Venus is harder to terraform; don’t forget the day/night cycle is ~200 earth days. Think of the sunburn!
The algae idea may not work as the atmosphere is dry and hostile. Very dry. As in there’s enough atmospheric water to cover the planet in 5 cm (2 inches) of the stuff. I don’t think we have anything that can live there. You can’t simply smash a comet into the planet to provide water; the heat of the impact will undo all your good work.
Even if you shade Venus and precipitate out the CO2 as dry ice what are we going to do once we want to live there? Our very presence will require a surface temperature that will allow the CO2 to move back into the atmosphere.
Mars has the advantage of possibly being in a critical state. Heat the planet and CO2 and water vapour should out gas, thickening the atmosphere leading to more heat retention, leading to more gases coming out of the soil. It also won’t require (hopefully) large amounts of water being brought in.
Brief and easily disposed hijack related to the subject: The recent rumors about a possible Mars mission have me thinking a lot about our future expanding in the solar system. I was at Barnes & Noble last night, looking in the Astronomy section for a good book on exploring and colonizing Mars. I didn’t really see anything, beyond a couple of texts covering what we currently know about the red planet. (I also saw, and bought, Bad Astronomer*'s book. Yay me!) Does such a book exist? Is there a good speculative volume that would talk about where we might get our water, how we would shield ourselves from cosmic rays given the thinner atmosphere, how big a colony would have to be to be self-sustaining (both in terms of cubic footage and in terms of a minimum number of humans to maintain genetic diversity and prevent inbreeding), and so on, up to long-term terraforming? If anybody knows about such a book, please give me a recommendation. (And yes, I’ve read Kim Stanley Robinson.) Thanks.
I scanned through one by Carl Sagan. I’m pretty sure it was Carl Sagan anyway. Sorry probably doesn’t help you at all.
In this book it mentioned various ways of terraforming both Venus and Mars, there was even a section on how to move Earth’s orbit closer to Jupiter. The section on Mars stated that the South Pole was dry ice and the north pole was normal ice. If we could subliminate(solid to gas) the CO2 at the south pole then it would melt the north pole creating small rivers and lakes. There may even be some ice in the ground, though I’m not sure. If we did send astronaunts to Mars and found out it had just a little water, then I’d be for planetary bombardment with ice chunks from Saturn’s rings. If we could hit it enough we might even increase the mass of the planet, hence the gravity, making the air more breathable to humans. I’m not sure how big a project like that would be though, probably huge and there would be an enourmous ocean with some small islands for human super cities.
This is like the petite girl who goes to the gym one time and says, “I’m worried, I don’t want to get big muscles like those bodybuilders.”
It is not going to happen overnight. Before we turn Mars into a steaming cauldron hot enough to melt lead I would imagine there might be some nice weather in between, say, for tens of thousands of years. This should be enough lag time to adjust our climate control strategies.
I’m all for terraforming. But before we terraform Mars into an Earth-like environment, we should first try terraforming Earth into a Mars-like environment. You know, for practice.
We think there should be enough lag time, but assumption is the mother of all screwups. Which is why I think we need to understand first what we are doing before we actually do it, otherwise we may seriously screw-up the terraforming effort.
It’s a nice idea if you’ve been smoking enough weed.
Seriously, we’re going to have to raise the atmospheric temperature of Mars by what, 100° F? 150°? We’ve got cars and factories and whatnot all over Earth, and we’re worried here that we might be raising the planet’s temp. by just a few degrees.
Then there’s the matter of the thin Martian atmosphere. Mars has much weaker gravity than Earth does. It’s going to be really hard to get an Earth atmosphere to stay put, instead of drifting off into space.
And others have already pointed out the enormous distance between here and there, and the resulting difficulty of moving what we need to Mars to do the job.
And those are just the most basic obstacles. Why don’t we start with something comparatively easy, like making a self-sustaining lunar colony?
What is the Earth’s magnetic field’s effect on keeping the solar wind away from earth and its atmosphere? Am I mistaken in thinking that the Earth’s magnetic field does a lot to keep the solar wind from blasting our atmosphere away?
Mars has a solid core and therefore, no magnetic field. Is it a coincidence that it also has a miniscule atmosphere? If it IS true that its lack of atmosphere is directly caused by its lack of magnetic field, all efforts at terraforming will be in vain, as Mars will constantly be leaking atmosphere. Unless, of course you constantly spend the resources to keep the atmosphere intact.
Which will probably lead to resource depletion of the critical resources in a few centuries.
Not to mention the fact that increasing the temperature will also increase the average velocity of the particles in Mars’ atmosphere, and thus increase the rate of atmosphere depletion.
I propose the following past for Mars: It had a magnetic core and a large, warm, life-sustaining atmosphere. Core dried up, magnetic field went away. Let’s postulate that this is only a minor factor, not the determining one, but that it nonetheless tips the scales in favor of atmospheric depletion.
Mars loses its hot, fast atmosphere. Less absorption of stellar rays decreases the temperature to the point where the particles no longer leak as much.
If we were to reverse the situation, atmosphere depletion would quickly resume IMO.
The Millennial Project: Colonizing the Galaxy in 8 Easy Steps by Marshall T. Savage has a chapter on Mars which includes a terraforming idea. I made my dad buy it for me when I was in the fifth grade for the pretty pictures (I lied and said it wasn’t for them) and it blew me away it did.
This is an interesting point. I read somewhere in passing (maybe in one of Zubrin’s books?) that, even under ideal conditions, the best we can really hope for is to get a thin atmosphere that keeps people from decompressing without pressure suits, and that has enough CO2 to sustain certain plant life, but that won’t be sufficient for people to breathe unassisted. Essentially it’ll be like the atmosphere at the top of Everest, or slightly thinner, so while people can walk around outside unprotected, they’ll need to bring oxygen gear with them so they don’t get HALO or whatever that low-atmosphere brain-embolism thing is.
Thanks for the book recommendations, too. Off to Amazon.
I can’t even terraform my back yard without letting something die off.
A recent theory is that all the Hydrogen on Venus is gone due to the intense UV. Hydrogen got split off from H2O at high altitudes and evaporated into space a long time ago. No water, no terraforming.
As for Mars, well I’m pitching a start-up business plan. First round financing will pay for proof-of-concept, and the second and third rounds will pay for marketing and development-to-market. I believe there is a window of opportunity where competition is low and we have a chance to be first-to-market, establishing top-of-mind brand awareness through promotional campaigns and viral marketing, plus co-branding opportunities with British Airways, MegaPizza, WalMart, and Fusion R Us. We expect an excellent Return on Investment and enhanced shareholder value by 3Q4, with an excellent chance to go public with an IPO in 2008.
