/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.11314291]

Would it be possible to make greenhouses on Mars and slowly release the oxygen created to create the atmosphere?

[Anonymous No.11314319]

>>11314291
Nitrogen is what it really needs. Just got to calculate the rate of atmospheric escape and produce more gas than that.

[Anonymous No.11314384]

>>11314291
Mars' specs:
• Gravity (g): 0.377g (37.7% of Earth's 1g)
• Atmospheric Pressure (AP): 0.636 kPa (0.62% of Earth's 101.325 kPa AP at sea level and 1.88% of Mount Everest's 33.7kPa AP)
• Radiation: 0.2 to 0.3 Sv per year (97-98% more than Earth's average of 6.2 mSv/0.0062 Sv per year.)
• Solar Radiance: 590 W/m^2 (59% of Earth's 1000 W/m^2)

Mount Everest's peak has an altitude of 29,029 feet (5.497 miles) above global mean sea level on Earth. That is on average 30 kPa. Mars atmosphere pressure is only 0.610 kPa.

>Earth's atmosphere is about 300 miles (480 kilometers) thick, but most of it is within 10 miles (16 km) the surface.
Thus, in a round about way Mount Everest's peak is about a bit more than halfway up into Earth's usable atmosphere. Meaning, there's only about 4.503 miles of atmosphere above it. Let's pretend this is the distance we need for your exercise,

Mars diameter: 4,212.3 miles
Mars volume: 39,100,000,000 cubic miles
Needed atmosphere thickness: 4.503 miles
Mars Dia + Atmosphere thickness = 4216.803 miles
Mars Dia + Atmosphere volume = 39,300,000,000 cubic miles

39,300,000,000 cubic miles - 39,100,000,000 cubic miles = 200,000,000 cubic miles

You need 200,000,000 cubic miles of breathable air to reach Mount Everest level of atmospheric pressure on Mars.
21% of 200,000,000 cubic miles = 42,000,000 cubic miles (68,731,291 megatons) of pure oxygen needed.
79% of 200,000,000 cubic miles = 158,000,000 cubic miles of pure nitrogen needed.

>all calculations are fuck terrible and make wide assumptions and probable have huge mistakes everywhere.

>greenhouses
Not enough light from the sun to do that. Radiation shielding will strip the rest of the light until windows are no longer windows. Use RTGs for energy to power LED grow lights instead.

>release the oxygen created to create the atmosphere
As the above calculations show, you are going to need a shit load of gas to give Mars any kind of remotely usable atmosphere. Plants will not help.

[Anonymous No.11314452]

is it possible to have internet on mars and see earth's 4chan threads on mars? a network between earth and mars?

[Anonymous No.11314455]

>>11314452
obviously. the lag would be incredible though. it's like 20 minutes isn't it.

[Anonymous No.11314464]

>>11314455
since we cant set up wires, will it like consume too much electricity to communicated between earth and mars?

[Anonymous No.11314465]

Mars has no magnetic field, so any long term attempt to retain an atmosphere is ultimately futile.

That's why it doesn't have an atmosphere in the first place.

[Anonymous No.11314469]

>>11314464
how do you think satellites power themselves. one LR satellite and one geostationary satellite is all you need.

you're still dealing with 20 minute latency, which makes it futile for anything other than long form communication.

of course any colony on mars would have it's own intranet.

[Anonymous No.11314556]

>>11314464
No matter what you do, the distance between Mars and Earth is about 190.82 million miles or about 1,024.359 light seconds (17.07 minutes) at best. That's both directions. So 17.07x2 = 34.14 minutes round trip for a ping.

Things like downloads would be how ever fast the bandwidth on that system allows. So, that could be super fast. You could download the wikipedia torrent quickly, but not be able to have a quick conversation with someone.

[Anonymous No.11315070]

>>11314291
It would be faster to push comets and high ice volume rocks down into the well and eventually into intercepts with Mars. Even doing that it would take several centuries even with the most optimistic propulsion systems due to the sheer volume of material that needs to be shifted. That's just to get the oxygen, nitrogen, organics and other components necessary for an atmosphere to Mars, then you need to give it all time to condense and precipitate, and you need to eventually establish an artificial magnetic field to prevent excessive UV exposure so complex life won't have it's DNA sandblasted 24/7 in daylight.

[Anonymous No.11315237]

Mars is just not big enough.

[Anonymous No.11315240]

>>11314384
I suppose it's going to be a longterm project post colonization.

[Anonymous No.11315264]

>ay ay let me crush the numbers in ummm... yes we should colonize the universe in 100 years
that's why physicists won't account for anything and will always be bellow engineers. do you know how hard it is to get something out of the earth's atmosphere or the fact that it's impossible to have propulsion in vacuum by electricity alone meaning that even if you had endless amounts of electricity you still can't propel yourself without a propellant

[Anonymous No.11315965]

>>11314291
No. NASA itself has a page on their website showing how absurd the concept of terraforming Mars is: https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/goddard/2018/mars-terraforming

And they don't even address the microgravity problem.

[Anonymous No.11316051]

>>11314465
They've actually found what may or may not be Marsquakes. And even then, you could just launch what would essentially be a giant magnet into one of Mars' Lagrange points in order to create a magnetic field.

ANYWAY, I personally think it's possible, but that it'd take a few centuries, at the very least.

[Anonymous No.11316379]

All your gasses would be stripped away by the Solar wind. Mars' real problem is a lack of a magnetic field. You either need to re-start Mar's internal dynamo (and keep it running, because it probably lacks the Mass to stop from cooling too fast), which isn't feasible by any current tech, or you need to generate a magnetic field like some anons have suggested.

Even then, the sheer volume of gas you would need is incomprehensibly huge. Your best bet would be redirecting icy-asteroids and kuiper belt objects onto a collision course with Mars.

Ultimately, Mars isn't going to be Terraformed in Human timeframes, it will take geologic timeframes and untold amounts of resources, it simply isn't worth it.

You could build thousand of O'Neill style space habitats with the same resources and material, and house billions of people on them.

IF there are ever permanent Mars colonies, they will be subterranean centrifugal habitats housing a few thousand researchers and maintenance personnel, maybe some recreational facilities for tourists and such. But Mars will likely never be inhabited in a serious way by Humans. There are too many more economical options.

>>11316051
>you could just launch what would essentially be a giant magnet into one of Mars' Lagrange points
You would need more copper in that magnet than all the copper ever mined on Earth. It might be possible with asteroids but it would take decades, possibly centuries to build, and you would have to expend some fuel to maintain it.

If you HAVE to terraform Mars it's probably the best option.

[Anonymous No.11316401]

>>11314291

Yes. t. van Leuwen, executive with Weyland Yutani

[Anonymous No.11317806]

>>1131438
good work

[Equivocation No.11317828]

>>11314291
The magnetic field and the gravity on Mars is not strong enough to maintain an atmosphere. Most gasses like oxygen and nitrogen are stripped off by solar winds.

[Anonymous No.11317842]

>>11316379
>Mars isn't going to be Terraformed in Human timeframes,

I'm okay with this, it keeps us focused on saving this planet.

Some recombinant form of life (bacterial, fungal, etc. (DNA based) could be developed that will start the process of terraformation, even if it never produces conditions Terrahumans would be able to adapt to.

[Anonymous No.11317847]

>>11314291
Zubrin proposed factories making CFCs to trigger a greenhouse effect. Another option is to liberate water vapor into the atmosphere. Oxygen is a second step.
>>11314319
>Nitrogen is what it really needs.
This is the longest pole in the tent for terraforming. Mars needs an external source of nitrogen: Earth, Venusian ammonia or asteroidal.
>>11314465
That's on a scale of 100,000s of years. If we can make a .5 or 1 bar atmosphere in a few hundred years, we can maintain it indefinitely.

[Anonymous No.11317850]

>>11316379

Such a tiresome old "point" that gets dragged up every single fucking time.

Atmospheric erosion takes place on geological timescales. If you created a 1 bar atmosphere on Mars, left the solar wind to do its thing and came back in 10k years, you would not be able to notice the change. And that's without replenishing it.

There are plenty of reasons Mars is a shit place to attempt to colonise. Making up problems that don't exist isn't one of them.

[Anonymous No.11317863]

>>11314291
Mars has no magnetic field so any atmosphere would be blasted away
And the radiation would kill any life on the surface

[Anonymous No.11317869]

>>11315240
The best option for greening Mars would be on a local scale such as deep craters or trenches where heavy gasses could be collected and made thick enough to block some radiation

[Anonymous No.11317877]

Titan is a better option than Mars desu
At least it has an atmosphere and enough hydrocarbons to be a Ford F-150’s dream

Its also geologically active meaning geothermal energy is a possibility for heating

[Anonymous No.11317885]

>>11317877
More than that, saturn had a massive magnetic feild which Titan sits within, and tons of valuable resources nearby in its ring system, not to mention hydrogen for fuel
Overall its a much more valuable region than mars will ever be
At best Mars might make a good “gas station” for the outer system

[Anonymous No.11317916]

>>11317850
orbital solar wind blockers

[Anonymous No.11318450]

>>11317828
Doesn't the process of the solar wind stripping mars of it's atmosphere take thousands of years?

So if humans created an atmosphere on mars and maintained it this really would never be an issue unless somebody forgot to do that for a few thousand years, right?

[Anonymous No.11318837]

>>11314291
space is fake.

how can an atmosphere stick to a ball without dispersing into the infinite vaccum?

and if you say gravity, the standard model excludes gravity. gasses will disperse in all directions regardless of your psudoscience of downward accelleration due to gravity

[Anonymous No.11318852]

>>11318450
It'd take even longer than that, but I think the point is that it's a huge amount of effort to inevitably end up as just a trail of scattered gas throughout the solar system.

[Anonymous No.11319292]

>>11318852
What's the point of doing anything if eventually entropy will reduce everything to scattered inert matter throughout an infinitely sparse universe?

[Anonymous No.11319312]

>>11318450
No.

[Anonymous No.11319317]

Earth
>oh my god humans are ruining the world with co2 and making the temperature go up super fast, we're all going to burn alive! There's a scientific consensus

Any other planet
>dude it's impossible to change the atmosphere of a planet that's scientifically impossible idiot

[Anonymous No.11319321]

>>11319292
Because Mars isn't going to become habitable like Earth. For several reasons, including atmospheric conditions, it's just a place for short-term habitation, while we extract resources, or whatever. Raising children in reduced gravity is likely to cause medical damage, for example.

There might be other planets, that could be a new Earth. But they're outside the solar system.

I suppose Mars could potentially be a nearby trial run of our attempts at terraforming.

[Anonymous No.11319324]

>>11319317
Well, this is about the level of "thinking" I'd expect from a dipshit conservatard. There are multiple reasons you can't fucking terraform Mars, you fucking baby-brained, imbecile. Namely, the microgravity will kill you. But even if it didn't, there aren't enough raw materials on Mars to MAKE a fucking atmosphere. Earth has vast carbon stores just lying underground. Mars doesn't. And, again, even if it DID, it doesn't have a fucking magnetosphere so any solar flare will just burn off the atmosphere even if you could somehow cobble one together.

Read a god damned book. God damn, you're stupid.

[Anonymous No.11319327]

>>11319317
Nobody said it's impossible to change an existing atmosphere, it's just impossible to introduce one on Mars.

[Anonymous No.11319334]

>>11319324
>ad hominem attacks
>"we can change an atmosphere when it supports my opinion, but not when it doesn't"
Sure buddy :) Keep watching those I freaking love science youtube channels, you got it all figured out.

[Anonymous No.11319336]

>>11319334
You're stupid. Accept your place in the world.