Terraforming Mars

[BrianG]

I'd prefer to see a habitat on the Moon or an improved orbital habitat, before the long journey to Mars. Small steps...

[Essay]

I'd prefer to see a habitat on the Moon or an improved orbital habitat, before the long journey to Mars. Small steps...

 

What about terraforming Earth? First we should learn to do that here, and pursue "an improved... habitat" here, before we try doing this elsewhere -in an untested manner.

 

~ :)

[Eclipse Now]

Hhhmmm, good point Essay... Worldchanging.com is one of my favourite 'bright green' blogs who truly understand the risks ahead yet somehow remain optimistic. They document all the positive trends and try and encourage them... yet even they say they'll believe there's a chance of a terraformed Mars when they see a major city somewhere like Antarctica or the Gobi desert. Why? Because although such a place would be very difficult to maintain in an economic manner, they are a thousand times more hospitable than anywhere on Mars.

 

On the other hand, when on earth we want to build in the most attractive places because this is our home. The whole point is that we don't like the Gobi desert, and it's not that exciting or inspiring to build a city there.

 

In other words, I don't know that we do have to wait to see a city in the Gobi desert because why would we do that? It's not Mars!:lol:

 

Basically, if I ran the world we'd go Co2 neutral fast, build fast rail across our major continents, provide universal education, healthcare, nutrition, free family planning, access to good jobs, Bright Green cities, and all that... and yet still put about 1/70th of the global economy into achieving something in space.

 

As the global economy is about 70 trillion dollars, a trillion dollars a year budget would kick butt in space, and inspire the world while we were also solving our problems here.

 

As to what to do? With a global telecommunications industry, why not have a global referendum?

 

Do we want a moon-base first, which would then allow us to use maglev rail-guns to launch moon-rock materials into orbit to build our first L5 colony... or go straight to Mars first? :)

 

Or would a moon-base allow us to construct space solar more economically? (Nah, Gen3 nuclear and baseload geothermal/CETO wavepower would have to be heaps cheaper than any energy systems we could construct in space).

 

So the idea of settling space would be... space! But who knows what spin-off technologies, medicines, discoveries, software, and cultural gain we'd have by settling space?

 

Or both... build the L5 colony and give it HEAPS of fuel so that after a decade or so, it can move itself to Mars and both terraform Mars and become an emergency backup home in case something on Mars goes wrong. Anyway, there's heaps of different plans for getting our presence off-world, and if the global community was to become involved, I'd like to see a global discussion and eventually referendum on it. (Which presupposes a truly democratic global government, but that's another topic that I'm discussing in this thread.)

 

And in my mind, the ultimate conservation would be polar bears wandering the Martian poles, or a cooler spot in our L5 colony. :hyper:

[maikeru]

What about terraforming Earth? First we should learn to do that here, and pursue "an improved... habitat" here, before we try doing this elsewhere -in an untested manner.

 

~ :naughty:

 

Soon we'll see if that's a go.

[Moontanman]

Mars will never be terraformed, there is no reason to do it. Orbital habitats will be more Earth like and much easier to build and maintain. At some point some one might want to terraform Mars just to do it but by then we will no longer need planets.

 

For an example of what an orbiting habitat can be read John Varley's Trilogy, Titan, Wizard, and Demon.

[BrianG]

Mars is too far, let's terraform a tiny bit of the moon, first. High ground, the moon's poles, or any livable space. we need to move on.

[Moontanman]

Mars is too far, let's terraform a tiny bit of the moon, first. High ground, the moon's poles, or any livable space. we need to move on.

 

Mars maybe further away but it is big enough to hold some atmosphere, has plenty of water and already some atmosphere. I'm not sure how you would go about terraforming a small part of the moon. A dome? May as well build a big orbiting colony that can be moved around if necessary.

[Eclipse Now]

Sydney Australia is about to hit another 42 degrees Centigrade day... nasty. Melbourne has had 45 today and are awaiting the 'cool change' of 36 degrees tonight. Now what kind of sick new climate system are we heading into when 36 is a cool change?

 

My point: we MIGHT begin terraforming here. If we fail, will we end up living in Logan's Run style domed cities with the way toxic pollution and global warming are playing out?

 

 

Or more like one of the Arcologies from the Night's Dawn trilogy? :phones::)

 

[BrianG]

... I'm not sure how you would go about terraforming a small part of the moon. A dome? May as well build a big orbiting colony that can be moved around if necessary.

 

Finding water is the beginning, digging shelters and collecting mineral and energy resources would be next. The moon has gravity needed for habitation, shelter from radiation by digging deep and mineral wealth. Evaluation of lunar rocks and soils for resource utilization: Detailed image ana

[ozi-rock]

I think the moon would be a good first attempt at terraforming, we could learn from it before wasting all the resources on a planet the size of Mars making mistakes.

[Eclipse Now]

The moon doesn't have the gravity to retain an atmosphere. It might be a good place to colonise for a variety of reasons, but it probably only ever be an underground civilisation, utterly dependent on their nuclear / fusion reactors and a 99.9% stable electricity grid. 3 days without power would be a death sentence on the moon. They probably wouldn't have just one grid though, but would have multiple redundancies and multiple options and safe houses "if something went wrong".

 

Reasons for the moon?

1. Helium 3 energy if we ever crack fusion

2. Build a rail-gun mass transporter to shoot moon rock into orbit around the earth so we can build an O'Neil colony, or even a super-sized transport to colonise Mars.

3. Shoot solar cells into orbit around the Earth to provide the Earth with 24/7 solar power micro-waved down to receiving stations.

4. Get practice living in underground colonies and making them attractive places to live (I personally think of some of Sydney's unground city-malls. See Fred Hapgood's article on underground real estate already happening here on earth!)

 

This paragraph is fascinating:

 

The next step might be draw up plans for the ultimate TBM megaproject: the world subway. Maglev trains running through tunnels are the logical successor to air travel, at least between large cities. Unlike supersonic airplanes, trains in depressurized tunnels can run at many times the speed of sound without bothering residents with sonic booms or raising any of the land use issues that strangle airport development everywhere. Magnetic levitation means no rolling resistance and evacuated tunnels mean less air resistance. In a couple of decades we may see planners wrestling with the meaning of life in a society in which the major cities of the world are within a few hours’ commute of each other.

 

Underground is most probably how we'd start on Mars until it was terraformed and we could come out to play on the surface.

[ozi-rock]

Have you any idea when we would have the capabilities to sustain life on the moon properly? Is it all just still just a dream or is this something that may begin to occur in our lifetime? The problem I have with it is where is the money to do this going to come from, if there was a fuel source there in abundance that could make a company billions it would seem logical that it would happen.

[Eclipse Now]

There seem to be many more problems to fix here on earth first, and no we don't have fusion that could actually use Helium3.

 

But having said that, getting into space might also help solve problems here on earth. EG: New technologies, moon-launched orbital space-solar-power stations, etc.

 

 

 

So money is the issue, but if we can avoid another GFC and get through peak oil, gas, and coal with sensible policies, then hopefully something like this might be achievable over the next 30 years... and even help us get through peak fossil fuels!

 

Now if something like Polywell fusion or some other game changing technology becomes available, we might be on our way a lot sooner!

 

Hey, we don't even need fusion... just a new sort of super-battery might do it! All the energy from solar-PV energy could be harnessed into some super-batteries on the moon (for the long 'night' of the moon). Or space-solar for the moon, but I'm a bit hazy on the details of how workable space-solar and orbital patterns are for the moon. EG: Does the earth shadow the moon's orbit too much?

 

Other members here are very much biased towards habitats (O'Neil colonies) but I see the moon as a step towards building habitats.

 

 

Now here's a thought: Imagine one of these suckers with a fleet of shuttles and engineering equipment, 20 thousand people, and enough stored energy to propel it to Mars.

 

Now that's a few steps process for settling Mars, which requires building the Moon base to do the heavy materials lifting for the O'Neil habitat, but once you're finally at Mars with a big enough habitat, it could pretty much take over from there and be independent of Earth! Humanity would have a whole new planet to birth. And with entire ecosystems in cold storage, including polar bear embryos etc, creating a 'backup' on Mars and in giant habitats floating around the asteroid field... now that's conservation!

 

Edit to add: And here's another thought.

 

If our grandchildren get really good at building these BIG, and with enormous power storage (say about 10 generations worth of Helium3 for fusion, or even good old plutonium in Gen4 nuclear fission reactors), then might we not use these things as generational ark-ships that we hurl towards the stars?

[Moontanman]

Finding water is the beginning, digging shelters and collecting mineral and energy resources would be next. The moon has gravity needed for habitation, shelter from radiation by digging deep and mineral wealth. Evaluation of lunar rocks and soils for resource utilization: Detailed image ana

 

All of the things needed to build an orbital colony can be found in the asteroids. The Trojan points of Jupiter would seem to be the best place to start a factory to build orbiting colonies. A toroid colony can be spun for gravity and all the materials are easier to access from asteroids. It's no more difficult to go to the asteroids than it is to go to the moon energy wise, it just takes longer. A moon base will be needed I am sure but the gravity is so low and resources so scarce it shouldn't be a major player in the long term.

[Eclipse Now]

What energy source are you guessing we'll use under that plan? The electromagnetic stuff Jupiter throws off? (As is apparently visualised in Accelerando, the free online PDF book that I started reading but never finished...)

[Moontanman]

What energy source are you guessing we'll use under that plan? The electromagnetic stuff Jupiter throws off? (As is apparently visualised in Accelerando, the free online PDF book that I started reading but never finished...)

 

I haven't heard of the process you mentioned, i was thinking nuclear power would have to be used. An intense industrial site would need huge amounts of energy and at that distance from the sun solar is just too weak.

[Eclipse Now]

Yes, I didn't realise that about a third of French nuclear reactors were Gen3. Forgive my crude understanding of these things, but don't MOX reactors reprocess old nuclear waste? In other words, as climatologist and Pro-Nuclear advocate Dr Barry Brooks states in his blog BraveNewclimate.com, nuclear waste from older reactors becomes nuclear fuel for the future. He has also stated on public radio that burning this old waste up reduces it to 10% of the mass, and then the reprocessed, 're-burnt' waste is SO HOT it burns itself out in about 500 years and is then safe. What waste problem?

 

Instead, Brooks says instead of waste what we have is FUEL that could potentially run the entire world's energy needs, including transportation if we move to fast-rail and electric cars, for the next 700 years! So it's not just a case of what waste problem, but what energy problem? (If we can build these nuclear plants and electric transport infrastructures quickly enough in the race against climate change and peak oil!)

 

But again, I'm also for a mix of technologies, and maybe our uranium and plutonium is best kept for space use as we have plenty of economically competitive technologies here on earth. As you said, out near the asteroid belt solar's not gonna cut it I'm afraid.

 

And in space, well, everything is blasted by solar radiation so if you're in space, having a radioactive waste bunker down the road isn't that big a deal. :phones: