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after settlement has begun?
If folks withdrew themselves to a small section of the planet could you begin bombardment with relative surety that ti wouldn't kill everyone? Or is bombardment lost as a serious possibility after settlement begins?
Not exactly whether or not we should bombard it, but it I didn't want to disrupt the toher thread.
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Bombarding Mars would be unessisary and foolish. Any bodies that comtains volatiles could be fairly harmlesly aerobraked into an orbit that would evaporate them into the atmosphere without them ever neededing to make surface contact. The most you would hear on the ground, if the atmosphere was think enough would be a sonic boom as it passed by. Aerobraking does work, we use it all the time to slow satalites down into more usefull orbits araound Mars and and other planets.
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You could drop small bodies in the southern highlands while humans lived in the Northern lowlands.
You wouldn't want to hit Mars with big impacts but no reason you couldn't target carbonate or nitrate beds with smaller asteroids.
Edit: While I was researching another post, I came across this table in the Terraforming textbook. I'm adding it to my post for your enjoyment.
Note: exponents are in brackets, e.g. 1.4(12) = 1.4x10^12.
Diameter of impactor (km).... 1.............. 5............... 10.............. 100
____________________________________________________________
Impactor mass (kg).......... 1.4(12)....... 1.7(14)....... 1.4(15)...... 1.4(18)
Crater diameter (km)............ 16............. 66............. 122........... 931
Imported volatiles (kg)...... 6.8(10)....... 8.5(12)....... 6.8(15)..... 6.8(16)
Incr. in Pressure (Pa)......... 1.8(-3)......... 0.2............. 1.8........... 1770
Depth H2O depth (m)........ 4.7.(-7)...... 5.9(-5)........ 4.7(-4)......... 0.5
Devolatilized CO2 (kg)....... 4.0(12)...... 1.0(14)....... 4.1(140...... 4.1(16)
Pressure of above (Pa)........ 0.1............. 2.7............ 10.7.......... 1070
Depth equivalent of regolith meltwater (m)
.......................................... 8.1(-5)....... 0.01............ 0.08............. 81
Substantial Atmosphere Impact Erosion?
.......................................... No............... No........... Some..... Significant?
# of Impacters needed to produce 300 mbars of CO2
...................................... ~291,000..... ~112,000..... ~2,800......... <28
# of Impactors needed to produce 10 m of water globally
....................................... ~123,000........ ~980.......... ~120........... <1
The table includes bodies 50 km in size which I left out for room reasons. There is another table that talks about comet impacts. However these generally have such significant atmosphere erosion that they are not worthwhile larger than 10km in diameter.
Warm regards, Rick.
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