Perhaps it is a money sink, but sooner or later, barring accidental extinction, humans must leave Earth in the future. The ground work must be laid and putting off for something as mundane as cost is rather pathetic and ends up slowing all forms of technological advancement...
On Mars? No, underground makes good sense - regolith gives you some radiation shielding, & you can pile on as much as you like - as long as the underlying structure can withstand the weight. Plus you get some external pressure to balance out the mechanical pressure of keeping the internal atmosphere @ pressure. Terraforming wouldn't be needed for underground living/base.
(on terraforming Mars) Yah, you'd need lots of free or almost-free energy - fusion? & a lot of water ice to dump on Mars. The real problem is retaining an atmosphere - if you could build up an atmosphere on the surface of the planet. That's a lot of gas, & you'd need to contain the atmosphere somehow, plus put up a Van Allen Belt or similar - to shield the Mars surface from the solar wind & miscellaneous radiation, making the surface safer for someone not in a high-radiation environmental suit. (Earth does this with a molten heavy iron/nickel core, spinning @ high speed - See the movie The Core.) Without the resources for planetary engineering, we'll probably have to build habitats, probably underground, & create shirtsleeve environments in there.
You'd risk your life & capital investment & crops & biosphere & etc. on a dome or series of domes on the surface of Mars? We don't have transparent steel, & I'm not sure even that tensile strength would be sufficient. Underground habs are a much likelier environment, @ least in the short term - the first century or two. Raise crops, put up solar collectors, do any dangerous chemical/radiological processing away from the habitats. Much easier to isolate dangerous processes that way - & that makes the thin to nonexistent atmosphere work for you - pressure waves can't propagate in near-vacuum. & terraforming is enormously expensive in terms of energy, materials, time - as a first-time effort, it would likely take centuries & a series of waves of flora & fauna, carefully tailored & monitored. It would likely take decades of study onsite, just to begin the surveys to see what we have to work with, & start planning to cultivate/manufacture the biota to implement.
Oh don't get me started about "The Core". I couldn't just suspend disbelief, I had to whack it on the head, drag it to a closet and lock it inside with a chair on the doorknob. I believe that Mars could be terraformed...eventually. The magnetic shield idea that NASA is sorting out on paper, the fact that there is enough ice in the solar system floating around freely...we could get an atmosphere going. Eventually. This would not be an easy process. This is something that would take a long time. A multi-generational project at best.
Depends on your time horizon. We would have to be underground to be safe in the beginning, but we would need to let loose with creating as much greenhouse gas as we possibly could to warm the planet and build its atmosphere over several thousand years.
On Mars? There are contradictions there. If your habs/energy plant/factories/crops/oxygen extraction gear is underground, & there's very thin atmosphere on Mars, & you're going to crash water ice/rocky meteors on Mars to build up the atmosphere - the atmosphere isn't going to supply much braking. The meteors will come in @ speed & generate seismic shocks, possibly damaging underground habs & infrastructure. Over a span of thousands of years, we'd likely be underground for the first couple of centuries @ least. Unless we can get free/very cheap energy to try to cook CO2 or oxygen out of regolith, getting oxygen into the atmosphere - let alone keeping the atmosphere in place & blocking serious solar wind/penetrating radiation - the last two problems look pretty tough now. We may come up with solutions, but that means committing to getting to Mars for the exploratory/inventory missions first - a long-term effort (50 years? more?) with no guarantee of an immediate payoff.
Of course there is no immediate payoff--the place is inhospitable. Its atmosphere, however, isn't that much different than earth's was in the beginning.
Assuming we could ever sustain human life on Mars, and IMO this is a huge assumption, we'll never transport more than a few humans to Mars. Mars colonization would only allow a new beginning for a few humans and will do nothing for the 7 to 10 billion left behind on Earth. Therefore, it is imperative that humans figure out how to allow Earth to be more sustainable! If not, billions of humans will either live a miserable life and/or be extinguished. We possess amazing technologies and capabilities to beautifully transform Earth but it will never happen because of the profit motive. IMO the only way to protect and sustain Earth is to remove the profit motive but too many people and governments derive their power from their wealth and will never give up their positions to exist in a world in which all people are equal...
Even if all the other problems were solved, Mars doesn't have the gravity to hold an atmosphere as thick as Earth. Would it ever be breathable? Lava tubes give us a readily available sheltered location to set up camp. https://lightsinthedark.com/2015/03/04/could-humans-set-up-camp-in-martian-lava-tubes/
In the distant future, we may find a reason to travel to Mars or elsewhere. There is currently no point to it other than philosophical ones. Yes, it would be cool! Unless, of course, the whole crew died. As we have yet to discover any habitable planet, and we are unlikely to ever discover one within any reasonable distance, there is no purpose for it. If there was ever some material discovered which would be a useful export to Earth, the transportation costs would be extreme. Robot explorers continue to increase in their ability to perform meaningful study. Their capabilities will keep improving. The systems used to propel them will continue to inprove. If a practical reason to transport people to another planet arises, the natural progression of space technology will eventually make it possible without a specific plan to do so.
Come on over to my house. I have built a time machine that will take anyone to any time in the past or future. Next to it is my space ship, ready to fly to Mars or Neptune. Obama already called me to see if he could rent it to go to Uranus. I said no.
This is really just speculation. There is NO reason to believe that traveling to Mars and establishing functioning societies there, is more likely than establishing sustainable societies on Earth.
Hello ChemEngineer. I am disappointed that you chose to leave rather than to continue to speak with me. I doubt you will respond, but hopefully we can resume the subject on the fallacies of evolution. As for this thread, while terraforming Mars sounds interesting, it simply is not practical at this time and won't be for centuries to come. That is if it were possible.
It's informed speculation. The history of mankind is rife with warfare between tribes who covet each other's liebensraum. It's a safe bet that that behavior won't change. The extra space provided by the inner planets and Jovian moons is just a stopgap while we prepare to colonize the stars.
Without free energy, I don't think the economics to even interplanetary colonization are going to work out. A Mars habitat would start out as a science station, & maybe exploratory - pin down water sources, precious metals ores, fissiles, etc. The energy costs to get people to Mars & then to preposition or land constant supplies after them - it'll be quite a while before the home planet can ease back on direct support. See Red Mars / Kim Stanley Robinson, c1993, Bantam Books. Subjects Planets -- Environmental engineering -- Fiction. Space colonies -- Fiction. Life on other planets -- Fiction. Mars (Planet) -- Colonization -- Fiction. Mars (Planet) -- Fiction. Series Mars trilogy Length 572 pages : map Very interesting on the science & technology of terraforming Mars. The 1st book of the trilogy. Also available as a download. Robinson did a lot of work, consulted with a lot of people to get the science right.
We need fusion to go to a level 1 civilization. That takes care of warming and provides the ability to terraform the Sahara and the interior of Australia to start with. We can regulate sea levels with desalination as well as provide drinking water lost from the lack of glacial runoff. We should eventually even begin to change the weather. We should be able to cool the climate some.
Interesting ideas. Of course, fusion is always receding by another 50 years or so. A workable fusion reactor would solve a lot of problems, though.
Thanks. It would get much closer if we had the foresight to throw a lot of money at it. It can be done. If they aren't going to do that then build a space elevator then transport materials to the moon. There we can build solar panels and transmit the energy back to earth via microwave. We can also build ships to get asteroids and put them in orbit around the moon while we mine them. These are all technically feasible although the elevator requires more work on nanotubes.
