Teraforming mars – my theory

[franontanaya]

Meh, excavating tunnels would cost a lot of energy. <br /><br />Maybe we would prefer to cover Mars with bubble plastic. A layer of cells filled with water and some dust piled on top would stop nasty radiation and thermally isolate the ground. Temperature gradients between cells could be used to produce energy, and genetically modified bacteria could produce more plastic using CO2 and local resources. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[thebigcat]

Personally, I feel that light is too important to us to ever even consider going underground on Mars. Dome-covered shallow pits would be the most feasible habitats. Living modules 20 meters across, each having an outer wall 2 meters high with a low inner dome, rising no more than 5 meters. Transparent ceiling of triangular panels of locally made glass with some sort of shutters in case of the odd dust storm. Cluster these things in a honeycomb pattern and then roof over the triangular areas in between them for storage.<br /><br />Since they are rather smallish most would have to be designated private, but in a large cluster every 3rd row in one given direction and a single zigzagging course in the middle would be public thoroughfares. That's just details though.<br /><br />Anyway, not cavemen, the first Martians (Aresians?) shall be, but prairie dogs. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[richalex]

If Mars gets nailed by a good-sized rock every year or so, it might be better to be deep enough underground to avoid it. The radiation profile on Mars is still being mapped, the last I heard, but what we know suggests that UV radiation alone is harsh near the surface. Visible light is less than half what it is on Earth. Of course, with the temperature the way it is, you probably wouldn't want to be near a window, anyway, especially at night! <br /><br />It might be more practical to hunker down deep in a cave and use artificial lighting driven by nuclear reactors. Colonization or even a temporary camp-out probably will need nukes to be practical.

 

[kelvinzero]

Radiation protection is vital, but perhaps not so important for the plants that grow our food.<br /><br />More land is going to be required for growing food that for just standing on anyway.<br /><br />I have been thinking about robust ways to angle mirrors to get more light. You dont want to have to keep adjusting it.<br /><br />How about this: You find some sort of canyon/valley near the equator and parallel to it with sides of something like a 45 degree angle. If the walls of the valley are lined with mirrored foil sheets then at the very bottom the sunlight is multiplied by about three times while the radiation exposure is halfed. The sun light still moves in a sensible east-west manner. though at noon light is coming from north, south and above.<br /><br />The bottom of the valley is where you have your greenhouses, in one long transparent tube.<br /><br />People need even more radiation protection as well as decent light. Their homes are built into the sides of the valley. Here they have full radiation coverage while also getting lots of light reflected in. In addition to this, their view/entrances opens directly onto the pressurised orchards. <br /><br />A final idea: walkways through the orchards could be below aqueducts for additional shielding.<br /><br />

 

[thebigcat]

Heat loss in homes through windows is more due to convective than radiant. The cold air takes the heat away from the glass. In Mars's excuse for an atmosphere this will be less of a problem. Triple-panes should suffice for adequate thermal insulation.<br /><br />So far as UV goes, a simple glaze will block that stuff out.<br /><br />Meteorites, well, ya pays the man ya takes yer chances.<br /><br />But we as a species are too psychologically dependant on light and space to ever thrive in a troglodite existance. Half as much light from the sun is more than you get on an overcast day here. A Martian sol being very close to an Earth day, it's an easy matter to live that day/night cycle, so there's no reason to go running for caves. <br /><br />Heck, fusion generators are more of a problem. Cooling them is going to have to be almost entirely radiant (that thin atmo again). Probably have to have something like a bunch of water pipes spread over an acre of Mars real estate and covered with a foot of soil just to cool a small fusion plant. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[richalex]

<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>Heat loss in homes through windows is more due to convective than radiant. The cold air takes the heat away from the glass. In Mars's excuse for an atmosphere this will be less of a problem. Triple-panes should suffice for adequate thermal insulation. <p><hr /></p></p></blockquote>On what do you base your estimate? <br /><br />I don't have a way to calculate what the values likely would be, but I have heard that an average day on Mars is similar to a cold day in Antarctica. Yeah, the atmosphere is much thinner on Mars than on Earth, but I don't believe it is *that* much thinner. Consider what -100° C is like; I don't believe triple panes of glass are going to be enough to protect from that. <br /><br /><blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>So far as UV goes, a simple glaze will block that stuff out.<p><hr /></p></p></blockquote>It won't block it, only attenuate it. <br /><br /><blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>Meteorites, well, ya pays the man ya takes yer chances. <p><hr /></p></p></blockquote>That sounds like you are throwing up your hands and giving up, simply because you won't accept an alternative if it means living under ground. <br /><br /><blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>But we as a species are too psychologically dependant on light and space to ever thrive in a troglodite existance. <p><hr /></p></p></blockquote>Speaking as someone who works nights and sleeps in the day, I do not find your argument convincing. We have scientists who spend 6 months in darkness in Antarctica, and people in Alaska also live with very little sunlight half the year. Our Navy submariners spend 6 months sitting on the bottom of the ocean without ever seeing the sky. Sunlight is nice, but it is not essential. We can replace it. <br /><br /><blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>Half as much light from the sun is more than you get on an overcast day here. A Martian sol being very close t</p></blockquote>

 

[origin]

<font color="yellow">Yeah, the atmosphere is much thinner on Mars than on Earth, but I don't believe it is *that* much thinner. </font><br /><br />The actual numbers indicate that the atmosphere on Mars is in fact *that* much thinner.<br /><br />Earth average atmospheric pressure is about 1000 mbar.<br /><br />Mars average atmospheric pressure is about 7 mbar.<br /><br />That is a really big difference. 7 mbar is a very good vacuum on earth. <br /><br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[richalex]

<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>7 mbar is a very good vacuum on earth.<p><hr /></p></p></blockquote>FWIW, Vacuum Insulation Panels (VIP) are evacuated down to 1 mbar. Martian surface pressure is about the same as Earth at 35 km, which is not beyond convective heat transfer. Indeed, the martian atmosphere is thick enough to equalize local surface temperatures to within a few tens of degrees; a vacuum would see much more extreme temperature gradients.

 

[qso1]

Bilb0:<br />To me it seems that the human race is expanding at an alarming rate world wide, we live longer and I read somewhere that we are going to over populate earth in about 2100.<br /><br />Me:<br />The biggest problem is the timeline for earth overpopulation. Assuming the projections are true...1, there is no way we could ever hope to slingshot Europa into Mars. 2100 is less than a century away. Last century it took half a century just to put men on the moon and build and operate a space shuttle.<br /><br />Traditional terraforming concepts might make mars habitable...in several centuries. Long after 2100 since we havent even put humans on mars yet.<br /><br />Terraforming by slamming a remote planetary moon into mars is so beyond our technical capabilities, not to mention we really dont know what would happen. I would say this, look at the size of Europa with a mean radius of over 1,500 Km:<br /><br />http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europa_(moon)<br /><br />And mars with a polar and equatorial radius of about 3,400 Km...making Europa at least half the size of mars.<br /><br />http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars<br /><br />IMO, I don't think mars would remain intact after such a collision.<br /><br />Bilb0:<br />Think different<br />If every nation sat down and made a true commitment to a cause like global warming today, <br /><br />Me:<br />And here is the heart of the problem. We have not committed to much of anything tangible where global warming is concerned. Certainly nothing on an engineering scale comparable to your proposal. We still have disagreement on whether global warming is manmade.<br /><br />By the time we figure out what to do, it may well be too late. I don't think humanity has ever been faced with a global emergency of any kind on the time scales of global warming and population growth. We certainly haven't been face with challenges such as <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><strong>My borrowed quote for the time being:</strong></p><p><em>There are three kinds of people in life. Those who make it happen, those who watch it happen...and those who do not know what happened.</em></p> </div>

 

[bilb0]

I’m sorry I been away for a couple of days, I actually got sick… But at least now the fevers gone<br /><br />I love the direction of how this tread unfold, just read most of the replies and I really enjoy them all. So much that I don’t really have a follow up for most post. They all are worth a thought.<br /><br />Thanks for all numbers people provide I see it seams a bit far fetched to create a crash like I first proposed, even the orbit of mars would properly change, if it even survived.<br /><br />qso1<br />Concerning a globe commitment of any sort, People fundamentally need to change their mind set about the world and about their self’s, This is what actually concerns me the most, but for such a global self awareness to be unfold, we properly need to be attack by another race, that target everybody, then we would have a common goal to help us work as one instead of competing amongst ourselves.<br /><br />And by another race I mean intelligent Alien life, and not the mambo jambo that divides us in separate groups we can all have children whit one and other so were pretty much the same. Like dog races are only created by inbreeding, dogs are still dogs, the races we created.<br /><br />Hope I didn’t offend anybody<br />

 

[thebigcat]

First, some replying to <b>RichAlex</b><br /><br /><blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>On what do you base your estimate? <br /><br />I don't have a way to calculate what the values likely would be, but I have heard that an average day on Mars is similar to a cold day in Antarctica. Yeah, the atmosphere is much thinner on Mars than on Earth, but I don't believe it is *that* much thinner. Consider what -100° C is like; I don't believe triple panes of glass are going to be enough to protect from that. <br /><br /><p><hr /></p></p></blockquote><br /><br />It works just fine at South Pole Station.<br /><br /><blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>It won't block it, only attenuate it.<p><hr /></p></p></blockquote><br /><br />Anything to lower it to Earth-surface levels is fine.<br /><br /><blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>That sounds like you are throwing up your hands and giving up, simply because you won't accept an alternative if it means living under ground. <p><hr /></p></p></blockquote><br /><br />So are you going to start living underground here on Earth just because of another Doomsday Asteroid show on The Discovery Channel?<br /><br /><blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>Speaking as someone who works nights and sleeps in the day, I do not find your argument convincing. We have scientists who spend 6 months in darkness in Antarctica, and people in Alaska also live with very little sunlight half the year. Our Navy submariners spend 6 months sitting on the bottom of the ocean without ever seeing the sky. Sunlight is nice, but it is not essential. We can replace it. <br /><p><hr /></p></p></blockquote><br />Speaking as someone who lives in the city with the highest suicide rate in the US, a fact generally attributed to the 16-hour nights in December and January combined with incessant rain which makes even the 8 daylight hours miserable, and known by the medical profession as Seasonal Affective Disorder, traceably directly to insufficient <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[richalex]

<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p><blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>Consider what -100° C is like; I don't believe triple panes of glass are going to be enough to protect from that.<p><hr /></p></p></blockquote>It works just fine at South Pole Station.<p><hr /></p></p></blockquote>No one is building greenhouses outside in the open air at the South Pole. The old South Pole Station (SPS) greenhouse and the new SPS greenhouse are both undernearth one or more non-transparent coverings. Both can be seen in the photos at <br /><br />Antarctica Hydroponics<br /><br />The dome at SPS is translucent, made of insulated fabric, not glass. Its top is left open to provide ventilation, and the temperature inside the dome is the same as outside the dome. People have lived under the Dome at SPS for the last 30 years, but now it is being decomissioned, and people will be living in the much larger and nicer facilities. <br /><br />Here is a diagram of the old SPS station: <br /><br />Walk-though of South Pole Station<br /><br />The old SPS living quarters did not have windows; the new one does. The windows in the new SPS are small and get covered up by opaque coverings, too, and the station experiences about 9 months of darkness. It isn't quite the Crystal City you are trying to portray for Mars. <br /><br />It isn't like the SPS has a choice, either; they can't really build a long-term underground station there, because the ice all flows and the solid ground is under miles of this flowing ice. <br /><br /><blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p><blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>It won't block it [UV radiation], only attenuate it.<p><hr /></p></p></blockquote>Anything to lower it to Earth-surface levels is fine. <p><hr /></p></p></blockquote>Yeah, like living in a cave! That would sure lower it! <br /><br />

 

[dragon04]

<font color="yellow">The sheer logistics of supply require that the settlement be on the surface.</font><br /><br />That's simply not true.<br /><br /><font color="yellow">If it's tucked 20KM back in some hole everything entering and leaving is going to have to come through that 20KM tunnel.</font><br /><br />Why would a supply center be tucked 20KM back in a hole?<br />That would be poor logistics indeed. Supply would be centrally located whether the hab be above or below ground. So your access argument doesn't have legs.<br /><br /><font color="yellow">Your heat exchangers won't work very well when attempting to exchange the heat from water steam into rock which is 80 deg C.</font><br /><br />Where on Mars will we be living that would have us in an underground city surrounded by rock that's heated to 80 degrees C?<br /><br />In terms of shedding waste heat (that's not used to heat water, etc), that's the nice thing about warm air and heat in general. It likes to rise. Vent shafts to the surface is a very low tech, no brainer solution.<br /><br /><font color="yellow">Also, the power station is going to have to do a lot less generating if the colony is able to get a portion of it's light and heat thanks to the simple fact of being in daylight for 12.5 hour a sol (or whatever), and this is especially important for agricultural needs.</font><br /><br />What prohibits having the same solar panels on the surface and distributed down to the underground hab?<br /><br />We do it all the time in various types of mines right here on Earth.<br /><br />Sure. Eventually, we'd want to populate the surface of Mars <b>despite</b> the risk of decompression, meteor impacts, UV radiation and constant cold.<br /><br />But at the start, going underground gives us the quickest, easiest start. It's the path of least resistance, and allows us to ignore a few things that would be critical on the surface.<br /><br />The obvious fly in my ointment is how the heck to boost <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <em>"2012.. Year of the Dragon!! Get on the Dragon Wagon!".</em> </div>

 

[qso1]

Good to hear your fever is gone. I'm recovering from a five day hospital visit myself.<br /><br />I think you are probably right about the human race needing an alien race to challenge them to do something. Where global warming is concerned, and even terraforming mars, IMO the liklihood of getting such an alien challenge is miniscule at best based on what we know so far. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><strong>My borrowed quote for the time being:</strong></p><p><em>There are three kinds of people in life. Those who make it happen, those who watch it happen...and those who do not know what happened.</em></p> </div>

 

[richalex]

<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>What prohibits having the same solar panels on the surface and distributed down to the underground hab?<p><hr /></p></p></blockquote>I'm wondering what the limits might be on light pipes?<br /><br />3M Light Management Solutions<br /><br />NG: Ship's Deck Maritime Prism

 

[thebigcat]

Can't reply to both <b>RichAlex</b> and <b>Dragon04</b> double teaming my argument, so I'll respond mostly to <b>Dragon04</b>, except for the following points of <b>RichAlex</b>:<br /><br /><blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>SAD has nothing to do with UV exposure, and it can be treated effectively with artificial lighting. <p><hr /></p></p></blockquote><br /><br />My bad. It's IR.<br /><br /><blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>Really? I was under the impression that the Martian ground generally is silica-deficient. <br /><br />"Nobody's ever found high-silica soil on Mars," Squyres told New Scientist. "Silica is particularly soluble in water, especially hot water." <br /><br />New Scientist: Mars rover's disability leads to major water discovery<p><hr /></p></p></blockquote><br /><br />Read the article please. <br /><br /><i>"It produced an inadvertent trenching tool," said rover lead scientist Steven Squyres, who presented the findings on Tuesday at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in Acapulco, Mexico.<br /><br />Spirit's mini-Thermal Emission Spectrometer found that an unusually bright patch of soil revealed in one of these trenches produced a strong signature of silica, a mineral whose formation usually depends on water and which had never been seen before by either rover.<br /><br />"Nobody's ever found high-silica soil on Mars," Squyres told New Scientist. "Silica is particularly soluble in water, especially hot water."</i><br /><br />And get your terms straight. <b>silica</b>, SiO2, is a specific mineral and is indeed, water soluble. It is that specific mineral which to which the article refers, and, until Spirit's rear wheel became an impromptu trenching tool, hadn't been discovered.<br /><br /><b>Silicates</b> are a class of minerals which are composed of SiO2 in amalgamation with other elements. <br /><br />From Wiki: <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[kelvinzero]

I would have already mentioned this on this thread, but living in a subglacial lake kept liquid by your unavoidable waste heat would solve most of these problems including how to decend into it.<br /><br />Does anyone know how thick ice gets on mar's poles?

 

[richalex]

<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>Does anyone know how thick ice gets on mar's poles?<p><hr /></p></p></blockquote>The thickest part of the Southern Martian ice cap is 2.5 miles thick. It is mostly pure water. <br /><br />I wonder if the Martian ice sheets move around (in the solid state) very much?

 

[richalex]

<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p><blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>SAD has nothing to do with UV exposure, and it can be treated effectively with artificial lighting.<p><hr /></p></p></blockquote>My bad. It's IR.<p><hr /></p></p></blockquote>I don't believe that anyone knows exactly what triggers SAD; the idea that it is light-related is fairly-well supported, but when it is possible to treat SAD by exposing the back of one's knees to light, it makes it seem likely that more is at work than just light. <br /><br /><blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>Silicates are plentiful. Or at least one would hope so.<p><hr /></p></p></blockquote>OK, silicates are plentiful on Mars. I won't say that we should make window glass production a mission priority. <br /><br /><blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>if you really want to go and live in a city in a cave which you have dug out yourself, why bother with the six month trip?<p><hr /></p></p></blockquote>Although I am advocating the use of natural martian caves, I would say that whether the cave is natural or artificial, the point is that it is on Mars. Society is not going to spend billions or trillions of dollars just so people can stand around looking at the scenery. <br /><br /><blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>According to RichAlex, Martian surface pressure...is not beyond convective heat transfer. <br /><br />I would love to hear his proof on that.<p><hr /></p></p></blockquote><br /><br />It is my understanding that the existence of dust devils on the Martian surface is proof of convective heat transfer in the Martian atmosphere. That's actually what dust devils are; ground-level convective vortices. <br /><br />Another evidence is an excerpt from an article on space suit design published by the Department of Biomedical Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin: <br /><br /><blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>The multi-layer insulation (MLI) curr</p></blockquote>

 

[richalex]

While I've looked up the info, I might as well post the following: <br /><br />"Can our circadian clock be reset to synchronize to a longer-than-24-hour day?<br /><br />"That was the question NASA’s National Space Biomedical Research Institute put to circadian researchers led by Charles Czeisler of Harvard and Claude Gronfier of INSERM in France. Previous research found that putting healthy people in an experimental environment matching the longer Martian day, with light intensity mimicking that of the space shuttle or the international space station, 'desynchronizes' the circadian system. The result: disrupted sleep, cognitive impairment, and metabolic problems—not the kind of problems you want to see in astronauts who are at least 36 million miles from home.<br /><br />"'People think 39 minutes longer is not a big deal,' Gronfier says. 'It is a big deal.'<br /><br />"Because the biological clock is sensitive to light, Czeisler’s group reasoned that carefully timed exposure to light might delay the clock, effectively stretching it beyond its evolutionary programming. The researchers used two 45-minute pulses of bright light—roughly the level available at sunset or sunrise—delivered one hour apart at the end of the day. Two control groups were exposed to lower intensities of light.<br /><br />"At the end of 30 days, subjects exposed to the brightest light pulses had successfully adapted to the longer day, showing normal behavior and physiological functioning. Subjects in the control groups did not adapt successfully."<br /><br />The Dana Foundation: Headed to Mars? Pack Bright Lights

 

[alokmohan]

Its hopeful point of mars.

 

[oklahoman]

There is a way to move planets with relatively little energy, but it would take thousands or millions of years.<br /><br />Every time a space craft does a slingshot maneuver across the front of a planets path, the planet is sped up a tiny little bit and the spacecraft is slowed a lot. A slingshot past the back of a planets path does the reverse.<br /><br />The idea would be to find an asteroid that already has an eccentric orbit, and deflect it into the first of a million slingshot maneuvers, wherein it goes from one orbital keyhole to the next, with very slight mid course adjustments.<br /><br />Use this system to slowly bring Venus to a more distant orbit and Mars closer. Peal off some Jovian moons to collide with Mars. Whatever.<br /><br />Ideally, there would be dozens or even hundreds of asteroids pressed to the task. And a great big computer coordinating it all.<br /><br />Here is a SDC article about using the idea to move Earth to keep it habitable as the sun goes red. <br /><br />http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/planetearth/earth_move_010207.html <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[3488]

Also remeber, the MER team @ JPL went nto to Mars time for a bit, post Spirit & <br />Opportunity arrivals. The found it extremely difficult, despite the day being only 37 minutes<br />longer than ours.<br /><br />Andrew Brown. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#000080">"I suddenly noticed an anomaly to the left of Io, just off the rim of that world. It was extremely large with respect to the overall size of Io and crescent shaped. It seemed unbelievable that something that big had not been visible before".</font> <em><strong><font color="#000000">Linda Morabito </font></strong><font color="#800000">on discovering that the Jupiter moon Io was volcanically active. Friday 9th March 1979.</font></em></p><p><font size="1" color="#000080">http://www.launchphotography.com/</font><br /><br /><font size="1" color="#000080">http://anthmartian.googlepages.com/thisislandearth</font></p><p><font size="1" color="#000080">http://web.me.com/meridianijournal</font></p> </div>

 

[alokmohan]

How 37 minutes matter I dont understand.

 

[thebigcat]

<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>I don't believe that anyone knows exactly what triggers SAD; the idea that it is light-related is fairly-well supported, but when it is possible to treat SAD by exposing the back of one's knees to light, it makes it seem likely that more is at work than just light. <br /><p><hr /></p></p></blockquote><br /><br />Yes, it does, doesn't it? I guess we leave that to medical science to work out, and maybe they will have it sorted by then.<br /><br /><blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>OK, silicates are plentiful on Mars. I won't say that we should make window glass production a mission priority.<p><hr /></p></p></blockquote><br /><br />Not on a first mission, no. Later yes, but it would only be a very small portion of the colony's labor requirements even then. They might never need more than one full-time glazier per "town". <br /><br /><blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>Although I am advocating the use of natural martian caves, I would say that whether the cave is natural or artificial, the point is that it is on Mars. Society is not going to spend billions or trillions of dollars just so people can stand around looking at the scenery. <br /><br /><p><hr /></p></p></blockquote>Don't underestimate the psychological benefits of having scenery to look at, even if it's sort of alien red, never changes with the seasons, and the sky is pink.<br /><br />Not going to quote the entire bit on convectivity in the Mars atmo, but I will say that you have adequately stated the point that there is some ability for heat conduction in that thin of a gas. Some. The radiant-cooling field I proposed (an acre or more of water-filled pipes buried under a foot or so of regiolith [BTW, the regiolith layer serves two purposes. It acts as a means of expanding the radiating surface area under normal operation and in the event of a short term shut-down it insulates the pipes eliminating the need to evacuate them. They should be good for <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>