Why can't we put life on Mars?

[Antilogic]

I don't know that it's a better candidate, since we have no idea how to practically begin terraforming. The magnetic field is a much bigger problem than the atmosphere (which is a huge problem, but again, we're talking about terraforming here, dealing with atmospheres is something to be assumed) because how would you restart or induce an internal dynamo? Yeah, Venus has a small one, but it's produced mostly from interactions between the ionosphere and the solar wind, rather than by internal convection like the Earth's. But the honest truth is that we know so shockingly little about Venus beneath its clouds, so we really don't know what's happened to its core.

Mars, on the other hand, we are pretty sure has a solidified core.

We got nukes. How many do we have to drill into the core and detonate to restart it?

One thing that Mars will have a value, is simply real estate.

You know what they say: location, location, location!

 

[Willem]

We got nukes. How many do we have to drill into the core and detonate to restart it?

It's not that simple. Even if we did manage to "restart it" with nukes, we couldn't keep it going. What keeps the Earth's core going is simply the presence of our moon. The gravitational pull from it keeps the core active, which produces our magnetic field. And I doubt very much if we'd even have enough nukes to do the job. They're not quite as powerful as people seem to think.

 

[GoodGame]

You know what they say: location, location, location!

Yeah asteroids and parts further Oort are really close to Mars!!


Imagine if our descendants think in terms of not East / West, but Sol / Oort


Go Oort young man!

 

[Antilogic]

It's not that simple. Even if we did manage to "restart it" with nukes, we couldn't keep it going. What keeps the Earth's core going is simply the presence of our moon. The gravitational pull from it keeps the core active, which produces our magnetic field. And I doubt very much if we'd even have enough nukes to do the job. They're not quite as powerful as people seem to think.

Oh, they aren't, but we have thousands of them.

Yeah asteroids and parts further Oort are really close to Mars!!


Imagine if our descendants think in terms of not East / West, but Sol / Oort


Go Oort young man!

In space, they just might.

 

[Willem]

Oh, they aren't, but we have thousands of them.

That's still small potatoes when you're talking about melting the Martian core. All of them blown up at once would just be a pinprick on something that size.

 

[CavLancer]

We can easily put a huge ship on Mars with a fraction of the cost of chemical rockets.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCszu4zaqr0

Actually the best bet would be to build it in space so chemical rockets would be involved.

 

[GoodGame]

Oh, they aren't, but we have thousands of them.



In space, they just might.

Think about it, we are in 3D space always; we are just not always in the vacuum!

 

[Rashiminos]

Invasive species?

 

[GoodGame]

Invasive species?

Unregulated, greedy capitalists?

 

[FriendlyFire]

Some cockroaches or rats

....... Why dont we lace Mars with highly deadly weaponized Anthrax specially adapted to survive and evolve too. How about No because I dont want an ecosystem with rats or cockroaches thanks.

 

[Old Hippy]

we could always use cane toads...

 

[Antilogic]

That's still small potatoes when you're talking about melting the Martian core. All of them blown up at once would just be a pinprick on something that size.

If there is one thing I have complete faith in, it is humanity's ability to build giant, destructive, world-altering superweapons. I'm sure we could figure something out.

Plus, Mars totally deserves what is coming to it. As soon as we figure out what that is.

 

[CavLancer]

With Orion we could build a moon for Mars without nuking the planet. Just haul a bunch of stuff in from the belt of meteors, bring in Pluto or something to orbit Mars close and let tidal forces melt the innards then haul Pluto back a ways.

Pluto has meen downgraded from a planet so its available to be a moon.

 

[Willem]

With Orion we could build a moon for Mars without nuking the planet. Just haul a bunch of stuff in from the belt of meteors, bring in Pluto or something to orbit Mars close and let tidal forces melt the innards then haul Pluto back a ways.

Pluto has meen downgraded from a planet so its available to be a moon.

Jupiter has plenty of moons, there's bound to be one that's about the right size for Mars. While we're at it, we could haul one in for Venus and get it's magnetic field going as well.

If there is one thing I have complete faith in, it is humanity's ability to build giant, destructive, world-altering superweapons. I'm sure we could figure something out.

That still wouldn't solve the problem of keeping the core molten and mobile. You need a moon for that.

 

[CavLancer]

Jupiter has plenty of moons, there's bound to be one that's about the right size for Mars. While we're at it, we could haul one in for Venus and get it's magnetic field going as well.

Nukes in s p a c e, who cares? Well some idiot will say that we're screwing up the environment of space...

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

We got nukes. How many do we have to drill into the core and detonate to restart it?

Dunno. Someone contact Stanley Tucci pronto!

Although the problem is twofold: both liquification of the outside and solidification of the inside, and convection of the liquid, are required for a magnetic field. The Martian core may be able to be restarted with some seriously futuristic technology, but the Venusian core may be more problematic, because Venus has no tectonic plates with which to regulate its internal temperature. It undergoes periodic mass surface realignment.

 

[Phrossack]

Nukes in s p a c e, who cares? Well some idiot will say that we're screwing up the environment of space...

I'd be more worried about thousands of nukes going up into space. Someone might be tempted to keep some of them in orbit, as a threat dangling above everyone else's heads.

 

[Willem]

Someone might be tempted to keep some of them in orbit, as a threat dangling above everyone else's heads.

People should get used to the idea. We need to have an arsenal up there just to deal with any stray asteroids that may come our way.

 

[metatron]

More enormous problems are:

a) it's lack of a sane rotation cycle (want your day to last for over 200 earth days?)
b) it's HUGE atmosphere. Getting rid of excess atmosphere is far, faaaaar harder than releasing a completely new one
c) it's lack of volatiles (hydrogen). No hydrogen, no oceans. Practically all the water would have to be brought to Venus from the outer solar system.

The same size isn't much of an advantage; it makes it harder to go down and up its gravity well.

With regards to the day, though, I read a plan for floating cities in the upper atmosphere which would be driven around the planet by winds at roughly the same speed as the Earth rotates, resulting in a more normal "day" for inhabitants. We could conceivably have a sort of "Cloud City" on Venus for mining deuterium/helium/sulfuric acid. And surface operations would be useful as well, if they ever became possible. Much larger quantities of tellurium, for example, which falls in pure form as snow at higher elevations.

It has a lot more problems than that. Like an atmosphere that is mainly CO2 and Sulphuric Acid, and a surface temperature of over 400C. Mars is by far a better candidate for terraforming than Venus is. And it does have a magnetic field, it's just very weak.

The uber-dense Venus armosphere actually has all necessary volatiles in abundance:

Spoiler :

And at a sufficient altitude the conditions are just fine:

Spoiler :

Nitrogen and oxygen are still floating gases under those condition, providing some serious lift.

As for the rotation:
For a colony this isn't a problem, due to the constant wind. And if you want to terraform all you have to do is make the planet spin. For all we know the core is probably just fine. Sure, getting a planet to rotate is a macroengineering challenge. Here's an idea: Just vent all the excess atmosphere into space, at an angle.
Sounds tough? It sure is easier than to make something out of nothing, which most aspects of martian terraforming come down to.
In the meantime there's the induced magnetosphere of Venus's atmosphere. Still better than what Mars has to offer in that regard.

Ah, right, the Sulfur-dioxide.
How about, uhm, a paint job?

It's in traces, for Christ's sake.
I've spilled car battery stuff over myself once. Sulfuric acid isn't all that awesome, really.
Protecting some lightweight structures against diluted acid isn't all that hard.
On Mars you get to build a whackjob bunker around everything ...

 

[Willem]

And at a sufficient altitude the conditions are just fine:

Except we don't have the technology to build floating cities, we need solid ground. And a 400C degree surface temperature kind of puts a damper on that idea. Right now, Mars is much more viable as far as building a sustainable colony than Venus. While it might be possible to do so in the future, it will require far too many resources and technological ability than we currently possess.