Originally posted by inverslyproportional
reply to post by KamaSutra
So you know, venus is much larger than mars, mars is about 2 and a half of our moon, venus is about earth sized.
So it woukd be large planet close to aun smallnplanet far from sun.
I think the answer would be to do both, and use both to help each other. Here I will explain my meaning.
Venus is not hot just because it is closer to the sun, or even because it has a high co2 concentrration in its atmosphere. It is a burning waste lane
befause it has too much atmosphere. Here on earth at sea level, w elwe are under about 14 psi of pressure, from the atmosphere pushing down on us. On
venus the atmosphereic prssure is hundreds of psi, no human could ever survive that. They woukd be crushed like a grape.
Mars has almost no atmosphere, because its magnetic shield no longer protects it from the slar wind, which has blown it away to the vacuum of
space.
I say we figure out how to fix mars' magnetic shield, or create a artificial one, and transport large amounts of tases from venus to mars, as both
have their atmosphere brought to a more human like tolerance, venus woukd begin to cool, and kars would begin to warm.
After a few thousand years of this, we would start to see improvements on both.
Just my take.
I think you have a good idea, but the practicality of it is not feasible. Transporting gases from Venus to Mars would be tedious and require too much
risk and expenditure of resources compared to other means.
The Earth's magnetic field is generated by the molten core. Mars' core is believe to be almost completely solidified, which is why its magnetic field
is almost non-existent. Part of this is due to the planet's relatively small size combined with other factors in its past that we are currently
unaware of.
Earth is extremely lucky to have a field as strong as it is, and this is largely due to the theorized impact of a Mars-sized planet early after our
formation which essentially liquified the entire planet and threw up the material to create the Moon. This helped a lot of the metals that comprise
our core to seep into the center of our planet to create the dynamo that generates the strong field we have today, as well as the Moon that gives us a
bit of extra tidal stress.
Mars, as far as we are aware, has had none of this. Combined with its smaller size and further distance from the Sun, it was able to cool much
faster. Which, without a strong magnetic field, means the planet doesn't have resistance to the solar wind to protect its atmosphere from being
slowly stripped away.
Currently the best prospects for truly terraforming Mars is to nudge comets as they come into the inner solar system so that they will impact Mars.
Since comets typically have a lot of water and other ices (CO2, etc), this could give the planet the necessary greenhouse boost to vastly improve
habitable conditions. The problem being that it will slowly lose this again to the solar wind unless we discover some way to reignite the core (which
is well beyond our means at present) It will also take time. Time to wait for suitable comets, time to redirect them, and probably even time to wait
for the aftereffects of the impact to dissipate.
A fairly large comet is believed to be making what might be it's first pass ever into the inner solar system in the near future and will either hit
Mars or come exceedingly close according to current orbital projections. There are some saying we should go ahead and use this opportunity to not
only start the process, but test our ability to redirect potentially hazardous objects.
I've always thought that, assuming both are currently devoid of life, causing Ceres to collide with Mars could be by far the most-effective method.
The Dawn spacecraft is due to arrive in orbit of Ceres in 2015, so we should be able to learn a lot more about the composition, etc of the dwarf
planet. It has been speculated that there could be a good bit of water in subsurface oceans under a thick icy mantle.
Terraforming of Venus would be a lot more involved. The current best strategies include using what they term floating cities or an insane # of
reflective balloons in the upper atmosphere to shade the lower atmosphere from the sun so that it would have a chance to cool off. Then they would
need to find a way to process out the carbon dioxide either through biological or other means. They've also explored the possibility of the effect of
introducing a lot of hydrogen to the atmosphere as it would react with the CO2 to create graphite and water.
I could go on, but it's fairly detailed on the wiki page:
Terraforming of
Venusedit on 13-3-2013 by Dashdragon because: (no reason given)