Terraform mars?

On 4/9/2010 4:25 AM, Greg D. Moore (Strider) wrote:

Yes and no. We don't know how much the original atmosphere may have been
augmented from internal sources.

Willing to bet those giant volcanoes put a fair amount of gas into the
atmosphere, which brings up a interesting point; on Earth, volcano's
explosive eruptive effects are generated by water in the magma.
Would the same prove true on Mars?
You could get some pretty good blasts if hot magma came in contact with
liquid or solid CO2.

In any case, retaining the atmosphere is obviously not a problem if one has
the technology to create one in the first place.

The key to doing it would be to come up with some sort of process you
could get rolling and then just stand back and wait while it built up a
atmosphere, such as some sort of exotic genetically engineered biology
that could be released in the present environment and start getting the
oxygen out of the rocks and soil it's presently bound up in, or at least
build up a dense CO2 atmosphere that plants could then convert to oxygen.
I still think we should shoot some sulfur-eating bacteria into the
atmosphere of Venus to see if we can get some terraforming going there.

Pat