Greenhouse effect could make Mars livable

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
As DRose pointed out, the first step is to warm up Mars.

With what?

The polar caps of Mars is likely to contain a fair amount of nitrogen, as volcanic activities were (still are) a major source. Then you can oxidise compounds such as ammonia.

How can you get enough to make AN ENTIRE ATMOSPHERE - to get the oxygen is easy, oxygen is in water is in comets. Carbon dioxide is very, very common on mars.

Comets can be a last resort.

How would you get nitrogen from a comet?

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by The Mad Monk
Terraforming Mars is a vanity project that will only take time and resources away from other, far more deserving projects, and if successful, will hobble our efforts on many of those other projects.

Why?

For starters, we don't know how to do terraforming and will need to conduct pilot projects. Mars is the best choice because it is relatively simple for the task. It's big enough to hold an atmosphere, close enough to the Sun and us, and got some stuff on the surface we could use.

[The Mad Monk]

We don't need terraforming, it can only be applied to very narrowly defined worlds (in the habitable zone, sufficient gravity, right geology, etc).

Sealed environments can be used everywhere (that radiation dosen't overwhelm our tech), and will be. They can also be scaled up as much as you like, given practice.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by The Mad Monk
We don't need terraforming, it can only be applied to very narrowly defined worlds (in the habitable zone, sufficient gravity, right geology, etc).

Sealed environments can be used everywhere (that radiation dosen't overwhelm our tech), and will be. They can also be scaled up as much as you like, given practice.

Sealed environments are much more difficult than it is on the surface. For example, how do you deal with meteors?

A great advantage of an atmosphere is it provides a powerful shield.

[DRoseDARs]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
With what?

The vasts amount of carbon dioxide that froze out of the atmosphere eons ago onto the surface of Mars. Perhaps some could even be scooped from the atmosphere of Venus to start that terraforming process, but that capability is even further in the future beyond our current capabilites.

How can you get enough to make AN ENTIRE ATMOSPHERE - to get the oxygen is easy, oxygen is in water is in comets. Carbon dioxide is very, very common on mars.

Then why'd you ask,"With what?"

How would you get nitrogen from a comet?

I can't answer that. Comets are relatively small compared to a planet - even as small as Mars - and we'd need LOTS of them for them to play a significant role in any terraforming project.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
How can you get enough to make AN ENTIRE ATMOSPHERE - to get the oxygen is easy, oxygen is in water is in comets. Carbon dioxide is very, very common on mars.

Free nitrogen in earth's atmosphere came either directly through various things such as deep sea vents and volcanic eruptions. I reckon such activities were as dominant on Mars as they were on early earth. Thus, it should be a fair bet to say that there's a good amount of nitrogen locked up on Mars.

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
How would you get nitrogen from a comet?

Smashing them at Mars.

[The Mad Monk]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger


Sealed environments are much more difficult than it is on the surface. For example, how do you deal with meteors?

A great advantage of an atmosphere is it provides a powerful shield.

Not as good as several dozen meters of lithosphere.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
The polar caps of Mars is likely to contain a fair amount of nitrogen, as volcanic activities were (still are) a major source. Then you can oxidise compounds such as ammonia. Comets can be a last resort.

The big problem is volcanism is supposedly extinct on Mars. A planet's magnetic field is created by the interaction of the liquid and the solid cores but Mar's has almost no magnetic field thus scientists believe there is very little liquid core left. Most of it must have cooled and turned into solid core; this means no tectonics are still active and likely little volcanism is active now since none has been observed in the hundreds of years human astronomers have been watching. Obviously there was a period were tectonics was dead but volconism still existed and that's why hot spot volcano's like Olympus Mons were created but it looks like, geologically speaking, that period is over for Mars.

The implication of this is without volcanism there is no large scale creation of nitrogen and no recycling of CaCO2 so the atmosphere will continually lose large quantities of CO2.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by The Mad Monk
Not as good as several dozen meters of lithosphere.

You are going to put several million people in a huge underground cave?

[Ned]

Oerdin gets back to the original point I made. The most critical aspect of terraforming is to have an active, molten core that triggers other processes that make and keep an atmosphere. If we could figure out how to heat Mars' core, we could easily terraform that planet by "natural" processes.

[The Mad Monk]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger


You are going to put several million people in a huge underground cave?

We'll be doing that with Luna, Mercury, Titan, probably most of the other major moons, and orbitals as well.

Why make a special case for Mars?

[The Mad Monk]

It'll probably be more like warrens than huge caverns. Easier to control that way.

[Ned]

What is the surface of Titan like? I understand its atmosphere is even thicker than Earths.

And, what about Europa? That planet seems to be covered by ice over an ocean of water. It might be very habitable, expecially if we could find land, ala, "Waterworld," rising above the sea.

[DRoseDARs]

As far as subsurface habitation on Mars, it is the safest way to colonize the planet given its lack of a substantial atmosphere (very low air pressure means great stress on any dome; thin atmosphere doesn't burn up incoming material such as meteorites).

As far as setting up shop on Europa, it is little different from doing so in Antarctica as much of the moon's surface is ice, though again the atmosphere is very thin - domes not advisable. Titan we're learning about, but my gut feeling is the surface is too unstable for habitation.

As far as settling Luna (Thank you Ned for realizing that there are gajillions of moons in this star system, so we need to give our's a more unique name ) subsurface habitation is again the best option as there is negligable presence of atmosphere, though there is some.

As far as talk about living on the surface of Mars, whether they realize it or not, people do so because of that planet's terraforming prospects. People hate the idea of living underground and domes aren't a whole lot better.

As far as restarting or even just reinvigorating Mars' internal heat: Nukes, nukes, nukes. We've got tens of thousands of them, we can make many more. However, I have my doubts that we'd make much of a difference in that kind of project, not to mention it would likely take hundreds if not thousands of years to get the core spinning sufficiently for a strong magnetic field to emerge.

[My Wife Hates CIV]

all you have to do is push mars towards the sun... just a bit. easy! or wait 4 billion years for the sun to get a little bigger. of course, than titan becomes a place to hang out. and it already has lots of gas.