>habitats dug several meters underground.

Or, you could just seal and pressurize a lava tube. Cheaper, less stuff needs to be sent to accomplish it, less labor, more living space.

>terraforming mars.

we can't even not fuck of our home planet and you want us to worry about fixing another one?

>>3657463
For the early colonists, such lava tubes may not be near enough to places of scientific interest or needed resources. Lava tubes are an option of course, but I believe digging a hole on Mars will not be so difficult as to warrant adding a hundred miles to colonists' commute.

The problem is that solar winds knocks off a lot of the atmosphere, water vapor in particular.

>>3657510

Cant we restart mars core?

I saw a movie that did something like that.

>>3657522
No, we can't with current technology and energy limits. And the movie you're referring to is The Core, and it's bullshit.

>>3657482
Earth already meets the physical requirements of habitability. Any problems beyond those physical requirements are in the realm of climatology, which has to deal with the inherent complexities of chaotic systems.

Mars however doesn't meet the physical requirements of habitability so wee need not even worry about the indeterminate side of climatology. Mars lacks sufficient temperature, so we warm it. Mars lacks sufficient atmosphere, so we add more air. Mars lacks sufficient amounts of particular elements, so we add more of those particular elements.

E Z P Z lemon squeezy.

>>3657510
Very slowly.

But the only reason to colonize Mars anytime in the near future is the eggs-in-a-basked problem.

>>3657510
So? That happens on Earth too despite the Earth's magnetosphere and yet here we are.

You are implying that rate of loss will be too high compared to how quickly we can add it, correct?

>>3657533
If zero-g mining and manufacturing prove too difficult, it may also become humanity's major source of raw materials.

Fuck that shit

We should find ALIENZ first and get them to take us back to their magical home world

>>3657533
I thought it was because nerds can't into society

>>3657530

well, we would need planetary amounts of nitrogen and oxygen.

using our own atmosphere would be stupid, so where else we can find great amounts of those two gases?

>>3657563
1) Humanity can redirect comets.
2) Mars has lots of oxygen.

>>3657575

>Humanity can redirect comets

Bullshit since when

Source needed

>Mars has lots of oxygen

Bullshit since when

Source on that as well

>>3657575
3) humans invent magic wand

>>3657561
Is that why you want to go to Mars?

>>3657587
For the oxygen, he probably means in the rocks.

>>3657587
1) Humans have been moving stuff since the dawn of time. If you don't know how it's done then look up "Newton's Laws".
2) Mars is red because it is covered in iron oxide.

Did I just get trolled?

>>3657604

Fuck the rocks

I can't breathe rocks

Also...

>>3657615
There's not actually THAT much iron oxide. But yes, plenty of oxides in general.

>>3657615

We've never moved a comet before fuck your shit

>>3657618
Bitch, please. The point is that you can take the oxygen out of them. There's plenty of oxygen there.

I don't know about nitrogen though.

>>3657624
We'll, we have STOPPED a few. Or at least, Earth has. With impacts.

nevermind then.

>>3657628

Bullshit since when

Source

>>3657620
>There's not actually THAT much iron oxide.
Seriously? I never thought about it. I figured the limitation was the vast quantities of energy needed to regain the oxygen from the Martian regolith, not on the actual amount of iron oxide. Are there plenty of other oxidized metals? Are there ENOUGH oxidized metals for our purposes?

I also forgot to mention CO2. There is oxygen in CO2, lol. I figured the only problem would be providing a filler gas like nitrogen.

>>3657636
What do you think rocks are made out of?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geology_of_Mars#Elemental_composition

But the tripfag ITT is too optimistic about our ability to bring things to Mars that aren't already there.

>>3657652
I'm really just saying it's not the majority of the crust by a long shot. But you're right, the higher levels of iron oxide (as compared with Earth) give the dirt its red color.

i thought the problem wasnt so much making an atmosphere, as it was keeping it from getting blown off the planet

>>3657664
The loss rates would be very low, even without any attempts at magnetic shielding. I haven't done the math myself, but I understand the time is measured in millions of years before you lose a substantial quantity.

>>3657653

Yeah but since when have we extracted oxygen from those rocks

>>3657669
That said, on geological timescales (billions of years) the atmosphere does get blown away if you don't do something about it. Mars just isn't massive enough.

>>3657673
You can. It might be pretty energy-intensive though.

>finally crawl out of mud hole
>want to dive into another
wat.
O’Neil cylinders ftw

>>3657575
Redirect comets?
No, we think we could if we put the money and effort into it, but we haven't. We merely have technology that could accomplish it, not the means (read: money, effort, will, politics, desire).

>>3657522
"Restart"? What makes you think something about the core needs to be started?
What makes you think something as small as us could have ANYTHING to do with a planet's core?
Heck, we can hardly even drill an inches-wide hole very far into the thing -- you're assuming we might be able to have an effect on the entire planet at once?

Get a sense of scale -- you're spouting nonsense.

>>3657674
Tie enough to come up with something else.

After five million years of technological evolution we might have decided to remove atmospheres from all planets and gengineer all remaining non-sentient life to be vacuum-proof.

>>3657653
>too optimistic
Really? All it would take to redirect a comet at Mars would be a slight nudge. A few orbits and a gravity assist or two later and colonists will get to spend their evening on lawn-chairs enjoying the lightshow of a comet burning up and exploding in Mars' atmosphere.

>>3657694
> a comet
Have you actually done any order-of-magnitude calculations on how much extra material you would need? And how big typical comets are?

>>3657689
*Time enough
Gods fuck this keyboard!

>>3657682
I like most space dwellings, but the huge cylinder-floor windows just seem to scream "HEY THROW A ROCK AT ME AND SEE WHAT HAPPENS". I really prefer the designs with smaller openings that are more easy to shutter in case of a puncture.

>>3657687

restarting a planet's core would be just about the most impossible thing i could imagine... assuming it was molten iron, its now one solid, cold chunk. how do you heat a billion trillion tonnes of iron back to liquid temperature?

>>3657694

DO YOU EVEN KNOW WHAT'S IN THOSE COMETS

>>3657615
No, you're trolling.

Of course humans have moved stuff -- even impressively large stuff, like huge rocks.

But get a sense of scale, here -- moving a comet is like moving a city, all at once.
No one has ever tried that, even a short distance, even on the ground without special protection needed.
The scale you're talking about (if indeed you are suggesting moving a single comet) is well beyond anything we've ever done.
Heck, it was a big project when we sent a single probe to CRASH on one.
So, let's not make broad claims about what we can and cannot do with a comet
-- we'd like to have those resources, but we've proven so far
we can hardly get together enough effort to float in orbit a couple hundred miles away.

>>3657701

Push it closer to the sun?

>>3657701
Use energy from tidal flexing.

Steer Ceres to low martian orbit and wait.

>>3657662
>crust
We were talking about the amount of oxygen present in accessible Martian iron oxide deposits. The amount of iron oxide in relation to Mars' crust is irrelevant. I obviously assumed you were talking about there not being enough oxides to produce a breathable oxygen concentration when you mentioned there not being much iron oxide.

>Mars, Earth, and the color red
Actually, Earth would be just as red as Mars if not for being covered up with blue and green. Earth and Mars were cut from the same cloth.

>>3657731
Cloth?
Earth and Mars are mainly made of silicates, not cloth.

Sorry, after 39 hours of work, I couldn't resist.

>>3657697
I've tried, but I couldn't find the relevant information. The mass and composition of comets is still a big mystery.

I calculated how much Nitrogen Mars' atmosphere needs by using the percentage of nitrogen in Earth's atmosphere, the mass of Earth's atmosphere, and the relative surface area of both planets. That doesn't take into account how much nitrogen will need to be held up in terraformed Mars' soil and plant life, but I wouldn't be a physicist if I didn't simply the problem.

What I lacked was the amount of nitrogen and similar filler gases within comets and the mass of most comets, but those numbers simply don't exist. IF we had those numbers, we would then need to sort through the more massive comet candidates to find ones that either pass near enough to mars or near enough to another body for to use a gravity assist.

>>3657740
Could you start using a trip so I don't even have to read the first couple words of your posts?

Please and thank you.

>>3657719
>move ceres
Such a delta v for such a massive object is impossible.

Mars doesn't need an internally produced magnetosphere. I said that in the original post.

>>3657774
No. I'm not the guy you were arguing with earlier, either. LLike I said. 39 hours of work makes you do stupid things.

>>3657782
It's not impossible. Just very hard.

I know Mars doesn't need a magnetosphere, but devising a way to melt a planet from the inside out seems like an interesting project that I would probably try just for the sake of seeing if it could work.

Another way I could think of doing the same would be to have a sub-stellar mass black hole penetrate Mars several times. The conversion of mass to energy could probably jumpstart the heating.

Of course it would also kill anything and everything close to Mars during the time the radiation wasn't masked by the bulk of Mars.

>>3657771
Composition of comets:
A.H. Delsemme, Chemical composition of cometary nuclei, in Comets U of Arizona press, 1982, pp 85-130
Mass of comets:
H. Rickman et. Al Estimates of masses, volumes and densities of short-period comet nuclei
Publication:
In ESA, Proceedings of the International Symposium on the Diversity and Similarity of Comets p 471-481

Comets are mostly made of small volatile organic and inorganic molecules and ions. There are trillions of comets in the Oort cloud, from a few meters across to hundreds of kilometers across. In fact, one theory to explain the presence of volatile liquids and gases on earth is a cometary bombardment after the earlier bombardment by rocky asteroids. Current work focuses on comparing isotopic ratios in comets to those on earth.

>>3657771
What's your number on the mass of the nitrogen needed?

>>3657839
>Oort cloud comets
Oort cloud comets are too far away or have too eccentric of orbits. They cannot be redirected. Like I said, we have to focus on the comets that either pass near Mars or pass near enough to other bodies for a gravity assist.

Thanks for the articles. I'll save them for later.

>>3657875

Maybe he means Kuiper Belt

>>3657852
I can't find the number but Earth has a 10^18 kg of nitrogen in its atmosphere and Mars has roughly 1/4th the surface area, so let's drop the amount of nitrogen needed from 10^8 kg to 10^7 kg.

Mars also has a extreme elevations which reduce the relative pressure in some areas and increase it in others. So, air pressure doesn't have to average out to breathable, the low lying areas are the only places that have to meat the minimum requirement. Plus we don't need Earth's sea level pressure. The air pressure of Earth mountain ranges would be good enough. Let's assume these reductions bring down the 10^7 kg of nitrogen to 10^6 kg of nitrogen. If I remember correctly, I had an even number for the order of magnitude so that sounds about right.

>>3657919
I think he meant Oort cloud because he mentioned where Earth's volatiles came from, which is supposedly the Oort cloud.

Kuiper belt comets would be usable so long as the at very least pass near Neptune. We could pass the comets in front of Neptune to slow them down into a series of assists that will end with it "slowly" burning up in Mars' atmosphere. The heat, the gases, the volatiles... they will all be useful.

Comets may the single most scary group of objects in our solar system, but boy will they be useful. Every thorn has its rose... well, no, not really, but you know what I mean.

So yeah, Mars doesn't need a magnetosphere.

>>3658182
No shit

>>3657701
With the galaxies largest induction heater.

>>3658182

Do you have even the slightest idea what the earth's magnetic field does for us?
Not only protecting us from normal cosmic radiation, but from solar flares and other high energy events.

Sure, digging under a few metres of matian 'soil' might protect you from most of the radiation when you don't need to be on the surface, but what happens when a solar flare takes out every bit of equipment that can't be completely buried underground?


And don't even bother blabbing about terraforming planets. Humanity is so far away from that it's pathetic. Look at it like this:

large projects cost money.

NASA currently gets (less than) 20 billion per year.
The federal budget for the USA is ~3.6 trillion.

That means the most space-oriented nation on earth is spending 1/180th of its money on humanity's future in space.

And you think somehow humanity will decide to spend the money on a seriously fucking long term, risky, unproven experiment covering an are 15 times the size of the USA?

Why don't you wish for world peace while you're at it.

>>3658256
If we can raise the atmospheric pressure, it will give adequate protection from normal conditions.

The rest can be done with an artificial magshield between the planet and the sun.

>>3657449
and how exactly do you manage to terraform mars?

>>3658535
>heat it up
>increase volatile content
>through ice sublimation if there's enough
>through cometary bombardment if there isn't
>bring in rudimentary soil bacteria
>bring in rudimentary fungi
>bring in rudimentary flora
>bring in rudimentary fauna
>build a magshield
>bring in rudimentary colonists

>>3658535

Warm it up, only needs to be 30c warmer and it would start to terraform itself. The ground would still be red, but the water would be flowing naturally. Once that has been achieved we start to introduce Bacteria and fungi, Then later down the track we plant grasses and trees