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Terraforming Mars

Could terraforming Mars be affordably done within 10,000 years?

  • Yes, terraforming Mars can affordably be done within 10,000 years.

    Votes: 3 50.0%
  • No, There's no way terraforming Mars can affordably be done <10,000 yrs.

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • No. Terraforming of Mars is a waste of time/money at any cost.

    Votes: 3 50.0%

  • Total voters
    6

Salvador

RF's Swedenborgian
Even with Musk's unproven optimistic estimates, it doesn't look even remotely cost
effective for carbon sequestration on Mars (something I was specifically addressing).
I'm highly skeptical of the notion that we'll terraform Mars, & make an independently
survivable alternative to Earth. It would need a fully functioning advanced technological
society. That's a big thing to do.
I prefer solutions close to home (Earth) for accessibility.

Carbon sequestration would be something done to cool a planet such as Venus, and this would be too expensive a process to do for terraforming Venus.. However, adding super green house gases to the Martian atmosphere for making Mars a warmer planet, would be far less expensive a process than carbon sequestration. I also think Elon Musk is too much the optimist. My $1,000-$2,000/kg delivery cost of sending CF6 to Mars, is 5-10 times greater than his perhaps overly optimistic $200/kg delivery cost estimate.

Wow though, if Elon Musk is right about the future costs of space travel, then Mars terraforming could be effectively done in a way shorter time span than the 10,000 years I'd envisioned and a far lesser cost than the $500 billion per year I'd estimated.
 

Revoltingest

Pragmatic Libertarian
Premium Member
Carbon sequestration would be something done to cool a planet such as Venus, and this would be too expensive a process to do for terraforming Venus.. However, adding super green house gases to the Martian atmosphere for making Mars a warmer planet, would be far less expensive a process than carbon sequestration. I also think Elon Musk is too much the optimistic. My $1,000-$2,000/kg delivery cost of sending CF6 to Mars, is 5-10 times greater than his perhaps overly optimistic $200/kg delivery cost estimate.
So.....whaddaya think of something closer to home
than Mars...at least until we get Star Trek technology.
 

Salvador

RF's Swedenborgian
So.....whaddaya think of something closer to home
than Mars...at least until we get Star Trek technology.

Maybe it does make more sense waiting until Elon Musk's cost estimates for space travel are realized before terraforming of Mars commences. Why terraform Mars at a cost of thousands of dollars per kilogram of mass delivered to Mars from Earth?, if it may soon be possible at a much lower cost of a few hundred dollars per kilogram?
 

Salvador

RF's Swedenborgian
Hello. Let me know when you figure out a way to do that efficiently and on large scale :)

As useful as that might be, it is really just treating a symptom. We will not have a sustainable, secure future until we figure out how to live without creating those problems in the first place.

Transfer of C02 from Earth to Mars would be nearly the same as the cost of transferring SF6 from Earth to Mars. I've concluded SpaceX interplanetary transport system should be fully in place and space travel costs reduced nearly tenfold, before greenhouse gases get transported away from Earth to Mars.
 

Brickjectivity

Turned to Stone. Now I stretch daily.
Staff member
Premium Member
Transfer of C02 from Earth to Mars would be nearly the same as the cost of transferring SF6 from Earth to Mars. I've concluded SpaceX interplanetary transport system should be fully in place and space travel costs reduced nearly tenfold, before greenhouse gases get transported away from Earth to Mars.
Consider obtaining greenhouse gases from Martian minerals. There is no tranport cost, then.
 

Salvador

RF's Swedenborgian
Last edited:

tayla

My dog's name is Tayla
Do you think this terraforming of Mars could be done at an affordable cost of approximately $500 billion annually over the duration of a few millenniums?
We will all be using horses and hand plows long before anyone can colonize mars.
 

Brickjectivity

Turned to Stone. Now I stretch daily.
Staff member
Premium Member
Unfortunately, a recent study indicates that Mars lacks enough available frozen CO2 for terraforming it by melting its frozen CO2 into green house gas. So then, greenhouse gases may have to be imported to Mars for significantly increasing its atmospheric pressure and temperature.

Inventory of CO 2 available for terraforming Mars | Nature Astronomy
Ok, but you mentioned sulfur hexafluoride. Mars has minerals with both Sulfur and Fluorine. If you heat them and run electrolysis you can make your gas. All thats required is a way to capture energy from the sun, which can be gathered and concentrated. Rather than spending billions per year put in place an automated system that collects energy, finds minerals, decomposes them and gradually heats up the planet.
 

Salvador

RF's Swedenborgian
I didn't know Mars had accessible minerals containing sulfur and fluorine.for significant production of sulfur hexafluoride there. Using Martian natural resources for greenhouse gas production rather than having to import greenhouse gases to Mars would nicely bring down the cost of terraforming Mars.
 

Subduction Zone

Veteran Member
It would always be hopelessly expensive to ship AGW gases from the Earth to Mars. But there is no need to. A lot of materials would be cheaper from space. Without anyone on Mars a site far from landing areas could be bombarded with ice d ok Saturn's rings and other space sources. That would instantly add heat and water. A needed resource and AGW gas.
 

Milton Platt

Well-Known Member
Parts of the heavens are indeed there for us humans to transform into biospheres sustaining human life. Mars is likely the first place beyond Earth in our solar system to get a man-made biosphere that is an appreciable fraction in size comparable to Earth's biosphere.
smile.gif


The first step towards the terraforming of Mars is the deployment of a magnetic shield that protects Mars against the solar wind stripping of its atmosphere. This magnetic shielding would subsequently allow the planet's atmosphere to reacquire its former density that'd be high enough to allow for sustainable surface liquid water.

gallery-1488399162-screen-shot-2017-03-01-at-31220-pm.png



Reference: https://phys.org/news/2017-03-nasa-magne...phere.html

An effective artificial magnetosphere placed at Langrangian point 1 from Mars is very achievable with foreseeable technology. This magnetic shielding apparatus could weigh less than a few hundred tonnes which is within the load capacity of a big Falcon 9 rocket. I'm guessing the cost of protecting the Martian atmosphere with an artificial magnetosphere would probably be similar to the cost of a small nuclear reactor.

1*mPYNE8ApyVjSFKErEM2aGg@2x.jpeg



Some few billion tonnes of sulfur hexafluoride gas (SF6) could increase Martian atmospheric surface temperatures by over 20 degrees Celsius. Sulfur hexafluoride - Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The SpaceX interplanetary transport system could deliver this super greenhouse gas to Mars at a cost of less than $2,000/kg.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Mar...astructure

A few hundred thousand tonnes of SF6 delivered annually to Mars would cost just approximately $1/2 trillion yearly. This is less than a fraction of a percent of the global economic output value. An accumulation of a few billion tonnes of SF6 at an annual rate of a few hundred thousand tonnes would take less than ten thousand years. The annual cost of less than $100 per person per year on Earth would be totally worth transforming Mars into a world with triple its current atmospheric pressure and a warmer Mars with average surface temperatures greater than typical summer Antarctic temperatures.

Do you think this terraforming of Mars could be done at an affordable cost of approximately $500 billion annually over the duration of a few millenniums?

The correct choice wasn't in the list. The correct answer is nobody could possibly know what is or is not possible in 10,000 years. We can't even predict the weather reliably on our own planet more than a couple of days out, and can even get that wrong sometimes.

It would be far cheaper in time and money to just stop crapping up the planet we are on now. I mean, if we have the ability to terraform an entire dead planet, how much easier would it be to just repair the damage to our own planet.
 

Shad

Veteran Member
An effective artificial magnetosphere placed at Langrangian point 1 from Mars is very achievable with foreseeable technology. This magnetic shielding apparatus could weigh less than a few hundred tonnes which is within the load capacity of a big Falcon 9 rocket. I'm guessing the cost of protecting the Martian atmosphere with an artificial magnetosphere would probably be similar to the cost of a small nuclear reactor.

Given how important the "shield" would be I would expect the costs would run higher. Maintenance, redundancy systems and quality for example. Toss in speculation regarding the damage a failure could cause not only for the device but Mars. A hypothetical thruster and navigation malfunction shifting the shield out of the Lagrangian point could cause a partial to total coverage failure. I have no idea what a lack of coverage cause in a short time. The point being is there details we have no idea about compared to a system of power we have been using for decades.

Food for thought.

Do you think this terraforming of Mars could be done at an affordable cost of approximately $500 billion annually over the duration of a few millenniums?

Nope. I think costs will balloon just due to R&D alone let along difficulties when putting new technologies into practice.
 

Salvador

RF's Swedenborgian
Given how important the "shield" would be I would expect the costs would run higher. Maintenance, redundancy systems and quality for example. Toss in speculation regarding the damage a failure could cause not only for the device but Mars. A hypothetical thruster and navigation malfunction shifting the shield out of the Lagrangian point could cause a partial to total coverage failure. I have no idea what a lack of coverage cause in a short time. The point being is there details we have no idea about compared to a system of power we have been using for decades.

Food for thought.

.

No doubt, there'd be constant adjustments made to keep an artificial magnetosphere in place for effectively protecting the Martian atmosphere from getting stripped away by solar wind.
 

Salvador

RF's Swedenborgian
The correct choice wasn't in the list. The correct answer is nobody could possibly know what is or is not possible in 10,000 years. We can't even predict the weather reliably on our own planet more than a couple of days out, and can even get that wrong sometimes.

It would be far cheaper in time and money to just stop crapping up the planet we are on now. I mean, if we have the ability to terraform an entire dead planet, how much easier would it be to just repair the damage to our own planet.

I don't think it's an either or proposition, ...I think both can be done....repairing Earth and transforming Mars from a dead/near dead planet into a place where life from Earth can be sustained.
 

Milton Platt

Well-Known Member
I don't think it's an either or proposition, ...I think both can be done....repairing Earth and transforming Mars from a dead/near dead planet into a place where life from Earth can be sustained.
Sure, but a redo on earth would be a tiny fraction of the enormous cost of bringing an dead planet to life.
 

Salvador

RF's Swedenborgian
Sure, but a redo on earth would be a tiny fraction of the enormous cost of bringing an dead planet to life.

A redo Earth might not be enough to support a larger population beyond that presently bound to Earth. A multi-planetary species has a greater chance of survival than a species limited to one planet.
 

Milton Platt

Well-Known Member
A redo Earth might not be enough to support a larger population beyond that presently bound to Earth. A multi-planetary species has a greater chance of survival than a species limited to one planet.

That is very true, Salvador. As to the population, if we were at the point that we could terraform a planet, surely we could control the population growth.

This is an interesting speculation. Thanks for starting this thread.
 

Revoltingest

Pragmatic Libertarian
Premium Member
They have not solved any of the main problems, yet they estimate only 10$ billion in cost. That must mean cost of materials.
I thought the $10B cost was pretty funny too.
I'd expect it to be an order of magnitude higher.
And $25 per pound per launch....also optimistic.
Maintenance costs would be interesting to see,
since collisions with orbiting/falling objects could
impose catastrophic costs.
 
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