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Mars Space

Warming Up Mars With Greenhouse Gases 521

Posted by CmdrTaco from the this-is-news-in-august dept.
fembots writes "Scientists are thinking of using the same toxic stuff (Octafluoropropane) already blamed for global warming here to put some life back on Mars. It would take hundreds of years but eventually ice sheets would melt, grass would grow here, and temperatures would hit 50 degrees along the equator of the planet. Martian organisms might be revived too - if there are any."
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Warming Up Mars With Greenhouse Gases More

Warming Up Mars With Greenhouse Gases

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  • Simple. (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Send CmdrTaco to Mars after he eats a burrito.

  • SimEarth (Score:5, Funny)

    by PunkOfLinux ( 870955 ) <mewshi@mewshi.com> on Sunday August 14, 2005 @03:17PM (#13317331) Homepage
    I remember the game SimEarth had you do something like this in order to make it livable. Of course, I nuked everything that moved, but that was a different story. Why are we trying to terraform mars?

    • Re:SimEarth (Score:3, Funny)

      by tratten ( 783047 )
      Why are we trying to terraform mars?
      I for one would like the extra 39 minutes and 35.244 seconds each day. (If the time is added to my spare time, that is...)

  • go humans! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 14, 2005 @03:17PM (#13317332)
    1 planet down, 9x10^10000 to go!

  • Sustainable? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Solder Fumes ( 797270 ) on Sunday August 14, 2005 @03:18PM (#13317333)
    If you warm up Mars, how long before all the atmosphere cooks off because the gravity is lower? To me it seems like trying to blow up a balloon that already has a small hole in it.
    • Yup. What it needs is for someone to slam a few of the larger asteroids from the nearby asteroid belt into it to add some mass (and some instant heat). Also a few large comets swinging in from the Koopers belt would also be nice. Those tend to have a lot of water in them and Mars could use a bit more water in it's mass.

    • Re:Sustainable? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by snilloc ( 470200 )
      Exactly. If you melt the ice you won't have lakes, you'll have water vapor slipping into space. At least ice can be harvested by any future human colonists.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re:Sustainable? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by WormholeFiend ( 674934 ) on Sunday August 14, 2005 @04:49PM (#13317829)
        if Mars is tectonically dead, then this would be an advantage for building bases INSIDE the planet.

        Put large fields of solar panels and wind turbines on the surface for power, and bring everything you need for indoor hydroponics.

        It would be feasible (although not cheap) and faster than terraforming.

        I bet that if you look around Mount Olympus, you could find large cave systems that can be used as a starting point.

    • Re:Sustainable? (Score:2, Informative)

      by CrazyDuke ( 529195 )
      Actually, if I remember correctly, Mars has it's problems not because of it's size or mass, but because it has a weak magnetic field. Because of that, every solar storm that smacks into the planet shears off some of it's atmosphere. Linky. [cnn.com]

      Saturn's moon Titan has a radius of about 2570km and a mass of about 1.35e23kg and has a thick atmosphere. Linky [mira.org]

      Mars's radius is about 3397km and has a mass of about 6.42e23kg and has a thin atmosphere.Linky [solarviews.com]

    • Re:Sustainable? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by mp3phish ( 747341 )
      Good point.

      But it is not just the low(er) gravity on mars that lets its atmosphere deplete faster. It is a lack of volcanos. Without a continuous replenishment of gasses from within the core into the atmosphere, no planet can sustain an atmosphere. No matter how much gravity is holding it down. There will always be a stastically significant number of particle to reach escape velocity in the correct direction in the upper atmosphere.
    • > If you warm up Mars, how long before all the
      > atmosphere cooks off because the gravity is
      > lower?

      Probably only a few hundred million years. Hardly makes it worth doing, does it?

    • From Margarita Marinova herself (Score:5, Insightful)

      by pauljlucas ( 529435 ) on Sunday August 14, 2005 @04:56PM (#13317851) Homepage Journal
      I had the same question, so I e-mailed her. Here's my question:
      So even if you add more of an atmosphere to Mars, what would prevent it from leaking off into space just like it's already done to get Mars into the state it's in now? Due to Mars' lack of a magnetic field, the solar wind would just strip away the atmosphere.
      Within minutes, I got a reply from her:
      Hi Paul,

      you're right, even if we thicken Mars' atmosphere, it will eventually disappear again. The lack of magnetic field is probably not the biggest problem (it's likely to have been more of a problem in the past when the solar wind was likely stronger), but you would definitely have the formation of Carbonates in the newly formed lakes and rivers that would take sequester the CO2.

      The important point here though is timescales. If people really wanted to do it, terraforming (at least the first stages) could definitely be accomplished in about 100 years. That's a reasonable timescale in the life of humans. The disappearance of the Mars atmosphere, on the other hand, would take *at least* millions, and probably tens of millions, of years. That timescale is much longer than human experience and therefore I would argue is not that important. We are going to be so different in a million years, with such totally different capabilities and needs, that the fact that Mars will then again become inhabitable I think is unimportant.

      Margarita.

      • So what she's saying is "We can do this, it will work for a while, and by the time it falls apart it will be somebody else's problem because we'll all be long gone."

        I think I can stand behind that kind of reasoning.

    • Re:Sustainable? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by shokk ( 187512 )
      A lot of this was all covered in Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy [amazon.com]. It seems like there was lots of good science in those books.

  • 50 degrees? (Score:3, Funny)

    by sound+vision ( 884283 ) on Sunday August 14, 2005 @03:18PM (#13317340) Journal
    50 degrees? Damn that's chilly!

    (Surely you mean celsius, try to be clear. Next time the number might not be so obvious. You could end up crashing a space probe or something.)

    • Re:50 degrees? (Score:3, Informative)

      by Solder Fumes ( 797270 )
      I think if we went to 50C it would be a little too far. 50F is actually very livable with a little extra clothing. Hell, -50F would be a paradise compared to most places in space.
    • Between 50 Celsios, and 50 Fahrenheit, I think that I, and any other warm blooded organism on the planet, would prefer 50 degrees Fahrenheit.
    • No I'm pretty sure they mean Fahrenheit. 50C would be too hot for most people, quite overdoing it when you are causing the heating yourself. 50F is 10C, chilly but perfectly livable with a jacket. I guess you're not from a northern climate?

    • Re:50 degrees? (Score:5, Informative)

      by ultranova ( 717540 ) on Sunday August 14, 2005 @03:34PM (#13317437)

      50 degrees? Damn that's chilly!

      (Surely you mean celsius, try to be clear. Next time the number might not be so obvious. You could end up crashing a space probe or something.)

      No, that doesn't make sense either. Earth, which is half the distance from Sun and has thousands upon thousands of tons of water vapor in the atmosphere to cause a greenhouse effect can barely hit 50 degree Celsius at the equator (according to NASA [nasa.gov] the highest temperature ever recorded on Earth (discounting the craters of erupting volcanoes and such, obviously) is 136 Fahrenheit, which, according to Google, is 57.8 degree Celsius, and was measured at Al' Aziziyah, Libya in September of 1922), so there's no way Mars could possibly reach it.

      Since this can't be Kelvin either (because that would be colder than it is now - cold enough to liquidate nitrogen, actually), the unit remains unknown.

    • 50 degrees? Damn that's chilly!

      After going through a -40F streak in Northern Minnesota, you'll find us wearing shorts in 50F

  • So how is there now (Score:5, Funny)

    by Quirk ( 36086 ) on Sunday August 14, 2005 @03:19PM (#13317344) Homepage Journal
    "It would take hundreds of years but eventually ice sheets would melt, grass would grow here,

    One has to assume you're there, quite the feat; and, let me be the first to say, I welcome our grass growing, and smoking, Martian Overlords.

    • grass would grow here

      If we were to form a utopian planet from what we have on earth, what life organisms would we take there? And skip the jokes of not taking humans.

      On one hand we could create a very controlled and disease free ecosystem. On the other hand, we could just try everything and see what starts to grow there. I think it'd be impossible to prevent many bacterias from entering the ecosystem because they'd come borne on humans.

      • Re:So how is there now (Score:4, Interesting)

        by jd ( 1658 ) <`imipak' `at' `yahoo.com'> on Sunday August 14, 2005 @04:55PM (#13317848) Homepage Journal
        I would probably start with life that is relatively primitive, on the grounds that it evolved under extremely simple conditions and therefore should have the minimum requirements for survival.


        Bracken, for example, would likely be a good thing to send. The Wollemi Pine and other trees that predate flowers (and therefore don't rely on insects) would also be good candidates. As the atmosphere would likely remain thin, flying insects probably wouldn't work too well, but there are flowering plants that pollenate by beetle - those would seem to stand a better chance.


        It would likely remain extremely cold and rocky - ideal conditions for the Bristlecone Pine which actually thrives under near-unendurable conditions. Just about any plant (or algae) that can handle a cold desert on Earth will likely do well on the fringes of a terraformed Mars and may well help to maintain the boundaries.


        Once a basic ecology is in place, you can add to it (slowly!) to build up to something that can sustain large animals, but I don't think you can really attempt to do this in one go. Part of the problem with Biosphere 2 was that it was too small to be self-sustaining, but the other part was that they tried to run through the necessary steps far too fast, thus introducing unwanted organisms and also not allowing what was there to properly adjust.

  • You are WHERE? (Score:2, Redundant)

    by ArmorFiend ( 151674 )
    eventually ice sheets would melt, grass would grow here, and temperatures would hit 50 degrees along the equator of the planet.


    So ... how did you get to mars again?!? Lemme guess, your submission about how you got to mars using a trebuchet and an old diving bell running linux got rejected by the editors because of a too-large number of grammatical errors!

  • Or... (Score:2, Funny)

    by iignotus ( 877104 )
    You could just put two or three of those 7gHz Pentum 4's on there without any cooling. That should warm everything up in a few hours.

  • Cosmic rays?.... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Piranhaa ( 672441 ) on Sunday August 14, 2005 @03:26PM (#13317382)
    Well we already know the cosmic rays will kill us eventually. So why don't we first think of a way to block these rays better than current methods THEN figure out about making the planet inhabitable by life? Why would we try to start life on Mars if life is unable to survive? Seems kind of retarded to me
  • Let's wake up whatever is fast asleep under that cover of ice.

    Have we not learned from cartoons, and sci-fi and horror movies about Mars?

  • Well, there are other problems... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Steamhead ( 714353 ) on Sunday August 14, 2005 @03:29PM (#13317406) Homepage
    Have they also figured out how to jumpstart the planet's magnetic field so that Cosmic Rays don't just strip the planet of it's atmosphere again?
    • Well haven't you ever seen The Core? In that movie all they had to do was take the core of their nuclear reactor in their vehicle and throw it out into the core of the earth.. Not to mention that when he tried to lift it with a chain it broke the chain because it was too hot. So he had to lift it with his hands instead which definately could take the heat...

      Then just shoot a missile at it until it blows up and shotts you back through a volcanic pipe into the ocean floor where you can pretend to be a dolphin
    • Tidal stresses.

      Start smacking asteroids into Phobos and Deimos, bump them gradually into higher orbits, persuade them to collide. Obviously it'd take a while and lots of asteroids.

      Could do the same to Mars itself, gradually slow it down into a lower orbit and add mass.
       
    • It would take hundreds of thousands of years -- or more likely, many millions of years -- to lose the atmosphere. If we'll still care after that time, we'll just terraform Mars again, or just keep doing some minor maintenance all the time.

  • Odd. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by rootedgimp ( 523254 ) on Sunday August 14, 2005 @03:35PM (#13317442)
    It would take hundreds of years...


    So, what took our planet (loosely theoretically) a couple billion of years to do, could be (again loosely theoretically) done there in a matter of hundereds? (I realize that theoretically the larger portion of the time it took for life to develop here had more to do with variable chances than it did with the atmosphere, although atmosphere is included in those variables)

    It just seems to me that the world of science has recently turned more into a smorgishboard of unfulfilled promises and reluctance to realize that we cannot even figure out 90% of the problems with our own people, on our own planet, so why should we be trying to conquer others?

    • Re:Odd. (Score:3, Insightful)

      by RAMMS+EIN ( 578166 )
      ``It just seems to me that the world of science has recently turned more into a smorgishboard of unfulfilled promises and reluctance to realize that we cannot even figure out 90% of the problems with our own people''

      I've identified a number of negative developments in recent times, but this isn't one of them. I think science has always been about unfulfilled promises. That's the whole thrill of it. I can be the first to prove the 3n+1 conjecture! That is, of course, assuming there is a proof to be found.

      I r

  • Organisms awakened? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by CupBeEmpty ( 720791 ) on Sunday August 14, 2005 @03:36PM (#13317448)
    I despite the general "far fetchedness" of this article. I think the wackiest part is that somehow we might revive organisms on Mars. Mars has been the way it is for a pretty long time now. Any organisms that might live there would be very specially adapted to their (probably very hostile) environment. Mostl ikely we would just kill anything that was living there.

    It would pretty much be like going down to the geothermal vents under the ocean and plugging them with concrete to make it more habitable down there, then expecting that to "revive" the organisms living down there.

  • better article (Score:5, Informative)

    by ars ( 79600 ) <assd2@noSPAm.dsgml.com> on Sunday August 14, 2005 @03:39PM (#13317465) Homepage
    Here is a better article on the subject:
    http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/02/05020 4115304.htm [sciencedaily.com]
  • they'd be killed before discovery--right?

  • martian atmosphere (Score:3, Interesting)

    by The_Rook ( 136658 ) on Sunday August 14, 2005 @03:41PM (#13317477)
    ok, mars has one third the gravity of earth, and no magnetic field to protect it from the solar wind. exactly how thick of an atmosphere or air pressure at ground level can mars support?
  • Yes, after our resounding success in monkeying with the Earth's atmosphere (sometimes passed off as "human activity is too puny to affect the environment that much"), we're moving on to an entire other planet to destroy^Wimprove. In the same breath as we mention the local life we haven't yet found, we lie about enhancing it, when really we'll be destroying it. How stupid are we, really? Only the future knows.

  • In related news (Score:5, Funny)

    by A beautiful mind ( 821714 ) on Sunday August 14, 2005 @03:44PM (#13317497)
    ....250 years ago Bwizopp Gnis'uen, a famous martian scientist came up with an idea how to colonize that cold blue planet.

    "This great plan will allow us to finally colonize that pesky blue planet and in the meantime allows us to get rid of that ape infestation over there.

    It would be hugely expensive to invade, so the brilliance of the plan is to let those apes do it for us. They will never suspect a thing.

    All we have to do is to tell them about the huge reserves of so called "oil" in the ground. The timing is crucial, because if we would tell them too late, they would discover a much easier way to generate energy. That would be a disaster, but it won't happen. When they realise what's going on it will be too late already."
  • once the reaction starts, it'll spread to all the turbinium in the planet. Mars will go into global meltdown. That's why the aliens never turned it on.

    as campy as that movie was, I still like it.

  • Nukes (Score:2)

    by kevlar ( 13509 )
    I've always wondered why we can't just nuke the polar caps or bombard it with asteroids to produce enough water vapor to make it at least have liquid water. I assume it'd cool off and re-freeze at some point, but I wonder if there's a critical limit where the atmosphere would be thick enough to absorb heat from the Sun and keep the water/co2 from refreezing.

  • Life there may not be like life here (Score:3, Insightful)

    by RAMMS+EIN ( 578166 ) on Sunday August 14, 2005 @03:49PM (#13317536) Homepage Journal
    ``It would take hundreds of years but eventually ice sheets would melt, grass would grow here, and temperatures would hit 50 degrees along the equator of the planet. Martian organisms might be revived too - if there are any."''

    Or, by so drastically changing the environment, we might kill the life that's there. For all I know, life on other planets may function according to very different mechanisms than life on Earth. Most of what we know is about lifeforms that do their magic with oxygen, water, and carbohydrates. Is it so hard to imagine there would be other combinations that work?

    There are many interactions between molecules in terran lifeforms that we barely understand. We don't know what the bulk of our DNA is good for, and I think the same goes for large parts of the human brain. With such a poor understanding of terrestial life, what makes us think we can make informed decissions about possible life on other planets?

    Oh, I get it. _We_ want to populate Mars with _our_ kind of life, so that someday _we_ might live there, after _we_ have ruined our own planet. The blurb about reviving Martian organisms is just to pretend we care for their survival, rather than just our own comfort.

    • Go visit Africa (Score:5, Funny)

      by Colin Smith ( 2679 ) on Sunday August 14, 2005 @03:56PM (#13317569)
      Offer yourself to the lions. After all, they're natural and wouldn't dream of hurting another living creature would they?

      Guess what. It's survival of the fittest.

       

      • Re:Go visit Africa (Score:3, Insightful)

        by RAMMS+EIN ( 578166 )
        ``It's survival of the fittest.''

        Yes, but what exactly constitutes "fittest" is hard to define. Surely money-grabbing corporatist leaders are more fit than poor people who spend all the energy they use on staying alive, in the sense that the former's offspring will be far more likely to survive. But in the long term, they are poisoning the planet to the extent that it basically can't harbor them anymore. Sure, they'll be the last to go; the poor will suffocate before they do, but, as a wise man once said, "

  • Toxicity of OFP (Score:5, Informative)

    by cyberfunk2 ( 656339 ) on Sunday August 14, 2005 @03:51PM (#13317550)
    Octafluoropropane is not really all that toxic.

    According to the MSDS (Material Saftey Data Sheet), the only real toxicity to worry about is asphyxiation, no worse than nitrogen or argon gas.

    Greenhouse gases != toxic (at least not implicity).

    MSDS link
    http://www.scottecatalog.com/msds.nsf/d118573c489f 39cc852569af00702e6f/26e5bede95a1fefb85256ef50045e 0e4?OpenDocument&Highlight=0,76-19-7 [scottecatalog.com]

  • Toxic stuff? (Score:2, Informative)

    by NReitzel ( 77941 )
    As a practicing chemist, I need to take exception to the characterization of octafluoropropane (perfluoropropane) as "toxic stuff." The very reason that such fluorocarbons hang around for a very long time is due to the strength of the fluorine-carbon bond and the extreme inertness of the molecules.

    PFP may be many things, but "toxic stuff" it ain't.
  • grass would grow here

    Um, since grass already grows on earth, then is "here" Mars? Wow, NASA's Mar's plans are a lot further along than I realized...

  • Journalists Garble The Facts As Usual (Score:5, Informative)

    by John Hasler ( 414242 ) on Sunday August 14, 2005 @03:54PM (#13317559) Homepage
    ...toxic stuff (Octafluoropropane)...
    It isn't toxic. Here's the MSDS [scottecatalog.com].
    ...already blamed for global warming...
    And it isn't to blame for global warming: there isn't enough of it released to matter. CO2 is to blame for global warming.
  • Too bad she didn't think this through. Even though our Earth plants do 'eat' CO2 and release O2, on Mars O2 will fly off into the space, but our Earth plants DO NEED O2 to breath. So... good luck with that idea.

    She is fun though (obviously a Russian born.)

  • It's NOT toxic (Score:5, Informative)

    by G4from128k ( 686170 ) on Sunday August 14, 2005 @04:03PM (#13317603)
    Octafluoropropane is NOT a toxic gas in the sense that it directly damages the health of people, animals, etc when breathed/ingested (its a class 2.2 hazard: non-toxic, non-flammable gas). Like most fluorocarbons (refrigerants, Halons etc.), it is a very inert gas which presents a hazard only in that it can displace oxygen and lead to asphyxiation. But a mixture of 20% O2 and 80% octafluoropropane would probably be quite breathable, although it might feel uncomfortably dense to breath (this mix being about 6 times denser than normal air).

    The only real danger of these gases in the atmosphere is that they can breakdown under UV bombardment in the upper atmosphere and generate ozone-destroying chemicals (not a big issue on Mars as it lacks appreciable ozone in the first place). Also, high temperature combustion of fluorocarbons can produce some nasty byproducts, but the inertness of the chemicals makes this very hard to do.
  • Pardon my scepticism, but how the fsck are these nutters planning to compensate for the incoming solar radiation which is - what, 25%? 20% - as bright as it is here on Earth? "Why, genetic engineering!" Yeah, right. An unpopular opinion amongst the SF film nuts around here, I know, but it's never going to happen outside of 'speculative fiction'.

  • Dr. Erik Clacey's Study (Score:5, Informative)

    by laodamas ( 151550 ) <`mailto:admin' `at' `kersplody.com'> on Sunday August 14, 2005 @04:11PM (#13317648) Homepage

    The idea is to initiate a run-away greenhouse effect on Mars using a super-effective Greenhouse gas that is safe and easy to produce on Mars. 10-20*10^9 Kg of C2F8, a greenhouse gas 12,000 more effective than CO2, would seem to do the trick. Assuming that 10% of all sunlight reaching Mars could be trapped, Mars could be warmed enough to reach the triple point of CO2 within 100 years. This would release the CO2 (and hopefully water) frozen within the Martian Regolith into the atmosphere and possibly add enough atmosphere to allow for human exploration with only an oxygen mask a few yars later. At this point martian life, if it does exist, should flourish. If it does not we can start populating the planet with Earth species without nasty Mars life preservation debates.

    This is not an easy process. Our CFCs, in the Martian atmosphere, would last for thousands of years, so VERY careful monitoring would be required in order to prevent us from terraforming a Venus.

    Mars does not have a magnetosphere so our terraformed atmosphere would only have a life of about ten million years before evaporating.

    I have notes of the ongoing Mars Society [marssociety.org] Conference here [kersplody.com] if you want more information on the current state of manned Mars exploration.

  • "Greenhouse" effect != green planet (Score:3, Interesting)

    by D4C5CE ( 578304 ) on Sunday August 14, 2005 @04:23PM (#13317710)
    "grass would grow [t]here"
    Last time I checked, grass would not grow at 7.5 millibar, on a "soil" of iron oxide - or in other words, on what seems similar to an old junkyard in near-vacuum conditions for most organisms from Planet Earth...

    Maybe the key to making that story seem plausible lies in using quite a different kind of "grass"? ;-)

  • It will never work. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by mark-t ( 151149 ) <marktNO@SPAMnerdflat.com> on Sunday August 14, 2005 @04:35PM (#13317763) Journal
    Any attempt to build a remotely useful atmosphere on Mars will be futile, as the planet lacks a strong enough gravity to hold on to a useful amount of atmosphere in the absence of a magnetic field that can help deflect the solar wind from taking it away.

    Inexorably, Mars' atmosphere is being lapped away by the constant barraging of the solar wind. If we thicken it up, by whatever means, it will simply thin down again because the gravity on the planet isn't strong enough to compensate for it.

  • My Site is devoted to this (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jimktrains ( 838227 ) on Sunday August 14, 2005 @04:49PM (#13317828) Homepage
    I don't mean this to be shameless advertising(, because we don't make money off of this, the pennies we make from cafepress is put towards server expenses).

    http://www.redcolony.com/ [redcolony.com] We accept articles from people and have a active forum with 16yros up discussing this very topic on scientific grounds. The site is about sharing ideas and getting the public excited about colonizing and sxploring (and terraforming) the Red Planet. I hope any visitors enjoy their stay.

  • why not venus? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by circletimessquare ( 444983 ) <circletimessquar ... il.com minus cat> on Sunday August 14, 2005 @07:34PM (#13318532) Homepage Journal
    might be quicker and easier to "precipitate" out the atmosphere, somehow

    i'm not saying i know how, but what i am saying is that mars doesn't make as good a candidate for colonization than venus does for a number of reasons no one is bringing up: gravity for one: venus's gravity is much like earths, mars i think is 1/3

    i mean say what you want about how hard it would be to "precipitate" the venutian atmosphere... but then you have to admit to what you are saying about doing to mars is a lot longer in time spent, and just as hard

    it seems to me it is always easier to "destroy": make components of the atmosphere precipate out into something dense, than it would be to "create": put density where there initially is none

    with such a weak atmosphere and gravity, what atmosphere can one hope to build on mars?

    meanwhile, you can suck a lot out of the venutian atmosphere chemically, in the right series of manipulation, that would merely become liquid water, sulfur compounds, carbon compounds... do it the right way and you could terraform an atmosphere a lot more similar to earths in a lot less time

    of course what i am proposing is hard... and mars isn't?

    also no one brings up that they both don't have a magnetic field: yikes, cancer from irradiation... but the colonies can be protected somehow

    but venus has always seemed to be a better terraforming candidate to me than mars, but mars has this hype machine surrounding it [pcc.edu]

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