Terraforming Mars in 100 years

[clarence]

Terraforming Mars seems much more realistic after reading this:

http://www.popsci.com/terraform-mars-climate-change

After 100 years the atmosphere is still too low in oxygen, but at least no vaccsuit is needed. And sending robots to do the initial work is of course very clever. 

[Atgxtg]

It's not really all that difficult, it just takes awhile. Finding water on Mars would help a lot.

[Joerg]

Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy has the colonists bombard Martian atmosphere with ice- and nitrogen-carrying meteorites to build up an atmosphere beyond what can be released from Martian soil. Not by direct impact but by aerobreaking in the atmosphere.

The other major geoengineering feat in Robinson's chronicles of colonizing Mars is a mirror array in the L1 position increasing the amount of solar radiation (at least in the visible and infrared).

[Opiyel]

I dig the article, especially since I'm sculpting a terraformed Mars in Grand Designer for my M Space game. I've always been more of a fan of terraforming Venus. One day we can. One day

[Joerg]

3 hours ago, Opiyel said:

I dig the article, especially since I'm sculpting a terraformed Mars in Grand Designer for my M Space game. I've always been more of a fan of terraforming Venus. One day we can. One day

Venus too sounds like a project where I would start with a mirror or filter array in the L1 position, or with floating bubble colonies (or possibly a Bespin cloud city-like approach) in the high altitudes that have tolerable temperatures.

Giving Venus an earth-like atmosphere and hydrosphere sounds like a much longer prospect project, although harvesting sulfur for synthesizing SF6 greenhouse gases for Mars might be an option. The question really is whether a future society would want to brave life on the surface in constant exposure to volcanic activity, even if Venus could be made an ocean world, or whether they would prefer floating teflon-coated habitats with interior biospheres.

Colonizing the moon in closed habitats with vertical gardens might be a major project, too. Our satellite might very well become a self-sufficient multi-domed megacity once enough carbon and water have been imported from Jupiter and/or beyond.

[clarence]

8 hours ago, Joerg said:

Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy has the colonists bombard Martian atmosphere with ice- and nitrogen-carrying meteorites to build up an atmosphere beyond what can be released from Martian soil. Not by direct impact but by aerobreaking in the atmosphere.

The other major geoengineering feat in Robinson's chronicles of colonizing Mars is a mirror array in the L1 position increasing the amount of solar radiation (at least in the visible and infrared).

I quite like the idea about terraforming without dropping meteoroids/asteroids on Mars, but here’s an interesting real-world concept for re-routing asteroids:

https://www.inverse.com/article/29303-made-in-space-asteroid-mechanical-spacecraft-project-rama

It turns the entire asteroid into an autonomous spacecraft, slowly steering it towards Earth in this case. But Mars should be possible too.

6 hours ago, Opiyel said:

I dig the article, especially since I'm sculpting a terraformed Mars in Grand Designer for my M Space game. I've always been more of a fan of terraforming Venus. One day we can. One day

Cool. Will you have a map to share?

[Questbird]

2 hours ago, Joerg said:

Venus too sounds like a project where I would start with a mirror or filter array in the L1 position, or with floating bubble colonies (or possibly a Bespin cloud city-like approach) in the high altitudes that have tolerable temperatures.

Giving Venus an earth-like atmosphere and hydrosphere sounds like a much longer prospect project, although harvesting sulfur for synthesizing SF6 greenhouse gases for Mars might be an option. The question really is whether a future society would want to brave life on the surface in constant exposure to volcanic activity, even if Venus could be made an ocean world, or whether they would prefer floating teflon-coated habitats with interior biospheres.

Colonizing the moon in closed habitats with vertical gardens might be a major project, too. Our satellite might very well become a self-sufficient multi-domed megacity once enough carbon and water have been imported from Jupiter and/or beyond.

Kim Stanley Robinson got there first too. In his book 2312, the Chinese were hard at work terraforming Venus. They had hijacked one of the smaller icy moons of Saturn and launched it into Venus (the Saturnians were displeased but couldn't do much about it). That provided a huge amount of liquid water, though I can't clearly remember the other steps which were required.

[Opiyel]

3 hours ago, clarence said:

I quite like the idea about terraforming without dropping meteoroids/asteroids on Mars, but here’s an interesting real-world concept for re-routing asteroids:

https://www.inverse.com/article/29303-made-in-space-asteroid-mechanical-spacecraft-project-rama

It turns the entire asteroid into an autonomous spacecraft, slowly steering it towards Earth in this case. But Mars should be possible too.

Cool. Will you have a map to share?

Here is what I have for it

http://i.imgur.com/6c47VVl.png

It's big so I didn't embed it.

And here's the actual map for it

 

[...]

I have Mars and Venus being Terra-formed in my Sidereal setting, though in laziness, I have just used maps off the internet:

 

[Opiyel]

I definitely like that. Looks really good. Never saw the Venus one, but I'll have to see that.

Also for those interested, I did up two hologram versions of it. One cleaner and a bit easier to make out stuff, while the other one is distorted and corrupted.

[...]

That is nice work!

Venus Terra-formed:

In my setting, it's not this far along, it still has cloud cities and atmosphere transformers, Mercury has been brought in as the main satellite (moon), as well as the core liquefied an set spinning so as to get the dynamo effect.

Mars has an external band in orbit to create a magnetosphere, and the main issues are the lack of nitrogen, and the presence of toxic salt perchlorates.

[clarence]

Love the maps! Good work. 

The funny thing with the Martian geography is that if I had a planet surface randomly generated looking like that, I would probably discard it. Such a massive southern landmass and only an ocean to the north - it just doesn't look right. And yet, that's how it is : )

BTW, here's an interesting piece on Martian timekeeping:

https://www.inverse.com/article/32283-humans-mars-timekeeping

[Questbird]

On 6/27/2017 at 7:29 AM, clarence said:

Love the maps! Good work. 

The funny thing with the Martian geography is that if I had a planet surface randomly generated looking like that, I would probably discard it. Such a massive southern landmass and only an ocean to the north - it just doesn't look right. And yet, that's how it is : )

BTW, here's an interesting piece on Martian timekeeping:

https://www.inverse.com/article/32283-humans-mars-timekeeping

"A sol is 24 hours, 39 minutes, and 35 seconds, whereas a day on Earth is 23 hours, 56 minutes, and 4 seconds."

Kim Stanley Robinson once again has been all over the solar system in his mind before we got there. In his Red (Blue, Green etc) Mars books the 43 minutes difference is kind of 'magical time'; in other words on Mars the clocks just pause for 43:31 between 11:59 and 00:00 the next day. In the books that time is when various kinds of stealthy or transgressive behaviour happens. In practice if such a system were adopted it would be like Daylight Savings, where the 'stolen' time just vanishes while you sleep. I guess it means Martians would be well rested at least!

[lawrence.whitaker]

This is a very timely thread. Knowing how Venus and Mars could look, if inhabited, fits neatly with a future Mythras project...

[clarence]

Oh, that's interesting : ) Can you tell us more or is it too early in the project?

[lawrence.whitaker]

Too early, but that won't stop me dropping hints. 

[Prime Evil]

1 hour ago, lawrence.whitaker said:

Too early, but that won't stop me dropping hints. 

You are a tease, Sir. Here, take my money....

[Conrad]

On 25/06/2017 at 11:02 PM, clarence said:

Terraforming Mars seems much more realistic after reading this:

http://www.popsci.com/terraform-mars-climate-change

After 100 years the atmosphere is still too low in oxygen, but at least no vaccsuit is needed. And sending robots to do the initial work is of course very clever. 

If you cart some of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of Venus over to Mars you would have the same effect. What most articles on terraforming Mars don't mention is the fact that you need a denser atmosphere than Earth's to block solar radiation that is harmful to living things.

Edited July 26, 2017 by Conrad

[Matt_E]

Adding CO$_2$ will not block the problematic UV rays.  You need oxygen for that, which has its ozone allotrope.  You could use a UV absorber other than oxygen, I guess, but whatever else you might choose, I'll bet you shouldn't breathe it.

[Conrad]

8 hours ago, Matt_E said:

Adding CO$_2$ will not block the problematic UV rays.  You need oxygen for that, which has its ozone allotrope.  You could use a UV absorber other than oxygen, I guess, but whatever else you might choose, I'll bet you shouldn't breathe it.

I'm not writing about quotidian UV, but stuff from solar flares, like X rays, and also stuff like cosmic rays that aren't caused by solar flares . A nice thick atmosphere will act to lessen exposure to such radiation.

Edited July 26, 2017 by Conrad

[clarence]

10 hours ago, Conrad said:

What most articles on terraforming Mars don't mention is the fact that you need a denser atmosphere than Earth's to block solar radiation that is harmful to living things.

Hmm, why does Mars need a denser atmosphere than Earth for protection? 

[Matt_E]

1 hour ago, Conrad said:

I'm not writing about quotidian UV, but stuff from solar flares, like X rays, and also stuff like cosmic rays that aren't caused by solar flares . A nice thick atmosphere will act to lessen exposure to such radiation.

Ah.  You said "solar", so I was not thinking about cosmic rays.  Yes, the more, the better, as far as that goes, and any/every molecule counts, as a massive deflecting body.  I would not call UV radiation "quotidian" (you do wear sunscreen, right?), but it is certainly less energetic.

If you're going down that road, there is also the magnetosphere to consider.  I don't know about that, for Mars.

 

[g33k]

On 6/26/2017 at 0:50 PM, dragoner said:

...

Mars has an external band in orbit to create a magnetosphere...

Such a band will need something to keep accelrating it.  The mag field, as it interacts with stuff, will tend to slow the band.

[Joerg]

6 hours ago, clarence said:

Hmm, why does Mars need a denser atmosphere than Earth for protection? 

Mainly because here on Earth the magnetism of the molten core deals with some of those issues.

Lower gravity might cause a lower density in higher layers of the atmosphere, too. Our ozone layer is created several kilometers up.

 

I wonder whether radiation control needs to be left to the atmosphere, though. Leaving Mars in its current orbit means that there is less desirable light available than a terraformed surface might want, so a mirror array like Kim Stanley Robinson's L1 Soletta could be a good idea. Now if that array was selective in what radiation it would let through from the sun, the major source for unwanted radiation activity would be under control. The array system would need to be able to react to changes in the incoming light. It might even convert the energy from "unwanted" emissions of the sun into an artificial magnetic field through photovoltaics.

[Conrad]

16 hours ago, clarence said:

Hmm, why does Mars need a denser atmosphere than Earth for protection? 

No magnetic field.