tekilamockingbird:Terraforming MarsMars has long captured people’s imaginations especially when it c
tekilamockingbird:Terraforming MarsMars has long captured people’s imaginations especially when it comes to the colonization of another planet. This is because, although different in size and climate, it is much less harsh than other worlds in the solar system. Potential ProblemsThere are several challenges that have to be overcome to make colonization feasible. The first is trying to overcome the low gravity on the surface; Mar’s has a gravity 38% that of Earth. There are many health issues associated with low gravity environments. Most of the water in humans bodies is located in the bottom half of our bodies because of the surface gravity present on Earth. In weightless or near weightless environments, that water begins to even out. The water then crowds out your chest cavity and makes breathing difficult. There have also been many experiments done with pregnant animals in space, and none of these animals have carried to term. This would be a huge detriment to not only the physical, but the mental health of any colonists as well as sustaining the population on a new world. There is also a problem when it comes to the weather on Mars. Mars has only a small carbon dioxide atmosphere because unlike Earth it’s not protected by a significant magnetosphere. A magnetosphere is generated by a hot, rotating, metallic core. Mars has a very cold core compared to Earth, mostly due to the fact that Mars is much smaller than Earth and therefore couldn’t sustain heat from its formation due to radioactive decay. As the core cooled, the once volcanically active, and perhaps water covered world, died. The volcanism stopped and with the loss of a more substantial atmosphere due to CO2 emissions from these volcanoes, water escaped into space. There are still large dust storms on the surface that can cover the entire planet during “dust storm season”. Most of these dust particles consist of small jagged pieces of rock, which could pierce a person’s life support suit, as well as chip away at any seals that would be needed on permanent housing. MethodsThere are several different ideas as to how we could terraform Mars. Three things need to happen in order to terraform Mars,1) You need to build the atmosphere.2) You need to warm the planet to melt the large amount of water ice under the surface.3) You need to prevent the atmosphere from escaping into space.One idea is to sublimate all of the CO2 trapped in the regolith rock of Mars’ southern pole. This would warm the surface by only a few degrees, and while this doesn’t sound like much it would raise the surface pressure to .3 atm (like on the top of Mt Everest), and people wouldn’t need pressure suits.Another is importing nitrogen, hydrocarbons, and hydrogen. There is also an idea to use large mirrors in orbit around the planet in order to raise the temperature, reducing the surfaces albedo so it would reflect less light (and therefore heat), and using small asteroid impacts to raise the temperature through impact energy.Anything you want to see? Message me! -- source link
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