This sounds like an awesome plot for the Rocky XIV movie.
Why can't we put life on Mars?
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This sounds like an awesome plot for the Rocky XIV movie.
Phrossack
Armored Fish and Armored Men
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"Please don't hurt me, mighty Earthling!" the pathetic, scrawny Martian whimpered.
"Sorry, Zergulon," Rocky Balboa II spat, "but you know what they say: Better dead than red!"
The mighty Earthling punched the pathetic, scrawny Martian square in the face. His weak head was torn from his shoulders and flew off into the distance from the summit of Olympus Mons.
Mars has economic potential, the Sahara does not. I wouldn't be surprised if it eventually overtook Earth.
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.
It already has an atmosphere, just not a very good one. A magnetic field isn't necessary for that, all you really need is sufficient gravity. The main role of a magnetic field is to protect the surface from cosmic radiation.
Cheezy the Wiz
Socialist In A Hurry
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.
CavLancer
This aint fertilizer
As long as they're A m e r i c a n microbes I'm all for it.
Why not colonize? Why not expand out? Not like anyone is using Mars at the moment.
I'm sure they'll take Civilization with them, though I'm not at all for taking Steam out into the galaxy.
Why not colonize? Why not expand out? Not like anyone is using Mars at the moment.
I'm sure they'll take Civilization with them, though I'm not at all for taking Steam out into the galaxy.
That might be a stretch, except if we allow the whole "impressive people moved there, and so it became impressive". I don't see how in inherently would be better. Earth's ecosystem is a pretty terrifically powerful resource.
Mars ain't the kind of place to raise your kids. In fact, it's cold as hell. And there's no one there to raise them, if you did.
What would we need to put anything on Mars for? As far as we in the present are concerned there's nothing useful there, is there?
What would we need to put anything on Mars for? As far as we in the present are concerned there's nothing useful there, is there?
Maybe not in the present but mankind needs to take a long term view if it wants to advance, or even to survive. Eventually we're going to start running low on basic resources here, and we'll need to go out to the solar system in order to get more. And if anything were to happen to this planet, like maybe a huge asteroid hitting us, having a colony on Mars would help to ensure our continuing survival.
By far and away, the most useful present value of Mars is as a pristine site for expanding our scientific understanding, which is why there's scientific pushback against this idea in general. By its very nature, planting a proto-ecosystem would be an investment in the future, hoping that life's capacity for exponential growth would create compounding returns on investment.
http://www.4frontierscorp.com/dev/assets/Economic Viability of Mars Colonization.pdf
I'm talking about a post-terraforming Mars.
That's TL
R! What's the punchline for what makes Mars more profitable than Earth after terraforming?
R! What's the punchline for what makes Mars more profitable than Earth after terraforming?
Phrossack
Armored Fish and Armored Men
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How does Mars have potential? Resources to mine? Then it would be cheaper to just have robots dig and operate the mines and ship the stuff back. Besides, given the extractive nature of mining, the wealth would belong to the corporations that did the mining rather than staying on Mars.
If you say that a terraformed Mars has more potential than an unterraformed Sahara, that's not a fair comparison. The Sahara, Antarctica, Rub al-Khali, and other places are much easier to terraform- no insanely expensive interplanetary shipping of equipment and materials, no need to worry about breathable air, and except for Antarctica, no concerns with radiation.
Phrossack
Armored Fish and Armored Men
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Just noticed and skimmed it, but it's a bad sign when an academic paper throws around words like "breathtaking stupidity" and "absurd" and whose authors haven't figured out how to use "it's" correctly.
It also makes faulty comparisons between the European colonization of the New World and Mars. Namely, that the New World was already perfectly habitable, rich in resources, and already inhabited by people whose domestication of maize and turkeys and abandoned or seized lands and farms really helped out the Europeans in New England. In Central America and Peru, the Europeans had entire empires to use as a starting point.
Mars, in contrast, doesn't even have air.
kramerfan86
Deity
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Its also a bit dubious because its a bit hard to know just what resources mars actually has. Maybe there are piles of precious minerals, maybe there arent. There most certainly is not massive amounts of hydrocarbon fuel sources lurking about whereas there very well might be some floating the in the desolate regions of Earth.
Winner
Diverse in Unity
Even if they were, they'd be useless given that burning them actually requires oxygen, which you'd have to produce. But Mars likely has deposits of metals and other stuff that you need to build a civilization at reasonable cost (space-age wise).
I've said it a million times and I'll say it again - colonising Mars is not a matter of "what's there that's valuable". The answer to that question is nothing, nothing that would make it profitable. Mars will be colonised for what can be there once it is developed.
Humans on Earth expanded into some pretty inhospitable places (extreme polar regions, deserts, high mountains) and they clearly didn't go there because it was better than the other places - they went there because they could.
I've said it a million times and I'll say it again - colonising Mars is not a matter of "what's there that's valuable". The answer to that question is nothing, nothing that would make it profitable. Mars will be colonised for what can be there once it is developed.
Humans on Earth expanded into some pretty inhospitable places (extreme polar regions, deserts, high mountains) and they clearly didn't go there because it was better than the other places - they went there because they could.
Why is that important? The petroleum age is nearing an end, there's plenty of other ways of generating energy.
Paul in Saudi
Emperor
They will welcome us with open arms and flowers as liberators.
GoodGame
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One thing that Mars will have as a value, is simply real estate. And strategic location.
Anyways, I did some quick research on this idea of getting oxygen and water.
1. Iron oxides are fairly common on Mars, even in the atmosphere, thanks to the lower gravity .
2. Iron oxide reacts with methane to make water and carbon dioxide (getting oxygen from CO2 is already pretty trivial by different method).
4x Fe2O3 + 3x CH4 reacts to make 8x Fe and water and carbon dioxide
This is requires a pretty complicated reactor to work on Earth due to presence of oxygen and nitrogen in atmospheric gas, but the lack of at least oxygen on Mars would be helpful (and only about 3 % nitrogen in atmosphere). Citation for the process reactor article I skimmed: http://www.entek.chalmers.se/~anly/co2/ghgt5.pdf
(follow the link the title and authors).
So there'd you get both water AND oxygen. All you'd need is methane, possibly on Mars already, or possible you can steal/borrow it from a neighboring celestial body.
EDIT: this is called Chemical Looping Combustion by the way: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_looping_combustion
The history is neat in that it started as a means of combustion without needing gaseous oxygen (the metal oxide provides the oxygen for combustion instead), giving off the typical combustion products (CO2 etc...). Then it was explored as a means of running the opposite direction as a carbon dioxide sink if you have elemental metal.
Now I supposed we could try to transfer the same processes to the metabolism of a synthetic organism. If you really want that.
Or maybe there is life already (methane plumes):
http://www.ted.com/talks/joel_levine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane_plume#Extraterrestrial_methane
Anyways, I did some quick research on this idea of getting oxygen and water.
1. Iron oxides are fairly common on Mars, even in the atmosphere, thanks to the lower gravity .
2. Iron oxide reacts with methane to make water and carbon dioxide (getting oxygen from CO2 is already pretty trivial by different method).
4x Fe2O3 + 3x CH4 reacts to make 8x Fe and water and carbon dioxide
This is requires a pretty complicated reactor to work on Earth due to presence of oxygen and nitrogen in atmospheric gas, but the lack of at least oxygen on Mars would be helpful (and only about 3 % nitrogen in atmosphere). Citation for the process reactor article I skimmed: http://www.entek.chalmers.se/~anly/co2/ghgt5.pdf
(follow the link the title and authors).
So there'd you get both water AND oxygen. All you'd need is methane, possibly on Mars already, or possible you can steal/borrow it from a neighboring celestial body.
EDIT: this is called Chemical Looping Combustion by the way: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_looping_combustion
The history is neat in that it started as a means of combustion without needing gaseous oxygen (the metal oxide provides the oxygen for combustion instead), giving off the typical combustion products (CO2 etc...). Then it was explored as a means of running the opposite direction as a carbon dioxide sink if you have elemental metal.
Now I supposed we could try to transfer the same processes to the metabolism of a synthetic organism. If you really want that.
Or maybe there is life already (methane plumes):
http://www.ted.com/talks/joel_levine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane_plume#Extraterrestrial_methane
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