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In Robert Zubrin's "Case for mars", there is a section where he describes the effects of warming the South Polar cap by 4 degrees celsius; causing a runaway greenhouse effect that not only warms the planet, but perhaps more significantly; raises the atmospheric pressure at the surface to a level sufficient enough that large, ungainly and expensive preassure suits will not be required.
If something like this is done prior to any attempts to colonize take place, there are many areas of the endeavor that become easier and therefore less expensive to tackle.
First of all the pressure suit is traded for a combination of off-the -shelf scuba and cold weather gear.
-There is no longer any need to preassurize structures thereby greatly simplifying engineering problems in building structures out of indigenous materials.
-a thicker atmosphere provides greater lift for fixed-wing aircraft and greater bouyancy for derrigibles and the like.
-Atmospheric processing for air, water and fuel becomes less expensive as less power is required to intake the gases.
-wind power for smallscale power generation is more viable.
-I'm sure the list goes on.
I think that this approach would make things a whole lot easier once we get there.
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It would take 100 nuclear reactor powered greenhouse gas factories or a 100 km mylar mirror over the south pole. Each would take approximately 50 years to create an atmosphere of a few hundred milibars.
Each alone is almost an impossible task but if we reduce the size of each and combine them, say have 25 nuclear reactor powered greenhouse gas factories producing a mixture of really powerful PFC's and an array of five 5,000' round space mirrors and maybe spread some fine dark powder over the southern ice to increase the albedo, well then we may be able to do it.
The nuclear reactors would produce a lot of waste heat so I wonder if they would help much in warming the planet?
Also when the ice does melt much of the northern hemisphere will be covered in oceans, seas, and lakes, so any base will have to be built south of those low areas.
Maybe build the base for the greenhouse factory workers on high ground locations just north of the south polar ice near sulfate deposits.
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I still think that a solletta array would produce enough heat to do this certainly in the case of the CO2 stored in the south pole. Though maybe some form of direct focused light could be used as well.
Chan eil mi aig a bheil ùidh ann an gleidheadh an status quo; Tha mi airson cur às e.
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Or a small asteroid or comet crashing into the south pole would do the trick.
Huge energy release with a small energy investment, and nearly immediate results.
The universe isn't being pushed apart faster.
It is being pulled faster towards the clumpy edge.
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Also the likehood of actually cooling the atmosphere by particulates unlike the supply of constant light to actually increase the energy that Mars actually recieve.
Good for our plants whatever you say.
Chan eil mi aig a bheil ùidh ann an gleidheadh an status quo; Tha mi airson cur às e.
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Grypd,
Worse case scenario of an impactor on the south pole is a 5 year nuclear winter, followed by a few 100,000 years of much warmer weather.
Any other energy source we try to use will take much longer than 5 years anyway, probably 100 or 500 years to achieve the same energy release as a small impactor.
I agree though that we have no idea what an impactor would do on mars, it might simply spew a lot of dust into the atmosphere, thicken the atmosphere, then return to pretty much how it was before the impactor as the nuclear winter freeze will be like nothing on earth.
We also have no real idea of what is just below the surface of mars, an impactor might release things we don't expect and turn mars into a nightmare place.
The universe isn't being pushed apart faster.
It is being pulled faster towards the clumpy edge.
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Hi everyone.
Even partial terraforming will be very helpful to colonists. Raise the temperature of Mars' south pole by 4 or 5 degrees and the CO2 will sublime. This will at least push the pressure up to 14 mBars from the current 6 mPa. This will help as it will reduce the dust storms and double the atmospheres protection from cosmic rays.
It will also warm the planet more.
There is CO2 locked in clays. As the temperature rises this will slowly be released. Likewise, there is CO2 in clathrates. If the temprature increases several more degrees then we get up to ~50 mBars pressure. Now people need masks but don't need pressure suits.
Warm up the planet some more, and we don't need such excessive efforts to stay warm. Moving off the equator becomes more reasonable.
Introduce cyanobacteria (blue green algae) and you start pumping O2 in to the air. The ozone layer starts to build up. This is a big help to colonists.
As O2 and N2 levels rise, it becomes cheaper and cheaper to concentrate usable levels out of the atmosphere using simple technology such as low tech compressors. This makes it easier for colonists to live independent of large, centralized life support.
We don't need human levels of oxygen for insects. Once they are able to survive we can greatly diversify the ecosystem.
If we wait for Mars to bury its excess carbon in peat bogs and the like it will take 100,000 years to get a human breathable atmosphere. If we force it by burying tonnes of carbon (or shipping it outside the biosphere like to the top of Olympus Mons) then it could be managed in perhaps 10,000 years.
My point is that there are lots of reasons for people on Mars to feel it is worthwhile to make the planet 'just a little bit better'.
Chat, do you have references for your theory about hitting the south polar cap with a large comet? I would be interested in the details. My understanding is that even a big, multi-gigatonne impact is dwarfed by a year's worth of reflected sunlight.
Dook, the heat of a few dozen reactors is insignificant compared to the energy given by a 125 km^2 mirror reflecting the sun. The human colonists will joyfully use the 'waste heat' for warmth and to speed energy intesive chemical reactions but I doubt it will have any climatic effect.
Warm regards, Rick.
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It's fun to speculate on planetary engineering but given the primitive state of climate science it's not possible to say what effect such heroic actions would have. The complex interactions between the atmosphere and icecaps would first have to be understood otherwise attempts at terraforming may have either no effect, or worse still, the opposite to that desired. The small scale planetary engineering so far done on Earth has not always had good or even predictable results.
It will probably be centuries before we have the ability to significantly change the temperature or atmosphere of Mars. Bacteria and then plants may be the answer, as it was on Earth.
[color=darkred]Let's go to Mars and far beyond - triple NASA's budget ![/color] [url=irc://freenode#space] #space channel !! [/url] [url=http://www.youtube.com/user/c1cl0ps] - videos !!![/url]
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Hi Clclops,
Nice to hear from you.
Alternately you could think of it as: "Why not experiment on Mars first where it can't do any harm, rather than trying to regulate climate on Earth first." (And we likely will need to within 200 to 350 years the way we are going.)
Warm regards, Rick.
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