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Terraforming Mars
What Mars would look like if it were given a thicker atmosphere, higher temperature, and the ice in it's poles melted. Credit to Daein Ballard on Wikipedia (Ittiz)
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#23
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felixjarl ONLINE (01/17/2013) [+]
(22 replies)
It is estimated that would only take 100,000 years of terraforming with the technology we posses today to gave it a near-earth appearance and climate.
#25 to #23
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matthamsnine ONLINE (01/17/2013) [-]
I think you overestermated a little. here is what Robert Zurbin (a former Martin-Marietta aerospace engineer, prolific author and founder of the non-profit Mars Society) has to say;
If one considers the problem of terraforming Mars from the point of view of current technology, the scenario looks like this:
1. A century to settle Mars and create a substantial local industrial capability and population.
2. A half century producing fluorocarbon gases (like CF4) to warm the planet by ~10 C.
3. A half century for CO2 to outgas from the soil under the impetus of the fluorocarbon gases, thickening the atmosphere to 0.2 to 0.3 bar, and raising the planetary temperature a further 40 C.
This will cause water to melt out of the permafrost, and rivers to flow and rain to fall. Radiation doses on the surface will also be greatly reduced.
Under these conditions, with active human help, first photosynthetic microbes and then ever more complex plants could be spread over the planet, as they would be able to grow in the open.
Humans on Mars in this stage would no longer need pressure suits, just oxygen masks, and very large domed cities could be built, as the domes would no longer need to contain pressure greater than the outside environment.
4. Over a period of about a thousand years, human-disseminated and harvested plants would be able to put ~150 mbar (millibars) of oxygen in the Martian atmosphere. Once this occurs, humans and other animals will be able to live on Mars in the open, and the world will become fully alive.
tl:dr. using current technology it would take around 1,150 years to make Mars habitable
If one considers the problem of terraforming Mars from the point of view of current technology, the scenario looks like this:
1. A century to settle Mars and create a substantial local industrial capability and population.
2. A half century producing fluorocarbon gases (like CF4) to warm the planet by ~10 C.
3. A half century for CO2 to outgas from the soil under the impetus of the fluorocarbon gases, thickening the atmosphere to 0.2 to 0.3 bar, and raising the planetary temperature a further 40 C.
This will cause water to melt out of the permafrost, and rivers to flow and rain to fall. Radiation doses on the surface will also be greatly reduced.
Under these conditions, with active human help, first photosynthetic microbes and then ever more complex plants could be spread over the planet, as they would be able to grow in the open.
Humans on Mars in this stage would no longer need pressure suits, just oxygen masks, and very large domed cities could be built, as the domes would no longer need to contain pressure greater than the outside environment.
4. Over a period of about a thousand years, human-disseminated and harvested plants would be able to put ~150 mbar (millibars) of oxygen in the Martian atmosphere. Once this occurs, humans and other animals will be able to live on Mars in the open, and the world will become fully alive.
tl:dr. using current technology it would take around 1,150 years to make Mars habitable
#32
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Orangewo (01/17/2013) [+]
(5 replies)
did I miss the big announcement where NASA found definitive proof of H2O on mars?
#153
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bulbakip (01/17/2013) [+]
(3 replies)
I came. I want the FUTURE NOW.
What about the prothean ruins?
What about the prothean ruins?
I cant wait till we terraform mars so we can get fucked up in martian bars..
unfortunately Mars has no real magnetic field meaning that the atmosphere will be ripped away by solar winds making terra-forming very hard