Is terraforming Mars possible?

Question

ter·ra·form (tĕr'ə-fôrm') To transform (a landscape) on another planet into one having the characteristics of landscapes on Earth.

Answer 1

Terraforming involves three phases: the atmosphere, the land itself, and sustaining the terraforming effort.

The most time consuming part is the atmosphere, since the gravational pull on the planet of about a third of that on Earth, that poses the largest singular problem of retaining whatever gases that is needed for a life sustaining environment.

The current calculation is that for every 1000 parts of gas being produce, only less than 1% will be retained, the rest will escape into space and be lost. Henceforth, the time need to terraform the atmosphere will take a base figure of approximately 120,000 years.

Of course, if a plan is already put forth, the scale conducted will be a huge effort, centered mainly around the poles and equatorial region since those regions will be more capable of retaining any form of atmosphere (at around 2% per 1000 parts, more if its at the apex [furthest distance away from the Sun] of its orbit).

Assuming we get over this hurdle, fauna lifeforms will have been pretty well established by now, though it will be only in a small overrall area (refer to National Geographic or Scientific American's websites on the types of fauna selected by NASA for terraforming).

Answer 2

While Mars could be terraformed to some extent, there are other problems.

The first problem is that Mars has about 1/3 the gravity of earth. Thus the escape velocity is lower and it would not support the same atmospheric pressure that earth has.

The second problem is that mars has no molten core and thus no magnetic field. This means that anybody on Mars would be exposed to harmful radiation. Also, this lack of a magnetic field would allow the solar wind to slowly strip the atmosphere from Mars.

Answer 3

Mars is considered by many to be the most likely candidate for terraformation. Much study has gone into the possibility of heating the planet and altering its atmosphere, and NASA has even hosted debates on the subject. However, a host of obstacles stand between the present and an active terraforming effort on Mars or any other world. The long timescales and practicality of terraforming are the subject of debate. Other unanswered questions relate to the ethics, logistics, economics, politics and methodology of altering the environment of an extraterrestrial world.

Answer 4

I doubt it. Mars has a much lower gravity than Earth, meaning gases can more easily escape into space and it is also much colder, meaning that there will never likely be liquid water in significant quantities.

The planet we should focus on is Venus. It is the only planet similar in size and mass to Earth and if we could cool it down via shading it from the Sun and crash some ice comets onto it it has the potential to be a great candidate for a sister planet in a few tens of thousands of years. Venus is truly our wayward sister: Mars is nothing more than a barren, mean, boring stepmother.

Answer 5

It's probably possible, but there will be major obstacles that take a lot of time to overcome. For example, we would need to find a way to make Mars capture enough energy to heat it quite a bit. Also, there isn't much nitrogen available. Abd unlike Earth, Mars doesn't have a magnetic field that's strong enough to protect it from solar radiation.

None of these problems are unsolvable in principle, but they're beyond our technical capability today.

Personally, my bet is that it's easier to adapt humans (and other creatures) to live on Mars than to adapt Mars to support humans. It might take some combination of cybernetics and genetic engineering that's beyond us at the moment, but given the technology, it could be done much faster than terraforming.

Answer 6

Personally, I think it's probable, but that it would take something like 10,000 years for it to be even close to Earth. However, I also believe that Mars was, at one time, inhabited. Whether it was just microbes or Martians, who knows?
Earth's atmosphere is almost constantly bombarded by meteors and meteorites, with send a ripple effect though our atmosphere. Because we have such high gravity (compared to Mars), the ripples don't do much damage before they're controlled. However, because Mars has lower gravity than we do, the atmospheric ripples ended up throwing most of the atmosphere into space. That's on explanation of why the atmosphere's so thin, but what do I know? I'm not an expert.

Answer 7

absolutely....Time is transient. Whatever can happen will happen if it will benefit humanity. One day I'm sure Humanity will do things that would leave us today in wonder and amazement. Dare to dream. Of course today the state of the art only limits us to only sending remotes to the surface of mars. There was a cool movie with arnold schwartzenegger (er however you spell it) where they found an alien enviromental generator under mars that was hidden by big corporations to profitize from. Good flick! What your talking about though will probably require the ability to generate energy to matter and maybe force field technology which deals with generating opposing magnetic fields etc...i.e. energy/matter manipulation when we can create something like star trek where we have enviromental controls to basicly beam out tornados etc., then we will be on our way to controling enviroments on other worlds Science and technology are unlimited fascinating fields that can open doors to new worlds for us...theres alot of schools of thought on subjects like this..I myself would like to see the earth as a tropical paradise one day...I think going out into the universe and creating more of the same is a great idea. A wise man once said: "If we can believe it, we can achieve it" Space planes are on the board and air cars and space stations, meanwhile people are making discoveries today that render our current technology obsolete. The future may be closer than we think.

Answer 8

While we can't stop global warming on earth and while we have not even sent one man to Mars yet, what is there to make you think terraforming Mars is at all possible?

Answer 9

principially, yes, it is possible, but we won't do it in our lifespan. It would be way tooo expensive. And if the next generations wants to start such a project, it would still be way to expensive and only the people from 10 or even 20 generations after us would benefit from that, because it is a very slow growing process.

Answer 10

Mars is actually very similar to Earth in its´ chemical makeup, the trouble is to get it hot enough. If that can be done, the rest is easy. Project would probably take only 10,000 years under the right circumstances.