Greenhouse effect could make Mars livable

[DaShi]

If there are bacteria living on Venus, it could be possible that they came from Earth.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Heresson
What for? The sun shall swallow both planets anyway

Mars will survive the sun's red giant phase though its atmosphere will be burned away.

[Dinner]

Venus is so hot there will be no life. Even if certain bacteria have evolved in the idealic setting of Earth to live at such temperatures it is unlikely for an asteroid to hit the Earth exactly where those bacteria live then propel rocks into space which then land on Venus.

[DRoseDARs]

Originally posted by Oerdin


Mars will survive the sun's red giant phase though its atmosphere will be burned away.

I've seen estimates having Sol swallow Mars by at least atmospheric drag if not full on contact.

[DRoseDARs]

Originally posted by Oerdin
Venus is so hot there will be no life. Even if certain bacteria have evolved in the idealic setting of Earth to live at such temperatures it is unlikely for an asteroid to hit the Earth exactly where those bacteria live then propel rocks into space which then land on Venus.

I'll play with this "Life on Venus" notion for a moment; I don't buy it, but I'll play nonetheless.

Perhaps a bacteria-carrying asteroid from the primordial Earth (or Mars or both or neither) smashed into Venus early on before the atmosphere turned to crap, that the planet's current state is a result of unrelenting volcanic activity the likes of which Earth has never seen since first forming. Perhaps the conditions at that time permited this stowaway life to survive and adjust to the slowly worsening conditions and have since evolved to survive high up in the atmosphere.

[The Mad Monk]

Originally posted by Oerdin
Venus is so hot there will be no life. Even if certain bacteria have evolved in the idealic setting of Earth to live at such temperatures it is unlikely for an asteroid to hit the Earth exactly where those bacteria live then propel rocks into space which then land on Venus.

Read the article, it isn't postulating colonization from Earth, it's postulating adaption of native life from an earlier, more hospitable era.

[Starchild]

What's with all the talk about mining Mars anyway? Is there anything that Mars offers that the low gravity environment of the Belt doesn't? Gravity is a nasty nasty thing and the more it's avoided, the better.

Besides, mining is such a cute and quaint concept. The building material of the future is carbon. We already build a lot with carbon in the form of plastics and we're making strong headway on materials that can replace metals. Think children! Semi-conducting polymers, diamonds produced on an industrial scale, carbon nanofibres metres long, new and exotic arrangements we haven't considered yet. Metals are old and boring and not that useful on macroscales compared to plain, simple carbon.

[The Mad Monk]

Gravity is bad, but lack of gravity is worse.

Sort of like oxygen, but less so.

[Starchild]

Gravity is expensive. Gravity translates directly into $$ when you start buying fuel to escape gravity wells and are forced to send up smaller payloads because of weight restrictions.

Besides, robotic miners or metal eating bacteria don't mind either way about gravity, only humans do. Removing humans from the industrial process can only be a good thing.

[Whaleboy]

Not going to happen. Cos of Mars' lower gravity the atmosphere will bleed away relatively quickly due to brownian motion, and while the half life of the atmosphere will still be relatively high, it's composition would remain too unstable for a pleasant, if not inhabitable environment.

[Geronimo]

i would think the worst thing about trying to terraform Venus would be the combination of a slow rotation with shorter distance to the sun.

Even if venus were given an atmosphere that had nearly no greenhouse gasses, and perhaps highly relfective clouds or haze the slow rotation would mean that while the sunward side might be made bearably cool the very long nights would lead to unacceptably low temperatures on the nightside due to the absence of greenhouse gasses which was necessary to cool the daylight side.

I don't think venus could be terraformed at all barring an immense array of orbitting mirrors that would artificially compensate for the uselessly slow rotation rate of the planet.

It's too bad really, given that venus has the closest match to earths surface gravity of any body in the solar system.

[General Ludd]

Originally posted by techumseh
Who is going to stand up for the Martian environment?

I would be more concerned with taking atmosphere, minerals, and matter from earth, than acutally dumping it on a dead planet.

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by Whaleboy
Not going to happen. Cos of Mars' lower gravity the atmosphere will bleed away relatively quickly due to brownian motion, and while the half life of the atmosphere will still be relatively high, it's composition would remain too unstable for a pleasant, if not inhabitable environment.

supposably the martian atmospheres halflife would be 10k years or more. At that scale there would be time to build an immense (if somewhat leaky) transparent UV/solar wind 'shade' or even an immense 'pressure dome' of sorts (more of a sphere than a dome really). Such a 'dome' could probably be made of something as almost as flimsy as plastic wrap and have huge gaping holes and still be effective due to the very low pressures at immense heights above the surface.

Hell, we could use such super high altitude leaky atmosphere 'spheres' to allow retention of atmosphere at breathable surface pressures even on tiny bodies like the moon.

[Zoid]

My pessimistic misantropic self says that why should we **** up another planet? We can´t even manage the one we´re currently occupying...

My space exploring sf buff self says. Hell, yes. Of course we shall colonize Mars. What are we waiting for?

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by Kamrat X
My pessimistic misantropic self says that why should we **** up another planet? We can´t even manage the one we´re currently occupying...

My space exploring sf buff self says. Hell, yes. Of course we shall colonize Mars. What are we waiting for?

planets are naturally ****ed up you know. If humans **** up the earth we will just have returned it to it's original state. I don't know why people believe it's so easy to **** up a hostile planetary environment.