11-08-2017, 11:27 AM
If you're prepared to go for the 'megaengineering approach' to terraforming Mars (which you are if you're building a magshield) then you could also probably set up orbital mirrors to increase the amount of solar energy hitting the planet and so reduce the amount of CO2 needed to keep the planet warm. Although given that Weather Machines have been described as a sort of artificial, programmable, and super powerful greenhouse gas (about 1000x the 'radiative forcing' (not quite sure what that is) of CO2) they might be sufficient to do the job all by themselves.
Not sure if we want to get that detailed with Mars terraforming, but perhaps the initial terraforming was a combination of greenhouses gases (besides CO2 - methane and water vapor for example) and a primitive early form of the weather machine (possibly augmented by some kind of mirror system). Later, as the tech advanced, more advanced weather machines could be introduced along with other changes as the state-of-the-art in terraforming advanced on general principles.
Just some thoughts,
Todd
Not sure if we want to get that detailed with Mars terraforming, but perhaps the initial terraforming was a combination of greenhouses gases (besides CO2 - methane and water vapor for example) and a primitive early form of the weather machine (possibly augmented by some kind of mirror system). Later, as the tech advanced, more advanced weather machines could be introduced along with other changes as the state-of-the-art in terraforming advanced on general principles.
Just some thoughts,
Todd