Sorry, we can't terraform Mars

You think a greenhouse is equivalent to a habitat on Mars? Sorry we've never done anything close to that. And talk about lack of return...

 

Why is there no reason to believe that?

To get to Mars and put people on it, we need to figure out how to lift the people, all the supplies they'll need for the trip, all the supplies they'll need to get established on the ground, in a ship. That requires advanced rocket technology, and/or the ability to assemble things in space.

The ship itself will be another revelation. The crew will live in it for 18 months or more. Thus it needs to be both shielded from the radiation of interplanetary space (not an easy problem to solve), and be sufficiently "homey" that the crew doesn't go nuts on the way there. Not to mention figuring out how to protect the crew from the effects of prolonged weightlessness. All while keeping the total weight low enough that the trip can be made with a reasonable amount of fuel.

That is all orders of magnitude more difficult than going to the Moon -- which ought to be obvious, because otherwise we would have gone to Mars back in 1970.

The things we will learn by sending people that distance will help us make the next logical leap -- to the asteroid belt and the outer solar system, where it seems increasingly likely that we may find habitable zones in places like Europa and Enceladus.

And in terms of scientific exploration, a permanent human presence on Mars can do more detailed and flexible exploration than most robots. 80% of exploration can be done by robots. But until we develop truly autonomous robots, deep, long-term exploration requires people, IMO.

We will go to the Moon first -- if we can't establish a base on the Moon, we can't establish one on Mars. But it's silly to think that going to Mars won't teach us anything new.

 

Underground cities make more sense.....which would require some terraforming.

 

No. I didn't say that. Those things are good to prepare for the real thing. But we still have to do the real thing to push our technology forward and expand our space travel capabilities. Mars could be a stepping stone of a vast mining operation of our asteroid belt in a distant future. We have to develop technology to get us to Mars as fast and as comfortable as possible so that we may have the technology to go farther in the future.

Anyway. I think an underground colony would be ideal for mars as the pressure there will allow for flowing water to exist

 

Why Mars though wouldn't underwater living areas be more practical first and maybe asteroid mining, over going to Mars and building Bio Domes of some type **** the Moon would be ideal to go to before Mars and test key technology there first and get the way to do colonies right.

 

No, it simply has allowed us to completely understand growing things in artificial environments.

A colony on mars would have to be self sustaining as far as food/water/power is concerned. Everything else would basically have to be of earth origin.

As for the lack of return, I guess you can't understand what the implications of solving all of those technological problems related both getting there repeatedly and surviving there for prolonged periods would have on terrestrial civilization. The spark that created the microprocessor that has powered the digital revolution came from the race to the moon. Ya think that was a worthwile investment on that little item alone? There's literally dozens of other tranformative technologies and inventions that have the same origins.

 

Should we try to terraform Mars or try to fix our own planet?

 

It doesn't have to be an either-or. And frankly, it might be easier to terraform an uninhabited planet.

 

I think you are really missing my point and mixing it in with the opinions of others. I'm not opposed to Martian colonization, but right now we can't even build self sustaining habitats here on earth, so I'm pretty sure there are tons of technical issues that we have not even thought of. It would be a lot easier to test bed them here on earth. If something goes wrong, there isn't a year long trip to supply a repair part.

As far as the return, I don't see a Martian colony as ever being profitable, so if it's done, it will be because some government will be willing to spend trillions for national glory. Maybe the Chinese...

And of course, the actual terraforming of Mars seems like it would be impossible. It's going to be underground/domed communities or nothing.

 

Since we haven't set foot on Mars as of yet. It would be my h easier to fix our own place planet. We would get faster results as well.

 

While I don't support Mars Terraforming, or settlement, or colonization, but DO support unmanned missions/research....I have to ask.

Just because you weren't alive during an event, means it doesn't matter!?

The pluses realized through the Apollo Project, took decades to show major benefit to humanity.

 

I think the math for that is off by at least an order of magnitude. Mars has a surface area of about 90 million square kilometers. If you covered it in 10 million kilometer-sized chunks of frozen CO2, you'd have quite a bit more than the 400 ppm of CO2 that, in our atmosphere, keeps things nice and toasty.

 

I think the problem with your math is they're assuming an atmosphere of almost 100% carbon dioxide for Mars, but on Earth it's not even 1% of our atmosphere. You still need a lot more gasses to make the air pressure on Mars usable (for us).

 

I think it matters that I was alive when man set foot on the moon. It was an honor to witness an event man had been considering and guessing about for centuries. I was fortunate to witness it.

 

Of course. And that's the point I'm making: they're assuming far more CO2 than is necessary. What are they going for, a runaway greenhouse effect like Venus enjoys? What we'll need to do is drop huge meteors of water ice onto the surface to create standing water. Eventually there'll be enough that we can build processors to split out the oxygen and let that seed the atmosphere. With oxygen emitting microbes doing their bit, the atmosphere would slowly become fit for humans to breathe. The trick is not to be boggled by the scale of the engineering. By the time we get around to terraforming Mars, we'll have all kinds of experience in huge projects in space.

 

It's a nice science fiction novel, but I feel pretty safe in saying that's not going to happen.

 

A Ringworld or Dyson Sphere is sci-fi. Since real estate in the solar system is a fixed quantity, terraforming Mars is simply a matter of time, because eventually, we'll need the living space.

 

yeah, I missed the landing by a few years.

Would have loved to be a teen at the time at least.

 

Then we should focus on expanding somewhere that can actually profit us. The Moon has Helium-3. Mars has rust.

 

Flipping the poles doesn't eliminate the magnetic field. It disrupts it.

 

The easiest way to do it would be to dome over Martian canyons.

 

Far easier to create colonization within ancient lava tubes and dome over entrances for agriculture.
http://globalnews.ca/news/3117985/canadian-researchers-lay-groundwork-for-lava-tube-living-on-mars/

 

There is already enough frozen water on Mars.....we just need to increase and warm the atmosphere.

 

Not about easy. That dome would be vulnerable. I am operating under the assumption that caves will leak less O2 than a dome when something cracks it.

 

Wouldn't living totally underground like that make logistics difficult?