New Mars Forums

Midoshi,

I think oxygen levels would easily obtain the self ignite point on Mars with its current gases or a warmed Mars with similar gas in thicker amounts.
On a planet with no land bio mass to burn, and all the oxygen production from water sources it's inevitable.

Since no land life will grow with toxic c02 levels, fires wont exist until the 0xygen is at ignite point.
Co2 would still be 9X beyond toxic levels for any land life when this happens.

It's a really long wait though to convert over 35% of the co2 into oxygen with just cyano and few other very tough water plants.
We have lots of time to bring in the buffer gas to stop this

Rick,

I think on Mars the c02 levels in ponds will stay below 20%, dissolved iron and other water contaminants will help keep it in check and the water weight itself.
Since Mars atmosphere would be almost 100% c02, water will be much higher percentages of c02 than on earth, but the water itself will only take up so much co2 before reaching a balance point.
We just don't need persistent waves on mars adding and mixing fresh c02 into the water like happens on earths oceans.

Hi Rick,

Here is a quick one about animal life co2 toxicity.
Will hunt out a good plant one today that isn't to long.

Animal toxicity
Carbon dioxide content in fresh air varies between 0.03% (300 ppm) and 0.06% (600 ppm), depending on the location (see graphical map of CO2 in real-time).

A person's exhaled breath is approximately 4.5% carbon dioxide.

It is dangerous when inhaled in high concentrations (greater than 5% by volume, or 50,000 ppm). The current threshold limit value (TLV) or maximum level that is considered safe for healthy adults for an eight-hour work day is 0.5% (5,000 ppm). The maximum safe level for infants, children, the elderly and individuals with cardio-pulmonary health issues is significantly less.

These figures are valid for pure carbon dioxide. In indoor spaces occupied by people the carbon dioxide concentration will reach higher levels than in pure outdoor air. Concentrations higher than 1,000 ppm will cause discomfort in more than 20% of occupants, and the discomfort will increase with increasing CO2 concentration. The discomfort will be caused by various gases coming from human respiration and perspiration, and not by CO2 itself. At 2,000 ppm the majority of occupants will feel a significant degree of discomfort, and many will develop nausea and headaches. The CO2 concentration between 300 and 2,500 ppm is used as an indicator of indoor air quality.

Acute carbon dioxide toxicity is sometimes known as by the names given to it by miners: blackdamp (also called choke damp or stythe). Miners would try to alert themselves to dangerous levels of carbon dioxide in a mine shaft by bringing a caged canary with them as they worked. The canary would inevitably die before CO2 reached levels toxic to people. Carbon dioxide caused a great loss of life at Lake Nyos in Cameroon in 1986, when an upwelling of CO2-laden lake water quickly blanketed a large surrounding populated area. The heavier carbon dioxide forced out the life-sustaining oxygen near the surface, killing nearly two thousand people.

Carbon dioxide ppm levels (CDPL) are a surrogate for measuring indoor pollutants that may cause occupants to grow drowsy, get headaches, or function at lower activity levels. To eliminate most Indoor Air Quality complaints, total indoor CDPL must be reduced to below 600. NIOSH considers that indoor air concentrations that exceed 1,000 are a marker suggesting inadequate ventilation. ASHRAE recommends they not exceed 1,000 inside a space. OSHA limits concentrations in the workplace to 5,000 for prolonged periods. The U.S. National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health limits brief exposures (up to ten minutes) to 30,000 and considers CDPL exceeding 40,000 as "immediately dangerous to life and health." People who breathe 50,000 for more than half an hour show signs of acute hypercapnia, while breathing 70,000 – 100,000 can produce unconsciousness in only a few minutes. Accordingly, carbon dioxide, either as a gas or as dry ice, should be handled only in well-ventilated areas.

Terraformer,
Great question, one i have thought about before.

cIclops,

Maybe no real large asteroids heading towards the moon.
But what about comets that we know nothing about?
Could be one heading for the moon or earth right now, until it passes the orbit of Mars we won't see it.

A semi decent sized comet hitting the moon could be a colossal problem for Earth.
Picture the ejected material from the very high speed comet impact from the moon spread all around the orbit of the moon and earth.

Earth receives small impacts for years to hundreds of years.
A cloud of fine dust remains between Earth and the moon for much longer decreasing Earths light content. (long ice age)
Since the impact speed of a comet is so high the moon wont retain most of the ejected material, but the earth will slowly capture almost all of it as impactors.

We cheer as the Moon saves us from a earth shattering smack, a one in a million chance that our moon is in the right place at the right time to stop the comet from a direct collision with earth.
We are deeply saddened just a few short days later as the after effects start to show up and in retrospect are far worse than the direct earth collision would have been.

Hi Rick,

I think the toughest of all the plants can only withstand about 6% co2 content then it becomes a toxic substance.

Most of the plant life on earth in the 3% range, around 1% for most animals, 2-3% for short durations.
Fungal life is many times more tolerant of C02 and other toxic elements, it might be a good candidate for the surface of mars if its all kept damp.

Cyanobacteria is not as effected with c02 in the water, and water won't be a great co2 holder, so short waits to start it growing.
Even though water will repel c02 semi well, cyanobacteria would be problematic at much beyond 20% co2 content in the water.

If Mars has persistent waves on its ponds we wont be able to keep co2 water content below 20%.

Terraformer,

Guess you missed the post.
Yep no problem with using UV, even worked out a way to deliver it to the atmosphere with no extra power needed.

I would hate to hazzard a guess to the number of Kbo's you would need and the time scales involved to move them and seperate the hydrogen from them in orbit.
But i bet they are all pretty long term projects.

Hi RickSmith,

Hate to be the bearer of bad news but NO plants with atmospheric c02 above 5%, none in the only viable place with such an atmosphere the water since water will be frozen solid.
Even cyano cant grow in ice frozen like solid steel.

Depending on cyano even on a warm Mars to convert 90% of even 100mb c02 into oxygen will take nearly forever in human terms, in fact we can only get to 35% oxygen before it self ignites.
It's a long wait for that to happen though.

I can't understand why this is overlooked.
Makes us plant people cringe when talk of a green Mars is impossible without massive inert gas imports first just to balance the c02 % before we have any hope of land plants.

Warm, Nitrogen/inert Gas import, decrease co2, maybe land plants if the temperatures and UV and  other high energy radiations and c02/oxygen/inert gas weight are right  and Mars induced plant mutation rates due to 1/3 gravity and increased radiation loads are just right.
Plants are very delicate things with very specific needs.

Not even sure its a viable scenario since Mars probably wont stay warm with less than 5% c02 per weight unless we have a few bars of atmosphere.

In my opinion trying to make Mars into Earth 2 is impossible.
The math for land life just doesn't work, the gas mixes don't work, or it takes so long to accomplish the ability to put life on land that its nearly forever in our terms.
Warming Mars and adding life to the water on Mars is possible, it should be our only goal.
Not such a bad thing to walk on Mars with just a gas mask, and live indoors and look at the greenery.

Rules of the game, not mine.

Wish some other plant people would dive in here, i hate being the bad news plant bear alone.

Commodore,

Charged particles/electrons from the sun should impart an electric charge to the c02 gas in geo.

If anything the gas will try to clump together in a ring in geo over time and create it's own small magnetic field.
If we added very fine iron dust to that we could create quite a strong magnetic field.

Similar reason the fine smoke sized particles at Saturn's rings stay in place.

Venus is much closer to the sun than Saturn so more effected by solar storms, but the same principal should work.

If we loose a percentage of c02 to space at Venus we can continually add to replace it.

Sounds like a simple plan for Venus but 4 bars of c02 is quite a bit to move even just to geo.

Terraformer,

Increased surface area is important to increased reaction with water ice on the poles.
The heat of each impact is important for c02 creation reactions also, so size does matter

We do have to think about the atmosphere of Mars on any small impactor, so a particular size to get past the atmosphere with little loss is needed.
That size depending on how you deliver the dust bullets, direct to pole delivery from Phobos or arching de orbit for extra speed.
Or shot away from Mars in a sloppy unstable orbit for the most impact speed.

Lots of calculations needed for sure, and lots of variables in each one.

The main calculation is how much new C02 we create with the dust quantity on Phobos at the best reaction percentages on the water ice poles.

If that number is 50-200mb new c02, then we really have a viable and simple way to alter mars for good.

With pretty rough math i get about 100mb new c02 for Mars with just 20% reaction if the poles are mostly water ice.
That is using all the loose surface carbon dust on Phobos.

Phobos has many times the loose surface dust amounts as solid carbon deposits, so a second or third poles bombardment isn't out of the question if needed.

Just guessing at the reaction rates of 20% though, because nothing like it exists to do any solid research on.

Terraformer,

I believe hydrogen is the best one of all for altering c02.
The bonds of oxygen and hydrogen are stronger than the bonds of Carbon and Oxygen.

Just the impact of hydrogen on the cooler atmosphere would break and reform the c02 bonds into h20 and free carbon.
I believe just delivering it to the atmosphere is all we would have to do.
On a 50c Venus both water and free carbon would try to get to the surface, that is a recipe for carbonated water. .

The beauty of hydrogen imports is we decrease the atmospheric weight and create water and free carbon.
If we did bring in 25 bars of hydrogen for Venus we decrease 75 bars of c02, and probably another 7 bars (guess) of co2 taken up in the oceans in rainfall.

Once we have a bit of water in the atmosphere or on the surface from importing hydrogen, we might get some help from engineered bacteria that form stable carbon/oxygen compounds to use up a few more bars.

Any and every idea to use up c02 would be a good thing.

Hi RickSmith,

You got it.

Costs us in final water totals for Mars but gains us a thick atmosphere quickly with lots of new c02.
Relatively low tech stuff we could do now with little material input from Earth.

The math/guessing is like a nightmare though

RickSmith,

This is kind of my latest thinking for warming Mars doing something similar to what you describe but using a very simple source of carbonaceous material.

We have a very good source of carbon on Phobos in dust format already.
We can use that dust in a better way than just spreading it out on the poles.

If we simply scrape of the dust of phobos and compress it into small packages then launch them towards either pole.
Tiny escape velocities for this, a small solar powered magnetic launcher would work.

We get the blackness of the non reacted carbon, the heat from impacts, the creation of lots of new c02 from water ice conversion, methane, water vapor, oxygen, nitrogen and other trace gasses trapped in the ice.

Phobos is expected to have a few meters of carbon soot on its surface so more than enough just lying around to melt and react both poles completely.

I've been trying to crunch the numbers of the pole ice amounts on Mars.
So far this is the best i can do with available info on ice quantity and makeup on Mars and carbon dust quantity on phobos.

Lots of educated guesses here.

With impactors of Phobos carbon dust bullets we get around 100mb of new co2, 2 mb of methane, 10 mb of oxygen and 10-20mb of free hydrogen.
We will probably get .5mb of trapped nitrogen from the ice and a host of other trapped trace gasses for another .5mb.

I think 110-130 mb of mostly c02 with 1-2% methane should completely melt the rest of mars.
It bypasses the Mars ice ball scenario also as the temperature would rise very fast.
110-130mb is before the rest of Mars begins to melt.

Let me know what you think Rick.
It's real low tech, technically within our means to do in pretty short time spans.

Terraformer,

Small traces of nitrogen are probably in lots of kbo's, but 1/2 a bar is a little more difficult to find.

Venus easily has 1/2 a bar of nitrogen to spare, but we would need a nearly terra formed Venus to get it.
Then transporting it from Venus to Mars even with a robust program would require 1,000/'s of years.

No chance of having any plants on mars convert ammonia into nitrates as the gas mix on Mars is incorrect for surface life.

If we warm Mars we can have life in the water without good gas mixes in the atmosphere, so we are limited to that until we bring in enough inert gas for land life.
We are pretty limited to what will live in the water also as the oxygen content will be very poor.

The most robust land life on earth can withstand no more than 6% co2 per weight of atmosphere.(other than bacteria)
Most of life on Earth requires 2% or less c02 content.

Titan is a possible to get nitrogen from for Mars, it's the only good place i could see to get nitrogen from.
It has a small escape velocity and lots of nitrogen.
Still around 1000 years to get 1/2 bar to Mars though, but at least we don't have to terra form it to begin moving nitrogen.
Titan has some other chemical goodies for Mars we can use to warm thing up and keep it warm, so it's a great destination for terra forming Mars.

1000 or more years to get nitrogen to Mars from Titan won't be much of a wait compared to decreasing the 40% or so c02 content of the final nitrogen rich oxygen poor Martian atmosphere.