So terriforming Mars won't be a thing for quite some time,

It amazes me how many intelligent people talk about going to mars, and hoping to live out their life and die on mars.

Why not terraform the Sahara Desert? Or the North Pole? Or the Marianas Trench (or whatever it's called). All of those would be easier and would accomplish something.

Elon Musk should just shut the fuck up and load a winnebago with whatever he likes, and drive out into the Sahara until he runs out of gas. At that point, the only assistance would be some other suicidal freak in another winnebago under the same rules. No rescue operations permitted, same as it would be if Elon got his dream come true and went to mars.

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>>8161381
>Why climb that mountain when I can just climb that hill over there?

>Why do people want to do things I don't want to do?

>People should just do what I think they should do

>People shouldn't spread out among the stars because there's plenty of places here on Earth to live

>terriforming and colonizing an alien planet is pointless, but building an underwater city in the darkest, most pressurized place on Earth is a worthy endeaver.

Honestly anon, I agree that trying to terriform our deserts is something worth doing as practice, but only for prepping for the real journey of Mars.

It's quite frankly ridiculous that you think it's ridiculous that people want to travel through space to live on another planet so they may produce the first martians.

This is the manifest destiny of our time, you either want to be apart of it or you don't and that's fine, but don't sit there and judge and act like what you decide to do with your life is anymore superior that what I decide to do with mine

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>>8161392
Thought it would mess with the ecosystem if animals already live in those areas, I agree it would be better to just colonize and teraform every unfavorable biome in preparation for terraforming planets

>Anything I missed?
Yes, no returns on investment in reasonable timescales. Nations are better off investing in military dominance and infrastructure, while individuals and firms are better off investing in projects with actual returns in their lifetimes.

>>8161334
The Terriforming of Mars will happen if we want it or not. Once people get there microbes WILL escape and establish themselves... Earth microbes have modified Earth to maximize their existence, they will do the same on Mars.

>>8161381
politics

I'm sure people would have settled Antarctica already if it weren't for those treaties

>>8161515
No, actually they can't survive on Mars for long, at least on the surface. There is no liquid water but lots of radiation.

>>8161491
There is returns in terms of people being distracted from important politics on earth by space exploration fairy tales. That is valuable for people who are concerned with keeping a status quo.

>>8161381
>Why not terraform the Sahara Desert? Or the North Pole? Or the Marianas Trench (or whatever it's called). All of those would be easier and would accomplish something.
Except whites abandoned colonialism before you were born
Big engineering projects were also abandoned in favor of socialism

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>>8161621
But if we solve the magnetic field problem we can reduce the amount of radiation on the surface correct?

>>8162704
I think we should go to mars, drill baby drill, then nuke that shit from the inside to melt down anything in its core that can melt. Anything too heavy will hopefully kick up into the atmosphere and create higher pressure systems.

Also if we blow a big enough hole, we could crash other space shit into its core to raise its mass and by extension gravity.

Otherwise spraying a fuckton of ozone in the upper atmosphere would eat up some radiation while making it warmer.

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>>8162716
This would start convection cells and in turn shifting tectonic plates, how long would we have to wait for the dust to settle?

Of we ever got to the point where we could move massive bodies into other orbits I always thought it'd be cool if we captured Ganymede and stuck it near Mars so it could use its magnetosphere

>building factories and just driving cars around
Internal combustion engines need 4 things to function:
1) Fuel
2) Compression
3) Spark
4) Air

You'd need to make an engine that ran without oxygen yet still produced greenhouse gases. Since the greenhouse gases are a direct product of the combustion of fossil fuels, a combustion reaction which inherently necessitates an Earth-like atmosphere, this poses a problem for your theory.

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>>8161381
Because none of those things do squat for you when the biosphere here goes to shit, be it due to a terrestrial or cosmological occurrence, both of which are eventually inevitable, and many variants could happen at any moment, without warning.

...Not that some of the science behind terraforming Mars couldn't be used to mitigate or counter some of those possible effects here.

>>8161449
The environments are too interconnected though. Terraforming the Sahara wouldn't be without consequence... Nor would melting the ice out of Antarctica.

Besides, the population "problem" isn't due to a lack of usable land, but over concentration. For most of us, there's plenty of land to go around, just the infrastructure hasn't been built, and there's no jobs out there.

Terroforming Mars isn't about simply grabbing more land - it's about having a backup plan outside of this floating dust mote and its fragile biosphere, and creating more of said from there, before it's too late.

>>8162776
>You'd need to make an engine that ran without oxygen

Not necessarily. It could run off its own oxygen tank. You could use a container of liquid oxygen, when the engine starts and heats up it could heat up the liquid oxygen converting it into its gas form which would be fed into the engine.

>>8162801
There's much more efficient ways to produce such gases than "building factories and driving cars around". Such utilities produce a small amount of green houses as a byproduct, not as their primary output, after all.

But without a strong magnetosphere, there's the sticky bit of making the atmosphere "stick", and simply producing it so quickly that it doesn't matter would be rather daunting. Most likely you'd be stuck making networked habitats, rather than terraforming everything.

>>8162789
How will going to Mars save you from a collapse of Earth's biosphere when Mars has no biosphere?

>>8162876
Long term plan would be to make a self-sustaining colony on Mars, of course, contained biosphere or otherwise.

It rather depends on what kills the biosphere on Earth though - several of the possibilities would render life in the solar system neigh impossible. But Mars is among the first steps for your deep space colonies.

Granted, if the problem is false vacuum, then you're just fucked.

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>>8162809
That's why you solve the magnetosphere problem first, either reignite the core or throw up clouds of magnets in orbit. You could also capture an object which produces it's own such as Ganymede, but that in and of itself would yield it's own problems so we can assume for now that it's not economical.

It's more than likely that multiple methods of producing carbon dioxide would be in use, I figured if you have miners or workers who need to get around then fossil fuels could be used since we don't have to worry about it having a negative impact on the enviroment and they'd produce greenhouse gasses.

During this stage, yes, artifical habitats will have to be set up. The automobile idea can only really be of any use if we have an established colony with many people using them

>>8162925
Getting fossil fuels to Mars would be insane difficult, and an extremely inefficient way to go about it. (I mean, abiogenic oil maybe a thing, but I doubt Mars has a lot of it.)

The soil has enough ice in it that you could likely power whatever greenhouse making beast machine you wanted. Porting oil over wouldn't be worth the effort when set next to that.

I can't imagine any realistic way to re-ignite the core though. I don't think all the plutonium on Earth would be enough. Just build water shielded domes and/or underground complexes, and you're good. Radiation is overrated.

>>8162809
>But without a strong magnetosphere, there's the sticky bit of making the atmosphere "stick", and simply producing it so quickly that it doesn't matter would be rather daunting. Most likely you'd be stuck making networked habitats, rather than terraforming everything.

This fucking meme will never die, will it? The atmosphere on Mars took millions of years to blow away.

The lack of a magnetic field is not really a concern with regards to the atmosphere's thickness.

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>>8162932
This is true, however the magnetosphere problem still needs to be address since the surface of Mars is constantly bombarded with radiation. We will still need a shield.

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>>8162935
Well, if you wanna be able to run around naked on the surface in Earth-like conditions, yes.

But if you're willing to adjust to habitats and subsurface life, then it's not a real problem. Mere millimeters of metal, a foot of rock, or even a few feet of distilled water, will shield you sufficiently on Mars.

There's sufficient gravity to stop your capillaries from bursting, but gestating children and growing up in that gravity, will no doubt involve another set of challenges. That might turn out to be the biggest problem.

>>8162801
Do the oxygen would be heated as it's fed? You can't heat up a tank of liquid oxygen without dealing with corresponding pressure/volume increases. Plus, at that point, since you'll be dealing with resource/energy losses from the conversion into GHGs, you might as well just bring a tank of compressed gasses instead of going through the trouble of converting it, especially since it'd save the trouble of bringing two separate fuels- both fossil and atmospheric. And like the other anon said, an engine's primary job is propulsion, not waste product generation. There are better ways, son.

>>8161334
Can't we just send a load of extremophile bacteria that pump out oxygen and munch up the C02.
Or a shit load of arctic lichens or something.
It would take ages but changes would eventually happen.

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>>8162949
The primary objective of terraforming is creating Earth-like conditions, if we can't run around naked then we haven't finished the job.

This will obviously take quite some time, and a sub-surface habitat would probably be the main means of living for the vast majority of that time. However this shouldn't be the endgame for the eventuality of interplanitary civilization. The goal is to reformat the planet to be as comfy as possible.

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>>8162967
Yes, here's the idea: you have a tank of liquid oxygen. You heat the oxygen initially with some apperatus, much like the starter of a car. This increases the internal pressure of the tank. This pressure is then released in the form of air into the engine to enable cumbustion. After the engine runs it heats up, causing the internal pressure of the tank to increase (due to air formation) which is released into the engine.

It's meant to by cyclical, however I'm sure there are plenty of problems with this set up (like when you've finished using the vehicle and the engine is still hot, you either waste the air or you isolate the tank from the engine.)

I figured liquid oxygen would be more preferable since you can carry more in a given space, and I can be kept cool relatively easily travelling between planets.

The cars would be used for propulsion, I was merely toying with the idea of using the exhaust for beneficial purposes, although I recognise transporting the fossil fuel and oxygen might not be worth the effort.

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>>8162969
I'm actually pretty on board with using extremophiles or some sort of martian algea, I suppose the only thing hindering that is thr radiation problem

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Surely we have enough resources to create an artificial planet by now if everyone unified for the project.

>>8161381
>Why not terraform the Sahara Desert?
Read any nes lately? The area is choking full of Arab terrorists. Sahara is better used as a nuclear waste dumping ground.

> Or the North Pole?
No solid ground, just a floating layer of ice. South Pole is a continent, however there are treaties in place that puts strict limits to what you are allowed to do there. No mining, for instance.

>>8161621
>No, actually they can't survive on Mars for long, at least on the surface. There is no liquid water but lots of radiation.
Microbes can hibernate in dry conditions and wake to life when wet. And we know that the polar caps have ice. Microbes may have adapted from the wet age millions of years ago.

>>8162770
A large satellite, preferably larger than our Moon, would induce Martian deformation and thus internal heating.

>>8162927
>Getting fossil fuels to Mars would be insane difficult
You might get hydrocarbons off Titan, the gravity well there is rather low.

>>8162770
How did it take this picture? does it set up a tripod?

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>>8161334
>terriforming Mars won't be a thing

Correct.

>>8165849
That's the fun thing about opinions: we're all entitled to them, regardless how shitty. That pic is a prime example of a shitty opinion.

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>>8165849
You're still trying to spread this bullshit: >>8165696 and >>8162849. I thought we made it clear that you should fuck off with your opinion?

I've seen people suggest the following:

>Phobos is already going to crash into Mars (Okay not in our lifetimes, but whatever). Can't we just purposely crash it into Mars at an angle to make Mars spin, thereby fixing the whole "dead core" issue?

Ignore the whole "crashing Phobos would require a lot of energy" thing and the "covering Mars in a hugeass amount of dust and debris" issue. Assuming we did and we managed to make Mars spin in a manner that would get the core going again, how long would it take before a suitable magnetic field would develop?

>>8165849
>predicting the course of next 500 years as a fact
>claiming the dominant species that took over the entire planet and stood on its moon will be the one that will not adapt do change
muh cynical edge

>>8165989
Precisely, he's been doing this over at least three threads (two of them created by him).

>>8165814
Yes, the rover brought a camera tripod so it could take a picture of itself.

>>8165971
It would be immediate. The spinning core is what causes magnetic force. It wouldn't be sustained though, Mars isn't big enough to sustain a core reaction.

>>8166036
But Ganymede is?
Mars did have a magnetic field at some point, the issue is not an issue of keeping a dynamo going, but rather holding in (or creating) heat to keep the outer core molten. Ganymede gets its heat from tidal forces while Earth gets it from radioactive decay in the core.