/sci/ - Science & Math

How do you power a base? Solar, nuclear or both?

I have been reading up on Mars colonization and terraforming possibilities.
Unexpectedly, everything seems pretty doable, including terraforming, except for one detail. Even if you were to change Mars' athmophere to be closer to earth's, the plnet wouldn't be able to keep it for 2 reasons:

1. low gravity. Fundamental elements like Oxygen and Nitrogen would leak in outer space

2. no magnetosphere. Solar winds would gradually strip way whatever athmosphere you put on the planet

There's one thing I don't understand though, which is the time scale for this to happen. If it were hundreds of millions of years, it wouldn't be much of a problem, but obviously if the scale is even just hundreds of years or, god forbid, even less, it would mae terraforming impossible.

Anyone knows about this?