Should we terraform Mars?
Should we terraform Mars?
If so, this should not preclude us from cleaning up our own planet first!
First we're going to need to terraform earth, the way things are going.
This feels a little bit like a Roman asking if we should build a steam turbine. It wasn’t beyond them to make a primitive version (one even existed!) but the necessary science and technology to do anything useful with it wouldn’t exist for a long time yet. Yes we have an idea of how we might potentially go about it but I don’t think it’ll happen until we’re flinging comets about like pool balls across the solar system.
I suspect if we do develop terraforming tech Earth will be the first target as we seek to undo the harm our mode of living has done to the planet.
I think it's unfortunately a bad idea for three main reasons (ignoring any practical issues with the terraforming):
- the low gravity can't be changed, and can't be ignored.
- the lack of a magnetic field means issues with radiation reaching the surface we're shielded from
- the combination of these two would lead to any atmosphere we could create needing regular top ups, as it would be erroding constantly.
Yeah, there have to be better alternatives than terraforming all of Mars if we really want to have large human colonies outside of earth.
The magnetic field issue is a biggie, and would have to be addressed before any large-scale colonization efforts could begin, but is hypothetically solvable.
It'd be easier to avoid turning earth into an arid desert, like Mars is, than making Mars habitable.
Yes, but if we turn Earth into an arid desert, for a brief moment it will make a few shareholders extremely wealthy!
We should at least colonise Mars, at which point the colonists will probably begin the rather slow process of terraforming. We could do that now, with current technology. Zubrin's updated Mars Direct mission plan is one such example. We now know Mars has abundant water and cave systems which would allow for the creation of propellant via electrolysis, while cave systems would help provide some shelter from radiation and could be sealed to create a higher pressure environment such that only breathing apparatus would be necessary and not entire space suits.
We should colonise Mars because it will open up the pathway to the main asteroid belt which can then be mined and perhaps even inhabited.
People always say we should focus on Earth first but that just seems like an excuse to do nothing, the issues we have on Earth will not be solved by diverting the relatively small amount of resources required for a more ambitious Space Programme towards them.
Does Zubrin have any ideas about mitigating the effects of low gravity on humans? The only thing I can think of are these little personal sleep centrifuges I read about somewhere that would approximate earth gravity for at least part of the time.
He mentions tethering spacecraft either to another spacecraft or to a counterweight to allow for rotation and artificial gravity while travelling.
It seems he considers that as Martian gravity is only 38% that of the Earth gravity it shouldn't be that big a problem as it is with the negligible gravity during space travel, and I guess this might be more easily complemented with an exercise regime.
This could potentially be a serious problem but at the moment we don't have the data to know if it is a showstopper or not, it's a shame the Mars Gravity BioSatellite was cancelled, it was a clever idea to be able to get that data in an easy way.
@hedge, you're asking if we should terraform Mars if we haven't already cleaned up this this planet. It's a good question but I don't see a problem here.
Let me borrow a quote from Isaac Arthur, youtuber and president of the National Space Society(in USA), and I'm paraphrasing him: If we have the technology to truly terraform Mars, then lot of that technology will already have been used to stabilize the climate on earth. It's by orders of magnitude easier to "fix" Earth, than make Mars habitable to humans without the need for Domes, or spacesuits to breathe outside.
So to continue the "cleanup" analogy, it's like cleaning up the worst nuclear disaster (Chernobyl ) vs cleaning a few drops of water off your kitchen floor.
Right, I didn't necessarily see it as an either/or type thing--I think we can and should do both!--however, if it does come down to one or the other, it's got to be earth first.
Do we even have the ability to terraform Mars?
No, not really. Mars has a very weak magnetosphere, so you need shielding against radiation. Also there is no atmosphere and any atmosphere we put on mars will quickly (in a geological timescale) get blown away by the charged solar winds because there is no magnetic field. So it's an immense task, and probably a few hundred years out before we have the technology.
For anyone who would like to read a sci-fi series about what terraforming Mars might look like, there's The Martian Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson
Hey, thanks for sharing this post! I think this would also be a good fit for our space community, beehaw.org/c/space – I’d encourage you to cross-post this into that community as well!
I think we are a long, long ways off before we could even get to the 'could' phase of the discussion, let alone asking if we should.
It sort of depends on your definition of terra forming. Like if your goal in Earth 2.0 .. Then your likely not going to get there.. there not enough free mass in the solar system to build mars up to size of earth. But if your goal is to make mars livable. we could build into mars crust to allow for high pressure areas .. If the goal is to get a temporary atmosphere .. that would take a few millennia active effort
What if all the effort needed to terraform Mars would be invested in fixing the disaster we started on Earth... I bet the effort would be better invested here. Not even talking about how much of resources will be needed to bootstrap the Mars project. Terraforming Mars will sacrifice Earth.
we'll clean it up afterwards