how could we terraform an entire planet?

Question

mars for example

move chunks of ice one by one? giant mirrors?

Answer 1

Since everybody else wants to editorialize or not answer the question, I'll take a crack at it.

There are many things that we could do to terraform a planet, and we'll use Mars as an example.

First, we need to thicken the atmosphere. There is a lot of oxygen trapped in the soil of mars, So that might provide us with a start, but humans need a mix of oxygen with something inert to breathe, preferably Nitrogen. Best way to get a large volume of gas? Import it from the outer solar system. Unfortunately this would take a great deal of time, expense, and effort. So we might be stuck (at least with our current resources) grubbing around on Mars to see if we could come up with plenty of nitrogen. One possible solution (suggested in the Mars series by Kim Stanley Robinson) is to vaporize lots of the surface with a huge laser or solar focuser. We would have to get plant life on Mars quickly to cycle the oxygen once the atmosphere started to thicken. Also, we'd probably never see truly thick atsmopshere like at sea level on Earth--It would be more like what you'd find at the top of a mountain, maybe 10,000 to 14,000 feet up. Breathable, but unpleasant until you get used to it.

Second, We need to increase the temperature on Mars. By thickening the atmosphere we'd have gone a long way toward accomplishing this, escepcially if we add lots of greenhouse gasses, like carbon dioxide and water vapor (which helps kickstart the water cycle). We could (again with much expense) install huge space mirrors and color the surface a darker color to absorb more heat.

Third, we'd need water on the surface. To do this, we have to thicken the atmosphere first. Even though the surface of mars is really cold, the lack of air pressure would cause water to boil off right away, since the air pressure over the water determines its boiling point. Water is important because we'd have to have plants to cycle the oxygen, and we can't go around watering all the plants on a planet manually. To get the water out, we could use the same heating technique we did to vaporize soil (large laser). Realistically, though, we don't know if there is a lot of water still trapped below the surface of Mars in permafrost of aquifers, so more than likely, we'd be importing it from the outer solar system.

Finally, since Mars is so much smaller than Earth, we run into a few annoying problems. First, due to the lower gravity and thus lower escape velocity, Mars would have a hard time holding on to whatever atmosphere we give it--this is the reason its atmosphere is as thin as it is now. The problem is that the moleules of air move around faster than the escape velocity of th planet, and so they would slowly bleed off into space. This is worse when the molecules get warmer-the warmer they are, the faster they move, the faster they bleed off. A good rule of thumb for how big a planet must be to retain an atmospheric gas is that the escape velocity must be about six times the average speed of the gas. For Mars, this limit makes lighter gases hard to hold on to.

Also, the lower gravity changes the structure of the atmosphere, making it stick out further into space. The layers (like the troposphere, tropopause, stratosphere, etc..) would change. This would mean that the atmosphere of Mars would have different properties, and behave differently than Earths. One solution would be to keep importing stuff from the outer solar system, trying to add mass to the planet slowly. This would take literally forever, though. Even a loarge asteroid like Ceres, if broken into chunks and carefully added, would only add a tiny fraction of the mass we were looking for.

Worse, Lower gravity means the human body would, over time, become ill adapted to earth gravity. Second and third generation martian Humans would find going to visit the home world painful.

Editorializing aside, you can see that the effort and technology required to complete a task like terraforming mars would be huge. We couldn't do it now--or rather, we could try, but it would take so long that we wouldn't see results for maybe a couple of hundred years.

Perhaps learning to manage the environment here on earth will give us a leg up if we ever do decide to terraform mars. After all, we're going to have to do some atmospheric manipulation to get earth to cool back off. Maybe some of the tricks we learn in saving our own planet will come in handy later!

I included a couple of articles that should get you started in researching this yourself, as I've only just scraped the surface of this topic. A good read (if a little unrealistic in it's timetable, and a bit dry in places) is the Mars series by Kim Stanley Robinson, the first book is "Red Mars". Hope this helps!

Answer 2

Terraforming Mars as in the Red, Green, Blue Mars series is probably practically impossible but a lot could be done to make it more habitable. Aerobraking ice blocks from the orbit of Jupiter would be one possibility which would thicken the atmosphere, leading to a little warming, which could create outgassing from the Martian soil and rocks. A few hundred tons of coal dust spread on the Martian polar caps would absorb more solar energy and melt or evaporate more CO2 and water from them. That could lead to the same effect.

A thicker atmosphere and warmer could mean people could move about on the surface with the sort of gear and air supplies worn by mountaineers on Earth, a lot better than full spacesuits.
It would also reduce cosmic and high energy solar radiation. People could live in underground "hobbit holes" covered by a metre or so of soil, which would insulate heat and radiation.

Genetically engineered or conventionally bred bacteria might be able to get a hold, transforming some CO2 into oxygen, which might be useful. Eventually a few plants might get going, probably bred from the sort that grow in near polar regions here.

Some real speculation -
If ever a transport system like the "Stargate" is developed, it would be possible to move millions of tons of water from Earth, through heat exchangers orbiting close to the Sun and down onto Mars, heating the planet and creating small lakes. Another stargate on Venus could move some of that planet's excessive atmosphere onto Mars. Stargates on Titan or Jupiter could provide other gases or materials as needed.

Martian explorers could order their favorite pizzas through a stargate!

Answer 3

The first thing to do is find a planet with plenty of unpolluted water and atmosphere. Then we move a bunch of humans to the planet, and if history repeats its self, in next to no time, they will have terraformed the entire planet into a toxic cesspool, just like good old earth.

Answer 4

confident that's feasible. We can even have the technologies now! the excuses are evident - we are figuring out of area here. over 6 billion human beings in the international and lengthening, farm land is figuring out and so is residing area! If we could terraform mars, we would have an entire new (albeit somewhat smaller) planet to farm. Whats greater, on the grounds that there arn't any oceans, there is easily extra area on mars as quickly as you get right down to it. additionally, if we set up a 2nd civilisation on mars it skill that the human race could proceed to exist if a majoy disastor occrued, at the same time with a meteor strike. the main significant issue is getting the 1st human beings there. the form takes months, or years, to end, and you like supplies at the same time with nutrition and oxygen the full way. as quickly as your there, you're able to set up vegetation in domes and enable the magic start up. ideally, machines could have long gone up till now to establish domes with pineer species, at the same time with lichen, to tranform the rock right into a skinny layer of soil. The sunlight, on an identical time as giving much less potential on mars than in the international, could nevertheless be sufficient to possibly enhance genetically changed variations of vegetation. as quickly as your set up, its uncomplicated to maintain going, and there will be particularly some uncooked supplies on mars to apply. perhaps, ultimately, vegetation could be bred which could proceed to exist exterior domes, as we could colonise the full of the purple planet. Unfortunatly, this demands huge quantities of supplies to even evaluate, and greater suitable technologies to what we've on the instant (even if no longer THAT greater suitable, i think of we are almost there). So we could terraform mars - merely no longer top at this precise 2nd.

Answer 5

Hi,

if you want to see how mankind can terraform a planet, look at the job it's doing on earth.

We started with a green and blue planet and gradually we have changed its surface until it barely resembles what we started with. Indeed, the latest 'expert' report issued just last week indicts us with the ruin of our planet and atmosphere...need we say more?

It is certainly 'possible' to terraform a planet, but whether we deserve the chance and whether we are willing to spend enormous resources on ruining another planet is debatable.

Why should we spend trillions of dollars on trying to mould another planet, when we can't even control successfully the damage we are doing to our present planetary home?

Hope this causes your mind to question your question,

Good luck,

BobSpain

Answer 6

We couldn't. If we cannot even control 5 degrees of unwanted global warming on Earth, how do we expect to be able to warm up Mars by 100 degrees, change its poisonous carbon dioxide atmosphere into one we could breathe and increase the amount of air to 100 times what it is now?

Answer 7

By genetically engineering micro organisms that use the local material to form more of their kind, and useful byproducts, like oxygen and water, but which will either die or mutate into something harmless or useful when the atmosphere changes, due to their activity.

Answer 8

We can't even fix the environment of Earth, how we gonna do it on Mars?

Answer 9

It depends on what needs to be done, what resources, and what time frame.