Which company will achieve her goals before, SpaceX or Blue Origin?

[Robotbeat]

I can't help but wonder if this discussion of the challenges of terraforming Mars is perhaps in the wrong thread (and subforum).

there isn't even any science in it, just "what looks nice". Wrong forum?

Baloney. Chris McKay and others have published numerous papers on the topic in scientific journals.
It belongs in the Advanced Concepts section.

The only reason this came up is folks like you ignorantly & unscientifically dismissing it with no logical argument (only slander), even though it is indeed one of SpaceX’s long term goals (not that SpaceX would themselves do it, but it’d be a long term goal of the civilization they hope to help establish on Mars) which is the topic of the thread.

It’s safe to say, IMHO, that Blue’s much less ambitious goals will be accomplished before terraforming of Mars.

[deadman1204]

I can't help but wonder if this discussion of the challenges of terraforming Mars is perhaps in the wrong thread (and subforum).

there isn't even any science in it, just "what looks nice". Wrong forum?

Baloney. Chris McKay and others have published numerous papers on the topic in scientific journals.
It belongs in the Advanced Concepts section.

The only reason this came up is folks like you ignorantly & unscientifically dismissing it with no logical argument (only slander), even though it is indeed one of SpaceX’s long term goals (not that SpaceX would themselves do it, but it’d be a long term goal of the civilization they hope to help establish on Mars) which is the topic of the thread.

It’s safe to say, IMHO, that Blue’s much less ambitious goals will be accomplished before terraforming of Mars.

Published doesn't mean correct. It just means whoever reviewed it found it internally consistant without major logic flaws. If your lucky, its possible to get a reviewer who barely even skims the paper before stamping "pass" on it.

Tell me, how much does a mountain weigh? Now imagine how much energy it would take to melt ALL that mass. Where would you get that energy? How do you even handle that much material? This is trivial compared to terraforming, less than a rounding error. Yet this undertaking is literally impossible for us to do with anything resembling present day technology.

Throw a million comets into a planet? Putting aside the utterly ridiculous amount of effort and time it would take to do this, where does all the energy of impact go? Atmospheres don't "magically settle down". Want an ocean? Its gonna take HUGE amounts of time to get enough comets and have an ocean rain out. Want a planet without constant hurricane storms 24/7? Gonna take WAY more time to let the system adjust.

But lets not do magic hand waving at the comets. Where are you gonna get a million comets? Send a ship out there to find one - where do you get the energy to send it INTO the system towards mars? Lets go back to the energy required to melt a mountain. Now wait, you wanna send millions of comets into the inner solar system? Some are gonna miss, but even just 1 could be an extinction level impact on earth. How can you garuntee you don't hit Earth? Each of your magic ships will take 1-2 decades to make it out to the kuiper belt. Probably way longer because its gonna have to slow down (without magic fuel), then it'll spend years and years just matching speed and approaching a target.

Then what? Where is all the fuel to send the comet in? Magic again? The fuel to get there was a rounding error compared to whats gonna be required to send a comet in system. Your magic reactor thats been running for 20+ years now? How many centuries will it take to change the orbit of a single comet enough to send to the inner system? If you do it quickly (again more magic) the forces will disrupt the comet. How will a small ship even change the orbit of a comet? Get out and push? What about threading the gravitational needle of all the giant planets pulling things around? Your ship is probably gonna need to go with the entire time. Now we're easily talking about multiple centuries of fuel (and tech magically lasting that long). Radiation is a thing.


So we're gonna need millions of these magic ships if you want to do this in a few thousand years. This makes even the most ridiculous starship fantasies blush.

Want actual control of the atmospheric makeup? Well now you have to test and discard tons and tons of comets because you don't want too much of one gas. So now we have to seriously ask if the kuiper belt even has enough...

Actual terraforming? You cannot do ANYTHING until all the material is there. With comets raining death every couple years the planet will be untouchable until thats done. You can't "get a head start". You will also have made it impossible for anyone to do ANYTHING with the planet for the magic handwaving "thousands" or years. Will everyone agree to this? No settlements on the planet cause everyone can die each time a comet comes. Underground bunkers don't do much with magnitude 11+ earth quakes (read mega comets wacking the planet).

Will people even want to do this and maintain it? Countries don't even last for 500 years. Thousands? With yearly cost greater than the current global gdp? For a promise untold generations in the future, while at the same time denying all access to the planet for all that time?

So you now have your material (everything above is incredibly simplified and handwavey still).
Oxygen? Just a few magic algae bugs to split co2/h20 that was magically delivered? It took earth like a billion years to oxygenate. You need to saturate ALL the reseviors that can absorb/react oxygen before it can even start building up. Yet mars will go WAY WAY slower because it'll have far less light for your magic algae. Mars will be much colder than earth due to less sunlight to power your algae.  How do you breed enough algae to seed a planet? Lets go back to the energy to move a few mountains again for an easy reference...

Every step is soo full of magic hand waving its just plain silly. On simply the energy front, we're talking millions of times more energy than human kind has harnessed in its entire existence, and thats just the energy not the mass or technology.

Unless you can adequately answer ALL of these points (not just a choice few), then the plan is nothing but a pipe dream.

[meekGee]

I can't help but wonder if this discussion of the challenges of terraforming Mars is perhaps in the wrong thread (and subforum).

there isn't even any science in it, just "what looks nice". Wrong forum?

Baloney. Chris McKay and others have published numerous papers on the topic in scientific journals.
It belongs in the Advanced Concepts section.

The only reason this came up is folks like you ignorantly & unscientifically dismissing it with no logical argument (only slander), even though it is indeed one of SpaceX’s long term goals (not that SpaceX would themselves do it, but it’d be a long term goal of the civilization they hope to help establish on Mars) which is the topic of the thread.

It’s safe to say, IMHO, that Blue’s much less ambitious goals will be accomplished before terraforming of Mars.

Published doesn't mean correct. It just means whoever reviewed it found it internally consistant without major logic flaws. If your lucky, its possible to get a reviewer who barely even skims the paper before stamping "pass" on it.

Tell me, how much does a mountain weigh? Now imagine how much energy it would take to melt ALL that mass. Where would you get that energy? How do you even handle that much material? This is trivial compared to terraforming, less than a rounding error. Yet this undertaking is literally impossible for us to do with anything resembling present day technology.

Throw a million comets into a planet? Putting aside the utterly ridiculous amount of effort and time it would take to do this, where does all the energy of impact go? Atmospheres don't "magically settle down". Want an ocean? Its gonna take HUGE amounts of time to get enough comets and have an ocean rain out. Want a planet without constant hurricane storms 24/7? Gonna take WAY more time to let the system adjust.

But lets not do magic hand waving at the comets. Where are you gonna get a million comets? Send a ship out there to find one - where do you get the energy to send it INTO the system towards mars? Lets go back to the energy required to melt a mountain. Now wait, you wanna send millions of comets into the inner solar system? Some are gonna miss, but even just 1 could be an extinction level impact on earth. How can you garuntee you don't hit Earth? Each of your magic ships will take 1-2 decades to make it out to the kuiper belt. Probably way longer because its gonna have to slow down (without magic fuel), then it'll spend years and years just matching speed and approaching a target.

Then what? Where is all the fuel to send the comet in? Magic again? The fuel to get there was a rounding error compared to whats gonna be required to send a comet in system. Your magic reactor thats been running for 20+ years now? How many centuries will it take to change the orbit of a single comet enough to send to the inner system? If you do it quickly (again more magic) the forces will disrupt the comet. How will a small ship even change the orbit of a comet? Get out and push? What about threading the gravitational needle of all the giant planets pulling things around? Your ship is probably gonna need to go with the entire time. Now we're easily talking about multiple centuries of fuel (and tech magically lasting that long). Radiation is a thing.


So we're gonna need millions of these magic ships if you want to do this in a few thousand years. This makes even the most ridiculous starship fantasies blush.

Want actual control of the atmospheric makeup? Well now you have to test and discard tons and tons of comets because you don't want too much of one gas. So now we have to seriously ask if the kuiper belt even has enough...

Actual terraforming? You cannot do ANYTHING until all the material is there. With comets raining death every couple years the planet will be untouchable until thats done. You can't "get a head start". You will also have made it impossible for anyone to do ANYTHING with the planet for the magic handwaving "thousands" or years. Will everyone agree to this? No settlements on the planet cause everyone can die each time a comet comes. Underground bunkers don't do much with magnitude 11+ earth quakes (read mega comets wacking the planet).

Will people even want to do this and maintain it? Countries don't even last for 500 years. Thousands? With yearly cost greater than the current global gdp? For a promise untold generations in the future, while at the same time denying all access to the planet for all that time?

So you now have your material (everything above is incredibly simplified and handwavey still).
Oxygen? Just a few magic algae bugs to split co2/h20 that was magically delivered? It took earth like a billion years to oxygenate. You need to saturate ALL the reseviors that can absorb/react oxygen before it can even start building up. Yet mars will go WAY WAY slower because it'll have far less light for your magic algae. Mars will be much colder than earth due to less sunlight to power your algae.  How do you breed enough algae to seed a planet? Lets go back to the energy to move a few mountains again for an easy reference...

Every step is soo full of magic hand waving its just plain silly. On simply the energy front, we're talking millions of times more energy than human kind has harnessed in its entire existence, and thats just the energy not the mass or technology.

Unless you can adequately answer ALL of these points (not just a choice few), then the plan is nothing but a pipe dream.

The energy required is indeed all-caps HUGE, but so is the total insolation on a planet which is what you have available when talking about biological processes.

It's an underlying assumption that said biology will operate on existing material - CO2, H2O  and rock.

How long it took on Earth is a complete non-sequitur. You can already see how industrialization causes changes many many orders of magnitude faster than natural changes in equilibrium, and that's without really trying.

Talking about "just a few algae" is similar meaningless.  It's an underlying assumption that you can guide a process that's essentially self replicating.

---

The difficult part is how to control such a set of processes with fidelity.  That's why I'm more confident about plans that just increase CO2 base pressure (and therefore temperature) than plans to make a completely habitable atmosphere.

[deadman1204]

I can't help but wonder if this discussion of the challenges of terraforming Mars is perhaps in the wrong thread (and subforum).

there isn't even any science in it, just "what looks nice". Wrong forum?

Baloney. Chris McKay and others have published numerous papers on the topic in scientific journals.
It belongs in the Advanced Concepts section.

The only reason this came up is folks like you ignorantly & unscientifically dismissing it with no logical argument (only slander), even though it is indeed one of SpaceX’s long term goals (not that SpaceX would themselves do it, but it’d be a long term goal of the civilization they hope to help establish on Mars) which is the topic of the thread.

It’s safe to say, IMHO, that Blue’s much less ambitious goals will be accomplished before terraforming of Mars.

Published doesn't mean correct. It just means whoever reviewed it found it internally consistant without major logic flaws. If your lucky, its possible to get a reviewer who barely even skims the paper before stamping "pass" on it.

Tell me, how much does a mountain weigh? Now imagine how much energy it would take to melt ALL that mass. Where would you get that energy? How do you even handle that much material? This is trivial compared to terraforming, less than a rounding error. Yet this undertaking is literally impossible for us to do with anything resembling present day technology.

Throw a million comets into a planet? Putting aside the utterly ridiculous amount of effort and time it would take to do this, where does all the energy of impact go? Atmospheres don't "magically settle down". Want an ocean? Its gonna take HUGE amounts of time to get enough comets and have an ocean rain out. Want a planet without constant hurricane storms 24/7? Gonna take WAY more time to let the system adjust.

But lets not do magic hand waving at the comets. Where are you gonna get a million comets? Send a ship out there to find one - where do you get the energy to send it INTO the system towards mars? Lets go back to the energy required to melt a mountain. Now wait, you wanna send millions of comets into the inner solar system? Some are gonna miss, but even just 1 could be an extinction level impact on earth. How can you garuntee you don't hit Earth? Each of your magic ships will take 1-2 decades to make it out to the kuiper belt. Probably way longer because its gonna have to slow down (without magic fuel), then it'll spend years and years just matching speed and approaching a target.

Then what? Where is all the fuel to send the comet in? Magic again? The fuel to get there was a rounding error compared to whats gonna be required to send a comet in system. Your magic reactor thats been running for 20+ years now? How many centuries will it take to change the orbit of a single comet enough to send to the inner system? If you do it quickly (again more magic) the forces will disrupt the comet. How will a small ship even change the orbit of a comet? Get out and push? What about threading the gravitational needle of all the giant planets pulling things around? Your ship is probably gonna need to go with the entire time. Now we're easily talking about multiple centuries of fuel (and tech magically lasting that long). Radiation is a thing.


So we're gonna need millions of these magic ships if you want to do this in a few thousand years. This makes even the most ridiculous starship fantasies blush.

Want actual control of the atmospheric makeup? Well now you have to test and discard tons and tons of comets because you don't want too much of one gas. So now we have to seriously ask if the kuiper belt even has enough...

Actual terraforming? You cannot do ANYTHING until all the material is there. With comets raining death every couple years the planet will be untouchable until thats done. You can't "get a head start". You will also have made it impossible for anyone to do ANYTHING with the planet for the magic handwaving "thousands" or years. Will everyone agree to this? No settlements on the planet cause everyone can die each time a comet comes. Underground bunkers don't do much with magnitude 11+ earth quakes (read mega comets wacking the planet).

Will people even want to do this and maintain it? Countries don't even last for 500 years. Thousands? With yearly cost greater than the current global gdp? For a promise untold generations in the future, while at the same time denying all access to the planet for all that time?

So you now have your material (everything above is incredibly simplified and handwavey still).
Oxygen? Just a few magic algae bugs to split co2/h20 that was magically delivered? It took earth like a billion years to oxygenate. You need to saturate ALL the reseviors that can absorb/react oxygen before it can even start building up. Yet mars will go WAY WAY slower because it'll have far less light for your magic algae. Mars will be much colder than earth due to less sunlight to power your algae.  How do you breed enough algae to seed a planet? Lets go back to the energy to move a few mountains again for an easy reference...

Every step is soo full of magic hand waving its just plain silly. On simply the energy front, we're talking millions of times more energy than human kind has harnessed in its entire existence, and thats just the energy not the mass or technology.

Unless you can adequately answer ALL of these points (not just a choice few), then the plan is nothing but a pipe dream.

The energy required is indeed all-caps HUGE, but so is the total insolation on a planet which is what you have available when talking about biological processes.

It's an underlying assumption that said biology will operate on existing material - CO2, H2O  and rock.

How long it took on Earth is a complete non-sequitur. You can already see how industrialization causes changes many many orders of magnitude faster than natural changes in equilibrium, and that's without really trying.

Talking about "just a few algae" is similar meaningless.  It's an underlying assumption that you can guide a process that's essentially self replicating.

---

The difficult part is how to control such a set of processes with fidelity.  That's why I'm more confident about plans that just increase CO2 base pressure (and therefore temperature) than plans to make a completely habitable atmosphere.

Please answer any of my questions. Just the simple mountain example. Explain to me how we can generate the energy and manage the materials to melt a few mountains. This bar is trivially low compared to ANY form a terraforming.

Where do you get the materials for "just a few bar of CO2"? Stripmine the top meter of regolith from the entire planet and melt it? Please explain of it without just handwaving.

[meekGee]

I can't help but wonder if this discussion of the challenges of terraforming Mars is perhaps in the wrong thread (and subforum).

there isn't even any science in it, just "what looks nice". Wrong forum?

Baloney. Chris McKay and others have published numerous papers on the topic in scientific journals.
It belongs in the Advanced Concepts section.

The only reason this came up is folks like you ignorantly & unscientifically dismissing it with no logical argument (only slander), even though it is indeed one of SpaceX’s long term goals (not that SpaceX would themselves do it, but it’d be a long term goal of the civilization they hope to help establish on Mars) which is the topic of the thread.

It’s safe to say, IMHO, that Blue’s much less ambitious goals will be accomplished before terraforming of Mars.

Published doesn't mean correct. It just means whoever reviewed it found it internally consistant without major logic flaws. If your lucky, its possible to get a reviewer who barely even skims the paper before stamping "pass" on it.

Tell me, how much does a mountain weigh? Now imagine how much energy it would take to melt ALL that mass. Where would you get that energy? How do you even handle that much material? This is trivial compared to terraforming, less than a rounding error. Yet this undertaking is literally impossible for us to do with anything resembling present day technology.

Throw a million comets into a planet? Putting aside the utterly ridiculous amount of effort and time it would take to do this, where does all the energy of impact go? Atmospheres don't "magically settle down". Want an ocean? Its gonna take HUGE amounts of time to get enough comets and have an ocean rain out. Want a planet without constant hurricane storms 24/7? Gonna take WAY more time to let the system adjust.

But lets not do magic hand waving at the comets. Where are you gonna get a million comets? Send a ship out there to find one - where do you get the energy to send it INTO the system towards mars? Lets go back to the energy required to melt a mountain. Now wait, you wanna send millions of comets into the inner solar system? Some are gonna miss, but even just 1 could be an extinction level impact on earth. How can you garuntee you don't hit Earth? Each of your magic ships will take 1-2 decades to make it out to the kuiper belt. Probably way longer because its gonna have to slow down (without magic fuel), then it'll spend years and years just matching speed and approaching a target.

Then what? Where is all the fuel to send the comet in? Magic again? The fuel to get there was a rounding error compared to whats gonna be required to send a comet in system. Your magic reactor thats been running for 20+ years now? How many centuries will it take to change the orbit of a single comet enough to send to the inner system? If you do it quickly (again more magic) the forces will disrupt the comet. How will a small ship even change the orbit of a comet? Get out and push? What about threading the gravitational needle of all the giant planets pulling things around? Your ship is probably gonna need to go with the entire time. Now we're easily talking about multiple centuries of fuel (and tech magically lasting that long). Radiation is a thing.


So we're gonna need millions of these magic ships if you want to do this in a few thousand years. This makes even the most ridiculous starship fantasies blush.

Want actual control of the atmospheric makeup? Well now you have to test and discard tons and tons of comets because you don't want too much of one gas. So now we have to seriously ask if the kuiper belt even has enough...

Actual terraforming? You cannot do ANYTHING until all the material is there. With comets raining death every couple years the planet will be untouchable until thats done. You can't "get a head start". You will also have made it impossible for anyone to do ANYTHING with the planet for the magic handwaving "thousands" or years. Will everyone agree to this? No settlements on the planet cause everyone can die each time a comet comes. Underground bunkers don't do much with magnitude 11+ earth quakes (read mega comets wacking the planet).

Will people even want to do this and maintain it? Countries don't even last for 500 years. Thousands? With yearly cost greater than the current global gdp? For a promise untold generations in the future, while at the same time denying all access to the planet for all that time?

So you now have your material (everything above is incredibly simplified and handwavey still).
Oxygen? Just a few magic algae bugs to split co2/h20 that was magically delivered? It took earth like a billion years to oxygenate. You need to saturate ALL the reseviors that can absorb/react oxygen before it can even start building up. Yet mars will go WAY WAY slower because it'll have far less light for your magic algae. Mars will be much colder than earth due to less sunlight to power your algae.  How do you breed enough algae to seed a planet? Lets go back to the energy to move a few mountains again for an easy reference...

Every step is soo full of magic hand waving its just plain silly. On simply the energy front, we're talking millions of times more energy than human kind has harnessed in its entire existence, and thats just the energy not the mass or technology.

Unless you can adequately answer ALL of these points (not just a choice few), then the plan is nothing but a pipe dream.

The energy required is indeed all-caps HUGE, but so is the total insolation on a planet which is what you have available when talking about biological processes.

It's an underlying assumption that said biology will operate on existing material - CO2, H2O  and rock.

How long it took on Earth is a complete non-sequitur. You can already see how industrialization causes changes many many orders of magnitude faster than natural changes in equilibrium, and that's without really trying.

Talking about "just a few algae" is similar meaningless.  It's an underlying assumption that you can guide a process that's essentially self replicating.

---

The difficult part is how to control such a set of processes with fidelity.  That's why I'm more confident about plans that just increase CO2 base pressure (and therefore temperature) than plans to make a completely habitable atmosphere.

Please answer any of my questions. Just the simple mountain example. Explain to me how we can generate the energy and manage the materials to melt a few mountains. This bar is trivially low compared to ANY form a terraforming.

You keep saying "generate".  I was talking about insolation driving planet-wide biological processes.

Total Earth insolation is 170,000 TWatt.
Mars should be about 10% of that.

[Robotbeat]

This is off-topic. Zubrin and McKay looks quantitatively at precisely these kinds of questions in their papers, which is is why the slander of the idea (of SpaceX’s goal of terraforming) being unscientific is false.

Talk in the Advanced Concepts section. I can look for the latest terraforming thread in there.

I can answer some of the questions there.

[meekGee]

Heh this thread (like a bunch of others by the same progenitor) are started specifically to generate adversarial content...

So a reasoned discussion about the specifics of each company's goal is clearly off-topic.  Instead we should discuss them only in the context of each other...

Well, I rebel!  Sue me.

[JCRM]

How long it took on Earth is a complete non-sequitur. You can already see how industrialization causes changes many many orders of magnitude faster than natural changes in equilibrium, and that's without really trying.

Again, human made climate change isn't terraforming, even though it may lead to the end of civilization.

That merely shows how fragile civilisation and highly adapted lifeforms are. The asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs and allowed mammals their chance to shine wasn't terraforming.

I'm just parroting a European astrobiologist, I can't even get my lawn to grow properly.

(while interesting, discussions about SpaceX's terraforming dreams are off-topic here)

Could I request that all SpaceX vs xxx discussions be moved to the SpaceX sub-forum, because they can spout as many alternative facts as they like there without disturbing those who are interested in what other companies are actually doing (or not)

[deadman1204]

This is off-topic. Zubrin and McKay looks quantitatively at precisely these kinds of questions in their papers, which is is why the slander of the idea (of SpaceX’s goal of terraforming) being unscientific is false.

Talk in the Advanced Concepts section. I can look for the latest terraforming thread in there.

I can answer some of the questions there.

Wow, if you think disagreeing with someone is slander, you really need to consider your biases.

[gaballard]

SpaceX’s goal is sorta kinda ultimately terraforming of Mars. A process that would take hundreds or thousands of years.

Your missing a few zeros on your numbers. Planets are WAY WAY bigger than people think they are. If its even possible, think millions.

You could say something similar about deforesting the Amazon, but here we are.

We’ve terraformed Earth so much we’ve altered the entire climate in just a century and a half or so.

Planets are big, but humans have a way of having an outsized impact on their environments.

[meekGee]

How long it took on Earth is a complete non-sequitur. You can already see how industrialization causes changes many many orders of magnitude faster than natural changes in equilibrium, and that's without really trying.

Again, human made climate change isn't terraforming, even though it may lead to the end of civilization.

That merely shows how fragile civilisation and highly adapted lifeforms are. The asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs and allowed mammals their chance to shine wasn't terraforming.

I'm just parroting a European astrobiologist, I can't even get my lawn to grow properly.

(while interesting, discussions about SpaceX's terraforming dreams are off-topic here)

Could I request that all SpaceX vs xxx discussions be moved to the SpaceX sub-forum, because they can spout as many alternative facts as they like there without disturbing those who are interested in what other companies are actually doing (or not)

Again, the point is that the "millions of years" opinion is bunk.  Of course Terraforming Mars is not like Screwing Up Earth.

But the idea that planets are huge and impervious to our efforts is bunk.  We screwed up Earth even without trying. Imagine if the entire industrial might of Earth was used to intentionally ruin the atmosphere.  We'd be done by Thursday.

We have enough energy and enough rough resources, to change the atmosphere of Mars in a reasonably short time.  Not sure how much control we'll have over the end result, but it'll be less hostile than it is now.

[VoodooForce]

Mars doesn't have an atmosphere yet and somehow a few vegan colonists in some tunnels are going to "terraform" it. Ok.

[deadman1204]

Mars doesn't have an atmosphere yet and somehow a few vegan colonists in some tunnels are going to "terraform" it. Ok.

Name checks out heh.  Cause the terraforming plans are all voodoo, pixie dust, and unicorn farts

[JCRM]

But the idea that planets are huge and impervious to our efforts is bunk.  We screwed up Earth even without trying. Imagine if the entire industrial might of Earth was used to intentionally ruin the atmosphere.  We'd be done by Thursday.

while we might have screwed up Earth, that's only a tiny change. The change made is less than any of  the variation caused by seasons, the variation due to altitude, the variation due to latitude.

Trying to equate Human related climate change to terraforming is nonsense.

[deadman1204]

Total Earth insolation is 170,000 TWatt.
Mars should be about 10% of that.

Please explain how sunlight will do this on its own. Grow trillions of gallons of vats of algae and release the gasses? Leaving the whole mega structures thing aside, whats to stop that gas from freezing out like that night? Don't forget that like half the polar ice cap melts each spring and then goes and freezes out back on the other pole.
Even just the algae, whats to stop the entire thing from dying every few years? Regional dust storm means you lose most your sunlight, and those happen far more often than the decadal global dust storms (Which will also starve your farms to death). You can't power them with solar power, cause there won't be any sun...

Regardless of your method to put gas in the air, how do you solve the chicken and the egg problem? Until there is enough pressure to retain enough heat, any CO2 you put out is gonna freeze out in whichever hemisphere has winter at that time.

[spacenut]

Terra forming Mars if it is ever done, is going to take years, probably centruies.  People will have to live underground an/or in domed cities.  This is not impossible.  It just has to have redundancy, like growing twice as much food as expected to need in case there is a problem, or building twice the industrial capabilities like power sources, metals manufacturing, etc as needed for redundancy. 

[Robotbeat]

Total Earth insolation is 170,000 TWatt.
Mars should be about 10% of that.

Please explain how sunlight will do this on its own. Grow trillions of gallons of vats of algae and release the gasses? Leaving the whole mega structures thing aside, whats to stop that gas from freezing out like that night? Don't forget that like half the polar ice cap melts each spring and then goes and freezes out back on the other pole.
Even just the algae, whats to stop the entire thing from dying every few years? Regional dust storm means you lose most your sunlight, and those happen far more often than the decadal global dust storms (Which will also starve your farms to death). You can't power them with solar power, cause there won't be any sun...

Regardless of your method to put gas in the air, how do you solve the chicken and the egg problem? Until there is enough pressure to retain enough heat, any CO2 you put out is gonna freeze out in whichever hemisphere has winter at that time.

Talk about it in the terraforming thread, bro: https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=31113.0
And another thread: https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=49313.0

And please don’t just invent strawmen to attack.  The solutions to these problems have been addressed in several papers on the topic. Discuss in the above links.

Your point about dust storms is kinda silly, and I’ll respond here because it pertains less to terraforming and more to settling Mars in general. It’s not like we don’t have extended cloudy periods on Earth, too. On average, Earth is shrouded by water clouds WAY more often than Mars is shrouded by dust. Being overcast (sunlight down to 1%) for weeks is super common on Earth but only occurs rarely on Mars. Turns out your crops don’t die because of a cloudy week.

They CAN and DO die due to hail, straight line winds, tornadoes, drought, frost (probably the closest analogue, but solvable with insulation), and too much rain. But these will be more controllable inside a Mars greenhouse (which can be insulated) than on Earth.

[meekGee]

Total Earth insolation is 170,000 TWatt.
Mars should be about 10% of that.

Please explain how sunlight will do this on its own. Grow trillions of gallons of vats of algae and release the gasses? Leaving the whole mega structures thing aside, whats to stop that gas from freezing out like that night? Don't forget that like half the polar ice cap melts each spring and then goes and freezes out back on the other pole.
Even just the algae, whats to stop the entire thing from dying every few years? Regional dust storm means you lose most your sunlight, and those happen far more often than the decadal global dust storms (Which will also starve your farms to death). You can't power them with solar power, cause there won't be any sun...

Regardless of your method to put gas in the air, how do you solve the chicken and the egg problem? Until there is enough pressure to retain enough heat, any CO2 you put out is gonna freeze out in whichever hemisphere has winter at that time.

Talk about it in the terraforming thread, bro.

Your point about dust storms is kinda silly, and I’ll respond here because it pertains less to terraforming and more to settling Mars in general. It’s not like we don’t have extended cloudy periods on Earth, too. On average, Earth is shrouded by water clouds WAY more often than Mars is shrouded by dust. Being overcast (sunlight down to 1%) for weeks is super common on Earth but only occurs rarely on Mars.

Yeah, off topic, and it had also devolved as always into a circular shifting goal posts argument.

The original thread premise was to generate argument, so little wonder that it did.

Shrug.

[Robotbeat]

This is off-topic. Zubrin and McKay looks quantitatively at precisely these kinds of questions in their papers, which is is why the slander of the idea (of SpaceX’s goal of terraforming) being unscientific is false.

Talk in the Advanced Concepts section. I can look for the latest terraforming thread in there.

I can answer some of the questions there.

Wow, if you think disagreeing with someone is slander, you really need to consider your biases.

This you?

Chris McKay and Robert Zubrin I’ve written papers on this topic and depending on what kind of terraforming you want, sometime between 50 years and 5000 are about right. If you are actually trying. That implies more than just waiting for biology to do your work for you.

There isn't the time to get into all the magic handwaving that these estimates have in them.

Mars doesn't have an atmosphere yet and somehow a few vegan colonists in some tunnels are going to "terraform" it. Ok.

Name checks out heh.  Cause the terraforming plans are all voodoo, pixie dust, and unicorn farts

[randomly]

To terraform Mars you have to start by appeasing the local gods by tossing terraforming skeptics into Olympus Mons. It might help that they're probably mostly virgins too...