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Without a decent atmosphere water will just boil / sublimate off and get blown away; Mars would need a magnetosphere to retain anything.
by barrkel 9y ago
Without a decent atmosphere water will just boil / sublimate off and get blown away; Mars would need a magnetosphere to retain anything.
- jon_richards 9y agoI've previously seem ideas such as nuking the poles. It implied there were enough gases stored in the ice to created a sufficient atmosphere. The loss of the atmosphere due to lack of a magnetosphere would take millions of years.
- adrianN 9y agoWater would get blown away over a period of millions of years though. I think that's not much of a problem.
- Reason077 9y agoEven if you could increase the atmospheric density, the lack of magnetosphere is still a problem when it comes to human habitation, however. Any long-term habitats would need to be built underground, or at least heavily shielded against solar radiation.
- eru 9y agoCould people go out at night?
- junkcollector 9y agoA sufficiently large radio system built on Mars or at its solar LaGrange point could provide the shielding effect that is normally the responsibility of the magnetosphere. It was studied for feasibility by NASA and found possible with current technology. Of course, possible doesn't imply practical and the natural formation of Martian atmosphere if we did that would be on geologic timescales.