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Economical with metal from earth maybe - what about from an asteroid? Time to think outside the box.
by EricE 2y ago
Economical with metal from earth maybe - what about from an asteroid? Time to think outside the box.
- db48x 2y agoI failed to adequately convey the degree of uneconomicalness involved. No such simple fix would save the idea. The magnetic rings would have to be _larger around than Mars_. A ring around Mars’ equator would do the same job while being smaller! Plus there’s the slight problem that the atmospheric loss rate on Mars is too low for us to really care about. Mars with an atmosphere as thick as Earth’s would lose about 1% of that atmosphere after a million or two years. If it will take us less than 10,000 years to build that atmosphere up then it will be much cheaper to just top it up every so often.