Terraforming Pluto.

[PlutonianEmpire]

Pluto is my favorite planet (obviously), and in my Celestia program, made a few changes to it. I terraformed it. In real life, I believe that this is ENTIRELY possible. The only problem is, with such a low gravitational pull, how do I know that all the water won't fly off into space, or some other stuff happening. Also, do you think that it can be terraformed in the first place? (I do, obviously.)

*PLEASE BE ADVISED*
The textures were developed by other artists, so I must give credit to them.

EDIT: The picture was deleted. There is a new one on page 7 of this thread.

 

[Perfection]

First off pluto isn't a planet.

I don't think it could be terraformed, it is simply to far from the sun. No greenhouse gas is going to be enough to give you the warmth needed to sustain life.

Edit: Oh and the water won't fly off, because it will be ice. (and it's quite likely there already is water on it)

 

[Masquerouge]

I think it can be terraformed once we have sufficient technology to make sure it will get sufficient heat, and its atmosphere won't vanish. Obviously that won't be in an even distant future, so it won't be the first planet to be terraformed...

Right now Pluto is too far from the sun for it to be anything else than just a big star, and it's too small for its gravity to retain any atmosphere.

I think most people don't have a fair idea of how far Pluto is from the sun. Actually it's so far that it's impossible to make a practical on-scale map of the solar system. Maybe you know the distance, but can you IMAGINE how far that means ?
EDIT : got carried away in my first calculations, sorry !
Okay so the Sun's diameter is 1.392*10^11 cm (that's 1.4 million km)
Pluto is 5,966*10^14 cm away from the Sun (that's 5,966 billion km)
So say you draw a sun 1 cm wide ; to accurately put Pluton on your sheet, it would have to be (5,966*10^14 / 1.392*10^11) = 4286 cm away, that's 42.86 meters. Pretty far, eh ?
The Earth, being 149.6 millions kilometers away from the Sun, would be a mere 1.07 meters away.

 

[PlutonianEmpire]

True. Very, very true. I'm thinking that the "sufficient technology" would probably include artificial gravity generation, but obviously, it would still take A LOT of work to place enough generaters around a planet, even one as small as Pluto.

 

[The Last Conformist]

Terraforming Pluto? Well, if we towed it into the inner solar system, and used Venus to up the mass with a few thousand percent, sure.

 

[PlutonianEmpire]

Scientists theorize that Pluto's moon, Charon, may harbor water ice, and maybe, that water ice can be transported to Pluto. With that, although it'd be just a fraction of a percent, the mass would be automatically also transported to pluto, therefore raising the natural gravitational pull of Pluto. Think of it as some sort of a negative correlation/relationship/whatever: Transporting water ice from charon to pluto=more mass for planet, less mass for moon. (Everything has it's own mass. Including water ice.)

 

[Perfection]

I just cruched the numbers:

Pluto recieves .12% of solar intensity we experience when it's closest to the sun and .041% when it's farther away. So if you don't change it's orbit it's gonna be an ice-bucket.

Also, quit calling it a planet, pluto is not a planet, you may call it a world, planetoid, or KBO.

 

[PlutonianEmpire]

Please stop flaming. Everyone has a right to their opinion.

 

[Perfection]

Scientists theorize that Pluto's moon, Charon, may harbor water ice, and maybe, that water ice can be transported to Pluto. With that, although it'd be just a fraction of a percent, the mass would be automatically also transported to pluto, therefore raising the natural gravitational pull of Pluto. Think of it as some sort of a negative correlation/relationship/whatever: Transporting water ice from charon to pluto=more mass for planet, less mass for moon. (Everything has it's own mass. Including water ice.)

Ummm, those who theorize that Charon may have water ice, also, even if you smashed the two together, it's still not going to get you much mass.

 

[Perfection]

Please stop flaming. Everyone has a right to their opinion.

I'm not flaming, I just find it annoying when one calls Pluto a planet, it's not much bigger than the other KBOs. If I was flaming I would be insulting you not correcting your common mistake. Pluto is not a planet because it's in a belt of similar massed objects. That's why Ceres isn't a planet either.

 

[PlutonianEmpire]

That is exactly why I conceded that "it'd be only a fraction of a percent."

 

[PlutonianEmpire]

Maybe it doesn't HAVE to be a "planet" in order to be terraformed? I'm sure that, somwhere in this infinite expanse of a Universe, there's an object floating out there the size of Pluto, but with the mass and gravity of Mars.

 

[The Last Conformist]

I'll wager my C3C disc that Pluto has more water ice than Charon in any case.

 

[Ramius75]

There might be a way to move Pluto out of its present orbit into a more comfortable one

 

[The Last Conformist]

Maybe it doesn't HAVE to be a "planet" in order to be terraformed? I'm sure that, somwhere in this infinite expanse of a Universe, there's an object floating out there the size of Pluto, but with the mass and gravity of Mars.

Stuffing in the mass of Mars in an object Pluto's size works out at a density about five times that of pure gold ...

 

[Perfection]

Well, let's get this whole gravitational thing straightened out.

g on Earth = 9.8
g on Pluto = .60
g on Titan = 1.4

So it's about 45% the gravity of a world with an atmosphere.

 

[PlutonianEmpire]

Stuffing in the mass of Mars in an object Pluto's size works out at a density about five times that of pure gold ...

"Planet of Gold discovered in Alpha Centauri! More on page A3!" I like that!

Super-nukes would be pretty useless with pushing Pluto into a new orbit., because it would simply tear the poor thing apart. I'm thinking, "How about wormholes?" We create a wormhole with a mouth wide enough for both Pluto and Charon, and wait a few hours as they float through. It would be best to do that when Pluto's at perihelion (closest to Sol), but we would need to use the wormhole over and over again just to keep the Pluto/Charon system from crashing into the sun, unless we find a way to use the wormhole to increase Pluto's velocity (and charon's). It would be nice to find a way to make Pluto Earth's next moon....

 

[Perfection]

Maybe it doesn't HAVE to be a "planet" in order to be terraformed?

That is true, but I still find it annoying when one calls it a planet.

 

[The Last Conformist]

How come no-one called me on augmenting Pluto by adding Venus to it? It's like augmenting your sandbox by adding the Grand Erg Occidental ...

 

[PlutonianEmpire]

There's an idea! Placing a bunch of traces of Venus' atmosphere on Pluto. Venus does have a hot greenhouse effect, right?" Maybe.....