/sci/ - Science & Math

I'm not sure about that...

Mining a planet and sending raw materials back to Earth would be at an astronomical price. Even if refineries were on Mars and raw materials were processed first it would still be very costly and there's really no incentive for such endeavors for years and years to come.

Terraforming over a period of 500-1000 years seems feasible and at that point Mars would represent a sort of "Wild West" with great rewards and great risk. It still wouldn't be necessary to travel there, but there would at least be incentive. Land grab, raw materials, etc...

Still would likely be too expensive to ship them back to Earth, but new markets would open up on Mars where they'd be unavailable or saturated back on Earth.

>>5260278
The point is that Mars WON'T be terraformed because there is no profitable way to do it.

Under traditional capitalist economics it will likely never be economical to do any more than kinetic bombardment through comets.

>>5260278
>astronomical price

>>5260287
Converting solar sails into mirrors would make economical sense and could drastically change the environment with enough time. Once the mirrors are in orbit they will just keep on contributing to terraformation.

>>5260298
Personally if I were overseeing the terraformation procedure I'd mill down asteroid regolith via automated stations designed to seperate out required elements to extrude some kind of radiation-tolerant, transparent, fracture-resistant sheeting. Each thin strip of this material would be indented with slightly curving lines. So basically a composite fresnel lens.

Completing a 20 x 20km sheet strung together placed at 25,000,000km orbit from Sol could do the same job as a faaaar, far larger sail array near Martian orbit, as the solar irradiance at that distance is roughly 40,000W m2 (Earth is 1.2kW, Mars is ~470W)

'Course, even such a development requires automation to advance a great deal. I reckon the technology will be available by 2040.

>>5260283
There's no profitable way to send rovers to Mars, but we do it anyways...

Mirrors or other such objects that can basically sit in orbit for hundreds of years slowly changing the atmosphere are projects I'm sure NASA would love to start. Terraforming would be a giant leap for mankind and I'm sure the process will begin in our lifetime.

>>5260311
This. Profit isn't an issue as much as the advancement of the human race. Thank god we live in a country where at least 1 percent of the things we do aren't related to profit.

Mars doesn't have a magnetosphere. Even with some atmosphere to protect you, you're going to get fairly large doses of radiation

>>5260323

>>5260310
But you must keep in mind that a mirror at that position, even if constantly repositioning to face Mars, would only be able to focus on Mars some of the time.

Good idea though. I hadn't thought about positioning mirrors much closer to the Sun.

>>5260329
And?

>>5260311
NASA wouldn't be the one terraforming Mars. The only entity with the resources and will would be coorporations.

>>5260323
1%? 1% of the Federal budget? NASA only gets 0.5%. What is the other 0.5%?

>>5260333
Not mirrors, fresnel lens. And I have a few ideas on how to reflect it Marsward constantly.

>>5260337
Cancer and birth defects

>>5260345
>fresnel lens
Not to be dwell on semantics, but aren't fresnel lenses made out of mirrors?

>>5260329
Robert Zubrin did the math for a manned crew on a 2.5 year trip to and from Mars. With its current atmosphere and the paltry shielding that habs on the surface would provide, you would actually receive less radiation than if you were a pack-a-day smoker for the same time.

Another thing you have to factor in is Mars' gravity. 0.376Gs. A 1 bar atmosphere on Mars would have over 2.5x the scale height of one on Earth, not to mention that Mars receives ~43% of the solar radiation that Earth does.

A planetary magnetic field is only truly useful for extended periods of habitation (think 50,000,000 - 800,000,000 years)

>>5260351
Those exist everywhere. It has yet to be shown that the increase in such medical complications would make Mars inhospitable.

>>5260355
Mirrors use reflection, fresnel lenses use refraction through transparent substances with higher refraction indexes than air/vacuum.

>>5260363
Oh, thanks for the info.

But what would they be made out of? Surely thin sheets of aluminum would be much easier to produce than actual silica glass.

>>5260370
The way I see it it is harder to deal with massive mirror arrays despite the relative abundance and ease of making metallic panels as making them a great size with constant adjustment of angles to line up sunlight onto Mars will become more trouble than it's worth, as shit like solar wind means that it requires constant repositioning.

I will admit finding a substance that can be produced in an automated fashion from regolith that is transparent, radiation tolerant, can withstand +1,000'C temperatures and can weather micrometeoroid impacts will be a task unto itself.

>>5260375
But come on man, thin films of aluminum would be easy to produce, meteorite proof, can handle high and low temperatures. Reposititioning wouldn't be necessary at the lagrange points and the fresnel lens would need to be repositioned all the time too outside of the lagrange points. The fresnel lens has the added difficulty of having to be turned in as one giant piece instead of small independent mirrors and its a lot more massive.

>>5260335
That's just stupid. Corporations don't have many resources for space travel, unless you're just considering money.

NASA will start the terraforming process, they've probably already outlined a plan. It's the next logical step after manned travel to Mars, which we'll probably see in the next 20-30 years.

>>5260384
>The fresnel lens has the added difficulty of having to be turned in as one giant piece
No, in my original post I stated that it would be thin strips that would be lightly connected (magnetism, physical connections)

My opposition to reflective vs. refractive is purely based in variable solar wind output and how that may affect its positioning.

>>5260390
>Corporations don't have many resources for space travel
Who do you think will be mining in space?