Question Can we create a micro climate crater on Mars?

Jan 7, 2023
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According to my calculations Martian Scale Height of 11.1km means that we are only 30km away from reaching 0.7 bars of air pressure from the Northern Basin or Hellas Planitia. Can we deflect a comet or more to the same spot on such an elevation on Mars to excavate 30km? Then the water from the comet can produce a liquid water lake for us since it will be within the Armstrong Limit now and we can introduce algae and plant life in cheap greenhouses to slowly terraform Mars as a micro climate via photosynthesis to convert the CO2 to O2 slowly. The comet the size of Hailey's would also contribute 1% to the Martian atmosphere with gas. While negilgible on it's own if this becomes a regular occurance, 100 comet strikes will double the Martian atmospheric pressure and air density. This also means the future Micro Climate Craters can gradually be shallower and shallower eventually only needing to be 15km deep in the future.

Could we deflect enough comets to excavate 30km from the Northern Basin where it's-7km from the datum? Or maybe Hellas Planitia. We could settle at the bottom of such a cavity and use airships for transportation without risk of explosion in the CO2 atmosphere, we could also live without the need of airlocks at our doors to maintain an air pressure bubble within the Armstrong Limit and we will have supply of drinking soda water and water for rocket fuel via electrolysis producing both breathable oxygen gas as well as hydrogen for rocket fuel and airships. We wont need full pressure space suits just flimsy stratapause type ones.

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Jan 7, 2023
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I found an impact simulation for Mars. I selected the maximum values for each parameter, a 15 km wide asteroid made of iron, coming straight down at 80 km per second. The resultant crater was 122 km wide but only 1.2 km deep. We need a better method.

Crater Impact (down2earth.eu)
Thanks for this, I wonder if a second comet striking the molten material of the first can be simulated also to try and get deeper depths.
 
A thirty km deep hole could probably not persist. Tectonic forces would likely cause it to fill in. Thirty km down, there is extreme pressure, rock acts like a fluid and would ooze in to fill it back up even if not molten.
Better to simply crash a bunch of icy comets into Mars until there is enough water vapor to make an atmosphere. We could use vast arrays of solar cells to make some of it into oxygen. The hydrogen could be pumped underground.
I once ran the calcs on the amount of existing water ice and CO2 on Mars. If all of it was melted, it would make an atmosphere only a few percent of Earth's. We would have to go get a whole bunch of comets to do any good.
 
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A thirty km deep hole could probably not persist. Tectonic forces would likely cause it to fill in. Thirty km down, there is extreme pressure, rock acts like a fluid and would ooze in to fill it back up even if not molten.
Better to simply crash a bunch of icy comets into Mars until there is enough water vapor to make an atmosphere. We could use vast arrays of solar cells to make some of it into oxygen. The hydrogen could be pumped underground.
I once ran the calcs on the amount of existing water ice and CO2 on Mars. If all of it was melted, it would make an atmosphere only a few percent of Earth's. We would have to go get a whole bunch of comets to do any good.
Thanks so much for contributing. Regarding tectonic forces, isn’t Mars Geologically dead?

Also would simulateus cluster strike enable deeper excavation?
 
Yes, Mars is pretty much tectonically dead in that there are no plates that move around. The most recent volcanic activity was probably 50,000 years ago which is actually fairly recent geologically. However, lack of volcanic activity does not mean that rock won't flow under pressure.
Olympus Mons is 22 km high. It might be possible to have a hole that deep but I don't know how deep is possible.
The problem with giant impacts is there is too much heat involved. Too much molten rock to flow into the hole.
 
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Yes, Mars is pretty much tectonically dead in that there are no plates that move around. The most recent volcanic activity was probably 50,000 years ago which is actually fairly recent geologically. However, lack of volcanic activity does not mean that rock won't flow under pressure.
Olympus Mons is 22 km high. It might be possible to have a hole that deep but I don't know how deep is possible.
The problem with giant impacts is there is too much heat involved. Too much molten rock to flow into the hole.
Is there a way to engineer the crater formation? Say the second comet is smaller and strikes the molten material up into space at escape velocity before it has a chance to harden as a fill and leaving the ground beneath it untouched? So the second conet only seconds away from the first will only have sufficient kinetic energy to excavate the molten fill (rebound) from first comet strike but not enough to cause a second molten rebound? This second comet could also be a cluster of smaller ice rocks that should cool down and remaining molten slag left behind and melt into a small lake/sea with sufficient weight to prevent a second rebound beneath it.
 
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The angle of repose on Mars is very low. Olympus Mons is 22 km high and 600 km wide. A 30 km deep hole dug out by comets would have to be 820 km wide. Our impactor would need to be (820/122)^2 times as heavy as the 15 km impactor discussed earlier. This is 67 times as heavy. The 15 km size would have to be 60 km in diameter. Mass varies by the cube of diameter. Four times the diameter equals 64 times the mass. If we were to impact with a 60 km comet, it would probably take several hundred years to cool off.
Shoemaker Levy hit Jupiter 30 years ago and we can still see the hot spots. It was only 2 km in diameter.
Better to deliver a whole bunch of small comets to Mars and make the whole planet livable. Making one pit deep enough to utilize current air puts too much heat into the system.
 
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Frozen or gaseous CO is utterly unsuitable for *any* human environment, because it is poisonous to everything that breathes Oxygen, by occupying the “Heme” part of the hemoglobin molecule in your blood, and stopping delivery of Oxygen to stay alive.
Frozen CO2 is too cold, at -56ºC, to form a human habitat. H2O, purified water, from Martian Glaciers, would be suitable to form an ionizing radiation shield between Space and humans, and atmospheric seal between a human habitat and Mars’ atmosphere, as long as the seal includes the ground on which the habitat stands. It would still require insulation between contact with the habitat and the ice shielding.
SiO2, in the form of basalt in the lava tubes of Mars, would form both an excellent shield from radiation and a sealable form, on which to place or suspend habitats, without worries about surface conditions.

So is a vacuum.
 
Jan 19, 2022
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Smashing a Kuiper Belt object into the bottom of Hellas Planitia could well excavate a deep enough hole, after all Hellas itself was once very much deeper, but it has rebounded. The additional nitrogen and water would be very desirable but the carbon monoxide would not be desirable. That would have to be oxidized and that could take a very long time.

A better bet might be a small Jovian Moon or a Jovian Trojan. We don't know enough about their composition but if they formed in the Jovian region they will be free of carbon monoxide, and also, unfortunately, free of nitrogen. However, none of this is possible with our current technology. I doubt we could control such a large body sufficiently well to get it to land in the right place.
 

sizzlerjoe

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According to my calculations Martian Scale Height of 11.1km means that we are only 30km away from reaching 0.7 bars of air pressure from the Northern Basin or Hellas Planitia. Can we deflect a comet or more to the same spot on such an elevation on Mars to excavate 30km? Then the water from the comet can produce a liquid water lake for us since it will be within the Armstrong Limit now and we can introduce algae and plant life in cheap greenhouses to slowly terraform Mars as a micro climate via photosynthesis to convert the CO2 to O2 slowly. The comet the size of Hailey's would also contribute 1% to the Martian atmosphere with gas. While negilgible on it's own if this becomes a regular occurance, 100 comet strikes will double the Martian atmospheric pressure and air density. This also means the future Micro Climate Craters can gradually be shallower and shallower eventually only needing to be 15km deep in the future.

Could we deflect enough comets to excavate 30km from the Northern Basin where it's-7km from the datum? Or maybe Hellas Planitia. We could settle at the bottom of such a cavity and use airships for transportation without risk of explosion in the CO2 atmosphere, we could also live without the need of airlocks at our doors to maintain an air pressure bubble within the Armstrong Limit and we will have supply of drinking soda water and water for rocket fuel via electrolysis producing both breathable oxygen gas as well as hydrogen for rocket fuel and airships. We wont need full pressure space suits just flimsy stratapause type ones.

1200px-Hellas_Planitia_by_the_Viking_orbiters-300x212.png
Fi7jVihVEAAVZUBhfgjhfjgjh-300x203.png
Fi7jVihVEAAVZUBhfgjhfjgjh22222-300x203.png

zzzzz-300x130.png
222222222-300x165.png
Too far fetched..
 
Let's take as a goal to have the same surface pressure as Earth. Neglect what gasses they are, just look at pressure of 15 PSI.
Current atmosphere on Mars is 1% of Earth. So we need 100 times the current atmosphere's mass.
The mass of Mar's atmosphere is 2.5E16 kg.
The mass of Mar's frozen water and CO2 in the ice caps is about 8E17 kg.

A hundred times Mar's atmosphere is 2.5E18 kg.

Melting and evaporating all of the ice caps would put about a third of what was needed into the atmosphere. It would have a surface pressure similar to 40,000 feet elevation on Earth.

We are still going to need to crash some comets into Mars. We'll need about 1.7E18 kg. A ball of ice about 75 km diameter should do it.
Halley's comet is 242 billion tons. This is 2.4E14 kg. We will need 7000 comets into Mars, each the size of Halley.
 

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