In article ,
says...

On Thursday, August 2, 2018 at 7:34:27 AM UTC-4, Jeff Findley wrote:
In article ,
says...

Terraforming Mars is one of those religious arguments, anyhow.

True. But my guess is that Mars will prove lifeless. If that's the
case, who's going to object to terraforming a lifeless planet?

Nothing fundamental in physics to stop humans from doing it. It will
surely take centuries or more to do it, but there should be more than
enough material in the solar system to do it. Mostly Mars needs
volatiles to recreate a thicker atmosphere. Once you get it up to 5
psi, you can walk around in breathing masks and (relatively) normal
clothing.

I forget how many octillion tons of oxygen it would take, but the
problem is getting it there in the needed quantities and then keeping
it there. Apparently nearly all of its atmosphere (even assuming it was
Earthlike at one time) has long since departed due to the effects of
gravity and solar radiation.

Keeping it there isn't much of a problem. In the short term (hundreds
of thousands of years) it won't lose enough to matter. A few more
Kuiper belt objects would make up for the loss.

In the long term, you put a giant electromagnet between Mars and the sun
in order to produce an artificial magnetic field to mimic the protection
earth's magnetic field gives it. Note from above this gives you
hundreds of thousands of years to perfect that tech and scale it up to
sufficient size.

The arguments against terraforming Mars sound a lot like the myriad of
arguments against heavier than air travel before the Wright Brothers
successfully demonstrated that it was possible. Yet a few weeks ago, I
flew to Shanghai and back for a week long business trip which is a 12
hour time zone difference from where I live, so roughly half way around
the planet. And that was only a bit over one hundred years later.
Terraforming is on a much bigger timescale, so we have a much longer
time frame to perfect the tech necessary to complete the task.

Jeff
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