Terraforming Mars, The Noble Experiment?

Mars Society founder, Robert Zubrin, talks about how to terraform the red planet. His engineer's eye reveals his robust plans for not just getting to a new home, but also how to build one from scratch.

john

www.spacedaily.com...

Over a period of about a thousand years, human-disseminated and harvested plants would be able to put ~150 mbar (millibars) of oxygen in the Martian atmosphere. Once this occurs, humans and other animals will be able to live on Mars in the open, and the world will become fully alive.

And everything slowly iradiates? And the first solar falre to pass by wipes out thousands of years of work?

Mars has no magnetosphere.

150 millibars is 2.17 pounds per square inch. Sea level on Earth, the pressure is just over 14 pounds per square inch. You would explode at 150 millibars. I don't see how he can claim you could walk around at that pressure.

For a thousand years of hard labour, that's little reward. Mars does not have enough mass to retain a decent atmosphere. (or the magnetosphere to keep cosmic rays out).


[Edited on 16-7-2004 by Zzub]

With out a magnetic field all those released gasses will lost to outerspace in short period of time. Honestly, HOW DUMB can an aerospace engineer be? The reason Mars no longer has the atmosphere it once had is because it lost its magnetic field. What a huge expensive waste of time his project would be. Someday they may beable to create/re-create the magnetic field on Mars, until then people will have to be satisfied with domes and underground structures.

Just start the reactor Quaid.... (If you don't get it, then you're behind on your Arnold movies....)

Originally posted by Zzub
150 millibars is 2.17 pounds per square inch. Sea level on Earth, the pressure is just over 14 pounds per square inch. You would explode at 150 millibars. I don't see how he can claim you could walk around at that pressure.

For a thousand years of hard labour, that's little reward. Mars does not have enough mass to retain a decent atmosphere. (or the magnetosphere to keep cosmic rays out).


[Edited on 16-7-2004 by Zzub]

Thanks for doing the calculation, it makes it easy to compare.

Apollo missions used a mere 3 psi both suit pressure and cabin pressure on the trip to the Moon.

So we obviously do not need 14psi, we merely can survive it, just as if we have 1000psi we crush into a little tin-can. 14psi is over-pressure, but not too much so.

Anyone care to challenge this? I might be missing something from the fact that we flew to the Moon with just 3psi.

Hah Gazrok..."I got 5 mouths to feed!"

I don't really know much about the pressure a person can survive...but I do know that anything about 20 rads of radiation, especially over time, will kill people.

Not to mention the UV radiation baking off skin.

Plane an simple...Mars has no magnetosphere, we could build encolsed structures there with shielding, but terraforming won't be possible til we can generate massive magnetic fields.

Wouldn't you know though, once they terraform Mars, then a wildcatter strikes oil, you know the subterranean methane pressure grid, and then what? More technological suppression, more pollution, fewer richer people ruining everything with their stupid politics and brainwashing.

Get rid of the stupid politics and selfish money, then teraform all you want!

[edit on 18-7-2004 by SkipShipman]

Real brilliant Skip, except there is really no sedimentary rocks on Mars, thus no real permeable rock...thus uh oh...no Oil. Mars is good for some valuable or necessary minerals and that's about it...