Giving Mars an Atmosphere

[Duddy9]

An interesting article on giving Mars a magnetic field. Would have been nice to have seen more technical details.

https://astrobiology.nasa.gov/news/how-t...ere-maybe/

[Drashner1]

This tech is actually used in OA to help with Terraforming Mars. Specifically, the Lagrange Magshield. Note that the article was initially published in 2004, indicating the basic idea has been around at least that long. Not saying that this idea is old news to us, but rather that I would bet there are probably some larger and more detailed papers on the subject floating around somewhere if we can find them.

The EG article currently includes a link to an article that seems to be a somewhat expanded version of the one you've posted.

If we can find additional papers/articles on the subject, we could add them to Development Notes of maybe the Additional Information section of the EG entry (not turned on atm, but can change that in a matter of minutes).

Todd

[stevebowers]

The Lagrange Magshield was my own idea although I did very little math work on the concept; or to be more accurate, the idea arose out of discussions on this forum. It is nice to see that at least some people at NASA are considering the idea in more detail.

I did manage to discuss the terraformed Martian atmosphere with Martyn Fogg at one point; to keep Mars warm the atmosphere would need toxic levels of carbon dioxide, so either the humans and other bionts would need to be tweaked to tolerate this gas, or some other greenhouse gas would be necessary.

Perhaps a thick layer of Weather Machines would suffice, if not on Mars then on some other terraformed would with similar characteristics.

[Drashner1]

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

[iancampbell]

There are greenhouse gases stronger than either CO2 or methane; CFCs come to mind, but they are undesirable for other reasons. I suppose something like HCFCs (hydrochlorofluorocarbons) which are rather more stable might work. Apparently, sulfur hexafluoride SF6 is very good at absorbing IR light but it's such a heavy gas that mixing it into the atmosphere would be problematic.

Of course, large amounts of any of these in the atmosphere would be a mammoth, and continuing, industrial project. Nothing in Earthly life metabolises them, so one would be stuck with factories.

[stevebowers]

I am fairly sure that we have established in the OA canon that Mars does have a large CO2 content in the Current Era, but tweaking the inhabitants to tolerate this is fairly trivial. Visitors would need to be tweaked too, or wear envirosuits that can adjust their breathable air to suit. By Y11K these envirosuits could be effectively invisible and intangible under most circumstances.

[four]

There are greenhouse gases stronger than either CO2 or methane; CFCs come to mind, but they are undesirable for other reasons. I suppose something like HCFCs (hydrochlorofluorocarbons) which are rather more stable might work. Apparently, sulfur hexafluoride SF6 is very good at absorbing IR light but it's such a heavy gas that mixing it into the atmosphere would be problematic.

Of course, large amounts of any of these in the atmosphere would be a mammoth, and continuing, industrial project. Nothing in Earthly life metabolises them, so one would be stuck with factories.

Sulfur hexafluoride (produced in factories designed for that purpose) was used to warm up the Martian atmosphere in Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy. It has the advantage of being non-toxic, though if I remember correctly the Mars trilogy raised the issue of UV light breaking down SF6 in Mars's upper atmosphere.

I wonder how useful SF6 would be for terraforming in real life.