"What Does YOUR Terraformed Mars Terrain Look Like?" Topic

Got pictures of what your habitable Mars table looks like?

Do your figures need spacesuits, breathers, etc? Or is the atmosphere breathable on your colonies?

Dan
TMP link
TMP link
PS. By the way, here is what the seasons could look like on a terraformed Mars:
link
link

In reality? It appears Elon Musk's dream is a pipe.

link

Well, mine of course is habitable and not terraformed, following the tradition of Burroughs and Brackett. Reddish dust and dirt, old ruins, half the canal network silted up.

Funny you should ask …

link

In reality? It appears Elon Musk's dream is a pipe.

Sorry, Ochoin, but an article in an Australian news site is hardly definitive. And the author of the article did little or no research beyond haphazardly cherry picking from studies dealing with specific topics. While Elon Musk's imagined method may seem less than feasible based on our current, very limited knowledge of conditions on Mars (till a week ago, we had no knowledge that there was any sort of liquid slurry 'lake' on Mars AT ALL), that's hardly the same thing as making terraforming impossible via other methods.

The article mentions nukes, CO2 release from Martian soil, but never considers things like redirecting comets and asteroids to impact Mars thereby adding water and hydrocarbons to the Martian system. The article also asserts a standard of "terraforming" that isn't necessary for actual human habitation, and has a woefully poor understanding of radiation effects of nuclear bombardment— no, there wouldn't be "millions of years of radiation," left behind, at least not at dangerous levels. Good grief, we NUKED TWO CITIES on this planet WHICH ARE BOTH PERFECTLY HABITABLE TODAY, and were in fact safe for living with minimal increased risk after only a very short period of time. But with the typical ignorance of the press, the author rattles on emotionally about something OF WHICH HE CLEARLY KNOWS NOTHING as "proof" for his claims.

Now, I'm actually not saying Mars can or can't be terraformed. But I don't think there's anything currently known that makes it an impossibility, merely an unlikely probability with current technological capabilities. The real question isn't whether it can be done (given enough technological development, of course it can), but rather how to go about doing it, and whether it's worth doing. As much as it's fun to imagine people living on Mars, there might in fact be better options for getting our eggs out of the same basket, like orbital habitats at various Earth-Moon or Earth-Sun Lagrange points, or anywhere stable in the Sun's current habitable zone. I think in the short run, these approaches would in fact be easier (for certain levels of "easier," of course).

And back to gaming:
I like the thought of Space:1889 Mars, or the Jon Carter Mars, or the Ray Bradbury Mars, all with canals, anti-grav boats/ornithopters, ruins, red sand, red rocky areas, caverns, soaring ancient, half-occupied tower cities, etc.
Or, in a more realistic vein, a multi-tiered "historical development" approach, as the Red Mars trilogy:
A.) Early conflicts involving surface and underground habitats on an otherwise "Mars as it is now" terrain landscape, with all combatants in spacesuits and sealed vehicles.
B.) Domed habitats and underground habitats with internal, shirtsleeve combat, but external combat still in spacesuits and enclosed vehicles.
C.) Partially terraformed Mars with domed/underground cities, sealed living habitats, but a temperature and radiation suit and filter-mask exterior environment with farms and open man-made or crater lakes/ponds in the populated areas, but the rest a rocky wasteland/desert slowly being invaded by bio-engineered plant life.
D.) A fully terraformed Mars, with open, unsealed habitats, shirt sleeve environment, lakes, oceans and actual man-made canals, a landscape covered with plant life and even bio-engineered animal life (some sort of pollinating Martian bee or butterfly would be a must), but still, of course, the effects of the low-G environment (so human-powered flight is easy and common), etc..

Of course, all of the above assumes I actually ever do any Mars gaming, which isn't currently on my radar…though maybe it should be!

I think, Parzival, you needed to take cognizance of the use of the word "appears".

It was nice of you to respond at length & perhaps I should have cited the scientific reports behind the "Australian newspaper". However, being a gaming site I thought that this would be overkill.

It seems your response needs to rely on pie-in-the-sky "redirecting comets" et al which are a stretch as far as we can see our technological reach.
Such an idea is promulgated here, not by a reputable newspaper but by sci-fi proponents:
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I'm not sure such a source carries very much real weight.

Nothing wrong with fantasy, of course, but it "appears" terraforming Mars might not be an achievable project for the foreseeable future.

Parzival: "C) … but the rest a rocky wasteland/desert slowly being invaded by bio-engineered plant life."

What sort of combinations and variants do you have in mind? Moss with Tartigrade DNA? :)

Dan
PS. Perhaps their resistant DNA might be useful to us humans too, should we ever have a nuclear war, or if our ozone were to disappear because of our own doing or because of some intense radiation beam focused our way, etc.:
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Ochoin, sorry, but the article's author lost me when he wrote that the radiation would last for "millions of years," which tells me he has no clue what the term "half-life" means, or how radiation works. If he doesn't know this, he doesn't have any business writing about science. The rest was just cherry-picked to rule out something and have a story about Elon Musk and how "crazy" he is, which seems to be popular in the press these days. Don't really care about Musk, but the willful ignorance of the article annoyed me.

As for redirecting comets being pie-in-the-sky and not within our technological capability, it's actually neither. NASA is already planning a "gravity nudge" asteroid flyby based on the simple fact that even a small unmanned probe can perturb the orbit of an asteroid or a comet through simple gravitational attraction. Over time, such perturbations can be huge. (Indeed, this is one of the most promising defense methods for prevent asteroid strikes on Earth— simply "pull" the asteroid so its orbit doesn't intersect Earth— though naturally such an effort requires considerable detection and warning times!) If you want a comet's orbit to impact Mars, do the math, send up your "comet carrot" probe, and let gravity do the rest-- don't forget that at some point Mars itself will be the gravity carrot for the comet. Your probe need only nudge the comet orbit enough that its path brings it into Mars's gravity well, and then Robert is your mother's male sibling. All in all, it's a rather low-tech solution as far as the rocket science goes. (And possibly much easier tech-wise than the interplanetary nuclear missile idea Musk seems to be calling for! It's certainly better politically— nukes in space is not a winning suggestion on the world political stage, regardless of the alleged intent! )

So while Musk's suggestions may be off-target (no pun intended), the concept of terraforming Mars isn't outside the realm of possibility on a technological level— it's just, as Scotty might say, a "wee spot o' engineering."

@CC
I'm thinking lichens, algeas, mosses, possibly ferns— the start will need to be spore-based plants that don't require pollination by insect life. Windborn plants are a big possibility. Such things, of course, will need to be able to survive on much lower levels of sunlight than typical "leafy" plants, not to mention minimal water (at first) and extreme temperatures (probably knocks out certain ferns). The goal is to begin fixing any CO2 brought in via bombardment and releasing O2; it will take a LONG time. A big issue, of course, will be other necessary mineral elements (nitrogen, etc.); I really haven't done a study of what is known to be in Martian soil, or what plants (if any) could get a hang there.* So all of the above is pure speculation, and will certain require considerations of which I am not at all aware.

*It would be a nifty experiment for a botanist to select certain extremophile plants and construct an "aresarium" on Earth to test a Mars environment based on known conditions. (This may have already been done; I haven't checked.) An even cooler experiment would be to equip a probe with an "aresarium" container into which the probe inserts a soil sample and Martian air, then adds either a spore or a contained extremophile plant to see what happens. (Obviously, I'm proposing a system that is sealed to prevent the plant contaminating the Martian surface prior to us actually 1.) determining if Mars has its own near-surface life and 2.) wanting to begin any terraforming effort in the event it doesn't.
As for DNA modification, I'd say that's a much more cautious experiment to consider, and even much further down the road!

Parzival: "The goal is to begin fixing any CO2 brought in via bombardment and releasing O2; it will take a LONG time."

More reason for us to start terraforming tests on Mars already, as in NOW, to receive our organisms and our eventual colonization.

Dan

40 kilos of manure and a kilo of Kudzu seeds. Done deal.

Redirecting comets isn't particularly technically challenging. Time consuming, hell yes. Difficult, no. We can do the job with the technology we have right now. Trick would be getting most of the comet down onto the planet and not blasting back out of the atmosphere, so you'd actually have to put the thing into Martian orbit and then drop it.

The big problem with Mars is that there's no planetary magnetic field to speak of, so the solar wind blows the top of the atmosphere away! We'd have to constantly add more gasses, it'd probably be a 100+year project just to not need pressure suits.

But the even bigger problem with Mars is that much of that red color isn't iron rust, sadly.

That red color is hexavalent chromium, which is distinctly not something you want to be breathing!

A little research and it turns out that yes, terrestrial plants will grow well in Martian soil: link

link

And I completely forgot about THE MARTIAN, which was based on answering questions like this. (Love that movie…time for a rewatch.)

Also, plants are apparently one proposed approach to dealing with hexavalent chromium contamination on Earth, though I don't know either the plants involved, the effectiveness of the method, or the feasibility of Martian application (it will take a lot of plants to fix a whole planet!). Maybe it's something that might work in localized habitat areas?

Cattails and common reeds appear to work to sequester chromium from wetlands sediments, but that requires wetlands…

The martian atmosphere is incredibly thin, thinner than the top of Everest. There might not be enough pressure to keep water liquid (at present)!

So terraforming Mars would definitely require lots of comets to increase the atmospheric gas content. This would probably end up creating a small ocean where continuing cometary drops impact. Continuing because the lack of magnetic field allows the solar wind to strip the top of the atmosphere away.

Given that lack of a magnetic field, I'd also be concerned about surface radiation levels.

Source: link

There's one good spot in the southern hemisphere where levels are only ~twice the annual allowed maximum for nuclear workers, and up around the North pole isn't bad. Otherwise, yikes. Chernobyl/Fukushima.

Wonder if an artificial magnetic shield is possible, perhaps from orbital satellites? We already know how to generate magnetic fields, and solar power still functions enough in Mar's solar orbit to provide a virtually unlimited power source. Yes, this is pie-in-the-sky. Of course, one only really needs to shield areas inhabited by colonists, not the whole planet at once. Also, is there a possibility of creating a shield at the Sol-Mars L1 LaGrange point, deflecting solar particles there with a relatively small shield, allowing for the cone of the deflection to exceed Mars's diameter at Mars's orbit range? Like this:

     /
    /
O==<   M
    \
     \

O is the Sun, = is the radiation, < is the initial shield, / and \ the deflection path, M is Mars.

At the L1 location, the solar power levels would also be greater. Of course, the shield itself must have station-keeping capability to avoid being shoved aside by the continuous interaction with the solar radiation and the possibility of orbital disturbance by meteoroids, etc..

Just some wild musing on the possibilities…

There's a baseline fault with Mars – .38 g of gravity. Earth has lost a LOT of air over it's 4-5 billions of existence and Mars has lost essentially all of it's air.

You can't hold that much air with such a small world's gravity. It just won't work – over the long haul.

Enclosed habitats? Those can work but, Mars it's going to be an Earth-like world unless you find someway to give it a stronger pull.

Dumping thousands of asteroids on it? Anything we do would take millennia to complete…

Define 'long haul'. If we're talking a thousand years to get to breathable-without-pressure-masks, and ten thousand years without maintenance to lose it again, that's not bad.

I think we're talking ~100 years to get the comets out of the Oort cloud/Kuiper Belt and onto Mars with current tech. Well, 1950s tech, actually. A nice nuclear-thermal rocket, NERVA style. Downside is that you're using the reactor to melt some of the comet and use that as reaction mass.

Not really sure how long after we started the comet drops before we got to a breathable atmosphere.

You also have to allow for the debris kicked up by dropping comets on Mars. It's not a clean, tidy process.

I have no idea how long it would take to get enough air to be breathable, or how long it would take for the dust to settle down (you don't want to be breathing that in).

It's always been an interesting idea to terraform Mars but, I rather doubt we will see it happen anytime soon.

Domed or underground habitats, yep – could be done right now. Given the political push and financing needed…

Off the top of my head: How difficult would it be to park in solar orbit JUST outside Martian solar orbit, shatter, spread/'smear' out, and let Mars slowly catch up, and pull in?

Doug

Edit: Sorry, Dan, to follow the hijacking. Reddish and rocky, breathing without masks, usually.

Should I admit that I like the Tom Corbett, Space Cadet books interpretation of Mars?

Very sandy, but breathable air without pressure masks and surface water. Basically Barsoom without the Martians.