Ways of Mars terraformation

[danik]

Let's think a bit about the terraformation of Mars- what's Your opinion about following questions:

1) Do we have the right to terraform another planets (or maybe objects as Jupiter moons etc.)?

2) What about the 'terraformation paradox' - I mean, you can say recently it's too expensive to terraform Mars, it'll take too long time and there's no reason for that... But maybe,at that time when it would be in the reach of our technology and even when it would be needed, some ways of terraformation woun't be possible to use- for example due to risk of destroying some human colony,already having been built there..?

3) What about this idea: For the aim of increasing temperature and pressure of Mars' atmosphere (and maybe to wake up some volcanic activity there,as well), let's redirect some closest mars-grazers (there are several asteroids with diam.of 200-500 m.,approaching to Mars to less than 0,01 AU in future) to collision orbit towards Mars? And what about using nuclear weapons for redirection those objects?

Now,my answers.
ad 1) Yes we must do it! Sooner or later,to move from our mother Earth,that will be the only possibility for the mankind how to survive..
Of course, there is the big question: was there life in the past on Mars? But how long can we wait for the answer?
ad 2) The manned mission to Mars- that's a big challenge and much more interesting for promotion than any robotic research..
But,in my opinion, even if we reach this milestone, afterwards the history will repeat- as with the Moon..
After this first (and probably for several decades the last) manned mission, then would be the right time to start that very long-lasting
but real process of terraformation.
ad 3) According to some my simple calculations, the change of velocity of certain asteroids just in measure of several m/s would be enough
to lead them to collide with Mars at the speed of about 10-30 km/s. This means that every invested joule of energy would come back
more than 1 000 000 times! Isn't that an effective business??
Using the nuclear weapons by the pacefull and most usefull way- the energy of several hundreds kilotons of TNT should be enough..
As the side-effect, the technology of deflection of asteroids from Earth could be investigated with this project.

[geckzilla]

I think there's absolutely no reason to believe that we can't continue to survive on Earth for another million years except for the dead-end way of thinking that we can continue to expand, expand, expand and use all of our natural resources up until there aren't any left. What's harder, terraforming Mars or learning to change our ways here in our very own home?

[Chris Peterson]

I think there's absolutely no reason to believe that we can't continue to survive on Earth for another million years except for the dead-end way of thinking that we can continue to expand, expand, expand and use all of our natural resources up until there aren't any left. What's harder, terraforming Mars or learning to change our ways here in our very own home?

This.

[Beyond]

I think there's absolutely no reason to believe that we can't continue to survive on Earth for another million years except for the dead-end way of thinking that we can continue to expand, expand, expand and use all of our natural resources up until there aren't any left. What's harder, terraforming Mars or learning to change our ways here in our very own home?

This.

And that.

[rstevenson]

On the other paw, I see no reason to believe we will change our ways significantly. Very likely we'll manage to avoid total extermination here, but at a huge cost to the planet's biome (and our descendents) before we reach that point. We will likely expand into the Solar System, finding and using whatever resources we need out there. This expansion will include the usual culprits: orbital habitats, asteroid mining, Moon bases, Mars colonies, etc. And we'll do all of those things for the same reasons we do everything else, a mixture of greed, altruism and curiosity.

Yes, we'll very likely try to terraform Mars, to probably disastrous results in the short term -- especially if you're a scientist who wanted to study Mars in all its untouched glory. But the goal of a second planet to exploit will drive us on and we'll eventually figure it out. We may have to drop some mountain-sized snow balls on it to get an atmosphere going.

We'll be out there taking our first halting steps within perhaps 50 to 100 years, but we won't be really comfortable in most of the Solar System for another 1000 or more years. A mere blink of an eye in terms of our species history.

Rob

[Beyond]

Speaking of Mars... Here's a guy that plans to do a fly-by of the red dust-ball in 2018.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... lanet.html

[Chris Peterson]

On the other paw, I see no reason to believe we will change our ways significantly. Very likely we'll manage to avoid total extermination here, but at a huge cost to the planet's biome (and our descendents) before we reach that point. We will likely expand into the Solar System, finding and using whatever resources we need out there.

I agree we're not likely to change. But I think the result will be the loss of our high technology long before we're in a position to expand into space in any meaningful way. We may well begin some limited exploitation of space for resources, but I don't see any habitation to speak of.

[bystander]

Speaking of Mars... Here's a guy that plans to do a fly-by of the red dust-ball in 2018.
Millionaire spaceflier plans mission to Mars! Dennis Tito reveals project to make history by sending himself to red planet

Private Mars Mission in 2018?
Discovery News | Ian O'Neill | 2013 Feb 21

[Ann]

We are a part of the Earth's biosphere. To terraform Mars so that we can move the Earth's biosphere there must necessarily be harder than to preserve the Earth's biosphere here, not least because Mars, with its low gravity, lacks the natural prerequisites for holding on to a substantial bio-friendly atmosphere for any length of time. And why should it be easier to create a perfect atmosphere from scratch and then keep it in perfect balance on Mars than to refrain from pushing the already existing near-perfect atmosphere here on Earth out of balance?

Ann

[danik]

Hey folks, thanks very much for your opinions!
I'm glad the discussion started here about this topic.To specify, how I mean that 'sooner or later we'll have to move from the Earth' :
Sure I hope that the reason for doing this will not be destroying of our environment! I'm optimistic in that- humans hopefully have enough self-preservation instinct..
The time measure for possible terraformation will be thousands of years for sure (Just the blink of an eye,as Rob wrote..)
But after some 2 billions of years the Sun will burn the Earth,anyway.So until that time we have to learn how to live somewhere else.
You can say that will be not our problem,already. And we have enough troubles to solve here at our only home.
However, in the 60's, there were as well so many more important problems to solve than how to get a man to the Moon..
I'd like to ask for your opinion:
Is a manned mission to Mars (I mean including landing on surface) really essential for science and exploration or is it more taken as the way how to make crowds to raise their eyes to the sky again?

[geckzilla]

You might be optimistic danik but there are a lot of people out there who don't give a rip about Earth simply because they assume that we will one day colonize other planets. They have no long term outlook for Earth. They see it as completely disposable or a means to an end which is for humanity to burst forth into outer space. But we have no idea if terraforming Mars will work or any other planet for that matter. You don't just say ah, let's go to Alpha Centauri and check it out. This isn't Star Trek and it never will be.

And yeah, one may draw comparisons to historical trips across the ocean humanity has made where I'm sure there were other naysayers like myself who got proved wrong but space has got to be a thousand times deadlier than the ocean. It's something like 8 billion times farther to the nearest star than it is to go from Europe to North America. Anyway, go ahead and have your sci-fi dreams. But please don't forget Earth is the only home we have and it's entirely possible it's the only home we'll ever have.

[Chris Peterson]

Sure I hope that the reason for doing this will not be destroying of our environment! I'm optimistic in that- humans hopefully have enough self-preservation instinct..

Humans have great self-preservation instincts. But they don't require that we remain a highly technological civilization. It would take very little to knock us back a bit in that regard, making any space travel quite impossible.

The time measure for possible terraformation will be thousands of years for sure (Just the blink of an eye,as Rob wrote..)
But after some 2 billions of years the Sun will burn the Earth,anyway.So until that time we have to learn how to live somewhere else.

Major civilizations typically exist for several hundred years, and often at their peak for less than a hundred. A handful have managed 1000 years. Nothing I see in the world today makes me think that our civilizations or societies are going to look anything like today's in 500 or 1000 years. The pressures that are going to be created by what is now probably irreversible changes to the climate are almost certain to result in some radical changes in the next century- which may include losing the capability to get to space.

Species themselves measure their lifetimes in mere millions of years for the most part. We have perhaps 500 million years before the Earth becomes inhospitable to complex life. Humans will be extinct long before then. Perhaps we'll have evolved into something else, very different, or maybe the line will simply end. In any case, whatever might be on Earth at that time worrying about where and how to escape will be nothing we'd recognize today.

Is a manned mission to Mars (I mean including landing on surface) really essential for science and exploration or is it more taken as the way how to make crowds to raise their eyes to the sky again?

A manned mission to Mars has almost no scientific value. Human scientists on Mars would be less capable than the well designed robots we can place there. There may be reasons to put people on Mars, as there were reasons to put them on the Moon. But it would be a lie to say it's to advance science.

[Chris Peterson]

You might be optimistic danik but there are a lot of people out there who don't give a rip about Earth simply because they assume that we will one day colonize other planets. They have no long term outlook for Earth.

And those aren't the real bad guys. How about all those in positions of power who simply don't care about Earth's future because they themselves will be dead before things change too much? (Although I think some of them are being caught off guard by just how fast a few things are changing now...)

[rstevenson]

Is a manned mission to Mars (I mean including landing on surface) really essential for science and exploration or is it more taken as the way how to make crowds to raise their eyes to the sky again?

A manned mission to Mars has almost no scientific value. Human scientists on Mars would be less capable than the well designed robots we can place there. There may be reasons to put people on Mars, as there were reasons to put them on the Moon. But it would be a lie to say it's to advance science.

You describe that almost as if you picture a human standing there in their spacesuit with a camera in hand, wondering what to do next. However, it's extremely likely that if we manage to go to Mars at all, we'll be there with multiple sophisticated robots in a coordinated program of science and exploration. One of the tasks of those humans would be to make sure the robots get whatever help they need -- and vice versa. Wouldn't it be nice if Spirit could have been lifted up, given the proverbial lube job and sent on its way instead of remaining stuck and dying in a few inches of sand?

Yes, it's more difficult and expensive to include humans, and at the moment robots are the best we can manage. But that won't always be true.

Rob

[orin stepanek]

I don't think Mars can be terraformed; simply because Mars has insufficient gravity to hold an atmosphere. Colonies would have to build sealed shelters to hold on to any type of atmosphere! Kind of like a submarine! It would be a lot less expensive to colonise Luna which can't be terraformed either.

[Chris Peterson]

You describe that almost as if you picture a human standing there in their spacesuit with a camera in hand, wondering what to do next. However, it's extremely likely that if we manage to go to Mars at all, we'll be there with multiple sophisticated robots in a coordinated program of science and exploration. One of the tasks of those humans would be to make sure the robots get whatever help they need -- and vice versa. Wouldn't it be nice if Spirit could have been lifted up, given the proverbial lube job and sent on its way instead of remaining stuck and dying in a few inches of sand?

Actually, I'd say no. It wouldn't make any sense for a person to do that, considering that for the cost of sending that one person (a mechanic, apparently, not a scientist) you could send dozens of rovers. Better to do that and just let the occasional one fail.

A scientist would need exactly the same sort of equipment that would be on robotic probes. Might as well just put it on the probe to begin with and skip the fragile human, who is going to end up spending most of his time and resources simply staying alive. Heck, we can't even pull off conducting science on the ISS, just a couple hundred miles away!

Yes, it's more difficult and expensive to include humans, and at the moment robots are the best we can manage. But that won't always be true.

I think it always will be true. Because robots inherently do a better job than humans at this sort of thing. And where human input is required, it is just as effective to provide it from Earth as from the surface of Mars. Like I said, we may have reasons for going to Mars, maybe even good reasons. But conducting serious science isn't really one of them.

[TNT]

Speaking of Mars... Here's a guy that plans to do a fly-by of the red dust-ball in 2018.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... lanet.html

Heh, that reminds me of an article I once read. In my opinion, this is basically a show about people dying on the red planet. But the show does have quite a bit of worth in it.

[danik]

I don't think Mars can be terraformed; simply because Mars has insufficient gravity to hold an atmosphere. Colonies would have to build sealed shelters to hold on to any type of atmosphere!.

The Mars' gravity for sure IS able to hold a proper atmosphere (for enough long period in comparison to our species lasting): For example, the Saturn's moon Titan is smaller and much lighter than Mars. Despite that, the surface pressure of it's atmosphere is 60% higher than the pressure on the Earth!
It's already considered as the fact that there'd been an atmosphere and running water on Mars, for a long period in the past.
The biggest problem of Mars is missing magnetosphere.Therefore the hard UV rays from Sun constantly sterilize the surface..
I don't know yet if any solution of this problem was ever suggested.. does anybody here know??
Probably it'll be impossible to create breathable atmosphere on Mars, so that humans will always need some kind of breathing equipment for walking out off the covered bases.But this equipment should be much cheaper,simpler and more comfortable than the full-body pressurized spacesuits.
Let's look on possibilities how to inflate the atmosphere a bit:
The main goal is running water on the surface. For that it's needed to increase the pressure approx.twice.
After this would be achieved, it's experimentally proven that simple photosynthetic organisms are able to prosper there.
This increase of pressure is achievable from Mars' solid sources of carbon-dioxide and water ice.
But the total amount of energy needed for changing these substances into gas form and to hold them in the atmosphere for enough long period.. that's beyond my imagination.
So what about to try to imitate the process by which our own atmosphere was created?
When I took a brief look into the list of short period comets, in next 200 years there are about 8 of them approaching Mars to less than 0.06AU Some 4 or 5 of them of diameter smaller than 2km- small enough to move them.
If we'd send those 4 icy rocks to Mars, the material from the comets in combination with the energy released by the impact should increase the amount of gases in the atmosphere more than twice (Sure that's a question for how long time..). Additionally all of those gases have huge greenhouse effect- this should result in increasing the temperature by several degrees for much longer period.
For sure this atmosphere wouldn't be breathable,most part of H2O and CO2 will later snow down to the surface and the rest will be slowly blown off by the sun wind again.But we can estimate that every few decades some small suitable Mars-grazing comet will appear.That is more than enough for keeping the pressure and running water on surface, even for increasing pressure slowly during centuries...
But this technology really looks as some 'apocalyptic smithy' if you imagine a human colony present somewhere on the surface at the moment of impact..
This is what I was writing about at the beginning, as the Terraformation paradox: It would be much more simple to create suitable atmosphere
before any colony will have been built there.
Afterwards the 'snowball' technology must be modified which brings additional costs: It will not be possible anymore just to send a comet towards Mars and simply let it smash on the surface.The core must be smashed to pieces smaller than approx 2 m before it enters the atmosphere.. I can't imagine now, how to ensure this reliably. A compromise could be in creating of several 'comet shooting ranges'. If we estimate that the colonies must be able to resist brutal dust storms, that regularly appear in the atmosphere, than those should resist the consequences of the shock waves from several hundreds km distant shower of rocks sized about 20-80 m.
The possibility how to take the gases and energy from a comet without the impact could be this: Let the comet fly just through the atmosphere
(if possible then several times during it's next pass-overs). But as well this method includes several risks: The core can collapse during it's fly through the atmosphere and pieces of it can impact the surface uncontrollably. And of course every close approach to Mars will change comet's orbit significantly.But this should be calculated quite accurately for the comet next 'reuse'.

Waiting for your opinions, suggestions, contradictions. Daniel

[danik]

Heh, that reminds me of an article I once read. In my opinion, this is basically a show about people dying on the red planet. But the show does have quite a bit of worth in it.

Cooool!
But the truth is, that much more money lie under the asses of bored tv-gapers than on the accounts of the poor space agencies and deaf governments..
Someone said in the 70' s to the Apollo-enthusiastic space fans: Yes, we'll send a man to Mars within next 20 years... and it'll stay like that next several decades

[rstevenson]

Hi danik,

Have you read Kim Stanley Robinson's excellent Mars Trilogy? I recommend it to anyone interested in human occupation of Mars. The timescale for terraforming Mars was shortened by a factor of ten or so (I think the author said that) and human lifespans were conveniently doubled, both to make the story more interesting to read and the characters easier to follow. But other than that it seems a perfectly plausible scenario. The stories pull no punches: there's controversy brought about by the terraforming, up to and including terrorism, with some wanting a pristine Mars (they're the "Reds") and others wanting a completely Earth-like Mars.

Definitely worth a read.

Rob

[neufer]

Speaking of Mars... Here's a guy that plans to do a fly-by of the red dust-ball in 2018.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... lanet.html

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colber ... by-mission

[neufer]

More than 100,000 want to go to Mars and not return, project says
By Jennifer Juarez, CNNMexico.com, Fri August 9, 2013

(CNN) -- <<More than 100,000 people are eager to make themselves at home on another planet. They've applied for a one-way trip to Mars, hoping to be chosen to spend the rest of their lives on uncharted territory, according to an organization planning the manned missions.

The Mars One project wants to colonize the red planet, beginning in 2022. There are financial and practical questions about this venture that haven't been clarified. Will there be enough money? Will people really be able to survive on Mars? But these haven't stopped some 30,000 Americans from signing up.

You can see some of the candidates on the project's website, but they're not the only ones who have applied, said Bas Lansdorp, Mars One CEO and co-founder. "There is also a very large number of people who are still working on their profile, so either they have decided not to pay the application fee, or they are still making their video or they're still filling out the questionnaire or their resume. So the people that you can see online are only the ones that have finished and who have set their profiles as public," Lansdorp said. The entrepreneur did not specify how many have paid the fees, completed their profiles and configured them as private.

Anyone 18 or older may apply, but the fee depends on a user's nationality. For Americans, it's $38; if you're in Mexico, however, it's a mere $15. The company said it sets the price based on the gross domestic product per capita of each nation. "We wanted it to be high enough for people to have to really think about it and low enough for anyone to be able to afford it," Lansdorp said.

For the first crew, the Mars One mission will cost $6 billion, Lansdorp said. The idea is for it to be funded by sponsors and media that will pay for broadcasting rights of shows and movies documenting everything from the astronauts' training on Earth to their deployment and colonization of Mars. Out of the applicants, Mars One said it will select a multicontinental group of 40 astronauts this year. Four of them -- two men and two women -- are set to leave for Mars in September 2022, landing in April 2023. Another multicontinental group of four will be deployed two years later, according to the Mars One plan. None of them will return to Earth.

[b][color=#0000FF]An illustration shows the proposed Mars One settlement.[/color][/b]

---

The astronauts will undergo a required eight-year training in a secluded location. According to the project site, they will learn how to repair habitat structures, grow vegetables in confined spaces and address "both routine and serious medical issues such as dental upkeep, muscle tears and bone fractures." "What we want to do is tell the story to the world," Lansdorp said, "when humans go to Mars, when they settle on Mars and build a new Earth, a new planet. This is one of the most exciting things that ever happened, and we want to share the story with the entire world."

How will Mars be colonized?

Each lander that Mars One sends will be able to carry about 5,511 pounds of "useful load" to Mars, he said. After eight missions, more than 44,000 pounds of supplies and people are expected to have arrived. The capsules themselves, whose weight is not included in that number, will become part of the habitat. Food and solar panels will go in the capsules. Earth won't be sending much water or oxygen though -- those will be manufactured on Mars, Lansdorp said. Astronauts will filter Martian water from the Martian soil. "We will evaporate it and condense it back into its liquid state," he said. "From the water we can make hydrogen and oxygen, and we will use the oxygen for a breathing atmosphere inside the habitat. This will be prepared by the rovers autonomously before the humans arrive."

It sounds like terraforming, a process in which the conditions of a planet are modified to make it habitable, but Lansdorp said it isn't. "We will create an atmosphere that looks like the atmosphere on Earth, so you could say that we are terraforming the habitat. But to terraform the entire planet, that's a project that will take hundreds and hundreds of years," he added.

In spite of the risks of space travel, the Mars One founder said he is convinced of the viability of the project. However, some space travel experts have said the risks are far too high to carry out these manned missions to Mars, a distance that humans have never traveled. Radiation is a big concern. NASA does not allow their astronauts to expose themselves to radiation levels that could increase their risk of developing cancer by more than 3%. To maintain the radiation exposure standards that NASA requires, the maximum time an astronaut can spend in space "is anywhere from about 300 days to about 360 days for the solar minimum activity. For solar maximum, in ranges anywhere from about 275 days to 500 days," said Eddie Semones, NASA spaceflight radiation officer. A round-trip journey to Mars could expose astronauts to the maximum amount of radiation allowed in a career under current NASA standards, according to a recent study by scientists at the space agency. Mars One is planning a one-way journey, which doesn't negate the problem, and being on Mars could expose astronauts to even more radiation, depending on how long they stay and what the shielding conditions are like. Radiation damages cells' DNA, which can lead to cell death or permanent changes that may result in cancer. However, "there's no convincing human evidence for excess abnormalities in offspring of radiation-exposed adults," Semones said. While orbiting the Earth, astronauts get exposed to greater concentrations of cosmic background radiation than here on Earth in addition to charged particles trapped in the upper atmosphere and from the sun, said Robert J. Reynolds, epidemiologist at the University of Texas Health Science Center. As a spacecraft moves into deep space, the people on board would be exposed to even more cosmic radiation and solar particles, which is "fairly dangerous," Reynolds said. Interestingly, according to Reynolds, astronauts' risk of dying of cancer is lower than that of the general public because they tend to be in shape, eat well, don't smoke and receive careful monitoring from doctors. Of course, none of them have been to Mars. Semones emphasized that NASA does not study the health effects of Mars colonization and that it's focusing on shorter recognition missions of the surface of Mars. "We're not looking at colonization of Mars or anything. We're not focusing our research on those kinds of questions."

Can it be done?

Mars One isn't the only group hoping to make history by sending people to the red planet. The Inspiration Mars Foundation wants to launch two people -- a man and a woman -- on a 501-day, round-trip journey to Mars and back in 2018 without ever touching down. At this time there is no technology that can protect astronauts from an excess of space radiation. "The maximum number of days to stay with our standards is on the order of 500 days. So any mission that would exceed 500 days would not be doable," Semones said. Reynolds agreed: "At this point it's completely infeasible to try to send someone to Mars unless we can get there faster or we develop better shielding for a spacecraft." NASA is working on engines intended to cut the travel time to Mars by the 2030s, but those systems won't be ready for many years, Chris Moore, NASA's deputy director of advanced exploration systems, told CNN this year. In the meantime, Moore said engineers could try to limit travelers' exposures by designing a spacecraft in such a way that it provides more protection.

But Mars One founder Lansdorp insisted his group will get people landing on Mars by 2023. "The risks of space travel in general are already very high, so radiation is really not our biggest concern," he said. If that all sounds good, you can still sign up. But remember: You can never go home again.>>