Mars Terraformed. And The Future Earth!

Too bad I won't be around to see it lol. Nice pics btw, it shows that Mars can be hospitable but it takes time. Ever since I was little I thought of MArs to be a giant useless pice of rock.

terraformed mars is cute

This will never happen. Mars is too tiny to retain an atmosphere. Sure, you could have bases on Mars but that's about it; and no magnetosphere is a huge problem as well. You can't just "jumpstart" a core. It requires tremendous mass to push elements closer together and get them heating up again, Mars just isn't big enough to push those elements closer together. So unless Mars somehow grows twice as much, there's no hope for the planet now, or ever.

It must be noted that you just can't switch from one planet to another. For starters, the Astronauts in space still need to hear Earth's 'heartbeat', which is played on the shuttle, for them to stay alive. It'd take many, many long years of transition even after it's been terraformed.

For it to work mars would need a moon on the same size and mass scale as the earth and her moon. I would suggest that the mass would have to be greater in order to cause enough tidal stress to possibly jump start the planet core and might generate enough of a magnetosphere to hold a thicker atmosphere. That's step one!!!

Sounds great until you examine one important detail. Why did Mars lose its atmosphere??

I can tell you why, its because unlike earth which has a liquid core that sloshes and spins and creates a strong enough magnetic field to stop the atmosphere from being erroded by space weather - Mars' core is solid iron and as such cannot create a sustainable field.. So one the first things needed doing if ever possible is either melt the core or somehow create an artificial magnetic field. Without it terraforming cannot be done.

Very good PS skills! Did you use Terragen by any chance?

the reduced gravity would not be good for humans

We are far to protect our own ecosystem to even think about Mars

reply to post by ColonelSF


If we look after our planet, and creatures on it we won't need mars. Think about it, how many countries have you travelled to on earth? So much rich culture and spectaculor scenery.

Originally posted by ColonelSF
And then there's Europa and Titan. The possibility of the human race spreading out into the Solar System is endless!

We should colonize our entire Solar System in this way (well the ones that would be possible) It would be the beginning of a universal space voyage. Carrying our technology and knowledge from planet to planet and expanding the possibilities to travel to other galaxies and meet other ETs. But let's say this happened and our descendants colonized Earh and let's say Titan, Would the Titans be Extraterrestrial to Earthlings even though they would be human?

We are turning earth into mars right now....the new earth will be ready and then we can terraform our old earth back to its current state and when we are done trashing mars we can come back to our terraformed earth.

Doesn’t Mars have a wobble problem?

Basically our earth has its on stabilizer the moon, which stops our planet from wobbling so its spins nicely on its axis but on mars this doesn’t happen as its moons are too small so mars wobbles all over the place, so you would get massive floods as the water on the planet would be thrown all over the place.

I could be wrong but im sure I read that somewhere. So instead of spending all that money on a planet impossible to live on, would it not be better for us to invest in space travel, or even moving our planet further from the sun when the time comes?

reply to post by OrionHunterX


The dream that once mars had an atmosphere, had contemplating my mind for a while so I looked at the original picture and tried to reassemble mars in the way I thought it could look like!

Here it is.

Originally posted by superbuker
reply to post by ColonelSF

 

If we look after our planet, and creatures on it we won't need mars. Think about it, how many countries have you travelled to on earth? So much rich culture and spectaculor scenery.

Well, it's not about culture and spectacular sceneries! We do need to find new homes on other planets for two reasons - one long term and the other, near term.

The first reason is that in the near future, the population will outstrip by far, the resources on Earth. There will not be enough to go around. 7 billion people at present. Probably 50 billion in a less than 500 years! And then? Would you like civilization to whither away?

The second and long term aspect is the sun which is getting hotter and bigger gradually. At a point in time the Sun will get so hot that it would be impossible to live on Earth anymore. What then? You would need to migrate to other cooler climes that can support life as we know it. And therefore we must act before it's too late.

Terraforming is a long drawn process that could take hundreds if not thousands of years considering that several planets would need to be trraformed where we all could migrate to. We would finally need to travel outward to other systems within our galaxy in our quest for 'greener pastures' as the Sun, by then a Red Giant, expands inexorably to swallow the entire Solar System.

Of course all this is far into the future, but inconsequential on the cosmic time scale.

P.S. If God were to see this as a 3 hour movie, this great migration would probably start in just the first few minutes!

Where are they going to get the trillions upon trillions of gallons of water needed to make oceans like the ones pictured in the ops photos?

i wish the aliens would just come and make us smart already!!!

Originally posted by BriGuyTM90
Where are they going to get the trillions upon trillions of gallons of water needed to make oceans like the ones pictured in the ops photos?

There is ice in the north and south pole, plus water in the soil i believe

Originally posted by BriGuyTM90
Where are they going to get the trillions upon trillions of gallons of water needed to make oceans like the ones pictured in the ops photos?

You may be aware that large amounts of water ice exist below the Martian surface, as well as on the surface at the poles. It has been found that significant amounts of water are stored in the south pole of Mars, and if all of this ice suddenly melted, it would form a planetwide ocean approx 40 feet deep!

Frozen carbon dioxide (CO2) at the poles sublimates into the atmosphere during the Martian summer, and small amounts of water residue is left behind, which winds sweep off the poles at fairly high speeds. This seasonal occurrence transports large amounts of dust and water vapor into the atmosphere, giving potential for Earth-like cirrus clouds.

And more snow falling onto the surface - like this famous image from the Viking Lander:


Heavy Frost, or Snow. Deposit at Viking Lander 2 Site (Viking Lander Image 211093).
Credit: Spherix Inc.

I think the biggest problem, and it has been mentioned already, is that Mars' magnetosphere is not strong enough for human survival. Now, if we could get that fixed, we might not even have to terraform the planet at all. It is possible that after the planet is able to block the cosmic rays, life may be able to grab hold again on its own. We might need to provide the extremeophiles for this jump-start of bringing life back to the dead planet (I believe it once had life, so I am using this phrase correctly) and the eventual habitation of humans.

(For whoever asked if people from other planets, ie Titan, Venus, Mars, Europa, ect,... would be extraterrestrials, the answer is yes. If we came into contact with beings from outside our galaxy, we could simply call them extragalacticals to specify this. Terra is used to define the Earth... at least it was at one point in time. Not so much these days.)