71–80 of 80 posts
If we could just pack up some of this extra CO2 & get it over there, maybe we'd have a new planet! I wonder how many PPM you'd need?
Mars is 96% CO2, I think it might already have enough. In fact, the problem is trying to get rid of it all.
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Without a magnetic field, there is way too much radiation on the surface of Mars. A colony would pretty much need to live underground. If you are going to live underground on a planet with unusably-thin air, why not live on the Moon instead?
Instead of just asking the question that many people think they have answered, why not say what you don't like about their answers? For example, Elon's speech about Mars colonization gives one answer. Maybe you've got great reasons to disagree with him. Maybe there's someone else you'd like to reply to? (Hint: folks advocating for Mars think the atmosphere is not unusable.)
To hide from Radiation, one plan is to have 16 feet of soil on top of the habitat [1], and limit outdoor time to just 2 hours a day. Given those levels, I'd argue that it would make better sense to build entirely underground on the Moon. The Moon has a shallower gravity well, much stronger solar flux for power, and is much closer for resupply.
[1] http://www.space.com/21813-mars-one-colony-space-radiation.h...
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There is a sentence that seems to imply that the frozen status implies there is no life. I'm not so sure we can be sure of that. There are microbes on Earth that basically live in virtually frozen environments. (All you need are moments when the water is liquid.)
All you need are moments when the water is liquid. But you don't get those at such low atmospheric pressure. Mars atmospheric pressure is around 600pa. Below 611pa, the boiling point of water drops to the freezing point; you can have ice or steam, but not liquid water.
Lake Superior has enough water to flood all of North and South America to almost one foot.
Lake Superior has enough water to flood all of North and South America to almost one foot.
Was intrigued by this comment so I looked it up. North and South America have a surface area of about 42.55 million sq km or 4.58x10^14 sq ft (1 foot deep water is obviously 4.58x10^14 cubic feet). Lake Superior has a volume of 12,100 cubic km or 4.2x10^14 cubic feet. That's unbelievable!
So take the area of the lake and multiply it by 483, and now it is not surprising that you can cover North+South America with it.
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A little over 3 feet. http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=(40,000+cubic+kilometre... To skip ahead, the Great Artesian Basin, the largest artesian basin in the world, would be just over 5 feet. http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=(64,900+cubic+kilometre... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Artesian_Basin
How much fracking liquid could we pump in there and remain profitable?
None?
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All you need are moments when the water is liquid. But you don't get those at such low atmospheric pressure. Mars atmospheric pressure is around 600pa. Below 611pa, the boiling point of water drops to the freezing point; you can have ice or steam, but not liquid water.
But you don't get those at such low atmospheric pressure. Mars atmospheric pressure is around 600pa. A mental exercise: Any place on Mars with higher than 600pa pressure?
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But you don't get those at such low atmospheric pressure. Mars atmospheric pressure is around 600pa. A mental exercise: Any place on Mars with higher than 600pa pressure?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellas_Planitia
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellas_Planitia
How about underground? How about the bottom of a glacier? No need to be "surfacist." ;)
A glacier that has the pressure to melt ice, would have more than enough pressure to keep it from sublimating. A rough estimate says that a foot or so of ice could provide over 600KPa of pressure, but that doesn't account for any means of keeping the water liquid or the ice solid. However, I wouldn't expect to actually find that on Mars. You might be able to keep water that way for a while until it froze again.