Mars Terraformed. And The Future Earth!

I love the idea of terraforming Mars and living on it's surface. I don't think we should wait. We should build a ship and send colonists to set up shop. They can live underground and put out solar panels to power underground lighting and hydroponic farming. We should put robotic tunneling machines down on mars and just make massive tunnel cities.

I read a series of sci fi novels called 'Red Mars, Blue Mars and Green Mars' the trilogy was great. It portrays what a real colonization of mars might be like.

reply to post by guyopitz

Good points! Yes, in the initial stages, the terraformers would be ensconced in self contained underground bases to oversee the process. A few feet of regolith above would be sufficient protection from radiation and cosmic particles.

reply to post by OrionHunterX


You are neglecting to realize that Mars cannot support a significant atmosphere for any length of time.

Mars does not have a magnetic field. With no magnetic field, the solar wind will erode away any significant atmosphere.

Sorry, mars can not be thermoformed unless you can create magnetic field to deflect the solar wind around it.

reply to post by hlesterjerome

Hi! All this has been covered in previous posts here. And do remember, Venus has a negligible magnetosphere but has an atmosphere of thick clouds that shields against radiation and cosmic particles.

Many posters here have mentioned that cosmic radiation would destroy life on Mars due to the lack of a magnetosphere.

However, a recent report calculated the incoming flow of both galactic cosmic rays particles (GCR) and solar energetic protons (SEP) over a wide energy range. As a result one may acknowledge that - without even invoking natural selection to enhance radiation protection and damage repair - the radiation incident to the surface of Mars appears trivial for the survival of numerous terrestrial-like microorganisms.

Adding to this rising tide of facts supporting the detection of life by the Viking LR experiment are the recent findings in the Martian atmosphere of methane, formaldehyde, and, possibly, ammonia, gases frequently involved in microbial metabolism.

Therefore, looking at it from another angle, it is perhaps possible that Mars at present does support some form of microbial life deep under its rocks/regolith despite a negligible magnetosphere.

reply to post by OrionHunterX


Venus has a shield? Unless you ignore it's crushing pressure, I suppose it's another Shangri-La!

BTW, Mars is a dead rock.

Originally posted by Illustronic
reply to post by OrionHunterX

 

BTW, Mars is a dead rock.

Exactly the reason why it should be terraformed!

And here's an interesting article:

Stranger than fiction: The search for habitable exomoons.

So, it's not only planets that should be terraformed, but moons too!

Originally posted by KamiKazeKenji
I only have one response to this post. As it is written in the holy book of the Word of God, in Genesis 1:1, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."

Only our Father the Creator knows our fate, and what he has planned for us. Only time will tell (or you could ask Jesus when you get to heaven)!

And "God' could be a commander/ruler of a more advanced civilization (alien race) whose civilization was in peril as they needed to search the solar system(s) for a more inhabitable home...

And 'created the heavens and the Earth" could have referred to what we NOW call 'terraforming'

Think about Exodus in the bible...could that have been an Exodus from Mars to Earth??

reply to post by ButterCookie

Wow! Mind blowing concepts! It's quite possible. But will we ever get to know?

reply to post by OrionHunterX

Thanks!!!

I think the evidence is undeniable...

Its the Ancient Alien/Astronaut theory

The gods traveled to Earth on some sort of mission( gold mining in Africa?) and found the need for a terrestrial species to do the labor (humans) and so by genetic engineering, voila, HUMANS

But the way Genesis reads, "god built the Earth" and built can easily mean 'created for' or 'made fit for'

(Terraform?)

We know that the cosmos were already in place by nature so there was no 'god' to create them.....but a god could see the need to terraform it for a species to adapt to, in the same way that our 'gods' (scientists, astronauts) would need to terraform Mars or anywhere else.....

hello all, i just joined, i know, kinda late to the party, as is said, better late than never. i read most of the post, as was previously stated mars' magnetosphere needs a jump start, the problem with just pushing the reset button is that mars does not have the mass nor the copper nickel iron core to protect said terraformed life. i was watching the documentary TV series "the universe" released in 2007. Something came across my mind, Make mars more massive. we are already talking about changing an entire planets environment, we need to go on a scavengers hunt, i understand that what i am taking about involves collecting massive amounts of material, and that this would be no easy task and extremely expensive not accounting the expense of terraforming. whats the point of terraforming mars if it's not self sustaining? someone out there has to have thought of the same thing. super simple idea, extremely complicated process.

reply to post by Yoshie

The main problem seems to be that Mars' core is no longer liquid. If tidal friction could somehow be generated for Mars (as the sun does for Mercury and the Moon-Sun system does for Earth), Mars' magnetosphere could possibly be reactivated. Probably repositioning Phobos and Deimos could do the trick.

No some asian scientists, said smash big astroids into the polls first, to build up a co2 and h2o atmosphere, and after that put plants on there, and it would only take 100 years for rain etc.

Take a look at this to-scale illustration of the relative sizes and distances Mars and its moons.



If you are familiar with gravitational tidal effects of bodies in space you would quickly deduce without even using math that the Martian moons have next to zero tidal effects on Mars, in fact Jupiter may have more tidal effect on Mars at the planets closest approach, which interestingly for Mars, is an interesting comparative distance from the sun, the difference is one is in miles and the other is in kilometers. 227,940 million km from its closest approach to Jupiter, about the same mean figure from the sun in MILES.

If Mars had larger moons where its current moons are there would be really whacky tidal effects on Mars, as Phobos orbits Mars about 3 times a Martian day! About 7.7 hours, and Deimos once every 30 and a third some hours.

Both moons are tidally locked, always presenting the same face towards Mars. Since Phobos orbits Mars faster than the planet itself rotates, tidal forces are slowly but steadily decreasing its orbital radius. At some point in the future, when it approaches Mars closely enough, Mars's Roche limit, Phobos, even though it's the larger of the two moons, will be broken up by the tidal forces of Mars and rain down to the surface eventually.

These are tiny moons but nothing that mankind has ever created could ever 'move' either of these bodies, for the foreseeable future.

reply to post by Illustronic


Having read many of your posts on this site,you seem very negative and quick to dismiss anything and everything.

You are in no position to claim Mars is dead.Reading Internet forums is NOT a qualification.

reply to post by paperface


We can detect mineral components of relatively close bodies in space with spectrometers. We have in vivo as well as in vitro specimens from Mars as samples taken from the surface and samples that have been ejected to the earth itself (millions and even billions of years ago). I'm not a geologist but I do trust what their analyses are about the confirmed samples.

I'm not negative I just find it a waste of time to delve into the imagination instead of the confirmed peer reviewed exchange of people smarter than me in those disciplines.

In other words, I would have a surgeon extract my gull bladder (if necessary) instead of a dentist.

A much simpler effect, smash asteroids into polls, releasing A lot of C02 into the air, and hydrogen etc, then when a full atmosphere has been made, put genetically engineered plants on the surface, what take in a lot of co2 and give out a lot of oxygen, leave for about 50 years, then do the mirrors, in about 120 years of doing this, it'll have rain and clouds etc.

What about capturing a big asteroid or comet and smashing it into the planet? Would that be a faster way?