In article ,
says...

On Thursday, August 9, 2018 at 7:46:41 AM UTC-4, Jeff Findley wrote:
In article ,
says...

Heavier than air travel was a matter of engineering developments
that provided a powerful enough engine and an airframe that could handle
the 100+ mph speeds that would keep it airborne. A 600-pound machine.
The theory was known for hundreds of years if not thousands.

This really isn't any different. The theory is rock solid. You're
essentially recreating the magnetic shielding that the earth has thanks
to its magnetic shield. This is not at all different than heavier than
air flight before it was proven possible by the Wright Brothers.

Building a 600-pound machine when the metallurgy and engineering was
at a point to sustain 100-mph flight, is rather simple compared to
building a magnet that weighs quadrillions or quintillions (or whatever)
of tons.

A 300-ton Boeing 777 is also a speck in comparison.

It's "just" a question of scale. Again, we went from a first heavier
than air flight measured in yards to Boeing 777s flying half way around
the world in about 100 years. So, building a big magnet to shield Mars
ought to be something we can do in several hundreds or several thousands
of years. Tech keeps getting better and better. Manufacturing keeps
getting better and better. We have the entire asteroid belt to use for
raw material if we have to. I don't see any fundamental show-stoppers
given much time and effort.

The alternative is to keep dropping comets on Mars, from time to time,
to make up for the loss. Either way, loss of atmosphere is something to
deal with on a very, very long timescale and really is not a show-
stopper for terraforming Mars.

The details needed to create such a huge magnetic field are "just
engineering problems to solve". Granted it may take hundreds or even
thousands of years to actually implement the solution. But, that's
still a very short amount of time when you consider the actual rate of
atmosphere loss you'd have on a terraformed Mars without any magnetic
shielding.

People that say terraforming Mars would be impossible are just like
those people that used to say "If God had meant man to fly, he'd have
given man wings".

Possibly the theory behind warp drive is "rock solid" as well, if you are
looking at thousands of years until actually implementing the
solution.

Not the same thing at all. We know how to build electromagnets. We use
them all the time. They also keep getting better with each passing
year. Electric motors were crap for electric cars in the 1970s, but now
they're quite good and both hybrid and electric cars which use them are
quite common.

Same thing with the Wright Brothers. We'd been building gliders for
centuries before their first powered flight. "All" they did was to
miniaturize and lightweight a gasoline motor so that it became a viable
means to add power to a glider. I put "all" in quotes because their
achievement was quite historical and in many ways made our modern
society possible. But from a physics point of view, both Langley and
the Wright Brothers knew that this was absolutely possible. It was just
a question of who would achieve the goal first.

Warp drive has not been demonstrated at all. Not the same thing at all.

Assuming that quintillions of tons of oxygen can be found and moved to Mars.

The Kuiper belt has a total mass estimated to range between 1/25 and
1/10 the mass of the Earth. Mass of Earth is about 6 * 10^24 kg. We'll
also have some losses due to using some of the mass of the objects as
propellant. Also not all the mass of the objects will be volatiles, so
we'll have to discount that as well. So let's say we have 5 * 10^21 kg
of volatiles we can "easily" get to Mars.

The mass of earth's atmosphere is "only" about 5 * 10^18 kg. So, I
think we're good considering the orders of magnitude we're talking about
here. Again, even if the magnet thing doesn't pan out, just keep
dropping Kuiper belt objects from time to time. We've got the mass in
the Kuiper belt to spare.

The Sun example is apropos. It is hard to humanly comprehend the amount of
mass that we are talking about.

Yeah, the numbers we're talking about are huge.

Jeff

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