rejuvenating mars

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moreandless

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Can a "china syndrome" project reinvigorate Mars core?
 
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neilsox

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Not enough energy and molten plutonium sinks maybe 4000 inches into the ground, not 4000 miles. China was a really, really big exaggeration. Neil
 
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moreandless

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I guess i never looked very far into the truth behind "china syndrome" hype.
Hmm, crust 50km thick would require a VERY heavy and HOT device to penetrate
must find the weak points as well ...seismic studies in order?

we are of course talking about a device that is not designed to burn out at 10meters
 
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silylene

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National Geographic this month has a very nice short article, graphic and timeline on how to terraform Mars in 1000 years effort. It is quite good, and even reasonable! I encourage you to check out a copy at the newsstand. The result is a Mars with a equatorial climate about similar to the Yukon, with plant life and trees, and an atmospheric composition which is 55:40:5 N2:CO2:O2 (breathable with oxygen concentrating respirator). An interesting key to the terraforming are building and running factories which release chlorofluorocarbons into the atmosphere (these have a greenhouse potential 20,000 times that of CO2).
 
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Couerl

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It's all just a pipedream, but it would seem simpler to place Venus under an artificial eclipse and cool it down rather than try to heat up Mars. I don't know how much tin foil you'd need nor at what distance between venus and the Sun for the optimal coverage, but since we're all pipedreaming etc... :lol:
 
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B_Cary

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About Venus, as long as we're dreaming--

Given a nice-sized solar-powered factory floating in Venus's upper atmosphere, could we create solid particles out of the CO2 and let them precipitate? I'm thinking of billions of billions of buckyballs over the years. That would get rid of the CO2 and lessen the greenhouse effect. The giant shades would be more effective then. :cool:
 
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bdewoody

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Before we spend a lot of time and money trying to alter Mars or Venus to suit our needs we need to figure out how to minimize our adverse impact on Earth. Part of our long term survival is being able to adapt to whatever environmental changes come our way. I'm not one of those who believes we should halt our space endevours and concentrate on fixing whats wrong here on earth. In the long run I'm sure we will end up colonizing the moon and Mars. I doubt that we will ever get to the point where it would be practical to terraform Venus.
 
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Couerl

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bdewoody":2a1bcn8o said:
I doubt that we will ever get to the point where it would be practical to terraform Venus.

Well I doubt we'll ever get to the point where we terraform Mars either, but that isn't to say we shouldn't think about these things.. Venus is still a better candidate (IMHO) for the simple reason that it is more similar in size, gravity, already has a thick, sustainable atmosphere etc and if we are going to invest the dough then lets make the most of it.. If the co2 were managed it would also be similar in climate/temperature-wise to Earth as well (assuming we could convert the co2 to o2). A cooling of the atmosphere, even if it were only 10% shaded might be enough to gradually reverse the runaway heat issue and rain out the vast amounts of so2 in the upper layers, which in turn would promote/release or outgas any remaining h2o in the surface/subsurface rocks.. you won't end up with Earth, but it would most certainly be better than the best day on Mars, especially if we could introduce some photosynthetic life to push things along and we have things on this planet that live in nearly as harsh conditions as those found on our sister world already. Ahhh... to dream is wonderful, but practicality is a *****. :lol:
 
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OleNewt

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Even if we could artificially create an atmosphere, wouldn't it just blow away or drift off?
 
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Couerl

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OleNewt":1cyzkask said:
Even if we could artificially create an atmosphere, wouldn't it just blow away or drift off?

On Mars yes, Venus has enough gravity to hold an atmosphere, which it currently does and at around 90 times the presure/density.. Anyway it's generally a moot issue since neither one is ever going to be "Earth". Venus just represents the closer of the two in terms of potential likeness, despite it being less hospitable (really hot and high pressure) at the moment. I'm still curious about how large the tinfoil umbrella would need to be and what the math looks like as far as how big a diameter you would need, optimal position between sun and venus for full coverage etc.. I may just try and figure that one out, I'll start with a scaled 3d computer model and see if it is possible.

Well, just finished and in case anyone cares, it doesn't look too promising, but maybe doable someday.. We'd need a 447.8332 km diameter tin foil umbrella approximately 544,662 km sunward for optimal coverage.. :lol:
 
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moreandless

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about Venus, i would love to think that someday a catalytic agent will be developed
to precipitate the carbon and sulfur,etc. onto the surface and help break the cycle.

haven't received my copy of NGeo yet
was it william hartman that did the story about finding the oxygen machine at mars' south pole?


we know that there are vast reservoirs of water on Mars
also it is easier to travel to and from orbit on the lighter world
 
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menellom

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There are three seriously big problems with trying to terraform Venus

1. Atmosphere - it's a terrible composition, there's way too much of it, and no practical way to get rid of it. Venus has almost a hundred times the atmosphere of the Earth.
2. Rotation - Venus's extremely slow rotation means that - barring a massive engineering solution like a giant sun shield large enough to cover half the planet - half the planet is going to fry while the other half freezes
3. Water - even if the problems of atmosphere and rotation can be worked around, we'd still have to deal with the fact that there's barely any water (in any form) left on Venus.

Meanwhile, the three main problems of Mars are a little 'easier' to handle.

1. Atmosphere - not enough of it, gradually raising temperature would release tons of CO2 in Martian poles.
2. Temperature - greenhouse gases and changing Mars albedo with dark simple plant life like algae and lichens would let the planet retain significantly more heat.
3. Water - water is proving to be much more abundant on Mars than previously thought. If the temperature and atmosphere could be raised enough, there's enough frozen water in the poles and beneath the surface to cover a good portion of the planet in shallow ocean.

Frankly, if we started soon and on a decent scale I could honestly see some changes happening to Mars by early next century.
 
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a_lost_packet_

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Couerl":2vf95l5d said:
...Well, just finished and in case anyone cares, it doesn't look too promising, but maybe doable someday.. We'd need a 447.8332 km diameter tin foil umbrella approximately 544,662 km sunward for optimal coverage.. :lol:

Lesse...

At a diameter of 447.8332 km, that would be a circle with a radius of 223916.6 meters. That's an area of 157,515.1949
square meters.

Aluminum foil at .2mm averages at 17.2 g/m2.

The London Metals exchange prices Aluminum at $ .9643 per pound.

157,515.1949 square meters X 17.2 g/m2 = 2709261.3519 g

That's 5972.8376 lbs of Aluminum at $.9643 per pound for a cost in raw material of $5,759.6073 covering an area of 157,515.1949 m[super]2[/super].

So, all you need is a sheet of Reynold's Wrap that is covers about 0.0003% of the Earth's surface. Of course, my numbers could be wrong* so someone above my pay grade would need to authorize the project...

Edit - (..and they were. I double converted km to m, appropriately inflating my quote, expecting to be awarded a no-bid govt contract. :) Thanks to neil for pointing it out. Now it reads right, probably..)
 
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neilsox

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Some errors occurred. 447 kilometers would not shade very much of Venus = cool the surface perhaps 0.1 degree c, average. Almost opposite the sun from Mars a disk that size would warm Mars perhaps 0.2 degrees, which might be significant, but the attitude and position is quite critical and would require more station keeping energy than a solar sail can provide. 447 kilometers would about cover Utah not 31 % of Earth's surface. It has been proposed that aluminized mylar about 0.01 mm thick be used, so the cost might be only one billion dollars, plus assembly, installation and maintenance. Neil
 
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a_lost_packet_

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neilsox":22rv9vyj said:
..447 kilometers would about cover Utah not 31 % of Earth's surface. ..

Yeah, it was late and I converted an extra km[super]2[/super] somewhere. It's "0.00031" the surface area of Earth. I was playing around trying to see if I could do it all at once using only a basic Windows calculator. :)

But, that's why I'm not in the accounting department.. or engineering dept.. or the paperclip assignment and delivery dept. Hey, it's a govt project.. it's supposed to be overrun by a few orders of magnitude..
 
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Gravity_Ray

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But you don’t need to bring anything from Earth. This is one of those cases where if you can find a good candidate space rock you can build a factory on it and mine it and launch what you need to make the umbrella for Venus.

But I disagree that Venus would be 'easier' than Mars to teraform due to reasons stated in Menelloms post. The only thing that is harder on Mars is maintaining an atmosphere long term due to not much of a Mars magnetic shielding to protect against solar wind blowing it off. But that can be done with large factories continuously pumping gases into the atmosphere.

I just have a very strong feeling that Mars can and should be terraformed.
 
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Couerl

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neilsox":32qw1vur said:
Some errors occurred. 447 kilometers would not shade very much of Venus = cool the surface perhaps 0.1 degree c, average. Neil


Well it has a lot to do with the position, I simulated around 4.5 Venusian diameters in distance sunward in a syncronous orbit to get full coverage using lines from the suns northern pole to venus southern pole and the suns southern pole to venus northern pole and plotting the distance to where they intersect. This should be the area where the smallest bit of tinfoil would get the maximum coverage. The numbers may not be exact, I was simply using a rough 3d model (at 1/100th scale) but they should be close or at least in the ballpark. Anyway, we can throw it up cheap, wait a few million years until the so2 rains out of the atmosphere and martha stewart can plant some lichens to do the rest. :lol:
 
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moreandless

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we hear a lot about solar radiation on the surface of mars
does anyone know how the background radioactivity compares to earth?
 
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menellom

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Gravity_Ray":rtunefhk said:
But I disagree that Venus would be 'easier' than Mars to teraform due to reasons stated in Menelloms post. The only thing that is harder on Mars is maintaining an atmosphere long term due to not much of a Mars magnetic shielding to protect against solar wind blowing it off. But that can be done with large factories continuously pumping gases into the atmosphere.

I'd be interested in hearing some of the data on how quickly Mars would lose its atmosphere if terraforming attempts were made. There's long term and there's long term. If Mars might lose whatever atmosphere we help generate within a couple decades, it's a big for terraforming problem. On the other hand if it'd lose it over the course of a few centuries well... presumably we'll have come up with a solution long before it would become a problem.

moreandless":rtunefhk said:
we hear a lot about solar radiation on the surface of mars
does anyone know how the background radioactivity compares to earth?

I've read that radiation exposure on Mars would be about twice what it is on the ISS.
 
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Shpaget

Guest
Since we're already shifting the asteroids around, mining them, producing giant umbrellas etc, we can also construct a pipeline between Venus and Mars and pump some of the atmosphere. Two birds with one stone.
The excess can always be dumped in the Jupiter, I'm sure he wouldn't mind.

When we reduce Venus' atmosphere to acceptable levels we can construct giant girders on it's equator and place some self-deploying solar sails that open automatically on the side that is turning away from the Sun and close on the other. That way we can spin up the Venus to decrease the length of the day.

[/sarcasm]
 
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menellom

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Shpaget":2vadu669 said:
Since we're already shifting the asteroids around, mining them, producing giant umbrellas etc, we can also construct a pipeline between Venus and Mars and pump some of the atmosphere. Two birds with one stone.
The excess can always be dumped in the Jupiter, I'm sure he wouldn't mind.

When we reduce Venus' atmosphere to acceptable levels we can construct giant girders on it's equator and place some self-deploying solar sails that open automatically on the side that is turning away from the Sun and close on the other. That way we can spin up the Venus to decrease the length of the day.

Pssh, why bother with all the trouble, why not just build a new planet altogether?
 
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duluthdave

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menellom":234crfga said:
I'd be interested in hearing some of the data on how quickly Mars would lose its atmosphere if terraforming attempts were made. There's long term and there's long term. If Mars might lose whatever atmosphere we help generate within a couple decades, it's a big for terraforming problem. On the other hand if it'd lose it over the course of a few centuries well... presumably we'll have come up with a solution long before it would become a problem.

If we could somehow build up an atmosphere on Mars, it would take millions (possibly even hundreds of millions) of years for the solar wind to blow it away. So for terraforming, it really wouldn't be a problem.
 
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menellom

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Good to know. ;)

Well that checks off one of the concerns as far as atmosphere is concerned. The bigger problem looks like it would be radiation. The daily dose of radiation that a hypothetical 'Martian' would experience would be high, and while it could me managed, it'd still wreck havoc. Large blasts of solar radiation like from a flare would especially do a LOT of damage.

Radiation, more than atmosphere or temperature is the biggest hurdle for terraforming Mars. Settlements would need to be contained or possibly even subterranean, for a long time if not permanently. Short of finding a way to "reboot" Mars' planetary dynamo or else artificially producing a planet sized field (either of which is a century or centuries beyond our current capability) there's nothing that can really be done about the radiation problem on Mars.
 
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B_Cary

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menellom":fokyg1go said:
The bigger problem looks like it would be radiation. The daily dose of radiation that a hypothetical 'Martian' would experience would be high, and while it could me managed, it'd still wreck havoc. Large blasts of solar radiation like from a flare would especially do a LOT of damage.

Radiation, more than atmosphere or temperature is the biggest hurdle for terraforming Mars.

The "radiation problem" might be solved from another angle. For example, today we <are supposed to ;) > get our teeth cleaned and checked for decay every six months. Someday we might go to the clinic every six months to get the cancer cells cleaned out of our body before they can grow and make trouble. No more radiation problem! (Well, radiation-induced cataracts...wear those protective goggles.)

Building habitats in narrow valleys/canyons would block solar particles (except when the sun was high). For light at other times, think--lenses.

Right now, at least on planet Earth / continent North America, there are skylights about 16 inches (40 cm) across that bring bright light 2-3 meters down from the roof to the room of your choice. They transmit light that would ordinarily be lost on the walls of the skylight by using lenses to keep it slightly focused. The result is much more light than you would expect by having a "window" on top of your house. Martian lenses could be ground to not quite focus the UV, which would be absorbed by the walls of the tube. (For the enthused, Google "solatube".)
The result is filtered, safe light for the colony.

What could be simpler? :D
 
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