[jennyp]

I've been wondering how we could keep the Martian atmosphere from escaping once we start producing oxygen and terraforming the planet. After all, what good would it be to build up a nice, thick oxygen atmosphere to sustain a new civilization on Mars, only to see all that expensive oxygen drift off into space in a thousand years?

I say we give the scientists 100 years to explore Mars. Then we start dropping all the asteroids in the asteroid belt onto the planet. With luck, we can drop enough large asteroids onto Mars that their total mass will increase Mars' gravity enough to trap more of the future atmosphere for far longer than it would otherwise.

Plus, all those asteroid impacts will throw up enough dust that we can get the greenhouse effect going.

[going hot]

sort of like back filling the swamp for a new housing project. i like it!! :-)

[RightWhale]

It might be more fruitful to make Mars the moon of Venus, put that combination at a trojan point to earth, and bombard earth's moon with comets. The would leave Mercury with no use.

Or make Mercury the moon of Venus and make Mars into earth's moon and send the moon into free orbit in the asteroid belt and bombard it with all the asteroids and comets until it is big enough to support a mining colony.