New Mars Forums

Grypd,

The Viking landers detected no seismic activity on Mars, so volcanic activity is either non existent or very episodal.

Since these small impacts make it directly to the surface of mars due to its thin atmosphere, a good experiment to find out when mars was more volcanically active is to search back for the oldest small impact craters.

At the age of the oldest small impactors is about the time mars became volcanically inactive and the atmosphere wasn't being replenished, or was thin enough for very small impactors to reach the surface.

That would give us a good idea of what mars has been doing and for how long, or at minimum how long mars has been how it is now.

If that number comes back a billion years then we can bet that most of the pole accumulation is from impact gas accumulation.
If it is 100 million or so years then the pole accumulated probably was started when the surface water stared to freeze.

My guess for the poles to slowly accumulate frozen h20 and slowly deplete it from other places on mars is hundreds of millions of years.

Interesting whatever result we get.

Grypd,

Hmmmm! if that is a typical happening for Mars, then its unlikely that the surface material and gasses expelled from impacts will be of much use for terra forming Mars.

If the surface material and deeper was full of frozen co2 and h20, them mars probably would have been terra formed from natural impacts.
This might be a big blow to plans for a green mars, and might be a good indication that Mars has little or no permafrost of any kind below the surface.

karov,

I guess the only advantage to making the diamonds on Venus is that it would be an automatic process.
Just let the spheres drop to the surface and they create diamonds, the inevitable sphere failure will cause the compressive o2 explosion.

Getting the explosive fuel and carbon at once for the process could be done with  c02 splitting, and maybe even the sphere outer material could be made at the same time.

To make any impact on atmosphere reduction we would have to create an enormous amount of diamonds on the surface.

Probably not a realistic idea to create a 50 meter deep diamond surface on Venus to lock away the C, but a good chemical experiment to show that a way exists to reduce the C02 on Venus but not in practicality.

If we could replace the creation of diamonds with some other product that locks away the C, then reducing the atmosphere on Venus might not be that difficult.

karov,

Almost a guarantee that most of the moisture is in the clouds.
Probably not far below the clouds is the no moisture zone.

Just above the clouds nothing to hold onto moisture for long.
Venus probably has a very weird water migration system within its clouds.
I wouldn't be surprised if short fall rain converted to steam as it drops was possible on Venus.
I believe i remember reading that Earth has less water in its cloud system at any given time than Venus has all the time.

John Creighton,

I'm not sure what temperature the metal must be, but i think most metals on the surface of Venus would be pretty soft under the heat.

We might be able to put the local conditions to use to create diamonds in a new way.

Send down pure carbon spheres with pressurized 02 surrounding them in a metal case.
Let the heat and pressure of the surface cause an explosion of the 02 surrounding the C to cause a compressive explosion.

Might work to create diamonds, a similar idea created the first A bomb.

karov.

Very interesting idea to split the co2 and use the o2 to power all space ventures and the C as containers.

At the 10x exponential rate of growth the production of O2 as rocket fuel would be astronomical even after only a couple of years.
Even with an expected 20% failure rate we would be moving bars of 02 very quickly.

I haven't done the math but i believe we are talking in a single human life span to completely alter Venus.

A little tweak to the plan might be the additional C created from 02 separation could also prove useful.
Send the additional C into a geo orbit to start creating a moon for Venus.
We can either leave it as a growing moon or use it later as a raw source of pure carbon.

Rxke,

To bad the pressure needed is more than 100 earth atmosphere.
Any plan that has a potential to make money and get Venus moving the right way towards a less hostile surface is what i was thinking.

noosfractal,

Not much money to play with when trying to alter a planet.

Rain was exactly what i was thinking.
Carbon packages sent to the surface to form diamonds.
It looks like that will work but with compressive explosive charges needed to increase pressure further at the surface.

At least on Venus we could make diamonds of a size that wouldn't exist on Earth, but would they be of value to start such a project? and the wait for collecting those diamonds from the surface until it is less than machine hostile.

Living in a pressure cooker, cold vacuum or liquid nitrogen bottle.
None of those sound very appealing, do we have a fourth choice? planet Hawaii?

Venus cloud top has its possibilities, but sulphuric acid and any balloon material don't mix well.
A balloon failure means a quick one way trip to the surface.
Getting what we need for existence in the atmosphere of Venus probably isn't to difficult with the abundant solar energy and atmospheric compounds.

Mars probably has all the resources we need just below the surface, in fact most of what we need in the atmosphere.
A good air compressor, vapor extractor and well heated structure are the check list for Mars.
If we set up home near the poles we probably wouldn't need a vapor extractor, we could just go collect ice.
Solar power won't be much use on mars, so a nuclear power probably would be needed.

Titan would require nuclear power just to settle on the surface, without constant heat everything will shatter like glass.
Carbon steel on the surface would be as fragile as cheap glass, water ice as tough as carbon steel.
Any attempt to live on Titan will require large quantities of power with many backup systems.
Titan probably has all the compounds we need for existence also.

noosfractal,

I think the Mars moon impact would be a cool way to slow an impactor down, but as you point out an easy way to destroy a moon.

If we did use such a method we would want to know the contents of the moon as it would be pretty easy to leave Mars with a debris ring for countless eons.
Last thing we would want would be a sun shield we cant remove.

Ammonia in its raw form diluted with water will be very difficult for most plants to use.
We would have to be very careful on how much we imported to mars, to much could be just as bad or worse than none.
Even human urine that is a small percentage of ammonia continually used in an area will kill plants on earth.
Anaerobic bacteria should have a nice environment though.

Using the 2.5% or mars atmospheric nitrogen  with ammonia to create ammonium nitrate would produce a huge quantity of fertilizer for Mars.

Getting what we need to Mars...
Instead of trying to move a single asteroid to mars with brute force we could move two with a tether between them.
If we use difference in speed or gravity between the objects we should be able to move one of them with little or no brute force.

Or we could do a gravity assist of smaller object to larger ones.
Moving a 1km object with a 10km objects gravity etc.

SpaceNut,
Commodore,

Deep impact told us a lot about the inside of a comet, if we did the same thing on mars it would reveal exactly what we need to go get and how much.

I agree that getting as little as we need for mars is all we should get.
No point in overkill of items we might not need.
If its small amounts of things we need then conventional methods will work fine.

If its larger quantities we need then asteroids/commets are probably the way to get them to mars.

noosfractal,

A direct thumping impact might be better or worse way to go, all depends on that ground chemistry like you say.
Gentle approach if the ground chemistry isn't going to help us, and we want to terra form relatively quick without much surface damage or dust.

The heat from an impact might be a good or bad thing.
Guess we will have to wait to see what is really below the surface.

Or maybe even a direct impact with one of the moons might yield even more chemical goodies.

We could probably terra form Mars much easier without anyone living on it than we could with anyone there.

Anything we do would be a risk after it has colonists.

I guess if we are bringing ammonia to mars we probably could alter the plant life to respond directly to is as a source of energy instead of nitrogen, or at minimum with little nitrogen.

I bet a few plants on earth already are pretty good at using bacteria to get energy directly form ammonia.

I think the nitrogen problems on mars will be in the very long time scales before we have to worry about it anyway.
We will probably have a few hundred to few thousand years before any terra forming effort produces a stable enough place for plant life to exist on the surface.

First stock to buy on Mars as a colonist will be anything to do with greenhouse equipment.

noosfractal,

Maybe not an actual moon/asteroid capture for mars, but a very bad orbit that places lots of stress on the asteroid.

If the orbit is sloppy enough it will break up and fall in pieces to mars.

Even with this more gentle approach I wouldn't want to be living on mars at the time.

With so much rust and peroxide on mars i doubt the poles will have much co2, but ground chemistry below the surface might surprise us as to contents with warmth.

Nitrogen is only really needed for plants.
Peas and beans and a host of other plants do well with little, so engineering nitrogen fixing bacteria might go a long way to reducing nitrogen needs.

Or we can grow everything in greenhouses that cycle what nitrogen we have introduced in an area.