11 ms·
How to Give Mars an Atmosphere, Maybe (2017)
- Synaesthesia 7y agoLet’s fix our own planet first before fixing another one ha
- bufferoverflow 7y agoThis is a silly argument. We can do more than one thing at a time.
- scandox 7y agoWe are certainly very good at rearranging multiple deck chairs on the Titanic at once. Our ability to grapple with any serious problem affecting the entire human system appears to be low at present.
- pvaldes 7y agoNot so silly. Resources are limited
- bufferoverflow 7y agoAre you in charge of all the resources? If not, it's a silly argument. People will do whatever they want to do. You might as well propose herding cats.
- pvaldes 7y agoMaybe is silly for you. "If you are not (put some impossible random requisite here) then you are wrong" Well... As other billions of people, I don't need to be "in charge of all the resources in the planet" or "to be Santa Claus or Jesus" to talk about the problems of humankind (or to be aware that neglecting earth conservation, to put five machines more or less in Mars none less, is a terribly stupid idea). If you equal asking more resources for nature conservation with proposing herding cats, then your logic has some serious loopholes.
- ripsawridge 7y agoThose loopholes are features, not bugs. They allow the mind to close the door to consideration of reflexive problems. Those with a feedback loop back to the self. It really simplifies existence! xD
- ripsawridge 7y agoI think your buffer has overflowed. If living sustainably within limited resources were merely a "thing" to take care of one afternoon, or even in 1000 afternoons, then we probably would have done it by now. Consider that the need for this "new thing" (Martian living) may have only arisen from the failure to solve the first thing.
- Synaesthesia 7y agoWell we haven’t even taken a human to Mars, do you realise how much resources it will take to just achieve that, and for what purpose? It’s a vanity project.
- bufferoverflow 7y agoIt's a long term survivability project. Living on one planet is inherently dangerous. And long-term - terminal. You're one step away from some relativistic rock hitting out planet and sterilizing it.
- Frenchgeek 7y agoLet's learn how to fix a planet with one we don't really care if we mess up.
- Synaesthesia 7y agoYes, one we’ve never even visited! Makes sense
- imjasonmiller 7y agoIf terraforming Mars were to be successful, wouldn’t the long-term livability of Mars still be hampered by having about a third of Earth’s gravity? I imagine it to dramatically affect human physiology, making it perhaps impossible for Martians to ever return to Earth.
- phreeza 7y agoCould people who plan to return to earth live in large centrifuges?
- jacobush 7y agoIt's not known whether Mars gravity would be sufficient to maintain "Earth compatibility".
- FreeFull 7y agoThe whole point of the centrifuges is to increase the force experienced by the people, up to the point where it is comparable to Earth's gravity.
- jacobush 7y agoYes, but we don't have empiric data on people living in a third of Earth gravity, only 0G from space stations. A third may be enough and no centrifuges necessary.
- vixen99 7y ago“My understanding of terraforming is the deliberate addition, by humans, of directly adding gases to the atmosphere on a planetary scale,” Not only adding but also removal of the 700ppm carbon monoxide.
- jacobush 7y ago700ppm (at 1% Earth sea level pressure), is maybe too little be a problem?
- gdm85 7y agoWould have appreciated if someone noticed the spell-checker underlining in the slide screenshot and...fixed it.
- fsh 7y agoI just don't get the point of humans living on Mars. Literally the entire surface of the earth, including the seafloor, is more habitable than Mars and can be reached without having to fight the rocket equation. Sure, thinking about space travel and terraforming is fun, but what compelling reason is there for mankind to invest unbelievable amounts of resources in actually doing it?
- Already__Taken 7y agooff-site backup? Seriously though, another independent human colony would lend some much needed perspective to the worlds political problems. Also what if just because we can might be enough reason? Maybe we can't, that would be quite important to know too.
- fsh 7y agoThese are the standard arguments people bring in favor of human spaceflight. I don't find them compelling enough to justify the enormous cost of such a project. A serious attempt at colonizing Mars would probably consume a significant fraction of the GDP of whichever country/ies is/are doing it. Currently, we are not even close to investing such amounts of money in order to solve much more pressing issues, such as climate change.
- Consultant32452 7y agoAll of NASA is less than 1% of the US federal budget, much less GDP. I think you're overestimating the price. The total cost of even current environmental regulations, much less the proposed solutions to climate change, are orders of magnitude larger.
- fsh 7y agoThis year, a total of four NASA astronauts have been launched into LEO on russian rockets. This is not at all comparable to colonizing or even terraforming a planet.
- hutzlibu 7y agoIsn't the problem with a artificial atmosphere also the low gravity? How to solve that? Or is it strong enough that the loss can be compensated?
- carrozo 7y agoThis terraforming Mars argument always sounds a bit “mechanical horse” to me. By the time we’d be able to do this, we would have merged our “survival machine” human body with technology and would not require the incubator of earth’s environment to survive. Feels more likely that in a century or two we’d have essentially immortal carbon nanotube exoskeletons wrapped around human brains going wherever the hell they want across the solar system and beyond.
- _wzsf 7y agoThere is not enough CO2 or any other such gas on Mars to make an atmosphere better than 5% of Earth's, even if you razed the surface kilometers down and boiled the ice caps and installed an artificial magnetosphere. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-018-0529-6 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-018-0529-6 20 millibars is essentially the long-term limit without piping in gas from other planets or comets. There's plenty of science and exploration to be done on Mars, and efforts towards getting people there are admirable, but let's keep it red. Non-scientists (like Elon) should at least consider not ignoring the data we've spent billions of dollars collecting and confirming over the past 50 years.
- _wzsf 7y agoWhy is this marked as (2017) when it's dated November 15, 2019?