Yes . . . I posted this thread because I just read a Steampunk SF story, “The Selene Gardening Sociey,” by Molly Brown, set in the universe of Verne’s From the Earth to the Moon, about a group of upper-class ladies in late-19th-Century Baltimore who decide to solve urban waste-disposal problems and terraform the Moon at the same time by launching Earth’s garbage at the Moon; decomposing compost heaps, they know, produce nitrogen, and most of the Earth’s atmosphere is nitrogen. But the effects of diminishing Earth’s biomass never seem to occur to them. (Nor the more obvious fact that garbage dumped on the Lunar surface would quickly become lifeless, and freeze-dried, thus would not decompose.) Still, if a way could be found to use it for the purpose, some of our planet’s biomass might be expendable – seed, as it were.
I’m going to go with no…nothing you could do would ever make the surface habitable by humans or other high order terrestrial life without envronmental suits or habitats. With those you could probably keep humans and other things alive.
The moon has no radiation shield and I doubt you’d ever be able to generate enough atmosphere too keep up with the loss. No matter how much money you threw at it. Mars now…you might be able to do something there if money is no object…
-XT
Mars has pretty much the same radiation problem that the Moon does, since its magnetic field is so weak. It’s somewhat mitigated by the greater distance from the Sun, but not by very much.
If it were, wouldn’t the Moon have an atmosphere already?
Not necessarily. All the gravity and temperature of a planet can give you is an upper bound, not a lower bound. Earth herself has much less of an atmosphere than she could: Compare Earth to Venus, which is both somewhat lighter and far hotter than Earth, and yet has an atmosphere nearly a hundred times thicker. Last I heard, the prevailing theory for why Earth’s atmosphere is so thin is that we lost most of it in the mega-collision which formed the Moon, which logically suggests that we shouldn’t expect an atmosphere on the Moon, either, even were it large or cool enough,
As I said, it can’t hold on to an atmosphere long term without help. So even if it started out with one, it would have lost it billions of years ago.
Eh, the radiation isn’t that big a deal. Earth doesn’t suffer mass extinctions when we lose our own field during reversals.
Europa is slightly smaller than Luna but it has an atmosphere, albeit a very thin one.
In the very long run, the solar radiation problem would be the “nasty hard to handle thing”. the upper layer of any nitrogen/oxy atmosphere would create a ozone layer, due to ionizing radiation, but the lack of a magnetic field would not mitigate the shere force of the energies of a typical solar particle flux.
You might get an atmoshpere, but you would have to wear sunblock spf 500000 to enjoy it…
regards
FML
Don’t suppose there’s any way to artificially induce a magnetic field (on a planet with no liquid, molten core)?
Well, the OP did say to hang the expense. Personally, I’d take those atmospheric shrouds that Der Trihs was talking about and make them out of something superconductive (carbon nanotubes just might be superconductive, if you can make them long enough and flawless, and also have excellent structural strength), and then run a big current through them.
Burt like I said; the evidence is that lack of a magnetic field isn’t that bad.
Never mind atmospheric shrouds; what about covering the surface with giant greenhouses?
Well, that’s not really terraforming. The point is to make an open-surface environment where you can walk and breathe without equipment, and a self-sustaining air-replenishing ecosystem and biosphere.
And – assuming the Moon’s rotation is not changed – what kind of ecosystem would emerge, on a world where each day and each night lasts two weeks? The present temperature extremes of the Lunar day and night would be moderated by the atmosphere, but by how much?
I worked that out once for the Earth, and to make a field as strong as the Earths, using wires circumnavigating the equator. You needed 10[sup]X[/sup] amps, where X was, IIRC, twenty-something. It wasn’t even close to being something doable.
You could probably partially or completely mirror those shrouds, to reflect sunlight or block it and moderate the effects.
Indeed, that would work well.
I don’t know much about electricity, but could you set up a static charge in that shroud, in order to divert that nasty radiation you seem to be handwaving? Just in case it does turn out to be important.
Possibly. As for handwaving; the fact that there’s no association with magnetic reversals ( during which Earth’s magnetic field vanishes ) and mass extinctions demonstrates that the radiation isn’t enough to make it uninhabitable.
During those reversals, for how long does Earth go without a magnetic field?
I’m not about to do the math, but I’d think the amount of energy required to spin the moon up to that speed would be enough to rip it completely to shreds if you introduce it in the form of an asteroid collision.