Forum - View topicINTEREST: U.S. Department of Defense's DARPA Research Eerily Similar to Terraformars
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enurtsol
 Posts: 14761 |
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We already know it's going to end in disaster.
Look at this: 
They're already engineering PMS into the organisms! |
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Blanchimont
 Posts: 3448 Location: Finland |
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Bio-engineered cockroaches might have their time in the limelight yet but there are other thoughts of terraforming Mars already in existence, a lot more simple ones, like building a giant ring around Mars to induce a magnetic field, and giant mirrors spread around LaGrange points reflecting sunlight towards Mars to warm it up while doing double duty by also acting as giant solar cells and powering the giant ring by transmitting the energy required for the magnetic field by means of microwave radiation. ...Things like that, for example. It would take a lot of time, sure. But in the grand scheme of things, even human existence on Terra is but a flickering moment yet...
About the time it would take for a breathable atmosphere to leak out on Mars, if left alone. Still, if we ever get to that point, that's still a lot of time to come up with solutions. While fending off a few dinosaur comebacks and extinction-level meteorites... Now, reversing the mirror thing to cool Venus, might sure take considerably longer. Though hardly up in the hundreds of millions either... |
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Kadmos1
 Posts: 13556 Location: In Phoenix but has an 85308 ZIP |
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@Utsuro no Hako: If NASA and the government are worried about the $ that they would use on a manned mission to Mars, then we could apply the same level of logic of any large money-spending operation that the gov't does.
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Hyperdrve
 Posts: 276 |
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I'm guessing you have enough knowledge on the subject to make some order of magnitude estimates. OK then a giant planetary balloon which is made of a porous material, to maintain a constant atmospheric pressure. Ideally this material should be micrometers thick (or maybe even molecules thick?) so that it fits in a space rocket going to Mars. The molecule(s) making this ideal material should have very strong cohesive forces, and geometrical properties which allow for any interaction to be spread out evenly in the overall structure. The structure should also be easy to patch up and fix, in any case. Then the material should be somehow weaved into Mars atmosphere, while the surface of Mars is being terraformed so that it produces the air that will fill up the planetary balloon. |
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leafy sea dragon
 Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
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I read about Dyson spheres (shells that encapsulate celestial bodies completely, usually around a star to harness all of its solar power); there has been some serious thought about how to construct them, as mad as it may seem. What Freeman Dyson meant was to have a swarm of satellites instead, also known as a Dyson swarm.
Dyson spheres (and their derivatives) are a pretty popular thing in science fiction, so the effort comes not just from astrophysicists, but science fiction writers too. A possible alternative is to use centrifugal force, strucuring the shell as rapidly moving bands, to allow the material to support much more weight than it would if it were stationary. You also have concepts like the orbital ring, a cable encircling a planet that's attached to the planet and spins with it (Nikola Tesla had an idea like this). |
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Polycell
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Mr. Oshawott
 Posts: 6773 |
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I wonder if Mars would ever be a livable planet with its mostly-arid surface? Would plants really be capable of faring well there despite having limited frequency to sunlight, since Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun?
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Polycell
Posts: 4623 |
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There's definitely enough light reaching Mars to do the trick, but the flipside is that there's enough solar fury in those rays to kill them without protection, which is what renders Mars colonization so fantastic.
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leafy sea dragon
Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
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That, and the intense cold (though greenhouses could do the trick if it weren't for Mars's weak magnetic field). The intense cold is also the reason for Mars's dryness: The water's all frozen.
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enurtsol
Posts: 14761 |
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