Scientist Calls Mars a Terraforming Target 575
Raver32 writes "Mars will be transformed into a shirt-sleeve, habitable world for humanity before century's end, made livable by thawing out the coldish climes of the red planet and altering its now carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere.
How best to carry out a fast-paced, decade by decade planetary face lift of Mars — a technique called "terraforming" — has been outlined by Lowell Wood, a noted physicist and recent retiree of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and a long-time Visiting Fellow of the Hoover Institution.
Lowell presented his eye-opening Mars manifesto at Flight School, held here June 20-22 at the Aspen Institute, laying out a scientific plan to "experiment on a planet we're not living on.""
Re:Planting? (Score:5, Interesting)
Still, the article is written by a physicist, I'd rather see a biologists perspective on this one, involving life and all.
Terraforming... (Score:5, Interesting)
I do think that the time span is a bit idealistic, and doesn't account for the Law of Unintended Consequences, but the idea is sound.
Then who owns Mars? (Score:5, Interesting)
Regardless, anyone who goes through the expense of terraforming Mars, even a government, is going to want some assurance that the rest of humanity won't leech off their work.
Hands off (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Then who owns Mars? (Score:3, Interesting)
If you can't stop people from using it, then it pretty much belongs to whoever holds the ground(or who ships them supplies).
It's like a saying I heard: Air support can only deny territory. Infantry occupies it.
Re:Terraforming... (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem is you need to raise the temperature of the atmosphere in order for most anything to grow, because there's no precipitation. The cycle can't begin until you've done that first step.
I haven't RTFA, but there was a show on Discovery Channel a while back where one of the guys who had designed a series of Mars missions for Lockheed/NASA back in the 80's (and he's still fighting for them) had proposed actually building a bunch of factories on Mars whose sole output would be greenhouse gases. Their entire purpose would be to just pump billions of tons of what we'd call pollutants on Earth into the Martian atmosphere. Supposedly you could raise the planet's temperature by 10 degrees over 100 years using this method, which would be enough to start releasing the water trapped in the ground as ice into the atmosphere, creating clouds and precipitation for plants. Then you could start planting forests, which would thrive in the CO2-rich Martian atmosphere and would begin to create the oxygen we need to breathe.
Humans could live on Mars as the terraforming process was ongoing, but they would need to be in enclosed colonies until the process was complete. Eventually, though, they'd be able to venture out into an Earth-like world.
I'm curious to see how the author of this article thinks the process could be sped up - the Discovery show said it would take thousands of years given current technology before the air would be both warm enough to live in and breathable for humans.
Re:Two problems I'm not seeing addressed here (Score:4, Interesting)
Venus is nearly the same mass as Earth so it has roughly the same gravity. The surface is a lot hotter and the atmosphere is a lot denser, but it seems to me it'd be much more feasible to scrub an atmosphere than invent a new one, all someone needs to do is come up with a solution (or multitude of solutions) for turning the bulk CO2 of the Venusian atmosphere into something else (perhaps hydrocarbons, carbon nanotubes, hell it could be graphite or diamonds for whatever reason).
Venus doesn't have a magnetosphere either, but it at least maintains its atmosphere and perhaps if it were left at least more dense than our atmosphere it would protect people from the radiation of space (or perhaps with the same machines we invent to do CO2 scrubbing we can make an Ozone layer too?)
Hell, if we were so bold as to do it, we could ship the gasses off Venus and onto Mars and inhabit both. Venus should still have plenty of atmosphere after we've bled off the excess junk within it to remain habitable. (I guess the only real question left is water, which we'd have to convert from whatever trace we could pull out of the atmosphere).
Re:"Will"? (Score:3, Interesting)
really not so complicated (Score:5, Interesting)
i'm sorry, but in reailty, the balance between individual rights and corporate provenance isn't so difficult or immobile. there is no massive conflicts, and the hudson bay company still exists today: what was once the corporate master of much of north america is now simply a department store [hbc.com]. but of course, you read most science fiction, or talk to a paranoid schizophrenic, or even consult certain lowest common denominator youth subcultures, and you get the impression that corporations are these unstoppable sociopathic vampires out to turn you into an unthinking slave. hardly. reality is just not that interesting, sorry
You'd almost certainly have to start with (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm more curious about where they expect to get the water. Sure, there may be a lot of it around, but the vapor pressure is going to be so low it would be very hard for bacteria to keep their water inside and not just instantly dry up.
Pity that Saturn's rings turned out to be dust instead of ice bergs. I keep thinking about that old Isaac Asimov story...
Robots Will Colonize Mars (Score:5, Interesting)
In fact, the more optimistic transhumanists would tend to assume that people alive today may see a time when they can upload or upgrade into an advanced robotic form themselves -- so it wouldn't even necessarily be our remote sort-of-descendants who colonize Mars, it could be us, suitably transformed.
Conventional wisdom is that Mars will be explored by robots, then colonized by humans. I turn that idea on it's head. Humans will explore Mars -- today's robotic probes are too crude and limited, so that a single manned expedition could do scientific work that would take decades, maybe centuries, with robots. The other side of that coin is that 50-100 years from now humans will become obsolete for space travel and colonization. The people who actually live on Mars and build a society there will be synthetic people, not homo sapiens.
Re:here's an idea (Score:2, Interesting)
Because there are to many riskfactors involved in projects like these. Changing course of water streams that used to go to Sahara could cause other areas that are now fertile and have water to become deserts. This could cause huge amount of starving people in places that are now densily populated.
Right now, we can't even keep existing, fertile land from turning into desert right here on earth, with plenty of water and air around.
This is more political and economical than technical problem. The logging, farming and mining industries are destroying those areas for purpose, money. It is agaist free capitalism to stop somebody to do their businis according to local laws. And there are certainly no politicans who would give up their support for tobacco or mining companies just for saving some rainsforest.
Otherhand, directing other peoples tax money to make something big and historical, like space programs, will just give them press time for being ahead of time.
Re:Terraforming... (Score:2, Interesting)
The options are:
- start off at the low end of evolution introducing bacteria and such to the environment hoping they survive and wait a few million years for things to start happening
- create a stable atmosphere and introduce complete ecosystems that are stable enough to achieve a balance and become self sustainable
magnetosphere? (Score:2, Interesting)
And isn't it also thought that in the past it may have had a stronger magnetosphere that could attribute for it having once had a thicker, more moist atmosphere in the past more like Earth's?
I watch Nova when I'm half asleep, so I may have dreamt all of this...
But assuming anything I just said is right to some degree, how does terraforming take it into account? Would it be all for naught if the solar wind comes and blows it all into space?
has been outlined... (Score:5, Interesting)
This is the point at which I stopped reading TFA.
A physicist talking about chemistry and biology, and a retiree talking about how easy/cheap/fast/simple it would be for you young people to do, if you only had the kind of vision we had back in the day.
Sorry, I've known too many physicists. (and too many retirees...)
Weak Magnetosphere (Score:3, Interesting)
The magnetosphere is the magnetic field generated by the planet. It essentially creates a shield around the planet that protects it from various kinds of solar radiation and the ill effects caused by said radiation.
Mars is, on a planetary scale,.... dead. There is no longer a mechanism within the planet itself to generate the magnetic field needed to protect the atmosphere (even if we could create one).
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Re:Two problems I'm not seeing addressed here (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:"Will"? (Score:5, Interesting)
Better yet (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:"Will"? (Score:5, Interesting)
The other major problem is that the rotation of Venus is extremely slow, thus leading to virtually no magnetic field. This means that it would be bombarded by extreme amounts of solar radiation on its surface if the atmosphere were cleared.
I read an interesting book on terraforming the solar system, and the author purposed that we could crash a comet (or few) into Venus to supply water, help cool the planet, and jump start its rotation. Of course needless to say I'm not exactly sold on playing intergalactic pool with planets in our solar system
they're ignoring the nitrogen! (Score:3, Interesting)
Mars: 3% nitrogen
Whether or not you can change the CO2 for oxygen is irrelevant if you can't magic up a lot of nitrogen. And remember you're talking about replacing most of a planet's atmosphere with a different element altogether. Its not feasible on a century scale.
So what do you do with it? 95% CO2 on mars, you could put some plants there (they don't seem to need the nitrogen, at least for photosynthesis). But that will only get you the O2 and create a sink for water (which is scarce as is). You might be able to mine the nitrogen there and blow it into the atmosphere, but is there enough? I'm very skeptical, you'd need millions of millions of tons.
Honestly the best plan for using mars for living is to plant some crap outside (but trap the O2 it makes) and live in contained environments. Short of either a)mining nitrogen or b)using fission to make it, it is likely that there's not going to be enough to make "air." We need to establish a presence and figure out if the ingredients are there to do the job, not brag that "it can be done soon!" without even having been there.
Re:"Will"? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Planting? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Terraforming... (Score:3, Interesting)
Humans could live on Mars as the terraforming process was ongoing, but they would need to be in enclosed colonies until the process was complete. Eventually, though, they'd be able to venture out into an Earth-like world.
I'm curious to see how the author of this article thinks the process could be sped up - the Discovery show said it would take thousands of years given current technology before the air would be both warm enough to live in and breathable for humans.
Ever read the Mars trilogy [wikipedia.org] by Kim Stanley Robinson (Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars)? One of its central themes is the terraforming of Mars, and specifically includes the use of greenhouse gas factories, along with bio-engineering of plants and algea to seed the soil, with human colonists living there during the process. Quite the good read if you are into sci-fi, though it starts a bit stronger than it ends.
Tm
Claim Terraforming? (Score:1, Interesting)
It does explicitly forbid any government from claiming a celestial resource such as the Moon or a planet since they are common heritage of humanity. Art. II of the Treaty states, in fact, that "outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means."
Can Soviet Russia claim it?
Will start it a new space race again?
Re:You'd almost certainly have to start with (Score:3, Interesting)
The "existing atmosphere" hardly exists, and that's the problem. You *have* to get gasses from some sort of solids if you want to have an atmosphere on Mars. Since there's only a small amount of CO2 trapped in dry ice, this means that having your replicators (biological or otherwise) turn oxidized metals into unoxidized metals via solar energy. The problem with that is that leaving unoxidized metals sitting around means leaving an invitation for a replicator (biological or otherwise) to make energy by doing just the opposite process.
How long would that last? It was my understanding that Mars' atmosphere is as thin as it is because it doesn't have enough gravity to hold down more gasses than it already does.
It's a combination of low gravity and the lack of a planetary magnetic field. The key issue is that this loss occurs on *geological timescales*. So long as the gasses can be replenished, Mars can keep an atmosphere. There's very solid evidence that Titan (which is much smaller than Mars) has continually lost and replenished gas since its birth; despite being about the same radius as Mercury (and less massive), its atmosphere is 1.6 times denser than Earth's.
Also, on geological timescales, we could *create* a magnetic field for Mars if we felt it was the best option. Not by a normal planetary dynamo, of course.