Best Way to Make Mars Habitable: Inject Greenhouse Gas

space.com ^ | 02/03/05 | Robert Roy Britt

[KellyAdmirer]

So how would one propose to generate enough of any greenhouse gasses on mars to make an effect anytime soon?

Well, first you get der Arnold up there, and he has to kill his wife and find out he's really a bad guy and then he finds the Martian atmosphere machine and then.....

[MaxMax]

HAHAhahaa

[Question_Assumptions]

The problem is that without a magnetic field, to solar wind rips against the atmosphere, eventually stripping it away. It's like putting a bowl of dry rice in front of a fan.

Of course slamming Europa (or one of the other two large water-rich Jovian moons) into Mars could help solve the mass problem, too.

[xp38]

As always Mars needs Women!

[RandallFlagg]

And take some big mousetraps with ya.

[djf]

Since the Martian orbit has ben somewhat stable the last few thousand years or so, I don't think slamming something big against it is too good an idea...

Anybody know what the escape velocity is on Mars? If the temp is high enough, molecules high in the atmosphere might just fly right away from Mars.

But I'm too tired right now to figure out kinetic energies and Boltzmans constants...

[RandallFlagg]

Don't count Dejah Thoris out.

[Question_Assumptions]

It's all a matter of angles. And, let's face it, if we had a way to move Europa away from Jupiter and into Mars, adjusting the orbit of the post-collision Mars shouldn't be that big of a deal.

[CyberAnt]

Wow! Can we ship our greehouse gases to Mars along with all the environmental whackos ..??

[djf]

Yeah, probably. But it's kind of like a few years back when a buncha eggheads in Europe decided they wanted to build a black hole and hold it in a magnetic field.

Any clown who thinks he can build a black hole, well, if I figure he's even got a small chance of actually doing it, that's about the time I start loading my weapons.

[WestVirginiaRebel]

Eh, they'll all be glad enough to take our money once we get there...

[ModelBreaker]

When do the environmentalist wackos start marching to "Save Mars!"

You joke. Mark my words. It will happen.

[DirtyHarryY2K]

On a program on PBS (NOVA) they discuss the Earth's magnetic field and how it will soon dwindle away to the point that the earth's atmosphere will no longer be protected. Maybe a thousand years or so from now.

Magnetic Storm transcript

[darth]

OK, you guys know that I am to the right of Attila the Hun, a confirmed space cadet, and a child of St. Robert Heinlein. However, I think its a mistake to go to the only other planet in this system that appears to harbor life and contaminate the hell out of it. The first time an astronaut takes a potty break you're gonna have terran organisms all over that rock. Let's at least use sterilized probes to catalog the existing life forms and preserve them before we wipe them out. The solar system is full of outstanding, dead rocks that we can colonize, strip mine, and pollute to our profit. Besides, why climb down into yet another gravity well when we can get around free space with so little delta V?

[Bulwark]

Any clown who thinks he can build a black hole, well, if I figure he's even got a small chance of actually doing it, that's about the time I start loading my weapons.

Curious... would you have said "Any clown who thinks he can fly thru the air in a giant box made of wood, well, if I figure he's even got a small chance of doing it, that's about the time I start loading my weapons.", about 100 years ago or so?

[Malsua]

Moholes will do way more than greenhouse gases.

The bulk of Mars's atmosphere is already CO2 and it's damn cold there. A couple orbiting space mirrors, some moholes and Nitrogen scooped out of titan's atmosphere will thicken it up enough in about 500 years to walk on the surface with a face mask. Need at least 500 or so millibars of pressure, equivalent of the top of Everest before we'll be able to walk around outside of a suit. Right now Mars is about 7 Millibars, there's a long long ways to go.

[Malsua]

But it's kind of like a few years back when a buncha eggheads in Europe decided they wanted to build a black hole and hold it in a magnetic field.

Just a quick question, are you talking in general with the upcoming CERN collider or is there a specific to which you're referencing? I don't recall a specific initiative to make a BH, I'd be quite interested in reading what these knuckleheads wanted to try.

[hosepipe]

Karnak is not dead;...
(holding envelope to head)
Question; What does do liberal(s) Dream about when they dream....

__________________________________________________________
Answer; "Best Way to Make Mars Habitable: Inject Greenhouse Gas"

[Question_Assumptions]

Yes, but that program talks about a reversal, which means that it will start up again but South will be North. That's OK because that happens fairly quickly (hundreds or thousands of years), it's happened before, and catastropic atmosphere erosion takes a long time (millions of years). We'll survive reversal. Now if they said the core was shutting down, we'd be in big trouble.

The reason why I mentioned slamming Europa into Mars is not only that Mars needs more water and atmosphere but also to add the heat of the collision and the mass of Europa's core. I suspect that the reason why the Earth has such a hot core and good magnetic field lies with the Mars-sized body that slammed into the early Earth creating the Moon. While a lot of the light material flew off to form the Moon, a lot of the heavier material sank into the Earth's core, not to mention the energy released by the collision. Basically, it liquified and reformed the Earth with a heavier core and probably more water and atmosphere.

[SunkenCiv]

Note: this topic is from 2005.

cries out for a caption.