Timeline for sources of water for martian terraformers
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
7 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Dec 11, 2022 at 18:38 | comment | added | Christopher James Huff | And since Mars doesn't have nearly enough oxygen in its CO2, you'd need to crack it from the rocks in the crust. And you'd still need to get nitrogen somewhere, while you could get at least some from comets. | |
| Dec 11, 2022 at 18:33 | comment | added | Christopher James Huff | ...it really doesn't. Mars has 0.28 times Earth's surface area. Scaling the water requirements with surface area, Mars needs about 4e16 t of hydrogen to match Earth. If you captured all of the sun's solar wind with 100% efficiency, it'd take about a thousand years to collect enough hydrogen. If you only caught what came within half an AU or so of Mars (a magnetic bubble that would reach Earth when the two planets pass each other), that goes up to about 40 thousand years. And the secondary purpose isn't really needed, once you've constructed an atmosphere it'll remain for millions of years. | |
| Dec 11, 2022 at 15:57 | comment | added | Gillgamesh | @ChristopherJamesHuff the discussion seems to bolster this idea. Agree that the apparatus to collect that much H, would be ludicrously large perhaps the HxW of a planetary magnetic field. Which is what I proposed. In any case a magnetic field or something solving the problem being nessisary. Why not have it serve dual purpose. And in the least case it could help maintain an established atmosphere. | |
| Dec 11, 2022 at 14:43 | comment | added | Christopher James Huff | space.stackexchange.com/a/45984/15771 has some numbers on the density issues. You would need an utterly gigantic collector to make this work. You would also need to brake the hydrogen by a couple hundred km/s, and there's nowhere near enough CO2 to make all the water you need for terraforming. Just go grab some comets. | |
| Dec 10, 2022 at 20:48 | comment | added | Gillgamesh | @SeanOConnor en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_carbonate | |
| Dec 10, 2022 at 10:30 | comment | added | user86462 | What is carbon silicate? | |
| Dec 9, 2022 at 17:27 | history | answered | Gillgamesh | CC BY-SA 4.0 |