9 ms·

I wonder what it would take for some nation or über-nation to set the goal to terraform Mars. That would be a goal worthy of mankind in the 21st century.

presidentender 16y ago
I'm more interested in private asteroid mining.
- CapitalistCartr 16y ago
  Asteroid mining and electricity generation have the near-term potential to turn space into a lucrative economic endeavor, instead of an exotic money pit. They are the only two things I know of that could profoundly change the World's exploration of space.
  - hugh3 16y ago
    What are you expecting to find on an asteroid which is valuable enough to make the trip economically viable?
    - presidentender 16y ago
      It's not 'what,' it's 'how much.' Millions of years worth of metals, mostly.
      - hugh3 16y ago
        Earth's crust already has a helluva lot in the way of most metals. Until I can dig it out of an asteroid more cheaply than I can dig it out of a hole in the ground, it's not going to help to kickstart the space industry. As far as rare and valuable materials go, I'm not aware of any which are more common in asteroids than they are on Earth. Most space rocks are just the same few elements over and over again; iron, nickel, silicon, magnesium.
        presidentender 16y ago
        I do not disagree with you on any point.
        njharman 16y ago
        http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/sci/tech/401227.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/sci/tech/401227.stm "The physical composition of asteroids is varied and in most cases poorly understood" - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid#Composition http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid#Composition
        olliesaunders 16y ago
        This bit is interesting: "In the 2,900 cubic kms of Eros, there is more aluminium, gold, silver, zinc and other base and precious metals than have ever been excavated in history or indeed, could ever be excavated from the upper layers of the Earth's crust. That is just in one asteroid and not a very large one at that. There are thousands of asteroids out there."
        Vivtek 16y ago
        Iridium, if nothing else. We've mined all the terrestrial iridium we can reach (there's all that magma, but it's going to be a helluva lot easier to get an asteroid than to get to the magma). Oh, also: the disadvantage of mining the Earth's crust is all those people and other things living on it. The environment is not an issue with an asteroid - you'll be using up the whole thing anyway. Longer-term, of course, you can set up a big mirror and smelt the whole asteroid in situ for much, much lower prices than a terrestrial smelting furnace - with the added advantage that you'll be able to breathe in Gary, Indiana. (If you still think getting your metal out of the crust of the planet you're living on is a good idea, I invite you to visit Gary. It's way better than it used to be, since China and Korea have volunteered to poison themselves in its place, but it's still bad enough.)
      - michaeltwofish 16y ago
        As soon as you've got millions of years worth of metals, you saturate supply, the price falls and you're back to a mission that isn't economically viable.
        InclinedPlane 16y ago
        Yeah, you aren't going to be selling asteroid mined metals to Earth any time in the foreseeable future, the math just doesn't add up. However, selling metals and other materials to other off-Earth colonies might be economically viable. But that just raises another question.
        nitrogen 16y ago
        I think the global diamond market serves as a counterexample to your scenario. The producers would simply limit the supply to whatever level is sustainable. If multiple competitors increased supply or decreased prices too quickly, there may be a temporary freeze on production, but once the supply dwindles production will resume.
  - rdl 16y ago
    Low earth orbit satellite constellations, especially using cheap picosats, also have a good chance of being lucrative. To date, they've been fiascoes (iridium, globalstar), but given a cheap RAMAC launcher to put $250k delivered cost satellites up, it should be feasible to do something like global EDGE coverage. The biggest issue is RF engineering (to get small antennas and tx power on both sides, maximum frequency reuse) and political (getting spectrum; steal it back from the 2.3ghz "we're a satellite network but operating entirely terrestrially" network).
hugh3 16y ago
As a first step it might be more useful to terraform, say, Mexico. Or Australia.
- charlief 16y ago
  Maybe some of the ecological aspects, but changing the atmosphere and climate sounds like a risky affair. I'm pretty sure if we were able to do some heavy handed climate modification, we would want to do it somewhere else, not in a fragile environment like Earth where extinction or at least long-term catastrophe of many ecosystems is on the table.
- InclinedPlane 16y ago
  Aren't we doing that already? #climatechange #zing?
- mahmud 16y ago
  Not the whole of Australia; NSW is fine, it's Queensland that needs to be made more habitable. Start by removing the Maroons; some toxic rocks found there.
- robryan 16y ago
  There is the idea that if they were able to effectively catch the summer wet season in the north they could reclaim it from desert and turn it into a food bowl.
bh42 16y ago
Mars has a lot less sun and atmosphere then the Earth, so terraforming it would involve a large investment in greenhouses and nuclear energy. But Venus has an excess of sun and heat, and parts of its super dense atmosphere could potentially host floating algae, which absorb CO2 and rain down to the surface when they die. (Where they could burn and release all the CO2 again, but maybe a tiny bit stays out of the atmosphere.) I guess what I'm saying is, we might be able to "seed" Venus and then sit by and watch as a carbon sink is created. And with less CO2 the atmosphere would start to cool off. Now my very amateur understanding of Venus is that because the greenhouse effect creates super hot temperatures the magma underneath the crust of Venus does not form hot and hold spots like it does on Earth, it does not flow or erupt. There are no volcanoes, the crust is too "baked", too hard and thick. But over long periods of time the crust still tends to break up: At a massive scale, planet wide, the whole planet surface is then covered with lava, the lava eventually cools and the cycle starts again. This is why the surface of Venus looks suspiciously smooth except for a very few, very recent craters. Now imagine we are able to "infect" Venus with life and it does manage to suck CO2 of the atmosphere and cool down Venus to the point where the surface of Venus can support liquid water. It seems that could either trigger another planet wide cracking of the crust or maybe just huge volcanic eruptions. But I think once life is widely distributed even that could not expunge it. And with a much cooler atmosphere softer elements would not be baked out of the crust and the Venus crust would start to resemble Earth's crust, complete with softer and harder and lighter and heavier components and volcanoes. And one day we could move in.
- hugh3 16y ago
  If you want to wait long enough for Venus to start having plate tectonics, you're going to be waiting a long time. By this point it's probably easier to tow Mars to a better orbit. Or just blow Venus up and make a (partial) Dyson sphere.
  - dennisgorelik 16y ago
    I have a better idea: 1) Populate Australia and Siberia first. 2) Convert some oceans into land (or cover oceans with land). 3) Colonize Antarctica. If you still have not enough land to play with -- consider spending money on playing with Moon, Mars, and Venus.
ars 16y ago
At a minimum it would take practical fusion power. To terraform mars you would need to add a lot of air and water, which would have to come from somewhere. It would take immense amount of energy to move the water from other bodies. This is a probably a 22nd century possibility, not a 21st.
patrickk 16y ago
Obligatory wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraforming http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraforming Interesting how long the concept has been in science fiction, since at least 1942.
Avshalom 16y ago
In twenty years vote for the progressive presidential candidate who was a naval nuclear engineer and has several science degrees.
adambyrtek 16y ago
The Mars trilogy[1] (Red Mars, Green Mars and Blue Mars) by Kim Stanley Robinson is a great tutorial on how we could approach such an endeavor. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_trilogy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_trilogy
retube 16y ago
Terraforming a planet is really in the realms of science fiction. Even with vast energy resources, it's 10s - 100s of thousands of years.

presidentender 16y ago

I'm more interested in private asteroid mining.

CapitalistCartr 16y ago
Asteroid mining and electricity generation have the near-term potential to turn space into a lucrative economic endeavor, instead of an exotic money pit. They are the only two things I know of that could profoundly change the World's exploration of space.
- hugh3 16y ago
  What are you expecting to find on an asteroid which is valuable enough to make the trip economically viable?
  - presidentender 16y ago
    It's not 'what,' it's 'how much.' Millions of years worth of metals, mostly.
    - hugh3 16y ago
      Earth's crust already has a helluva lot in the way of most metals. Until I can dig it out of an asteroid more cheaply than I can dig it out of a hole in the ground, it's not going to help to kickstart the space industry. As far as rare and valuable materials go, I'm not aware of any which are more common in asteroids than they are on Earth. Most space rocks are just the same few elements over and over again; iron, nickel, silicon, magnesium.
      - presidentender 16y ago
        I do not disagree with you on any point.
      - njharman 16y ago
        http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/sci/tech/401227.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/sci/tech/401227.stm "The physical composition of asteroids is varied and in most cases poorly understood" - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid#Composition http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid#Composition
        olliesaunders 16y ago
        This bit is interesting: "In the 2,900 cubic kms of Eros, there is more aluminium, gold, silver, zinc and other base and precious metals than have ever been excavated in history or indeed, could ever be excavated from the upper layers of the Earth's crust. That is just in one asteroid and not a very large one at that. There are thousands of asteroids out there."
      - Vivtek 16y ago
        Iridium, if nothing else. We've mined all the terrestrial iridium we can reach (there's all that magma, but it's going to be a helluva lot easier to get an asteroid than to get to the magma). Oh, also: the disadvantage of mining the Earth's crust is all those people and other things living on it. The environment is not an issue with an asteroid - you'll be using up the whole thing anyway. Longer-term, of course, you can set up a big mirror and smelt the whole asteroid in situ for much, much lower prices than a terrestrial smelting furnace - with the added advantage that you'll be able to breathe in Gary, Indiana. (If you still think getting your metal out of the crust of the planet you're living on is a good idea, I invite you to visit Gary. It's way better than it used to be, since China and Korea have volunteered to poison themselves in its place, but it's still bad enough.)
    - michaeltwofish 16y ago
      As soon as you've got millions of years worth of metals, you saturate supply, the price falls and you're back to a mission that isn't economically viable.
      - InclinedPlane 16y ago
        Yeah, you aren't going to be selling asteroid mined metals to Earth any time in the foreseeable future, the math just doesn't add up. However, selling metals and other materials to other off-Earth colonies might be economically viable. But that just raises another question.
      - nitrogen 16y ago
        I think the global diamond market serves as a counterexample to your scenario. The producers would simply limit the supply to whatever level is sustainable. If multiple competitors increased supply or decreased prices too quickly, there may be a temporary freeze on production, but once the supply dwindles production will resume.
- rdl 16y ago
  Low earth orbit satellite constellations, especially using cheap picosats, also have a good chance of being lucrative. To date, they've been fiascoes (iridium, globalstar), but given a cheap RAMAC launcher to put $250k delivered cost satellites up, it should be feasible to do something like global EDGE coverage. The biggest issue is RF engineering (to get small antennas and tx power on both sides, maximum frequency reuse) and political (getting spectrum; steal it back from the 2.3ghz "we're a satellite network but operating entirely terrestrially" network).

hugh3 16y ago

As a first step it might be more useful to terraform, say, Mexico. Or Australia.

charlief 16y ago
Maybe some of the ecological aspects, but changing the atmosphere and climate sounds like a risky affair. I'm pretty sure if we were able to do some heavy handed climate modification, we would want to do it somewhere else, not in a fragile environment like Earth where extinction or at least long-term catastrophe of many ecosystems is on the table.
InclinedPlane 16y ago
Aren't we doing that already? #climatechange #zing?
mahmud 16y ago
Not the whole of Australia; NSW is fine, it's Queensland that needs to be made more habitable. Start by removing the Maroons; some toxic rocks found there.
robryan 16y ago
There is the idea that if they were able to effectively catch the summer wet season in the north they could reclaim it from desert and turn it into a food bowl.

bh42 16y ago

Mars has a lot less sun and atmosphere then the Earth, so terraforming it would involve a large investment in greenhouses and nuclear energy. But Venus has an excess of sun and heat, and parts of its super dense atmosphere could potentially host floating algae, which absorb CO2 and rain down to the surface when they die. (Where they could burn and release all the CO2 again, but maybe a tiny bit stays out of the atmosphere.) I guess what I'm saying is, we might be able to "seed" Venus and then sit by and watch as a carbon sink is created. And with less CO2 the atmosphere would start to cool off. Now my very amateur understanding of Venus is that because the greenhouse effect creates super hot temperatures the magma underneath the crust of Venus does not form hot and hold spots like it does on Earth, it does not flow or erupt. There are no volcanoes, the crust is too "baked", too hard and thick. But over long periods of time the crust still tends to break up: At a massive scale, planet wide, the whole planet surface is then covered with lava, the lava eventually cools and the cycle starts again. This is why the surface of Venus looks suspiciously smooth except for a very few, very recent craters. Now imagine we are able to "infect" Venus with life and it does manage to suck CO2 of the atmosphere and cool down Venus to the point where the surface of Venus can support liquid water. It seems that could either trigger another planet wide cracking of the crust or maybe just huge volcanic eruptions. But I think once life is widely distributed even that could not expunge it. And with a much cooler atmosphere softer elements would not be baked out of the crust and the Venus crust would start to resemble Earth's crust, complete with softer and harder and lighter and heavier components and volcanoes. And one day we could move in.

hugh3 16y ago
If you want to wait long enough for Venus to start having plate tectonics, you're going to be waiting a long time. By this point it's probably easier to tow Mars to a better orbit. Or just blow Venus up and make a (partial) Dyson sphere.
- dennisgorelik 16y ago
  I have a better idea: 1) Populate Australia and Siberia first. 2) Convert some oceans into land (or cover oceans with land). 3) Colonize Antarctica. If you still have not enough land to play with -- consider spending money on playing with Moon, Mars, and Venus.

ars 16y ago

At a minimum it would take practical fusion power. To terraform mars you would need to add a lot of air and water, which would have to come from somewhere. It would take immense amount of energy to move the water from other bodies. This is a probably a 22nd century possibility, not a 21st.

patrickk 16y ago

Obligatory wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraforming http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraforming Interesting how long the concept has been in science fiction, since at least 1942.

Avshalom 16y ago

In twenty years vote for the progressive presidential candidate who was a naval nuclear engineer and has several science degrees.

adambyrtek 16y ago

The Mars trilogy[1] (Red Mars, Green Mars and Blue Mars) by Kim Stanley Robinson is a great tutorial on how we could approach such an endeavor. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_trilogy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_trilogy

retube 16y ago

Terraforming a planet is really in the realms of science fiction. Even with vast energy resources, it's 10s - 100s of thousands of years.