Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: diamondgeezer on February 21, 2005, 01:09:26 pm
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4285119.stm
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Diamond Geezer owns a Ten Pole Tudor CD
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Oooh
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intresting
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This just means the TV watching people are smarter. They take what they need from TV rather than TV dominating their lives. The way forward indeed.
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01010?
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probably meant to be posted in another thread, maybe the UK TV downloading one....
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i'm gonna go post something about Mars in that thread...
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But...oh, ok then...
Water does dramatically improve the possibilities for colonies though.
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It also drasticly improves the possibilities for syncronized swimming teams... ON MARS!!
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Bum bum buuuuummm!
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Originally posted by Scuddie
It also drasticly improves the possibilities for syncronized swimming teams... ON MARS!!
... in EVA suits! :D
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Don't forget whaling...
*sings*
'We're whalers on The Moon...err... Mars...'
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Alright, let's think terraforming here. Or at least contained colonisation - that lake could be nicely melted to provide both water and oxygen.
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But you're missing something... It's too damn cold on Mars
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Hmmm... maybe we should store up all our spare greenhouse gases and use them to create another planet to screw up! Yay!
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Originally posted by Scuddie
But you're missing something... It's too damn cold on Mars
naah, just build a sauna or two and we'll be fine
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but the atmosphere on mars is too thin. if you melt the water it'll boil away into space.
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But... wouldn't terraforming eventually thicken the atmosphere...? Some how? With magic?
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Yes, we are magically going to increase Mars' mass by .3x so that its gravity can actually hold onto lighter molecules.
Curiously enough, the Atomic weight of H2O has had an absolutely enormous impact on the way the Solar System was created ;)
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The lower gravity and lack of magnetic field just means that the atmosphere would have to be artificially renewed
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Diamond Geezer has no fear of heights
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Just ship a lot of lead over there until the planet gets heavier - shouldn't be too difficult with the technology available in the year 2500 - which is about the next time humanity will bother with manned missions...
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Indeed, it is possible to Terrform Mars, but it would require constant maintenance as Diamondgeezer says. humanity is a pretty flexible species in the scheme of things, and fortunately, we are more tolerant of cold environments than hot ones, though even then we evolve/shed defence mechansims, such as skin/hair colour, changing the actual chemical content of our skin etc.
However, without the massive ecological 'machine' that Earth has to process its atmosphere, and with lower gravity which affects the weather fronts greatly, the relatively 'cold core' of the planet, which means no internally generated heat source etc, it would be an extremely difficult job.
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It would take decades, if not centuries to even get through the first phase of terraforming mars. We would have to begin with warming the planet up. this could be done in a number of ways. For example;
- Large orbital mirrors that reflect sunlight (and thus heat) towards Mars' surface.
- Greenhouse gas production facilities to create a global warming scenario.
The mirrors would be so huge that they would have to be constructed in space. This is possible, but not without a huge effort and a huge amount of money (which is not very likely to become available in the next decade). The project itself would also take a long time.
The mirror would be able to raise the surface temperature by several degrees. If they aim it at the polar caps, it will melt and release the CO² which is believed to exist in the ice.
As for the greenhouse gas producing facilities... i'd say we have experience in that area :p this plan would give a far easier first phase but a much harder second phase; actually building stuff on mars. This would mean manned missions and material transport. A lot and often.
Ofcourse, for the atmosphere to change planet-wide, it would take centuries if not millenia. It took Earth billions of years to evolve in to a habitable planet. So, an area-specific terraforming plan would be much more favorable.
If we succeed to change the atmosphere to even resemble Earth's atmosphere is a small part of Mars (which would mean continious and perpetual terraforming for that area), it is possible to build a 'dome' and filter the outside atmosphere for use inside the dome. :)
But, alas, we'll all be dead by the time we get there :p
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To those who ripped an asshole in my idea - I stated a contained environment - like domes etc.
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LOL To be honest Vyper, we'd would almost undoubtedly have to start in exactly that fashion. For a start, it's a lot cheaper to launch stuff into space from the Lower-G surface of Mars. So the Primary stage would probably be a domed mining/manufacturing colony to start extracting material and producing the required equipment for the second stage :)
At least they won't have to worry about what to do with emissions from the factories etc ;)
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Can't we just send all of our spent nuclear material to one side of Mars, enough to increase the mass, and perhaps warm up the planet, with the warm nucular glow of the Springfield power plant? ;7
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we should just send all our garbage to mars. that will solve all of our problems.
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Originally posted by vyper
To those who ripped an asshole in my idea
:lol: I'm sorry, I just thought that comment was the funniest thing...
Anyway, dumb question...The Dome looking things are actually craters right? Cause it looks kinda weird.
:nervous:
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One question: why even bother terraforming it? What's wrong with domed cities?
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We might run across some 20km wide domed space amoebas that theink they are females..... :nervous:
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fly me to the moon
we've bled the earth
there's nothing left
dollars in the heavens
guess we'll make out fortunes yet