Love the Elon Musk spirit but terraforming Mars is nothing but a pipe dream until you figure out how to create a planet sized magnetic field that'll stop solar wind from stripping off any atmosphere you try to create.
If you can master creating an atmosphere (which is admittedly a huge challenge, but linked to science that's important to us here on earth), it's probably far more practical to simply create additional atmosphere at a rate matching the speed at which it's stripped away (100 grams per second).
That's not a crazy amount of gas to replace, only 3154 tonnes over the course of a year, you just need to get the proportions right.
A magnetosphere is probably important long-term to make it safely habitable for humans, but it isn't necessary for the initial terraforming and colonization.
Location: In a land without pants, or war, or want. But mostly we care about the pants.
Exp:
Project Orion was the idea that we'd launch a spacecraft using atomic bombs dropped out its space-butt every second to detonate against a giant pusher-plate for thrust. This - this is cool, but my excitement level dropped considerably when I saw chemical rockets.
Chemical! Like we're flying to Mars in caves!
__________________
Better educated sadness than oblivious joy.
The Following User Says Thank You to jammies For This Useful Post:
I want to see people go to Mars purely from a curiosity and scientific perspective. But I don't see how terraforming another planet is a better option than just not being a dick to our own.
AltaGuy has a magnetic personality and exudes positive energy, which is infectious to those around him. He has an unparalleled ability to communicate with people, whether he is speaking to a room of three or an arena of 30,000.
I want to see people go to Mars purely from a curiosity and scientific perspective. But I don't see how terraforming another planet is a better option than just not being a dick to our own.
Don't really think its an either or sceanrio, or the idea is to abandon the Earth. Like others have hinted at, teraforming Mars is likely, instead, to lead to technological advancements that will help us mitigate and repair damage done to the Earth.
Project Orion was the idea that we'd launch a spacecraft using atomic bombs dropped out its space-butt every second to detonate against a giant pusher-plate for thrust. This - this is cool, but my excitement level dropped considerably when I saw chemical rockets.
Chemical! Like we're flying to Mars in caves!
I've heard of that theorized propulsion system, the challenge with all of those super fast propulsion systems is slowing them down and still having it make sense. Also, shielding the craft from dust and particles at those high speeds
If you can master creating an atmosphere (which is admittedly a huge challenge, but linked to science that's important to us here on earth), it's probably far more practical to simply create additional atmosphere at a rate matching the speed at which it's stripped away (100 grams per second).
That's not a crazy amount of gas to replace, only 3154 tonnes over the course of a year, you just need to get the proportions right.
A magnetosphere is probably important long-term to make it safely habitable for humans, but it isn't necessary for the initial terraforming and colonization.
Mars has essentially no atmosphere. Air pressure on Mars is about 0.6% of Earf's.
__________________
If you don't pass this sig to ten of your friends, you will become an Oilers fan.
If you can master creating an atmosphere (which is admittedly a huge challenge, but linked to science that's important to us here on earth), it's probably far more practical to simply create additional atmosphere at a rate matching the speed at which it's stripped away (100 grams per second).
That's not a crazy amount of gas to replace, only 3154 tonnes over the course of a year, you just need to get the proportions right.
A magnetosphere is probably important long-term to make it safely habitable for humans, but it isn't necessary for the initial terraforming and colonization.
One of the ways we could assist in creating an atmosphere would be to create an insanely fast tunnelling Terra craft that would increase in strength the faster it moved, because, magic science and the metal 'unobtainium'. Then we, as in you and I and not the human race, could tunnel to the mars core together in this vehicle we'd call 'Gio' as 'Terranauts'. The real neato thing about this idea is all the zany adventures we'd have whilst travelling towards our goal! Once we get to the core we would begin to travel with the flow of the molten core and we would then place nuclear bombs in a specific design throughout the core for us to detonate in a specific order. This will undoubtedly cause the core rotation to speed up creating a stronger magnetic field and the Mars atmosphere will "plug" and build up, just like a bath tub. We will be heroes!
