Mars Needs Nitrogen

chat · 2005-02-26 15:02:10

RobS,

You have the same conclusion as me to teraforming mars.

It probably can be done, but its a daunting and maybe impossible task.
Warming mars can be a slow no rush process.

Cities under glass started from small structures under glass are much easier than teraforming.
The west Edmonton mall gone mad.

I also doubt an easy to find nitrogen rich asteroid exists, but one probably does somewhere.
Only problem is finding it, transporting it for a hundred years, then waiting maybe a hundred years after the impact with mars for things to settle down, since it will need to be maybe 10km or larger in diameter to deliver what mars needs.

The impact teraform method is the fast route to a teraformed mars.

In the 200 years waiting around for the asteroid humanity probably could dome most of mars, and be well on the way to the surface warming already.

Rxke · 2005-02-26 17:20:05

Why do people always want to impact stuff on the surface of Mars?
The energy created that way might 'feel' huge, intuitively, but it's nothing compared to the insolation we get nowadays. It would probably only cause huge dustclouds or storms, cutting off that very insolation.

Aerobreake big chunks of whatever your fancy, but don't you go crashing them big things into my preciouss, hatdammit!

Grypd · 2005-02-26 18:03:19

It makes for a more acceptable risk scenario and reduces loss of cargo to Mars by escape, extra atmosphere.

It would be easier to simply designate an area of Mars for deliveries of such consumables than to risk possible large gas or similar deliveries going wrong by a miscalculated aerobrake and or turbulence caused by an external factor like terraforming itself and sunstorms. We want to make sure these things dont crash where we dont want them. And designating an area of Mars as an impact zone is a perfect way of ensuring this.

chat · 2005-02-26 18:03:31

Rxke,

I think the only thing that has enough energy to alter mars are impacts.

1 good impact on the pole releases huge quantities of co2 and h20 and small amounts of other gasses nitrogen argon etc.

The down side of a impact big enough to change mars is the planetary wide disaster zone it will be for a minimum of 5 years afterward.
You can also bet that a sudden atmospheric change to mars will create 50- 100 years of insane weather until it settles into a new balance.
Maybe 1000 years of insane weather would follow an impact.

The plus side is that after the impact the temperature will rise abruptly melting all of mars, and with a new much higher bar co2 and water vapor atmosphere level it will stay that way, or close to that way as co2 wont be fixed out or frozen out.

I wonder what kind of atmosphere we get simply by melting the poles and surface areas of mars all at once.

Maybe 1/4 to 1/2 earth pressures?
And close to earth pressures in the deep canyons?

Sure the chemical composition of the mars atmosphere will be different than on earth, but then mars will require a different atmosphere than earth to stay warm anyway.

The energy amounts needed for a slow warming of mars by manmade methods are staggering, and time scales in the 1000s of years.
And only if the greenhouse gas products we make arnt simply frozen into the poles, or sucked up by the surface chemistry faster than we make them.

Shaun Barrett · 2005-02-26 20:03:38

Thanks, Rob, for distilling the problem down to basic arithmetic for us. Very helpful as usual.
Since terraforming is close to my heart, and since I'm always looking to see how practicable it may or may not be, I took your step-by-step method and honed it a little bit to suit myself.

Sea-level pressure on Earth is 1000 millibars or 10.338 tonnes/sq.m
But, at least in my book, we only need 300 millibars of N2 partial pressure on Mars, which, ignoring small molecular mass differences between oxygen, nitrogen, and air, corresponds to;-
0.3 x 10.338 tonnes/sq.m
= 3.1 tonnes/sq.m (under Earth gravity)

But Martian gravitational acceleration is only 0.38g, therefore we would need:-
3.1/0.38 = 8.158 tonnes/sq.m of N2 on Mars.

Mars has roughly 144 million sq.km of surface area, which is 1.44 x 10^14 sq.m
Therefore, we need 8.158 x 1.44 x 10^14 tonnes of N2 on Mars to create 300 millibars N2 partial pressure.
This equals 1.175 x 10^15 tonnes of N2

The density of liquid nitrogen is 0.807 tonnes/cu.m
Therefore, the volume of liquid nitrogen required for 1.175 x 10^15 tonnes is:-
1.175 x 10^15 / 0.807 = 1.45 x 10^15 cu.m
Or 1.45 x 10^6 cu.km of liquid N2

1.45 x 10^6 cu.km of liquid N2 would fill a sphere with a diameter of approximately 140 kms.

I have no idea whether Kuiper Belt objects of that diameter, made of almost pure N2 ice, exist or not. And I don't know how densely packed any nitrogen ice (snow?) might be in such an object.
But, assuming we ever find one suitable for the job, we'd have to land nuclear reactors on it and feed surface material into them, blasting the rapidly expanding gas in the appropriate direction to nudge the object sunward.
Once we get closer to the Sun than about the orbit of Neptune (rough guess), we're going to start losing nitrogen off the surface of our KBO at an accelerating rate due to sublimation. This means we'll either have to get it to Mars quickly, having calculated the expected losses in advance, or we'll have to shade it from direct sunlight to preserve its mass.
Given the right kind of KBO, I can see us achieving this feat of 'celestial snooker' (as it's been called! ) within the next century or two.
I think it's doable.

And one other thing. I agree with Rik that we should try to avoid crashing large masses onto Mars if we can avoid it. We don't know how long it would take after a major impact before surface conditions would settle down again and it might make life intolerable for the colonists already there at the time.
If possible, a few grazing encounters with Mars' atmosphere should be attempted, so as to deliver the N2 into the air more gently. (But I admit I don't know if this is even possible.)

Rxke · 2005-02-27 02:22:34

I don't think if you have the tech to pin-point landing or crash large bodies, you have a bigger risk using same tech to aerobrake. Just set your safetymargins high enough. Maybe you'd need several passes before your object is totally gone, but it would at least not release huge amounts of dust.
If you crash your stuff into, say, the poles, sure there will be massive releases of water and CO2, but for how long? the same impact releases sun-obscuring dust, which will cause a net effect of cooling, setting you back to square -1, you wait 'till the dust settles... And all you have is a Mars with a little bit more (insert element here) than before, but it'll be frozen even more solid than before, Mars having lost GazzillaWatts of insolation for years...

And I can understand Reds foaming at the mouth, when they hear about impacting these Armageddon beasts.... Maybe *you* shrug, but a lot of decisionmakers would not, so the project would be at best controversial, at worst in limbo for ages because of protests, politics...

(EDIT: oops. deleted misplaced quote.)

chat · 2005-02-27 05:57:54

Rxke,

The aero brake method for asteroids will work on mars.
But will trying to aero brake a large asteroid work, or will it require many small asteroids instead of 1 big one. ?

Aero braking will not em part as much energy to mars as an impact would, so for this plan to work it will largely rely on the density of the atmosphere to warm mars after the release of its contents.

All that mars needs is a pole temperature of 1c for a complete melt, maybe even less than this temperature on the poles will suffice as the frozen gasses in the equatorial zone will melt first.
As the surface melts it will add to the atmospheric weight and temperature, then the poles will begin to warm.

Any guess as to how much atmosphere mars needs for a runaway melt?
It would determine the asteroid size needed, and it might be much smaller than we expect since mars has so much frozen h20 and co2.

I also agree that direct impacts on mars are asking for disasters, we just don't know the outcome of crashing 10km asteroids into worlds.
The devastation might be on such a scale that mars is rendered unusable for millenniums.
Or it might be just 1 year, we just don't know.

chat · 2005-02-27 06:03:49

Just an afterthought.
Maybe all we need for temperature on mars is the melt point of frozen co2 for a runaway melt.

karov · 2005-02-27 08:43:59

Only 1 trillion huh?

Yes, Dook - ONLY one trillion cargoes of ~1250 tonnes L-N2 for ~250 milibars of N2 on Mars. Calculate again!

karov · 2005-02-27 09:22:50

Titan with its 83 mln km2 of surface area and 1.5 bars of >90% N2 atmosphere and 1/7 gees surface gravity, possesses about 1.6 times bigger quantity of N2 than Earth... or about 6 000 000 000 000 tonnes of N2 totally in gaseous phase or equaling of 1.25 earth`s atmosphere fills...

Siphoning out ( on account of lowering the Titan`s orbit insignificantly due to the exploitation of its orbital velocity via the centrifugal force used by the pipeline system with positive efficiency) the necesarry amount is ONLY slightly more than 1/5 of the total Titan`s stockpile of gaseous N2. This moon regarding the regulary estimated composition of 50% rock + 50% ices ( 90% water, 5% ammonia, 5% carbohydrates), should contain enormous solid phase matreials confined amount of nitrogen - primaly in amonia. The same results are for all the rest of the bodies out of the jovian orbit, but Titan is the only conveniently close body with ready deposit of gaseous ( easy to process), pure N2 + the mentioned HUGE energy source, extractable in direct mechanical manner, confined in its celestial dynamics as gas giant`s moon. The ~6% of methane/ethane in the syphoned atmosphere should be used for production in multiple massively parallel assembly lines` processing of the carbon content in structures - L-N2 tanks, solar sails, computers and mechanical parts, etc. Titan without 0.21 part of its atmosphere will still be mostly in its original form, as we know it. The strongest plastics known now ans here on Earth - kevlar, spectra, etc - consist of nitrogen, oxigen and carbon - the content of the Titan`s atmosphere. The net possitive gas flux on the upper end of the siphone-pipeline system will give all the electric energy necesarry for the processing and sending the shipping packets of 1000-2000 or more L-N2 doses... BTW, the begining of the construction of the pipeline should begin from some little body within the Saturn`s system ( better than some NEA and shipping up to Saturn)-- cause it being chunk of ice/rock will give all the necesary compounds for the pipes and the machines construction , to begin and proceed up and down from the L3 point... untill the bottom end dips in the atmosphere, and the upper is high enough to start the flux...

These figures show that Titan`s atmosphere is enough to provide 5 Marses with 250 milibars of N2.

400 milibars of total air pressure ( 250 N2 / 150 O2) is like the air pressure on 6-7 000 meters above the sea level here on Earth. It is human tolerable, regarding that indeed on Mars ( mainly the northern hemisphere regions) the surface air pressure will ber higher in lower altitude zones...

Dook · 2005-02-27 09:39:31

All that mars needs is a pole temperature of 1c for a complete melt, maybe even less than this temperature on the poles will suffice as the frozen gasses in the equatorial zone will melt first.
Any guess as to how much atmosphere mars needs for a runaway melt?

I believe the correct temperature increase to cause all of the ice and frozen carbon dioxide to change into water and gas is an average increase of 4 degrees celsius, not 1.

This won't be a sudden thing, over a series of martian summers more carbon dioxide would change to gas until, maybe 50 years later, the planet is warm enough so that the gas does not freeze over the winters anymore.

RobS · 2005-02-28 00:16:52

Thanks, Shaun, for refining my numbers, which were done without a calculator.

I do not think "nitrogen rich asteroids" exist because no mechanism for creating them is known. Water is by far more common, then CO2, and you will have to drive off those substances to create a nitrogen-rich body. But nitrogen does not form very many compounds, and the onces it does create--like ammonia--would be hard to separate from water and CO2.

It will be much easier to mine and break down all Mars's nitrate compounds than haul nitrogen in from Titan. We have absolutely no idea how common nitrates are in the Martian crust. But the only place they are found on Earth are desert environments, so they probably exist on Mars. Whether they'll give you more than 50 or 100 mb of pressure is a question for late 21st century Martian geologists to resolve.

-- RobS

Shaun Barrett · 2005-02-28 05:42:46

Rob:-

... my numbers, which were done without a calculator.

Yes indeed, Rob, I could see you were doing rough 'back-of-the-envelope' calculations not necessarily intended to be precise.
But it was the method which was so useful because it wasn't immediately obvious to me how to go about getting a good estimate for the amount of nitrogen necessary to terraform Mars. Your clear sequence of steps made it easy .. thank you!

I take your comments about nitrogen-rich asteroids on board, too. I couldn't agree more that indigenous nitrate beds are far and away the best option for Mars .. if only we manage to find any!

Admiral_Ritt · 2005-03-10 14:02:42

All the chemicals you need to terraform Mars is available
in plentyfull supplies in your common Comet. C.H.O.N. The
smaller Saturnian satellites are composed of this too.

The choice is to move 1,000's of Halley's comet sized
chunks of ice or move ONE 200 mile moon to Mars orbit.
From there you just hurl them into the atmosphere in
sizes that vaporize before impact.

Until we can do this Mars Will remain Dependent on Earth.
and any colonies will be small, a few thousand at most.

GCNRevenger · 2005-03-10 14:07:42

Moving an entire moon even half the size of ours from Juputer's gravity is clearly impractical.

The Martian atmosphere probobly isn't thick enough to make a comet burn up completly before impact, it would have to be broken down into smaller pieces first.

MarsDog · 2005-03-12 16:53:47

The Nitrogen supply could come from http://www.answers.com/topic/centaur-planetoid]Centaurs, cometlike objects, in unstable orbits.
A little nudge to crash into Mars, creating oceans full of http://www.aas.org/publications/baas/v3 … m]Nitrogen compounds.

The problem may be estimating the water coverage,
loosing large area to the created oceans.

The nudge could come from nuclear explosions;
Or, more safe, precise, slow and controlled; from microwaving the Centaur.
The Centaur could be nudged into a slingshot path near a larger planet.

Big splash of water and cleaning fluids would sterilize Mars,
ending all hope of finding the Little Green Men alive.

RobS · 2005-03-13 14:52:10

Nitrogen is much rarer than water or CO2 in this universe, so anything you crash into Mars will bring maybe 100 times as much water and CO2 to Mars as nitrogen. I doubt you'll get enough nitrogen to Mars that way without making it a water planet (or maybe a glacier planet!).

-- RobS

Austin Stanley · 2005-03-14 03:57:25

I've heard of Karov's idea before but heard of generating electricity from it, a great improvment. But also, once your pipe passes the LaGrange point you can also use it's velocity to add to your Delta-V, properly timed this system could at least augment the transportation of nitrogen to mars. At best no manufactured items would be needed at all. Freeze a ball of nitrogen then give it an insulating coating water ice, then wait for the proper time and hurl it on it's way. Of course the timing would have to be of nearly impossible precision and direct windows would probably be rare if they existed at all, and your cable would have to be very long, but hey every little bit helps right?

mars2015 · 2005-05-16 14:38:42

Here's a thought-Nitrogen serves two purposes primarily-nitrogen fixation from plants and buffer gas for animals (humans included). Say we could create an atmosphere of say 0.5% CO2, 20% Oxygen, 40% Nitrogen, and 38% Argon?

I realize getting Argon may be as hard as Nitrogen but perhaps from a liveability standpoint it could work.

Shaun Barrett · 2005-05-16 21:25:20

Maybe, Mars2015.
Those proportions indicate you're thinking of a 1 bar atmosphere, or thereabouts(?). That's a lot of Argon. And still a lot of nitrogen, too, which we've yet to find in quantity on Mars.

Welcome to New Mars, by the way!

chat · 2005-05-17 02:41:15

I still think the atmosphere makeup of Venus is perfect for a mars teraform project.
Co2 ,nitrogen and sulphur in abundant quantity at Venus.

The big question is how to get it from Venus to mars in respectable time scales and engineering scales?

I wonder if something as simple as a man made asteroid made up of giant balloons filled with Venusian atmosphere, then sent to mars.
This might fit the bill for low tech and low times scales?

The same idea of filled balloons might also serve well as a sunshade at Venus.

REB · 2005-05-17 07:14:54

Chat, I was picturing more of a factory (Or thousands of factories) in low Venus orbit. The factory sucks up Venus’s atmosphere and process it. The CO2 is separated into oxygen and carbon. The carbon could be used to built huge tanks to hold gasses, like nitrogen, bound for Mars. Perhaps a similar process, say set up above Saturn or Uranus, could extract valuable hydrogen (There should be plenty of carbon on the moons to make strong carbon nano-tube tanks). This hydrogen could be combined with Venus oxygen to form energy and water.

I think the real key to making this feasible is to make as much of it automated as possible, and have robots do most of the work.

REB · 2005-05-17 07:28:19

…and the gas giant hydrogen mines could end up being valuable fuel sources for space crafts. As for which gas giant to mine, Jupiter is the closest, but its gravity is 2.64. Neptune is the furthest with a gravity of 1.14.

The best candidates are Saturn which is closer but has a gravity of 1.10, or Uranus, which is farther, but has a gravity of only 0.87.

karov · 2005-05-18 03:32:39

Orbital rings ( kinethic structures) forming SolSys-wide Momentum Exchange Loop Network ( Paul Birch`s MOLONET - see " A Visit to Supra-jupiter" or the so many times quited by me http://www.paulbirc.net]www.paulbirc.net ), could utilize the enormous stockpile of orbital and axial roation energy confined in the celestial mechanics of the SolSys.

Thus Venusian CO2 could be traded in delta-V with Jupiter hydrogen and ammonia. Moons moved... etc. no waste of usfull mateial for rocket propelant, no need of orbital movement of the cargo, triptimes of mere days within all the system. MOLONET would provide also the veery possitive effect that the movement of the cargoes will be coupled in momentum - decelerating one will accelerate other...

To build the infrastructure of such rally K2 civilization harnssing ALL the nergy and material resourses of the System , we`d deffinitely need self-replicating robotics.

chat · 2005-05-18 04:40:55

REB,

I agree that whatever is done to mars or Venus it will require a lot of automation.

I'm always looking for a low tech solution to teraform, something that is just barley possible now.

The big balloon idea might be just the way to transport things around in the solar system with solar wind.
If the balloon area is big enough the sun will push things for us.

Works well from Venus to Mars, but in the outer solar system to the inner it wont.

Taking whatever we need from Venus wont really impact Venus in any great way, but could easily teraform mars.
Venus probably has enough atmosphere to teraform another 89 more mars after we are done.

Filling giant balloons in the upper atmosphere, then a gentle push of each balloon into orbit.
No need to compress the gas as the joined balloons become the transport vehicle.

It's pretty low tech for sure.

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