Is it just me or does Mars look Terraformed?

You would need something alot bigger than tiny asteroids Phobos and Deimos. Great impact hypothesis suggests that the body which slammed into the Earth was half the size of it. Seriously big planet. Of course, after such cataclysmic impact you can write off the planet for the next few million years until it cools down again.

No problem, I got time

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Actually gravity isn't a problem. You can have a thick atmosphere on a lower-gee body than Earth (look at Titan). Atmospheric erosion is the killer, if you don't have active volcanism to replenish it.

Cheers,

Drew.

Well thats a bad idea you need a rather stable athmosphere otherwise if you replace it with inner ressources it will sooner or later be gone. Especially if you needto enrich it with Oxygen and not just "whatever you find below the surface"
 
It wont be possible with that type of attitude, negative nancy :)

Ok how about a more positive approach, then?

It will totally be possible some day. You just gotta change the laws of physics, economics and human nature, and after that, nothing stands in the way of terraforming Mars :)
 
It's been said above that Mars has no magnetosphere to stop atmospheric stripping. True enough, not one strong enough to shield the planet.

Any remotely plausible strategy for the terraforming of Mars will require huge amounts of water and gas (probably N2 and O2 mainly) to be imported - and any civilisation cable of doing that will easily be able to keep the atmospheric gas budget in equilibrium with the constant stripping by the solar wind.

Even with the stripping, a fully terraformed Mars would retain enough atmosphere for thousands or possibly millions of years (assuming no Mars-based process runs amok and gobbles gas i.e. renewed oxidation of the surface rocks and regolith)

Its not like the air suddenly gets blown out into space in a few days or so when you've made that much of a change to the planet's atmosphere; Mars had a thicker atmosphere in the past, and surface liquid water. It didn't boil off in a short time; it took possibly a billion years or more.
 
In the Nights Dawn Trillogy by Peter F. Hamilton, Mars was terraformed by a communist nation that had originally formed living on the Moon. They had genetically engineered themselves to live in the Moon's low gravity, and when they were terraforming Mars, they altered theselves again to be able to breathe a much thinner atmosphere. So they never intended to change Mars to be fully Earthlike.
 
Ok how about a more positive approach, then?

It will totally be possible some day. You just gotta change the laws of physics, economics and human nature, and after that, nothing stands in the way of terraforming Mars :)

1. Dog fighting in space. Maximum speed in space. Slowing down unassisted in space. Faster than light travel. Physics: conquered.

2. Economics don't really exist in this game. I can't even give another person money. Conquered.

3. NPC's contain no qualities that link them to humanity. They order me to drop cargo out of my empty hold.

I think we're good. :)
 
Well thats a bad idea you need a rather stable athmosphere otherwise if you replace it with inner ressources it will sooner or later be gone. Especially if you needto enrich it with Oxygen and not just "whatever you find below the surface"

You appear to be under the impression that the Earth's atmosphere is stable. It's not. :)

Cheers,

Drew.
 
There's lots of ideas of how to terraform mars, add them together and maybe it will take decades rather than thousands of years. Some of them sound a bit crazy and expensive but if we can build self replicating robots to do the work maybe it's possible:
1, Set of nukes over the poles to add heat and release CO2 and H2O thickening atmosphere and creating greenhouse effect
2, Crash comets/asteroids into the planet to add heat and H2O to atmosphere
3, Add giant lenses or mirrors in space to increase the amount of the suns energy raising the temperature
4, Dig massive holes in the ground so geothermal energy can rise up and warm the atmosphere
5, Add genetically engineered lichen, algae and plants to begin photosynthesis converting that CO2 to O2
6, Dig into the ground for any water and release it onto the surface
 
You appear to be under the impression that the Earth's atmosphere is stable. It's not. :)

Cheers,

Drew.

it is, its just not constantly the same, those are two different things.




There's lots of ideas of how to terraform mars, add them together and maybe it will take decades rather than thousands of years. Some of them sound a bit crazy and expensive but if we can build self replicating robots to do the work maybe it's possible:
1, Set of nukes over the poles to add heat and release CO2 and H2O thickening atmosphere and creating greenhouse effect
2, Crash comets/asteroids into the planet to add heat and H2O to atmosphere
3, Add giant lenses or mirrors in space to increase the amount of the suns energy raising the temperature
4, Dig massive holes in the ground so geothermal energy can rise up and warm the atmosphere
5, Add genetically engineered lichen, algae and plants to begin photosynthesis converting that CO2 to O2
6, Dig into the ground for any water and release it onto the surface

all this on a global scale will already exceed decades. you would already need decades to create this stuff fly it over there or gather and throw the asteroids to mars would also take decades.
 
We just need to go there and start making stuff and encourage pollution rather than prevent it to release volatiles.

Afterall if the evidence for anthropogenic climate change exists for Earth, then the same processes can be applied on Mars - the argument can't be made both ways (but I bet some will try to do so ;) ).

A "simple" way to do the above would be to use nuclear powered strip mining and processing of Martian regolith into iron/steel and aluminium - both materials will be required in vast quantities for colonisation anyway. IMHO there is a need for a psychological change though, as there's too much "science" and not enough "engineering" in space exploration currently (crudely put, but no less so than Elon's "nuke Mars" hyperbole).
 
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