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.""
Go to Mars Quaid... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Go to Mars Quaid... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Go to Mars Quaid... (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean, what value could learning about extraterrestrial life have, when it's at the closest planet for several light years likely to have some similar to ours? We'll study the next one, even though that means interstellar travel.
We've proven how carefully we protect environments when we don't understand them, right here on Earth, right?
Re:Go to Mars Quaid... (Score:5, Insightful)
If the whole point of bringing up "Total Recall" here is just to joke about Martian Terraforming, then might not the movie be a better fit anyway?
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We Can Remember it for You Wholesale was the basis for Total Recall, and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep was the basis for Bladerunner. Not to enter the debate about whether the movies should have followed the original Philip K. Dick, but you at least have to know the relationships.
I was not confusing Total Recall and Bladerunner (to use the rather less elaborate titles...) I was just providing another example of Title Bitching. I could as easily have said "Excuse me, sir, but the proper title is Macross" or "I can see by your use of the title Godzilla that you are not familiar with the original film..." Just imagine it in a Simpsons "Comic Book Guy" voice - it could be about just about anything steeped in nerd-contention.
KSR wrote it first (Score:4, Insightful)
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It'll happen. Industry'll LOVE the idea. (Score:3, Funny)
Every belch from a power plant or a factory will actually be doing some good.
No pollution controls required.
Gee, Wally (Score:5, Funny)
Wish me luck.
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Re:Gee, Wally (Score:5, Funny)
Wish me luck.
Re:Gee, Wally (Score:4, Funny)
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rj
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.
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If the planet has little/no water or 'stuff-that-can-be-made-to-water', and/or little or little/no oxygen that can be put into the atmosphere (with respect to the size of the planet, not an absolute "little" here), then it'll take more than just tossing some hearty growing things on the planet.
As for 100 years, it depends on what they plant, but that seems fairly reasonable, if they can find something both (a) hearty enough, and (b) fast growing enough. I saw a project reling on Kudzu,
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If the planet has little/no water or 'stuff-that-can-be-made-to-water', and/or little or little/no oxygen that can be put into the atmosphere (with respect to the size of the planet, not an absolute "little" here), then it'll take more than just tossing some hearty growing things on the planet.
Maybe if they're lucky, they'll find a nuclear reactor left behind by an ancient alien civilization that would melt the vast quantities of ice hidden beneath Mars's surface, thereby giving the red planet an almost instantaneous atmosphere!
Re:Terraforming... (Score:4, Funny)
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 (whi
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.
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Better yet (Score:3, Interesting)
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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.
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
Re:Terraforming... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Terraforming... (Score:4, Funny)
And I often wonder why I can't just take any type of plant and stick in some styrofoam in the closet and wait for it to turn the closet into a lush arboretum. Yet everytime I try this, everything just ends up dead...
Re:Terraforming... (Score:5, Funny)
Well, obviously you need to lower the temperature in your closet to about 63 degrees below zero and then pump out 99% of the air, simulating the ideal growth environment found on Mars.
After that, just stick some seeds in and watch them grow.
Re:Terraforming... (Score:5, Informative)
Some problems with this whole scheme.
1) Rich in carbon-dioxide, but only relatively. The atmosphere is so thin that even if the CO2 were converted to a more human-friendly mix, it's still too thin, and too cold.
2) The atmosphere can't be enriched with more material because Mars can't hold it. Too gravity, and not a strong enough magnetosphere (which is how Venus holds it atmosphere).
3) No internal dynamo. Mars has a cold core, leading the aforementioned problems.
Flora. (Score:3, Funny)
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"Will"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Mars doesn't have a carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere. Mars doesn't have an anything-rich atmosphere. Yes, what atmosphere Mars has is mostly CO2, but what atmosphere Mars has is actually a pretty decent approximation of vacuum; the thickest parts of it are barely 1% of typical atmospheric pressure on earth.
The whole article doesn't actually include any specifics, it's just handwaving of the "and then a miracle occurs" sort:
Right. We'll get right on that. We only have 93 years to go, according to this article.
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Re:"Will"? (Score:5, Insightful)
What does that mean? Mars doesn't have enough gravity to hold enough gas at its current temperature. If we warm it up, that problem increases. You can't just wish that problem away. Mars doesn't need heat or oxygen to be Earth-like. Mars needs mass.
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If Mars doesn't have the gravity to hold a viable atmosphere, then we'll have to build enclosures that contain their own atmosphere. If we're doing that, then there's no real difference between colonizing Mars vs colonizing the moon.
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Like Biosphere 2 [wikipedia.org]?
It didn't work that well (at least for the humans involved)... And it was built right here, where material, financial and human resources are easily available.
Re:"Will"? (Score:5, Informative)
Blah blah blah. It was a total screwup, not just in management, but in pure conception. They needed to start with a working system and then figure out how to make it self sufficient, instead of starting with a system that they thought would work, and trying to live in it indefinitely. Does anyone really think we'd start off with a system that needed no outside inputs? It's not realistic. Basically the only thing they proved is that they didn't do very well at making a self-sustaining system.
Re:"Will"? (Score:5, Interesting)
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The geological scales over which Mars would lose its atmosphere are not that important to humans anyway.
So, wouldn't make Mars a natural planet.
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
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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.
Re:Then who owns Mars? (Score:4, Insightful)
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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.
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
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As with anything else, property rights on Mars will go to those with the ability to enforce them. International "nobody owns this place" treaties like those governing Antarctica and the Moon are only useful as long as those places have nothing of value. In the end, if a region is worth occupying, only those with the weapons needed to keep others out will really "own" the land.
Re:Then who owns Mars? (Score:4, Funny)
Like those pesky Colonials. Give them some arable land really far away and suddenly they think they're a sovereign nation.
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You forgot that part of the adage.
Obligatory (Score:3, Funny)
RIPLEY: "How many colonists on LV426?"
VAN LEUWEN: "Sixty, maybe seventy families."
RIPLEY: "Families..."
Two problems I'm not seeing addressed here (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Two problems I'm not seeing addressed here (Score:5, Informative)
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:Two problems I'm not seeing addressed here (Score:5, Funny)
By the time we use up Earth, Mars will be ready for wholesale migration, and by the time Mars is used up, Venus will be done simmering. By that time we will be assembling new planets from scratch with asteroids, Mercury, Pluto, Sedna, and whatever other junk we can find.
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plastic wrap
A warning to early terraformers... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:A warning to early terraformers... (Score:5, Funny)
ISS But bigger (Score:2)
Whilst terraforming a nearby planet seems interesting, I would like to see more investment of both research and cash into either orbital habitats or preferably mobile space habitats. The idea of living on a large space station seems to me to be more interesting than settling a different planet... Oh whilst Im on the subject,- a FTL drive, I'd like one of those, plus a teleportation device, oh and a repl
Mod Parent Up, plz... here's why: (Score:3, Insightful)
We're not even counting the gravity well penalties of getting back and forth that'll be present, at least within the next 100 years.
Personally, I prefer what Parent is s
Altering its now carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere (Score:5, Insightful)
Global Warming (Score:4, Funny)
Hands off (Score:2, Interesting)
Erm... (Score:5, Insightful)
Getting off the rock (Score:5, Informative)
Wow! (Score:2, Funny)
Excellent priorities!
two things (Score:4, Insightful)
2. why does venus get such short thrift? i'm thinking along the lines of energy investment and simple entropy: in my mind, to precipitate matter out of an atmosphere, and to dissipate heat, seems to be an easier task than accumulating atmospheric mass and stoking atmospheric heat. yes, even with runaway, geometric catalyst-driven processes, i think it is easier to destroy than it is to create. of course, to do this to venus will be excedingly difficult. but why do you think mars would be easier?
but we should terraform mars and venus as soon as we can, regardless
here's an idea (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
I hate to be negative, but (Score:5, Informative)
We'd have to find a way to get its dead core molten and spinning again. Otherwise solar radiation will just flay off any atmosphere we try to put there.
Maybe we could live on Mars in domes or sealed caves but I doubt we'll ever be walking about in the open on its surface.
Home soil? (Score:2)
Just be sure not to piss off the local, crystalline, computer-like life-forms [wikipedia.org] inhabiting the crust, you ugly bags of mostly water.
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.
Misread that.. (Score:3, Funny)
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...)
Destroying Martian life (Score:4, Insightful)
Given that we're still discovering new species (microscopic ones by the gazillion, and still finding occasional large ones too) on earth, despite a huge exploratory effort that's been underway for hundreds of years, I think it's a bit early (massive understament) to think we've determined that mars is lacking any life at all
what's that old line? (Score:4, Insightful)
I love the idea of massive engineering projects making useful changes, but also understand that there is going to be a HUGE heap of the law of unintended consequences because these systems are so difficult to model accurately.
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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Not enough mass to hold a warm O2/N atmosphere. (Score:3, Insightful)
If we took the atmosphere as it is on this planet and actually brought it to Mars, it would have been gone from that planet in the matter of weeks, most of free N and O2 at the molecule speeds that we see on Earth would just jump out of the Mars gravitaty well, and it would happen extremely fast.
My big concern with Mars is ... (Score:3, Insightful)
... getting high speed internet there. Damn, those packets are sure taking a long time.
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.
Re:Planting? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Planting? (Score:4, Insightful)
Just say that we send a rocket ship that spews spores or whatever photosynthetic organism. There is a 70% survival rate, they get situated, some martian monsoon rips up a path and sends it up in the upper atmosphere where it rides the current for half a year where it mixes with some native vegetation and grows gangbusters. Density increases within 40 years - not part of the original model.
Mars will never be habitable for us earthlings to live comfortably. Our bone density would suffer too with a year long round trip and 6 month minimum stay, that's 18 months away from Earth's gravity. Not too good for our health but we're smart enough to figure out a solution.
Lets terraform that sucker and see what develops.
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Throwing my theory into doubt (Score:3, Informative)
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In reality, I'm sure we'll be theorizing forever, and never just try something.
There are serious considerations to if we really SHOULD terraform another planet. The obvious is, we've done a beautiful job maintaining the one we're on now, should we mess up another?
Mars is quite likely rich with artifacts that we haven't even begun to discover. We've explored what
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Anyone know of any botany research on the subject? I know we analyzed a few samples of Mars soil in the 70s.
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...
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What are you talking about? Saturn's rings are a mix of dust and ice. They're more ice-enriched toward the outside and more dust/rock enriched toward the inside. The E-ring, for example, is almost pure ice, largely spewed forth from Enceladus.
I'm more curious about where they expect to get the water.
That is the rub, isn't it? No matter what, any terraforming organisms or other self-replicators are going to have to be very heavily engine
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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 th
Re:Planting? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Planting? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Planting? (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't tell the folks making hydrogen fuel cells.
Marshalled will (Score:3, Funny)
Obviously this "Marshaled will" stuff must be the key ingredient that he's discovered. Just a pinch of that and planets magically become habitable.
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Only when the political will to do so is required, say population explosion is causing massive food/energy shortages will something like this possibly be considered.
It costs huge amounts of money to send every kilogram to orbit let alone Mars. If they do get Mars to a colonizable state anytime soon they won't be sending millions of Average Joe's to live there anytime soon.
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Re:Not if we could, but should we (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, I'd hate to ruin all that prinstine forest over there on the red planet.
I couldn't care less about "ruining" currently lifeless worlds. Even if we found something similar to bacteria I wouldn't care if we went in there and "ruined" it by putting life on the same planet.
Only worlds like Europa where there's a least the potential for some multi-cellular life as we know it would I proceed with caution.
Life is special and we should put it everywhere we can. While potentially we might be messing with some Martian nano-scale bacteria and the like, the risks are far outweighed by the gains.
Oh, and as far as "ruining" Earth goes. We are a product of the Earth. Humans are natural. We're life and evolved from the same process that gave us sharks and walnuts and horses. We're probably Earth's most precious resource because we're the lone form of life that can get to other planets, that can spread out beyond Earth. The Earth is far from ruined, it still supports trillons and trillons of individual life forms. And one form of life, us, is just getting capable of one of the greatest achievements possible. Spreading life out beyond the planet it formed on.
Re:MARS! (Score:5, Insightful)
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http://powerweb.grc.nasa.gov/pvsee/publications/ve nus/VenusColony_STAIF03.pdf [nasa.gov]