DailyDirt: Making Mars More Like Earth

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Mon, Oct 19th 2015 5:00pm — Michael Ho

The goal of living on Mars is getting some media attention (because everyone continues to want to save Matt Damon apparently). It's seriously difficult to live on Mars unless we make some major changes to its atmosphere and climate, and somehow turn the clock back to make Mars warmer and more water-friendly. People are thinking about ways to terraform Mars, but it's an enormous project that isn't quite environmentally friendly to our alien neighbors (if they exist).

Elon Musk made an offhand remark about terraforming Mars quickly -- using nuclear weapons. Musk has elaborated a bit, saying he's talking about exploding nuclear fusion bombs above BOTH the north and south poles of Mars -- every few seconds -- to create artificial suns that would warm up the surface of the red planet. Sure, that'd be a great way to get rid of some nuclear weapons, right? (Hold on. Does Musk have nuclear weapons?!?) [url]
The microbial colonization of Mars is another way we might make Mars a bit more habitable for us. Terraforming an entire planet with microbes would take a while (an eon?), but the Earth itself is evidence that it can be done. The right microbes to do the job might even already exist here at home. [url]
Lessons from Biosphere 2 might teach us a few things about how to terraform Mars -- and instead of detonating nuclear weapons over our neighboring planet, we might just want to pollute its atmosphere with perfluorocarbons to get a runaway greenhouse gas effect going. But perhaps we shouldn't be messing with other planets when we have no idea what we're doing to our own. [url]

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Filed Under: biosphere 2, colonization, elon musk, mars, microbes, nuclear weapons, space, space exploration, terraforming

13 Comments

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Pixelation, 19 Oct 2015 @ 6:13pm

"he's talking about exploding nuclear fusion bombs above BOTH the north and south poles of Mars"

Woohoo everyone! Mars is inhabitable...by cockroaches.
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- Brazilian Guy, 21 Oct 2015 @ 8:02am
  
  Re:
  Mars, Cockroaches, electric cars...
  
  I think i'm grasping Musk's masterplan.
  
  http://static2.fjcdn.com/comments/Artimax+rolled+a+random+image+posted+in+comment+2+at+_9 f1c7f705e8622f65bf1ee62e3f46cb4.png
  
  (That's from the manga Terra Formars, about the fight of humanity against cockroaches on Mars)
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Anonymous Coward, 19 Oct 2015 @ 6:17pm

Musk's nuke idea is frankly retarded. You can get the same level of warming from dropping asteroids on mars without all the negatives of nukes. Shit, you can even use the asteroid drops to help sculpt the terrain to your liking too.
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- Anonymous Coward, 19 Oct 2015 @ 11:18pm
  
  Re:
  Comets would be better. Same effect + water.
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  - Irving, 20 Oct 2015 @ 6:45am
    
    Re: Re:
    Exactly - do it The Martian Way.
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- Mason Wheeler (profile), 20 Oct 2015 @ 7:02am
  
  Re:
  Oy. How do people not realize that what he said, while being interviewed by a comedian, was a freaking joke? I bet he's laughing his head off right about now, seeing so many people taking "Elon Musk wants to nuke Mars" seriously. Even a cursory look at the math shows that the idea simply doesn't work; give the guy some credit for being enough of an engineer to know that.
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- Brazilian Guy, 21 Oct 2015 @ 8:08am
  
  Re:
  So, what do you suggest we use to steer the asteroids and comets onto Mars? Maybe Nukes?
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Anonymous Coward, 19 Oct 2015 @ 6:50pm

Oh boy! There is another planet for humans to destroy.
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- Aaron Walkhouse (profile), 19 Oct 2015 @ 8:56pm
  
  You can't destroy sterile dust and rocks.
  You can, however, rearrange them a little. ;]
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Anonymous Coward, 19 Oct 2015 @ 11:22pm

If you want to sustain "artificial suns", for however long, how can you drop a nuke into one to set off another bomb? Not to mention that Mars' atmosphere is way thin and I doubt you could heat up a ball of gas like that there.
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scotts13 (profile), 20 Oct 2015 @ 6:05am

Good practice
It's most likely Mars is already dead. Terraforming efforts there would be good practice for when we need them on Earth. If only there was a cheap way to ship most of Venus's atmosphere to Mars...
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David (profile), 20 Oct 2015 @ 7:02am

Atmosphere will be a problem
Considering that Mar's gravity is little more than 1/3 of Earth's, I doubt that it will hold enough of an atmosphere. The atmospheric pressure on Mars is 1% of Earths. More air can be generated but can Mar hold enough to be breathable?
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- Will Waters (profile), 20 Oct 2015 @ 7:22am
  
  Re: Atmosphere will be a problem
  Titan's atmosphere is almost 50% more dense than ours. Based on gravity alone, if one were to give Mars a breathable atmosphere, it would last a long time (relative to us, not geologically). The issue is the lack of magnetic field on Mars which means the solar wind would constantly strip off the atmosphere, starting with the lighter elements.
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