Terraforming mars in a short time

(Parallax) wrote in
m:
Might it be possible to raise the surface temp and atmospheric density
enough to make it easier for ppl to live there when astronauts get
there in 15-20 yrs? I dont expect to see this happen cuz ppl think
nukes are too scary but I was just wondering.


Assuming you have the ability to redirect an arbitrarily huge amount of icy
meteors/comets to mars. (we dont, by many MANY magnitudes, but never mind
for now).

Heating the place up is no problem. Incoming cometary material will posess
enough kinetic energy to heat itself to many thousands of degrees. As we
will need to dump trillions of tons of comets to form any real atmosphere,
the problem will most definitely be excess heat, not cold.

i.e.
Terraforming mars by dumping comets on it will work fine if you are willing
to move an *obscene* amount of comets, and do it over many years. Centuries
if not millenia. There is no way to speed this method up.

A *slightly* easier method would be to trigger as much deep seismic
activity as possible, use vulcanism to release the needed gasses. Problem
here is again the scale of energy needed. Mars has been kinda inactive for
a loooong time, the molten stuff is way deeper than on earth.(1500 km down,
compared to earth's 30-50km)

I think it would not be necessary to terraform the entire planet, if the
Mariner Valley is indeed deep enough and able to hold in most of what's put in
it, it has enough area inside by istelf to be quite enough living space to hold
plenty of generations of colonists.
What are the physics of this? How much "leakage" would have to be overcome?
Would it have to be "roofed over" to hold in enough pressure?

"Parallax" wrote in message
om...
Marvin wrote in message
...
(Parallax) wrote in
m:
Might it be possible to raise the surface temp and atmospheric density
enough to make it easier for ppl to live there when astronauts get
there in 15-20 yrs? I dont expect to see this happen cuz ppl think
nukes are too scary but I was just wondering.


Assuming you have the ability to redirect an arbitrarily huge amount of
icy
meteors/comets to mars. (we dont, by many MANY magnitudes, but never
mind
for now).

Heating the place up is no problem. Incoming cometary material will
posess
enough kinetic energy to heat itself to many thousands of degrees. As we
will need to dump trillions of tons of comets to form any real
atmosphere,
the problem will most definitely be excess heat, not cold.

i.e.
Terraforming mars by dumping comets on it will work fine if you are
willing
to move an *obscene* amount of comets, and do it over many years.
Centuries
if not millenia. There is no way to speed this method up.

A *slightly* easier method would be to trigger as much deep seismic
activity as possible, use vulcanism to release the needed gasses.
Problem
here is again the scale of energy needed. Mars has been kinda inactive
for
a loooong time, the molten stuff is way deeper than on earth.(1500 km
down,
compared to earth's 30-50km)

Diverting comets theoretically shouldnt be too hard. It does not take
much when the comet is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay far away to give it a tiny
nudge to get its orbit to be where we want it int he inner solar
system. X-rays emanating from a 1 MT nuke are a substantial nudge and
we got lots of nukes.

Diverting a comet to miss the Earth is easier than diverting it to hit the
Earth. If a comet is aimed straight at the Earth, you have to change its
course by 4100 miles to make it miss. If a comet is expected to pass 5
million miles from Earth, you have to change its course quite a bit to make
it hit. Some asteroids are so massive that even a 100 megaton nuke won't
change their courses much.

We could begin terraforming mars in a fairly short time by using nukes
to alter the orbits of comets so they encounter Mars. I done
accurately enough, it might be possible to have the comet torn apart
by tidal forces as it comes very close to the planet to avoid impacts.
The gases of the comet would become part of the new Martian
atmosphere and cause some greenhouse warming. Some cometary impacts
might be good to locally cause ice to melt and put water into the
atmosphere for further warming. I dunno how many comets this would
take or how long it would take to increase the temp of the martian
surface. Havent even done the calculation of necessary mass.
I would favor nukes as a way to alter a cometary orbit since the x-ray
deposition in the low density comet would give it a more gentle
impulse applied over the entire comet surface than a rocket mounted in
one spot or other explosive methods. Furthermore, the nukes are
available and maybe even the launchers.
Might it be possible to raise the surface temp and atmospheric density
enough to make it easier for ppl to live there when astronauts get
there in 15-20 yrs? I dont expect to see this happen cuz ppl think
nukes are too scary but I was just wondering.


The more you heat Mars, the more atmospheret will boil off into space!

"Aozotorp" wrote in message
...

The more you heat Mars, the more atmospheret will boil off into space!

A Martian atmosphere of two Earth equivalent surface pressures would be
stable for a geological time period. Like 10 million years. Long enough for
humanity to set up home, complete terraforming, nuke ourselves back into the
stone age, redevelop technology, colonize the solar system, evolving into a
higher lifeform, move onto the Oort, develop FTL and head off to
Andromeadia. Boil-off into space is irrelevant unless you're talking about a
much more lumiscant sun and 5-billion year time periods.

Regards
Frank Scrooby

"Frank Scrooby" wrote in message ...
"Aozotorp" wrote in message
...

The more you heat Mars, the more atmospheret will boil off into space!

A Martian atmosphere of two Earth equivalent surface pressures would be
stable for a geological time period. Like 10 million years. Long enough for
humanity to set up home, complete terraforming, nuke ourselves back into the
stone age, redevelop technology, colonize the solar system, evolving into a
higher lifeform, move onto the Oort, develop FTL and head off to
Andromeadia. Boil-off into space is irrelevant unless you're talking about a
much more lumiscant sun and 5-billion year time periods.

Regards
Frank Scrooby

When an object is at the farthest point of its elliptical orbit, even
a tiny change in its velocity will make a huge change in the orbit
(sorta like having lots of leverage). So, even a large comet could be
diverted substantially with a properly placed nuke. This assumes we
know a lot about the comet (density, mass, composition, compressive
strength, etc). Unlike the movie Armeggedon, teh detonation does not
occur within the comet but many km away, perhaps hundreds so that the
x-rays from the nuke cover the entire area of the comet on that side.
Most of the output of the nuke is int he formn of x-rays that are
deposited within the comet "surface" causing very fast heating and
ejection of the material producing an impulse distributed over the
entire surface.
As th comet nears Mars, decisions have to be made for impact or
somehow getting tidal forces to tear it apart before it encounters the
Martian atmosphere. In either case, I would assume we want to make it
break up a lot so maybe then we use a nuke imbedded in it.
Now that I think about it, if we changed the orbits at their farthest
point, it would probably take many years for the comets to get to the
inner solar system.

"Aozotorp" wrote in message
...

The more you heat Mars, the more atmospheret will boil off into space!

A Martian atmosphere of two Earth equivalent surface pressures would be
stable for a geological time period. Like 10 million years. Long enough for
humanity to set up home, complete terraforming, nuke ourselves back into the
stone age, redevelop technology, colonize the solar system, evolving into a
higher lifeform, move onto the Oort, develop FTL and head off to
Andromeadia. Boil-off into space is irrelevant unless you're talking about a
much more lumiscant sun and 5-billion year time periods.

Regards
Frank Scrooby


Really??? And you have the Physics of that worked out???

"Mike Rhino" wrote in
:
Diverting comets theoretically shouldnt be too hard. It does not
take much when the comet is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay far away to give it a
tiny nudge to get its orbit to be where we want it int he inner solar
system. X-rays emanating from a 1 MT nuke are a substantial nudge
and we got lots of nukes.

Diverting a comet to miss the Earth is easier than diverting it to hit
the Earth. If a comet is aimed straight at the Earth, you have to
change its course by 4100 miles to make it miss. If a comet is
expected to pass 5 million miles from Earth, you have to change its
course quite a bit to make it hit. Some asteroids are so massive that
even a 100 megaton nuke won't change their courses much.

Thats the easy way to move comets, yes. But remember the original poster
wanted things done "fast". To get enough comets, with a slow enough orbital
speed that small nudges will direct them to the inner system, you would
have to go waaaaaaaaaaaay out to the oort cloud. Care to guess what
timescale you looking at, if you direct one of those bodies to the inner
system and let it fall in? Hint: add 2 or 3 zeroes to your own expected
lifetime!!

All other objections to the cometary bombardment method of terraforming
aside, just having to sit back and wait 1000++years for your ice to arrive
is kinda.. boring.

(Aozotorp) wrote in message ...

"Aozotorp" wrote in message
...

The more you heat Mars, the more atmospheret will boil off into space!

A Martian atmosphere of two Earth equivalent surface pressures would be
stable for a geological time period. Like 10 million years. Long enough for
humanity to set up home, complete terraforming, nuke ourselves back into the
stone age, redevelop technology, colonize the solar system, evolving into a
higher lifeform, move onto the Oort, develop FTL and head off to
Andromeadia. Boil-off into space is irrelevant unless you're talking about a
much more lumiscant sun and 5-billion year time periods.

Regards
Frank Scrooby


Really??? And you have the Physics of that worked out???

Theoretically, Yes.

(Aozotorp) wrote in message ...

"Aozotorp" wrote in message
...

The more you heat Mars, the more atmospheret will boil off into space!

A Martian atmosphere of two Earth equivalent surface pressures would be
stable for a geological time period. Like 10 million years. Long enough for
humanity to set up home, complete terraforming, nuke ourselves back into the
stone age, redevelop technology, colonize the solar system, evolving into a
higher lifeform, move onto the Oort, develop FTL and head off to
Andromeadia. Boil-off into space is irrelevant unless you're talking about a
much more lumiscant sun and 5-billion year time periods.

Regards
Frank Scrooby


Really??? And you have the Physics of that worked out???

A "side of the envelope calculation" (even more cursory than back of
the envelope), gives about 2600 comets each about 20 Km diameter to
raise the atmospheric pressure from .01 earth to .1 earth. This uses
only the material of the comet (assumed .2 gm/cm3) and does not
account for any greenhouse effect that will cause more CO2 to go into
the Mars atmosphere. It might be considerably fewer. It also does
not account for CO2 and water vapor produced by cometary impact.