DARPA Study on how to Terraform Mars

[phavoc]

It's pretty short, but it's interesting. I'm assuming there'd be other things happening, like ice comets being dropped onto the planet to increase it's water content, at least in the short-term. Much would depend on just how much is locked up on the ground.

https://bgr.com/2015/06/25/mars-darpa-terraforming-project/

 

[dragoner]

Oxidizing bacteria is a good idea, though Mars needs a magnetosphere, which I wonder how hard that would be to do.

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

Mars has no molten center.

 

[Hopeless]

Tell Scotland that!

They've been doing that to Mars bars for years! :twisted:

As for the actual planet Mars, wasn't the reason it lost its magnetism due to being hit by some planetoid in the distant past?

Is there a way to artificially bolster a weaker magnetic field?

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

As for the actual planet Mars, wasn't the reason it lost its magnetism due to being hit by some planetoid in the distant past?

The planet cooled too much. Wrong ratio of atmosphere with distance from Sun. It's just solid dirt now.

 

[Reynard]

Mars original problem is its lousy magnetic field and low gravity which is why the original atmosphere and hydrosphere boiled away. Growing bacteria won't make that much air and there won't be much to prevent is loss again with solar winds blowing it away while extremely low surface pressure won't hold it down.

Mars is an example how tight a range planets must achieve to come close to habitable. The Goldilocks Zone also needs a Goldilocks planet.

 

[simonh]

The perchlorate problem is tricky too. Turns out up to about half a percent of Martian soil is a potent poison. Even Kim Stanley Robinson and Elon Musk have expressed fears that this essentially kills any realistic chance of successful terraforming.

There are possible decontamination approaches such as using bacteria to process the perchlorate into chlorides, but the sheer vast quantities of it would seem to make any such attempt infeasible. You'd have to thoroughly process almost the entire Martian soil stock. It's hard to see how that could be done in practice.

Simon Hibbs

 

[Reynard]

If that same imaginary time, resources and money went to 'terraforming' our own messed up planet, we wouldn't need to go to Mars. Still, it's a hypothetical exercise that could be engineered for uses on Earth.

 

[Hopeless]

So is it more viable to build a subterranean lunar colony then establishing one on Mars?

 

[Reynard]

And here's the big question which applies to Traveller exploration and colonization as well. Why go there in the first place? What's so important on the Moon or Mars that's not on Earth? Terraforming or building underground facilities are expensive and high maintenance so something really needs to justify them.

Except maybe that latest 'pyramid' on Mars...

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

If that same imaginary time, resources and money went to 'terraforming' our own messed up planet, we wouldn't need to go to Mars. Still, it's a hypothetical exercise that could be engineered for uses on Earth.

Tell me, do you sit there with a filter mask on your face in your living room and pretending that the atmosphere is too polluted to breath? Reality check, why don't you go outside and take a breath and see what happens?
I have trouble imagining hypothetical futures where the Earth's atmosphere is too polluted to breathe, do you suppose we'll switch in a massive way to dirty coal fired plants? The so called "smoke stack future?" I don't see that happening, though it is popular with movies like Avatar.

 

[Reynard]

Tom, are you actually living under a rock along with many others denying climate change and subsequent species extinction? That could explain why some people a focusing on taking vacations on a terraformed Marian paradise. As to wearing filter masks to breath, go check photos of typical citizens in Beijing walking outside.

 

[Rick]

Tom, are you actually living under a rock along with many others denying climate change and subsequent species extinction? That could explain why some people a focusing on taking vacations on a terraformed Martian paradise. As to wearing filter masks to breath, go check photos of typical citizens in Beijing walking outside.

Please keep your personal opinions or religious beliefs in the appropriate off-topic area. As to a 'Martian paradise', I don't think that could ever be a reality due to the information presented in previous posts

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

I have trouble imagining hypothetical futures where the Earth's atmosphere is too polluted to breathe, do you suppose we'll switch in a massive way to dirty coal fired plants? The so called "smoke stack future?" I don't see that happening, though it is popular with movies like Avatar.

True. People don't want to pollute their living space and live in their own filth in general. Except for the horde cultures and promoters of scarcity you see in dystopian films (examples: Soylent Green, Blade Runner, Silent Running).

 

[dragoner]

So is it more viable to build a subterranean lunar colony then establishing one on Mars?

Titan is a better bet, a lot of gas and petroleum there to fuel an energy hungry planet.

 

[heron61]

So is it more viable to build a subterranean lunar colony then establishing one on Mars?

Titan is a better bet, a lot of gas and petroleum there to fuel an energy hungry planet.

I can't imagine that being cost-effective w/o space drives like those in Traveller. However, Titan still works, because Saturn (like Jupiter) has He3 in its atmosphere, which may be really handy for fusion and unlike Jupiter, it lacks vastly deadly radiation belts, and unlike Luna (another proposed site for He3 collection) collecting it won't use up more energy than using it in fusion. Of course, a colony of a far lower gravity moon like Enceladus, which is also far closer to Saturn and has abundant water makes more sense. Aerostats floating in Saturn's atmosphere would also work, since they'd be at roughly 1G.

 

[dragoner]

So is it more viable to build a subterranean lunar colony then establishing one on Mars?

Titan is a better bet, a lot of gas and petroleum there to fuel an energy hungry planet.

I can't imagine that being cost-effective w/o space drives like those in Traveller. However, Titan still works, because Saturn (like Jupiter) has He3 in its atmosphere, which may be really handy for fusion and unlike Jupiter, it lacks vastly deadly radiation belts, and unlike Luna (another proposed site for He3 collection) collecting it won't use up more energy than using it in fusion. Of course, a colony of a far lower gravity moon like Enceladus, which is also far closer to Saturn and has abundant water makes more sense. Aerostats floating in Saturn's atmosphere would also work, since they'd be at roughly 1G.

There is an economic infrastructure around natural gas and petroleum, creating a "pipeline" of balloons filled with frozen gas launched at the earth, would take time to get here. But whoever controlled those supplies as terrestrial supplies became more scarce, would generate an enormous income. Now if artificial production can negate all that, who knows, but for now, Titan represents a real economic goal for it's development, something Mars does not.

 

[heron61]

There is an economic infrastructure around natural gas and petroleum, creating a "pipeline" of balloons filled with frozen gas launched at the earth, would take time to get here. But whoever controlled those supplies as terrestrial supplies became more scarce, would generate an enormous income. Now if artificial production can negate all that, who knows, but for now, Titan represents a real economic goal for it's development, something Mars does not.

If the energy cost to get the hydrocarbons to Earth is higher than the cost to burn them, then you aren't generating energy, you're wasting it. W/o thrusters and antigrav, I can't see any way that this won't be massively true. Also, there's the matter of cost - no matter how scarce liquid hydrocarbons become, no one is going to pay $100/kg for them, and I'm betting that would be a low estimate of the cost.

There's the cost to build and maintain in-system transports, launch vehicles from Titan and landing vehicles for Earth as well as the cost to fuel them, ship supplies to a colony on Titan... He3 for fusion is an exceptionally energy dense material - each kg can generate truly vast amounts of power, 1 kg of liquid hydrocarbon can't.

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

I see the resources on various moons used to provide energy for just the inhabitants of those moons. Earth (Terra in the future) will still have plenty of resources still for its energy use.

 

[Reynard]

Remember, Earth is running out of hydrocarbons not energy. We get locked into a mindset that we must run our world on gas and oil. The Traveller universe postulates energy based on cleaner hydrogen burning fusion. If we were to develop the fusion technology then there would be a market to exploit other intrasystem worlds if only for bases to mine gas giants.

One of the reasons to set up a permanent colony or outpost on Mars is scientific study directly. If we try to terraform it to be human habitable, we destroy what Mars is and make it less viable for such research. Terraforming would be more useful if we planned more commercial ventures there such as mining.