Mars

And besides the wingnuts, don't forget the scientists and engineers who would object to terraforming. Mars used to have a healthy atmosphere, but it lost it for 2 main reasons:

1. the gravity is lower than Earth's, so lighter gases float up higher from the surface, and then

2. Mars has no magnetic field like the Earth's since its core has long since frozen due to its small size. No magnetic field means no magnetosphere, which means Mars is unprotected from the solar winds. When Hydrogen and other light weight gases float up too high, the solar winds easily blow them away, leaving Mars with a very thin atmosphere.

No amount of terraforming will ever increase Mars' gravity or restore a planetary magnetic field, therefore any atmosphere "created" on Mars would leak out just like the old one did.

There are many other reasons relating to radiation, mix of available chemicals, etc that I believe make terraforming largely unfeasible, though not necessarily impossible. If it could be done, the costs would be astronomical (no pun intended) and atmospheric maintenance would be one of the primary source of employment and expenditure for any planetary colonists. Some knowledgeable writers disagree with my view, but they have yet to convince me that terraformation could be affordable in any conceivable manner. Of course, we don't know what technology might be available 1000 years from now, but by the time technology makes terraformation feasible enough to be competitive with orbiting colonies, I'm sure we will already have moved on to greater things, like creating new universes in tiny black holes or stuff like that.

For these reasons I believe orbiting space stations would be a superior place for human habitation for the next few hundred years (beyond that speculation becomes impossible due to the technological horizon.) A small station would be easier to create and maintain a proper atmosphere and gravity and so on, rather than trying to force an entire planet to conform to our standards.

Also the comment was made about using solar reflectors to melt the ice in Mars. Because of the low atmospheric pressure on Mars, water cannot exist long in a liquid state. It pretty much instantly sublimates to vapor or freezes to ice, depending on specific conditions. By heating up the ice, much of it would sublimate into gas and rise up high against Mar's weak gravity, and then be blown away by the solar winds. A chemical's state (solid/liquid/gas) are products of both its temperature and the pressure. Some have suggested bombarding Mars with thousands of comets to release gases to thicken the atmosphere, as well as to increase the mass, and thereby the gravity. I see no point in all that. The plan offers no guarantee of success, and just think of how many orbiting stations we could build with all those comets.

Besides, we only have 1 Mars. Once we screw it up, it's gone forever. Might as well let Mars be Mars. But I guess that makes me an environmentalist wingnut!

Douglas May

From: Ed Minchau
To: spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Friday, May 23, 2008 6:54:05 PM
Subject: Re: [spacesettlers] Mars

I don't think that environmental wingnuts would or
should be taken seriously when it comes to
terraforming other planets. The serious objections
will come from those who point out that there is no
good reason to go back down to the bottom of a gravity
well once we're at the top, and that the dismantlng of
Ceres for construction materials for space colonies
would provide 300 to 500 times the surface area of
Earth.

Ed

--- Don DAnthony wrote:

>
> I've got a thought and I'm curious to what the
> settlers group thinks; terraforming mars-will we get
> environmentalist wingnuts who boject to it? Say we
> create mega solar reflectors orbiting the planet to
> increase it's temperature to melt the ice. Are we
> going to hear objections based on the notion that we
> might hurt some native microbe?
>
> Just athought.
>
> Dante D'Anthony
> "Tales from the Pandoran Age"
> http://pandoranage. mystarship. com/
>
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