New Mars Forums

"And frankly, Columbus' feverish zealousness to get to the Indies is a problem for the 'Nina', 'Pinta' and 'Santa Maria', that the "Indies or bust" mindset is liable to cut corners or promise what can't likely be done to push the project."

    I guess that throughout history, there have been the 'feverish zealots' of science and technology who appeared foolish and desperate to many of their contemporaries.
    Maybe many of them were fools and desperadoes whose ideas came to nothing. But there were many others who were ostracised and ridiculed, who eventually became historical icons of science and discovery.

    Dr. Z has enemies. Manned space exploration has powerful enemies. But I wish we had more people like Dr. Zubrin.
    A little 'feverish zeal' for space exploration in governments all over the world would be a nice change.
                                                 

Good point, Graeme.
    I suppose a lot depends on how long it takes astronauts to adjust to different 'gravities'.
                                             

::Edit::  Apologies for the repeated post. ::

Aahhh .. you're all nuts!!!   :angry:

    If Dr. Z says Mars Direct is feasible (albeit with slight modifications) and Robert Dyck thinks he can make it work, that's good enough for me!

    When do we leave?!!    ???   [     :laugh:  ]

[This thread is really Josh's, Clark's, Bill's, and CC's, I know, but if I may just toss in two cents worth(?):- ... ]

    It's one thing to "mollify" various space agencies by giving them a "truly important role" in future projects, it may be another thing entirely to persuade them to stump up the cash to make a "truly important" financial contribution!
    And there's always the usual 'fly in the ointment' - endless committee meetings with representatives of governments who are all paddling their own canoes, usually in different directions.

    I don't know what the best way forward might be, though I'm inclined to agree with Bill and Josh, in principle. Why throw good money after bad?
    But trying to cobble together some kind of United Nations of Space Exploration will probably meet the same intractable problems which make today's U.N. the lame duck shambles of an organisation it is.

    It's always going to be easier to sell a space program to tax payers if you say the cost will be shared among several countries to ease the pain. But, in the end, I think one country, with one plan, and with one administrative structure to carry it out, will be able to achieve its objective much more cheaply in the long run.

    I'm keen to get out of the rope retailing business, too!   :bars:

Hi Earthfirst.
    Well, I don't know much about growing citrus fruit but your comments about former martian oceans, and any potential oceans created by terraformers in the future, are well taken.

    I also read about Mars probably having had mildly acidic oceans in the past, which might explain the apparent scarcity of carbonate rocks on its surface today.
    This is potentially good news for terraformers looking to find CO2 reservoirs hidden in the regolith.

    People like Drs. McKay and Zubrin have suggested there may be large quantities of carbon dioxide adsorbed onto granules in the martian soil. Estimates have ranged widely, between maybe 100 millibars worth and as much as 800 millibars. This is in addition to the few tens of millibars worth which may exist as solid CO2 at the poles - especially the south pole (though, there have been reports lately that even the south polar cap is more H2O than CO2).
    The idea, of course, being that a relatively dense new atmosphere could be created on Mars by the simple expedient of warming the planet, tipping the balance, and producing a runaway greenhouse effect which would release most of that CO2.

    What's always bothered me, though, is the possibility that virtually all of Mars' CO2 was turned into carbonate rock early in the piece, leaving little or none readily available to us now for terraforming.
    This latest news, that the formation of carbonates in the martian seas was inhibited by a lower than expected pH, makes the prospect that useful amounts of CO2 are still there for terraforming purposes much more likely.
                                                           
    And, if we manage to re-create an Oceanus Borealis and a Hellas Sea, it seems likely these new bodies of water will assume the same mild acidity as the originals. If so, then Earthfirst's suggestion that we won't have to worry about the new atmosphere rapidly disappearing into the ocean is also likely to be true.
    Good news all round.   :up:

Beautiful!   

You'll notice I avoided the gas/plasma question by using the word "matter".   

    You're not as fast on your feet when you get older, so you have to plan ahead!    :;):    :laugh:

Apparently, no one's 100% certain of the theoretical maximum temperature of matter. It depends to some extent on whether the Standard Model of physics is complete and, if it's not, and if there are more and more massive sub-atomic particles produced as ever-increasing energy is applied to a system, then the maximum may be relatively low - a few trillion degrees!
    On the other hand, if quarks are the end of the trail, and injecting more and more energy into a system goes to increasing the kinetic energy of the particles, rather than the creation of more massive ones, the theoretical temperature can be very much higher - as high as 10^32 degrees Kelvin.

    According to http://www.astronomycafe.net/qadir/q804.html]THIS ARTICLE :-

    I'm not sure if this was what you were looking for, Cindy, but it's mind-boggling stuff just the same!
                                                 

Yes, indeed, Rob. A multiplicity of potential terraforming disasters in the making!

    While dust storms are known to cause lower atmospheric cooling, I guess we can only hope that increased levels of water vapour in the air from the newly created seas will act as an atmospheric cleanser, as happens here on earth.
    Localised dust storms, some of them no doubt quite large, will probably always occur - especially in the dryer southern reaches, far from water. But I'm hopeful that global monster dust storms will be a thing of the past.
    It may be, too, that hardy (genetically engineered?) drought-resistant plants, introduced to the southern highlands, will help to inhibit aeolian erosion and minimise the quantity of raised dust.

    While, as you suggest, the increased water vapour in our brand new martian atmosphere will increase global albedo through cloud formation, the resultant cooling will surely be more than offset. Water vapour is the major greenhouse gas in Earth's atmosphere, without which our global mean temperature would be some 30K lower than it is.
    Of course, on a terraformed Mars, with a 500 millibar atmosphere of mainly CO2, and proportionately less ocean surface and less average humidity, the CO2 will be the main influence. But, despite the clouds, I think the overall effect of the extra water vapour will be decidedly in our favour.

    Nevertheless, I agree with you Rob that Mars will "tend to revert". Custom-made greenhouse gases like perfluorocarbons will be a constant requirement and I think that soletta will be a must.
                                               

Groovy movies!   :up:

Yes, Cindy, an interesting example of how a micro-climate can be influenced by human activity, even to the detriment of that very activity.

    Dook's right, of course, in saying oceans on Mars would act as heat sinks and tend to moderate temperature swings. But I've wondered for a long time now whether there's something profound about the topography on Mars which might have been a significant contributor to its dessication and freezing.

    If we look at Mars' surface and compare it to Earth's, it's almost like Mars has one enormous continental plate, taking up about 60% of the surface area and mainly occupying the south of the planet, and one huge oceanic plate taking up the other 40%. Even if earlier volcanism had been vigorous enough to drive tectonic plate movement, there was probably too much continental plate area, a kind of logjam, to allow much movement.
    Without the movement of continental plates and subduction of oceanic plates we have here, recycling carbonate rocks down into the mantle where the CO2 could be returned to the atmosphere via volcanoes would not have occurred.
    In addition, the only ocean would have been centred on the north pole. Without the benefit of a planetwide system of oceanic currents, transferring warmer water from the equator to the colder polar regions, there would have been a tendency for the Oceanus Borealis to freeze and stay frozen.
    With the greater distance of Mars from the Sun, and the inexorable sequestering of more and more of the thick greenhouse-producing CO2 atmosphere into the crustal rocks without tectonic recycling, the martian air would have thinned and the planet would have been locked into a permanent deep freeze.

    These things bother me because I'm a terraformer. Your comments on the micro-climate in Florida, Cindy, certainly give me food for thought about the macro-climate on Mars; and it's not necessarily a particularly palatable snack!    You remind me of nagging doubts I've had for some years.
    While changing the local climate in Florida may be as simple as draining some waterlands, even massive planetary engineering on Mars to create a benign climate for colonisation may prove to be a futile exercise. It's possible that the very structure of Mars has been a major player in its climatic deterioration in the distant past and will conspire against our terraforming efforts there in the future.

    This potential problem has been addressed to some extent in as much as orbiting solettas have been suggested to concentrate solar heating on Mars' north pole. But I've yet to see anything much of what we've learned about terrestrial air and ocean currents being applied to a hypothetical terraformed Mars.
    Once we've established a warmer wetter Red Planet, will it be a constant engineering struggle to keep the place from reverting to its old ways?!
                                                          ???
[Sorry! Rambled on a bit with this one.]

Happy Birthday Seth!!
    And may there be many many more of them.   :up: