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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (887573)	9/14/2015 3:11:14 PM
From: combjelly	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1574734

Without something even close to being useful (if not breathable) for colonization, what's the point except to use Mars' atmosphere as a gigantic experiment? I listed reasons in the post. I guess you just skipped over them. Suffice it to say that it wouldn't just be an experiment. You think nuking the planet just to release some sources of CO2 is going to do it? And another straw man strides onto the field! The crowd goes wild! Of course, no one made that claim but you. Elon said it would speed the process. And it would. There is a lot of CO2 tied up at the poles. That doesn't mean it wouldn't be supplemented with NH3 and chlorofluorocarbon compounds. The idea is to pump out enough greenhouse gases to get the temperature up so the rest of the CO2 at the poles would sublimate. That raises the atmospheric pressure to the point of being useful.

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (887573)	9/18/2015 12:18:50 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 1574734

Even if Mars atmosphere isn't breathable after (or during, before its finished) terraforming, it would still be useful. Right now on Mars you would need a space suit. Add a lot of CO2 in to the atmosphere and maybe you get by with a parka and an oxygen tank and mask. Get the O2 a bit higher (likely from oxidized Martian rocks Mars has almost no free O2 but it has oxygen) and you might be able to wear some system that filters out the CO2, and so you don't need to carry around a large tank. Of course "Antarctica with a re-breather" (and no significant planetary magnetic field), still isn't exactly hospitable, but its a lot better then Mars is now, and slow improvement could continue from there. I agree terraforming would be a huge complex operation, and one that would take time (and that we aren't ready to even start now), but I could see it eventually happening.