Drunkard's Walk Forums

Full Version: The Martian Terraforming Project
You're currently viewing a stripped down version of our content. View the full version with proper formatting.
Pages: 1 2
Allright gang, it's probably time we consider one of the elephants in the room. What shall we do about/with the MTP? Which means to an extent, what shall we do about/with terraforming Mars?

The following stuff is a bit of brainstorming on my part that's partially recycled from another project. Comment at will:

Quote:As I get older, and... not "wiser." I doubt that age brings that much wisdom. "More cynical" would probably work. Anyway. The more I look at Mars, and the more we learn about it (in OTL, and certainly in Fenspace) the more I question the validity of the great Heinleinian Martian Manifest Destiny plan that seems to drive most conceptions of terraforming the planet.

Should we go to Mars? Absolutely. Should we stay there on a permanent basis? Of course. Should we change the planet to suit us? That I don't know.

Leaving aside the philosophical and moral questions of terraforming, I can't quite shake the idea that turning Mars into a miniature copy of Earth is the right thing to do. Mars is Mars, and just cut-pasting Earth on top of it *feels* wrong.

So where does this vague maundering leave us? Well, in my personal vision of the "terraformed" Mars we can forget a good chunk of the greenery. It's obviously a bit warmer, of course, and has a breathable atmosphere, maybe with a largish sea around Hellas and randomly scattered lakes. This Mars would be a cross between the deserts of New Mexico, the steppe of Central Asia with a bit of the Serengeti thrown in for flavor - long stretches of wide open plains punctuated by clusters of trees near open water sources. It's a very Pulper sort of Mars when you think about it, with plenty of wastes for people to have Adventures in.

Everybody chip in with their thoughts on where they want Mars to end up, and maybe we can work backwards from that to a working MTP.
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"
I'm game for the Steppes/Taiga/Desert/Savannah mold, Just think of Olympus Mons as being a very Rocky Mountain Ski Resort kind of place, though. Hmm... cities/domes getting their oxygen and CO2 fixing from Algae Pools and the occasional "weird looking plants?"
''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''

-- James Nicoll
The pulper sort of Mars sounds quite right for what I'd been imagining.  It would make the canals and aqueducts actually useful and not there just because.  Not that they aren't there just because anyway, but it makes it even better if there's a reason.
I'd been imagining Mars as being terraformed faster than Venus for vaguely defined reasons, which could give Mars the opportunity to go heavily into farming and ranching more traditional crops, especially with the help of the Space Amish.  Though that brings up an interesting question which I've barely begun to speculate on.  Handwavium environmental contamination.  Maybe that's where some of the monsters that show up in Adventures come from?
The MTP will need to come up with a way to increase Mars's mass so that it can hold onto the extra atmosphere they're going to give it.  It's only 1/10th (~11%) of Earth's mass, and they'll need a thicker atmo to git rid of the domes and increase the greenhouse effect.  And they'll need to create a planet wide magnetic field to help protect themselves and the atmosphere from solar wind.  'Though it wont be as bad as it is here that much farther out.
Pity Venus's atmosphere doesn't have anything they'd need on Mars.  I'd gotten this idea for large, and I mean large, balloons made out of 'waved cloth and rubber being used to ferry atmosphere from one planet to the next.  Maybe not even being towed at all, just drifting until someone at the other end can catch them...
--
Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to
build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the universe trying
to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the universe is winning.
-- Rick Cook, Mission Manager, NASA Mars Pathfinder Project
"...Pity Venus's atmosphere doesn't have anything they'd need on Mars.  I'd
gotten this idea for large, and I mean large, balloons made out of
'waved cloth and rubber being used to ferry atmosphere from one planet
to the next.  Maybe not even being towed at all, just drifting until
someone at the other end can catch them..."
Venus has CO2; great greenhouse gas for warming the planet and adding mass to the atmosphere, plus it breaks down to carbon and oxygen, both of which will be essential in establishing an ecosystem. Import methane from Jupiter (an even better greenhouse gas, by the way, *ten times* more efficient at trapping IR than CO2...but not anywhere near as efficient as plain old water vapor, which is over 100 times more efficient than CO2...but I digress.) and you get hydrogen, nitrogen, and more carbon. Run the CO2 through a greenhouse full of blue-green algae and you get breathable O2, and the enriched CO2 in the atmo makes the algae grow faster. Burn the methane, you get CO2 and water vapor. Process the methane into anhydrous ammonia, and you get one of the best nitrogen-fixing fertilisers ever developed.
Venus' atmo also has sulfur dioxide and sulfuric acid; both useful chemical compounds in their own right.
CHON: Carbon. Hydrogen. Oxygen. Nitrogen. The building blocks of life.
Quote:I'd been imagining Mars as being terraformed faster than Venus for vaguely defined reasons
In our timeline, Mars has a very thin atmosphere made up (mostly) of things that won't hurt a Terra-type biome. Venus has a very think atmosphere, lousy with sulfur compounds that have to be removed before terraforming can begin in earnest. (Yes, they're useful... but where they are now, they're in the way.)

In Fenspace, the Mars Terraforming Project is ahead of the Venus Terraforming Project because the MTP has an effective head start.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
Quote:Everybody chip in with their thoughts on where they want Mars to end up, and maybe we can work backwards from that to a working MTP.
I want an atmosphere thick enough to breathe and Valles Marineris to be filled with water, but that's because I want Helium to host an annual regatta on the Mariner Sea. Selfish of me, I know...
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
Lessee. Stirling's "In the Courts of the Crimson Kings" gives a very Pulp Biotech Mars, that works out to 25% water. Of course, that's a *dying* Mars and not a "sparking to life" one.
''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''

-- James Nicoll
HARDES to the Rescue! (^_^)
This is something I can easily see them taking on by doing something Roughrider-esquely bat-shit crazy... like maybe injecting the mass of a neutron star into the Martian core. Shades of The Core here. It will grant Mars the gravitational pull needed to retain a proper atmosphere and probably give it the magnetic field that is so desperately needed to keep everyone from getting flash-fried by a solar flare.
Though, granted, I can easily see this causing a not-small amount of geological upheaval...
...
OLYMPUS MONS ERUPTS!  NEWS @ 11PM, GMT
It's a pity Noah probably won't share his gravtech -- if he did, you could probably load a Pellucidaran drilltank with a monster grav generator with a wavium powerplant, drill to the center of Mars, and just let the thing run.

However you do it, you might need to be careful. Mars may not be "packed" as tightly as Earth -- if you up its gravity unexpectedly, will it "settle" or "collapse" under the increased load?
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
Hrm... This is going to be a case of 'Pool Owner Patience' where you tweak something a bit, then wait a while to see what kind of results you get. The HARDES Core Injection Project could possibly take decades or even centuries.
Quote:It's a pity Noah probably won't share his gravtech
You're darn tootin' he won't share! Gotta protect those trade secrets, don't'y'know...
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
Meh. Roughriders have Gravity Bombs anyways. Not as refined, of course, but they get the point across. *Evil Grin*
But really, I suppose you could simulate the effect at a much-diminished level and apply it soley to the surface... but it still does nothing for the magnetic fields and I bet it'd be rather energy intensive - which is something not desireable since power failure can mean slow death for everyone not close enough to an emergency shelter.
EDIT: Bob, regarding seismic activity in reaction to increasing Mars' core gravitational pull, it would definitely be something not to take lightly, but it may be manageable.  Really, it may be rather desireable since a seismically active world is one capable of self-renewal over time - and unless I missed my guess we want Mars to be able to sustain humanity life for the long-term.
I think the worry isn't so much earthquakes as causing the damn planet to implode. Which, y'know, would kind of invalidate the whole terraforming thing and piss off a lot of people in the process.
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"
I have no idea why I didn't express it that way, but Fnord has the right of my concerns.

And come to think of it, we don't need to use grav hardtech --'wavium gravity generators may even be more reliable in the long-term (say, on the order of millennia). Make a big enough one, deliver it to the core, and adjust it with a remote until it's juuuuuuust right.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
Thinking about it, I reckon that focusing on gravity is probably the wrong way to go. (not that this necessarily stops anything - these *are* fen we're talking about here) The two main things Mars needs for long term viability are an atmosphere and a magnetosphere. Atmosphere's the easiest part of this - it's never going to be a full 1 bar, but a good .75 to .85 bar at "sea level" is possible - so the tricky bit is setting up a magnetosphere to protect the new air.

The best way to do this IMO is to restart the core. Adding energy to the cooling iron core would spin it up a little & give us a nice new magnetosphere. It'd also have the side benefit of restarting tectonic activity, maybe even reactivate the Tharsis Montes. That would be useful for very long term viability. So how do we do it? Well, that's a problem for another day; the atmosphere should be stable for the short term (for values of "short term" running into the 2200s at least) and that's more than enough time to come up with something.
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"
I'd always figured that the magnetosphere was simulated by a Xavier Protocols style set of magnetic field generator satellites (probably solar powered, hardened, armed, and patrolled).

As to Mars' layout, I'd kinda figured that some of the Fen had gone comet fishing in the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud and were having fun filming them smashing into the Martian lowlands while giving Mars a decent amount of water down on the planet. So at least a third of its surface covered in water.

As for upping Mars gravity, A.C. CAN manufacture pretty much anything on Prometheus Forge, so Unobtainium isn't too far out of realm of probability. If we need mag field generators as well, we can do that. It might take a bit to create the necessary amounts of the material, but A.C. has been upgrading the Forge's manufacturing capabilities so it'll take less time than you think.
Oh hey, I just found the perfect picture for the post-terraforming Mars (link 'cause it's too big): http://www.orionsarm.com/im_store/greenmars.jpg

This is pretty much what I was looking for in a Mars; plenty of lightly terraformed land, not a lot of open water... it's perfect.
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"
And enough water that Helium can hold an annual regatta, too. I like.

Edit: Pity the image has a share-alike licence...
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
Cool! Polar oceans and crater lakes... I like. (^_^)

As for the magnetosphere... Well, it had to stop for some reason. I still think we should take a look under the hood and see what's going on. Anyone up for building a subteranean shuttle?
Ask http://www.fenspace.net/index.php5?title=Pellucidarans]these folks for help there...
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
I like that image.  Enough water to have some small oceans and seas, but still recognizably Mars.  Pity about the license, but I'm sure we can come up with something.
Planting some kind of magnetic field generators beneath the surface, even if only as a temporary measure could make an interesting story.  Even more so for an Infinities one several generations hence, when something goes wrong...  Too many plot bunnies and not enough writing talent darn it.
--
96. My door mechanisms will be designed so that blasting the control panel on
    the outside seals the door and blasting the control panel on the inside
    opens the door, not vice versa.
                --Peter Anspach's Evil Overlord list
Well we DO have some talent... it's just distracted constantly.

*Fox attempts to write*
*Fox's dad bellows*
Fox: *Pam Dawber impression* Really, Mork, what earth concept are you misunderstanding THIS week?
''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''

-- James Nicoll
Think you could squeeze in a short-short between distractions? We've got plenty of http://www.fenspace.net/]FenWiki pages that need fleshing out (including the bios of the crew of the Pinafore) which shouldn't take more than an hour or so each.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
Efforts underway. I'm trying to figure out just what decorations Tom would HAVE other than his Purple Hearts, and Joe's been nattering away in all his sesquipedalian splendour.

After Work and during the day tomorrow, dattebayo!
''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''

-- James Nicoll
No rush...
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
Pages: 1 2