by Jack
In 1985 we had the technical ability to send a manned rocket around mars and back to earth. Then, for reasons that were never really clear, we stopped building the Saturn V in favor of smaller rockets that were earth orbiting.
From 1990 through 2000 we have made seven attempts to either orbit Mars or drop robot vehicles to its surface, we’ve only succeed three times. However, from 05 thru 2010 we were battling a 1000. 5 successful trips, no failures. In 2014 we landed two Mars rovers, Opportunity and Curiosity. There are now five orbiters currently surveying the planet: Mars Odyssey, Mars Express, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Mars Orbiter Mission and MAVEN.
NASA thinks we will be able to launch a manned mission by 2035, but seems like an unnecessarily long time. However, aside from manned flights to Mars we could begin terraforming Mars now to make it more habitable once the migration starts…and it will start. It’s only a question of when.
So what could we do right now to make Mars more livable? Well, we’re in luck, because Mars is loaded with CO2, 96% of the atmosphere is CO2 and that’s a green house gas, but because the atmosphere is so thin it doesn’t do much to keep the planet warm or stabilize the great swings in temperature. The logical place to start seeding Mars is around place were we could tap into water that is just beneath the surface.
The poles have frozen water and dry ice, but is it too cold? Scientists say not for lichens. It was probably lichens that first took hold on Earth. On Mars it might be a bit trickier, the lichen, symbiotic masses of fungi and algae, could adapt physiologically to living a normal life in a harsh Martian climate as long they lived under “protected” conditions, shielded from much of the radiation within “micro-niches” such as cracks in the Martian soil or rocks. The lichens would then grow rapidly and produce oxygen via photosynthesis. That would be step one, but without a step two, it might take a million years before there was significant change in climate.
We could speed up the process of oxygen production via a number of other ways.
#1 idea – some day we could send ammonia laden asteroids from the outer solar system on a collision course with the red planet. Asteroids moving at about 4 kilometers per second would arrive on Mars in about 10 years.
Why crash asteroids into Mars? Well, its all about the ammonia on board, that would really thicken up the atmosphere. Imagine what a 10-billion-ton ice asteroid would do to Mars atmosphere! Scientists say we could change the surface temperature by 3 degrees and that would almost instantly produce liquid water now trapped as ice. A good idea for sure, but we’re still a few decades away from having that potential, still this is a viable plan that NASA is considering.
Now we’re but a few hundred years away from having a near breathable atmosphere, where plant life could flourish beyond imagination. That’s still not quick enough? Okay, here’s idea #2, and again this is a NASA idea. We could use solar powered machines, hundred of them, to pump out CFCs, methane, carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases all day long. In the scope of about 100 years we could change the atmosphere of Mar’s so that humans would need only a modest assist from an oxygen producing backpack to survive.
Aside from the natural resources on Mars, it is the perfect launch pad for leaving our solar system to explore for earth-like planets. And we better, because the sun won’t stay our friend forever. There’s no rush to leave, because we’ve got about 2 billion years left before the sun is going to grow into an orange giant and make life on Earth a little too hot, but we really do need to go. Eventually, as the sun grows we turn into a piece of charred rock. So, how’s that for motivation to leave?
For more information on terraforming Mars check out this site… http://science.howstuffworks.com/terraforming2.htm
So we could send a horse to the moon back in 1969, what good came of it?
Today our roads are full of pot holes and the feral government (yes feral) is 18 trillion in debt and hundreds of trillions in debt when you count all the unfunded liabilities.
The only people who should be going to Mars are the politicians, and it ought to be a one way trip!
Space exploration is fascinating but only immediately of interest to those in the industry. The rest of us wait for exciting news which doesn’t happen that often. I support privately funded exploration, but with a debt of $18.4 trillion of debt and $250 trillion in interest on the debt, we need to cut expenditures that don’t produce an immediate return. When interest rates rise, and they will, servicing the debt will mean even more trillions in interest due. Cutting such luxury expenditures would give us more room to work on the budget, the excesses of tax and regulation departments, and unsustainable entitlement programs that are the major contributors to our debt.
I might make an exception for launching useless politicians into space…to the moon, Alice!
…to the moon, Alice! Yer killin’ me, Tina. I nearly spit my coffee.
Ralph was the dreamer, Alice the pragmatist. It made for some entertaining situation comedy but not necessarily good science policy.
Space science drives technology, engineering, knowledge, and all science. It is an enormous asset, except when corrupted by people like James Hansen.
Do you have any idea of how US government funded space exploration has driven the cutting edge of scientific knowledge and technology?
The study of Mars may not be such a good idea, and “terraforming” a ridiculous fantasy that does, however, makes for some pretty good story telling like in the film “Total Recall.”
By the way it appears that humans have been terraforming earth for at least 10,000 years. Possibly a factor of ten or twenty longer than that. (Of course, this is still but a blip in geologic or paleontological time.)
In my humble opinion, one of the most significant factors in the success of our species, outside of language, is our agrarian nature. Yet we are humbled by ants, which have been a successful species on this planet eons longer than man.
Could it be that God created the ant in his own image?