Not bad for 16 000 O'Neill colony sized megafreighter trips. Or quadrillions of little liquid nitrogen tanks, but I think the economics favours megafreighters at these scales not to mention the navigational nightmare of billions of "small" nitrogen tanks pelting Mars every M-year, each of which has the kinetic energy of small nuclear weapons.
Pluto only has an escape velocity of 1.2km/s so a fusion-powered megafreighter using water ice as reaction mass would only need a mass ratio less than one. And as a bonus the structural components could be made of water ice, and be delivered with the nitrogen ice. Windows open up roughly every Martian year.
Or, you could just build tens of thousands of O'Neill colonies and live in them.
Phobos is has low enough orbit that if we were to chemically split it to release gases such as oxygen and carbon dioxide most of them will be captured by Mars. And its mass is comparable to the Martian atmosphere. If we chemically split most of it it could increase Mars pressure by maybe 15-20%. Two options - 10^12 m^2 mirror and 100000k 20mt nuclear bombs.In both cases the launch cost will be roughly 5 - 10 trillion $, using current launch prices.
From a delta V stand point it would be easier to get the nitrogen from Titian and Kuiper belt objects.
Quote from: goran d on 02/05/2018 05:18 pmIf we chemically split most of [Phobos] it could increase Mars pressure by maybe 15-20%. Two options - 10^12 m^2 mirror and 100000k 20mt nuclear bombs.In both cases the launch cost will be roughly 5 - 10 trillion $, using current launch prices.You want to send mirrors totaling twice the size of TEXAS to Mars?You want to send a HUNDRED MILLION nukes, each massing 5 metric tons, to Mars?At a manufacturing cost of about 650 million $ each? That's less than 610 YEARS of the WHOLE WORLD's gdp.Sir, i question you business plan!
If we chemically split most of [Phobos] it could increase Mars pressure by maybe 15-20%. Two options - 10^12 m^2 mirror and 100000k 20mt nuclear bombs.In both cases the launch cost will be roughly 5 - 10 trillion $, using current launch prices.