Cyclone Posted January 14, 2012 Share Posted January 14, 2012 Where did I say that it would be easier than flying to mars? Here Terraforming wouldn’t be the expensive part; it’s the getting there and back that needs making cheaper we can already do that, but not at an affordable price, so everything than can be made cheaply on earth would cost far too much to transport to mars. People would need to come back because terraforming would take centuries. I think the general idea is that they would live in domes, having people travel back is a non starter. You go and it's for life, that's what colonisation means. The terraforming effort takes place whilst the colonisation is going on using closed (or semi closed) systems. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrSmith Posted January 14, 2012 Share Posted January 14, 2012 Here I think the general idea is that they would live in domes, having people travel back is a non starter. You go and it's for life, that's what colonisation means. The terraforming effort takes place whilst the colonisation is going on using closed (or semi closed) systems. That doesn't say anything about easier it says cheaper, and it’s the transportation of the domes that makes it unviable building somewhere to live on mars would be significantly cheaper than getting it there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cyclone Posted January 14, 2012 Share Posted January 14, 2012 You don't transport domes, you build them locally. The juxtaposition of harder and cheaper in your sentence implied that they were related. Ie harder = more expensive. Getting people and material there is currently hard and expensive. Terraforming the place is currently verging on impossible and impossibly expensive. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rich Posted January 14, 2012 Share Posted January 14, 2012 Mars is uninhabitable though, that's why the War of the Worlds happened 100 and odd years ago, the Martians got fed up of living there. And yes I know that's just a story, I have the book out from the Library at the moment, and I'm tempted to nick Mum's Kindle and download the e-book from Amazon. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
curriechick Posted January 14, 2012 Share Posted January 14, 2012 How about making it a Prison Colony for people that don't deserve to come back? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrSmith Posted January 14, 2012 Share Posted January 14, 2012 You don't transport domes, you build them locally. The juxtaposition of harder and cheaper in your sentence implied that they were related. Ie harder = more expensive. Getting people and material there is currently hard and expensive. Terraforming the place is currently verging on impossible and impossibly expensive. All that is required to start the process is a method of producing vast amounts of CO2, there is also some evidence that there are vast amounts of frozen CO2 and Methane, we already have the technology to melt it and we are more than capable of producing CO2. We just can't get there at an affordable price. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrSmith Posted January 14, 2012 Share Posted January 14, 2012 How about making it a Prison Colony for people that don't deserve to come back? It will end up like Australia and be much better off than us. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cyclone Posted January 14, 2012 Share Posted January 14, 2012 We produce CO2 here by reacting carbon based fuels with atmospheric oxygen, not an option on Mars where there is no atmospheric oxygen. Terraforming can be started as you suggest, but it's clearly much more complicated than that. We want an atmosphere that is approx 20% oxygen, around 20 degrees Celcius, ideally at approx 1 atmos pressure (earth atmos) although that last one could vary quite a bit. Simply filling the atmosphere with CO2 would start to increase the temperature, but would make the atmosphere poisonous to humans. We also require a biosphere, so that means genetically modifying and releasing organisms that can live in the prevailing conditions and do something towards changing those conditions in the direction we need. We already ship (small) nuclear reactors there onboard the various rovers and probes, what we'd need initially is a larger reactor and some equipment, that's enough in theory to start a small colony which can then extract local materials to further the process. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rich Posted January 14, 2012 Share Posted January 14, 2012 How about making it a Prison Colony for people that don't deserve to come back? Won't happen, the HRA would never allow it for a start. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrSmith Posted January 14, 2012 Share Posted January 14, 2012 We produce CO2 here by reacting carbon based fuels with atmospheric oxygen, not an option on Mars where there is no atmospheric oxygen. Terraforming can be started as you suggest, but it's clearly much more complicated than that. We want an atmosphere that is approx 20% oxygen, around 20 degrees Celcius, ideally at approx 1 atmos pressure (earth atmos) although that last one could vary quite a bit. Simply filling the atmosphere with CO2 would start to increase the temperature, but would make the atmosphere poisonous to humans. We also require a biosphere, so that means genetically modifying and releasing organisms that can live in the prevailing conditions and do something towards changing those conditions in the direction we need. We already ship (small) nuclear reactors there onboard the various rovers and probes, what we'd need initially is a larger reactor and some equipment, that's enough in theory to start a small colony which can then extract local materials to further the process. Yep that sounds about right but the problem at the moment is getting there at an affordable price so we can’t even start the process even though we already have the technology to start it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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