populating+ecoforming mars +how to!?

[truthseeker]

i have trust in humankind and when things are thougher
mars wise humen will be juster

neverther the less
someday if this succeds there will be places for all kinds of ppl


1 big place for each kind

i wanna be at the gowers-fair players place

edit-and that guy is disgusting, u may be wellcome here
but he is not!

 

[medi-useA]

what makes a biodome different than a "building"??????
for me photosynthesis should be made mainly by artificial sources led hids etc and supplemented by natural light with some optical fibres????

about the wind power. i dont get it, ur suggesting that we harvest wind on mars???

om the underground thermal generation, that sounds really interesting but i guess power will not be in sortage on mars(relatively to elements) and i believe that the only benefit of underground would be temperature control
but u got me thinking

A BioDome, Whatever it's shape, has to be atmosphere tight and structurally sound. Within it, it must house an ecosystem including heat, air, bacteria, liquids and solids.

As to wind generation on Mars..lookee here.

Basically an air tight mineshaft is what you're after...


muA


I seem to remember reading about MMJ being grown in mine shafts in Canada...

 

[truthseeker]

biodome it is then, questions are:
can it really suceed?
and if yes why it hasnt already started?????

 

[cashmunny]

the energy cost of escaping earth's gravity is so enormous that it will never happen. It costs about $10,000 per pound to put an object into low earth orbit. And it costs even more the further up the gravity well you go. The space station cost 100 billion dollars, it supports about half a dozen people, and requires constant resupply. The cost for everything required to start a colony on Mars would exceed the value of the entire earth's economy. The human race started on earth and that's where it will end. Probably sooner rather than later since human beings can't seem to regulate their desire to fuck and make babies in spite of dwindling resources.

 

[Frozenguy]

One of the main problems is our current propulsion. There are other problems, but most could be fixed with a more energy efficient propulsion system.

Mars doesn't have nearly anything that we need, so we need to bring everything there.

Water was found, but how much is REALLY there? Hopefully/possibly quite a bit.

We need an atmosphere on mars as well as a magnetic field.
The magnetic field will help protect us against dangergous solar radiation and help keep water/atmosphere on the planet.

We can cover the planet in a dark soot material to attract more light for heat, but that is only temporary.

The lack of a substantial magnetic field is probably what will keep us in domes when we go to mars.


Its possible to live on mars, but making it a new earth? Very very difficult and possibly impossible; but I don't like to say anything is impossible.

Simply "colonizing" Mars is definitely doable TODAY.

 

[Nor'Easter]

ok did not read every last post but we must stop being a throw away society and this is not a throwaway world, and the end will not come if we act. But this is a great thread. I suggest you search for McKay and Zubrin, both authorities on Mars. We could have been on Mars years ago using an approcach like Zubrin's Mars Direct. Chris McKay and Zubrin suggest we can terraform Mars. Doing what is bad for Earth would be great for Mars. We would set up factories that churn out lots of super CFC's, which would melt CO2 in the icecaps, creating an accelerating global warming. Liquid water would melt out of the icecaps and there may be enough water underground to cover 1/3 the surface! Once the atmosphhere thickens and liquid water can collect, and it warms up enough, plants can grow and churn out oxygen. In a 100-1000 years (I heard it could be 100 or less with really imaginative tech not available today like nanobots liberating CO2 and water from the soil), we could have an atmosphere breathable for humans, and a new home for hundreds of millions of years. Meanwhile we could live under domes and become a 2 planet species, which will increase our chances of avoiding extinction.

 

[Nor'Easter]

yes it would be nice to have faster propulsion, and we could if NASA got even a tenth of what the military gets. But we can get there with current technology. A rotating craft would provide artificial gravity so we don't waste away, it can be shielded against radiation, and we can get there even now in 6 months when Mars is at its closest every 2 years.
and quit it with the Al Gore pics, that is really getting old and shows your immaturity.

 

[Nor'Easter]

this thread is dead? I hoped it was just getting started!

 

[cork144]

Well..can you sew a seed on mars? will it sustain itself? Imagine the lumens! If there be no water, we can bring water..and an ro filter incase we find water...

All thats needed really is one male and one female...to let a landrace begin? no?

the lumens would be little, mars is further away from the sun than earth.

 

[cashmunny]

It's really the stuff of science fiction not reality with the current state of aerospace technology. You have to realize that aerospace technology does not progress at the same rate as say semiconductor technology or biotechnology. In aerospace we are still designing vehicles using 60 year old technology. There has been no quantum mechanical revolution in the macroscopic world as there has been in the microscopic world.

Essentially the problem is that in order to escape earths gravity using a rocket, that rocket has to carry fuel, and that fuel has mass. The mass of that fuel requires even more fuel to lift it off the ground. So the energy cost of leaving the earth is enormous.

And again, consider that the space station, which is in a LOW earth orbit, cost 100 billion dollars to build, supports six people, took many space shuttle flights to build, and requires constant resupply and maintenance by highly educated and skilled individuals in conjuction with massive ground support. And the space shuttle is not even capable of flying to Mars. So the cost of a colony would probably be a thousand times greater and exceed the worlds entire domestic product.

Not to mention that the colonists could never return to earth. How many people would sign up for living with a small chance of survival, in a harsher environment than anything on earth, with no chance of return?

It would have to be a dire emergency like an imminent large asteroid collision with earth and every single person on earth would have to devote themselves in some way to the effort in order to take an extreme longshot on saving a handful of individuals who would probably not survive more than a year on Mars let alone a generation.

So since we are clearly in the realm of science fiction and pipe dreams, I'd say the best bet would be to find some bacteria that survive well in extremely hostile environments, like ocean thermal vents, or antarctic ice. And deposit them in a region of mars that may contain liquid water. Perhaps it would be possible to genetically engineer the bacteria is such a way that they are capable of photosynthesis and are radiation resistant.

Then hope that they survive and evolve into a more advanced life forms long after human beings have committed collective suicide through war, overpopulation, and environmental degradation. So when our last few surviving descendants are living in caves again and wondering how things got so fucked up and why no one stopped it before things got out of hand, they can look up at the sky and wonder.

But I think we'll destroy ourselves long before such long shot missions are ever even contemplated. Better odds would be to focus our efforts on civilizing this planet. But I'd say that's a longshot also.

 

[cyberwax]

Terraforming Mars would entail two major interlaced changes: building up the atmosphere and keeping it warm. The atmosphere of Mars is relatively thin and thus has a very low surface pressure of 0.6 kPa, compared to Earth's 101.3 kPa. The atmosphere on Mars consists of 95% carbon dioxide (CO2), 3% nitrogen, 1.6% argon, and contains only traces of oxygen, water, and methane. Since its atmosphere consists mainly of CO2, a known greenhouse gas, once the planet begins to heat, more CO2 enters the atmosphere from the frozen reserves on the poles, adding to the greenhouse effect. This means that the two processes of building the atmosphere and heating it would augment one another, favoring terraforming. However, on a large scale, controlled application of certain techniques (explained below) over enough time to achieve sustainable changes would be required to make this theory a reality.

The main way to build the martian atmosphere is importation of water, that can be obtained, for example, from ice asteroids or from ice moons of Jupiter or Saturn. Adding water and heat to the environment will be key to making the dry, cold world suitable for life.

A substantial, nearby source of water is the dwarf planet Ceres, which, according to various studies accounts for 25% to 33% of the mass of the Asteroid Belt. Ceres' mass is approximately 9.43 x 10^20 kg. Estimates of how much of Ceres is water varies widely but 20% is a typical estimate and it is thought that much of the water forms the outer or near-surface level. The mass of Ceres' water equals approximately 1.886 x 10^20 kg using the previous estimates. The total mass of Mars is approximately 6.4185 x 10^23 kg. Therefore a very rough estimate is that the amount of water on Ceres equals approximately 0.03 % of the total mass of Mars. As a side note, the total mass of Ceres is approximately 0.15 % that of Mars. Transporting a significant portion of this water, or water from any of the icy moons, would be daunting. Alternately, any attempt to perturb the orbit of Ceres in order to add it whole to Mars (similar to the strategy of using a gravitational tractor for asteroid deflection), thus increasing Mars' mass by admittedly a tiny fraction but adding a great deal of heat (no small, cosmic body Ceres, see below), must account for any resultant perturbation of the martian orbit and account for prolonged geological tumult, such as reestablishment of hydrostatic equilibrium, that would result from even the softest of impacts.

Another, more intricate method, uses ammonia as a powerful greenhouse gas (as it is possible that nature has stockpiled large amounts of it in frozen form on asteroidal objects orbiting in the outer Solar System), it may be possible to move these (for example, by using very large nuclear bombs to blast them in the right direction) and send them into Mars's atmosphere. Since ammonia (NH3) is high in nitrogen it might also take care of the problem of needing a buffer gas in the atmosphere. Sustained smaller impacts will also contribute to increases in the temperature and mass of the atmosphere.
The need for a buffer gas is a challenge that will face any potential atmosphere builders. On Earth, nitrogen is the primary atmospheric component making up 77% of the atmosphere. Mars would require a similar buffer gas component although not necessarily as much. Still, obtaining significant quantities of nitrogen, argon or some other comparatively inert gas is difficult.

Another way would be to import methane or other hydrocarbons, which are common in Titan's atmosphere (and on its surface). The methane could be vented into the atmosphere where it would act to compound the greenhouse effect.
Methane (or other hydrocarbons) also can be helpful to produce a quick increase for the insufficient martian atmospheric pressure. Also, these gases can be used for production (at the next step of terraforming of Mars) of water and CO2 for martian atmosphere, by reaction:
CH4 + 4 Fe2O3 => CO2 + 2 H2O + 8 FeO
This reaction could probably be initiated by heat or by martian solar UV-irradiation. Large amounts of the resulting products (CO2 and water) are necessary to initiate the photosynthetic processes.

Hydrogen importation could also be done for atmospheric and hydrospheric engineering. For example, hydrogen could react with iron oxide from the martian soil, that would give water as a product:
H2 + Fe2O3 => H2O + 2FeO
Depending on the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, importation and reaction of hydrogen would produce heat, water and graphite via the Bosch reaction. Alternatively, reacting hydrogen with the carbon dioxide atmosphere via the Sabatier reaction would yield methane and water.

Since long-term climate stability would be required for sustaining a human population, the use of especially powerful greenhouse gases possibly including halocarbons such as chlorofluorocarbons (or CFCs) and perfluorocarbons (or PFCs) has been suggested. These gases are the most cited candidates for artificial insertion into the Martian atmosphere because of their strong effect as a greenhouse gas. This can conceivably be done relatively cheaply by sending rockets with a payload of compressed CFCs on a collision course with Mars. When the rocket crashes onto the surface it releases its payload into the atmosphere. A steady barrage of these "CFC rockets" would need to be sustained for a little more than a decade while the planet changes chemically and becomes warmer.
A proposal to mine fluorine-containing minerals as a source of CFCs and PFCs is supported by the belief that since the quantities present are expected to be at least as common on Mars as on Earth, this process could sustain the production of sufficient quantities of optimal greenhouse compounds (CF3SCF3, CF3OCF2OCF3, CF3SCF2SCF3, CF3OCF2NFCF3) to maintain Mars at 'comfortable' temperatures, as a method of maintaining an Earth-like atmosphere produced previously by some other means.

Adding heat and conserving the heat present is a particularly important stage of this process, as heat from the Sun is the primary driver of planetary climate. Mirrors made of thin aluminized PET film could be placed in orbit around Mars to increase the total insolation it receives. This would direct the sunlight onto the surface and could increase the planet's surface temperature directly. The mirror could be positioned as a statite, using its effectiveness as a solar sail to orbit in a stationary position relative to Mars, near the poles, to sublimate the CO2 ice sheet and contribute to the warming greenhouse effect.
Changing the albedo of the Martian surface would also make more efficient use of incoming sunlight. Altering the color of the surface with dark dust and soot (likely from both of Mars' moons, Phobos and Deimos, because they are dark in color and could be ground into dust while in space and then somewhat uniformly distributed across the Martian surface by "dropping" it onto Mars) or dark microbial life forms such as lichens would transfer a larger amount of incoming solar radiation to the surface as heat before it is reflected off into space again. Using extremophile life forms is particularly attractive since they could propagate themselves.

Another way to increase the temperature could be to direct small cosmic bodies (asteroids) onto the Martian surface; the impact energy would be released as heat and could evaporate Martian water ice to steam, which is also a greenhouse gas.
As the planet becomes warmer, the CO2 on the polar caps sublimes into the atmosphere and contributes to the warming effect. The tremendous air currents generated by the moving gasses would create large, sustained dust storms, which would also contribute to the warming of the planet by directly heating (through absorbing solar radiation) the molecules in the atmosphere. Eventually Mars would be warm enough that CO2 could not solidify on the poles, but liquid water would still not develop because the pressure would be too low.
After the heavy dust-storms subside, the warmer planet could conceivably be habitable to some forms of terrestrial life. Certain forms of algae and bacteria that are able to live in the Antarctic would be prime candidates. By filling a few rockets with algae spores and crashing them in the polar areas where there would still be water-ice, they could not only grow but even thrive in the no-competition, high-radiation, high CO2 environment.

If the algae are successful in propagating themselves around parts of the planet, this would have the effect of darkening the surface and reducing the albedo of the planet. By absorbing more sunlight, the ground will warm the atmosphere even more. Furthermore, the atmosphere would have a new small oxygen contribution from the algae, though it would still not be enough oxygen for humans to be able to breathe. If the atmosphere grows denser, the atmospheric surface pressure may rise and approximate that of Earth. At first, until there is enough oxygen in the atmosphere, humans will probably need nothing more than a breathing mask and a small tank of oxygen that they carry around with them. To contribute to the oxygen content of the air, factories could be produced that reduce the metals in the soil, effectively resulting in desired crude metals and oxygen as a byproduct. Also, by bringing plants with them (along with the microbial life inherent in fertile topsoil), humans could propagate plant life on Mars, which would create a sustainable oxygen supply to the atmosphere.

Earth abounds with water because its ionosphere is permeated with a magnetic field. The hydrogen ions present in its ionosphere move very fast due to their small mass, but they cannot escape to outer space because their trajectories are deflected by the magnetic field. Venus has dense atmosphere, but only traces of water vapor (20 ppm) because it has no magnetic field. The Martian atmosphere is devoid of water vapor for the same reason. It seems that the most practicable way to hold water and regulate temperature is building water-tight greenhouses on the surface of Mars. Another way to achieve these goals is building very large magnets and launching mirrors into orbit.
It is believed by some that Mars would be uninhabitable to most life-forms due to higher solar radiation levels. Without a magnetosphere, the Sun is thought to have thinned the Martian atmosphere to its current state; the solar wind adding a significant amount of energy to the atmosphere's top layers which enables the atmospheric particles to reach escape velocity and leave Mars. Indeed, this effect has even been detected by Mars-orbiting probes. Another theory is that solar winds rip the atmosphere away from the planet as it becomes trapped in bubbles of magnetic fields called plasmoids.
Venus, however, shows that the lack of a magnetosphere does not preclude a dense (albeit dry) atmosphere. A thick atmosphere could also provide solar radiation protection to the surface. In the past, Earth has regularly had periods where the magnetosphere changed direction and collapsed for some time.

 

[Kcar]

Why not just go there, discover the secret machines buried by long since dead martians,
and turn them on?

 

[cyberwax]

Why not just go there, discover the secret machines buried by long since dead martians,
and turn them on?

Cuz the terminator is busy ruining california.

 

[Nor'Easter]

the lumens would be little, mars is further away from the sun than earth.

I think it has been researched and Mars would get 1/2 of Earth light, mb 1/4 but I think 1/2. Either way, it is well within the range of sustaining plants, I remember that much. Especially genetically engineered ones. Animals, people, and plants with genetic engineering will do well on Mars.

 

[Nor'Easter]

they could return to Earth, but would need adaptations similar to the spacesuits Earthlings would need on Mars. And great post #31 cyberwax, but we do not to import water, Mars prob has plenty just under the surface. And if not asteroids/comet would work. Manufactured super CFC's would be more efficient to the program than even methane, and mirrors near the poles to melt the ice would help. These steps would be all that is needed, not the more out of reach scenario you propose. Basically, everything bad for the Earth would be great for Mars, and we already proved we can warm Earth, so this is totally doable and with present technology.

 

[Kcar]

What about giant sno-blowers to scrape away the red dust and expose all the ice
underneath? Then is would vaporize and turn into an atmosphere. Ta-da.

 

[Nor'Easter]

there you go!

 

[ShantiSadhu]

Step 1. Plant Hemp Seed.
Step 2. Wait.
Step 3. Colonize.

Simple as Pie.

IAnimals, people, and plants with genetic engineering will do well on Mars.

Genetically Modified Plants and Animals have major problems on Earth.
Mars would not be any different. Nature does miracles all by herself.
​

 

[Nor'Easter]

not that easy but not too hard either. Plants will provide the oxygen humans need, but not for hundreds of years. First, Mars needs to be warmed, which will re-hydrate it. In the meantime live in caves or under domes.