Leader

By atmosphere I'm referring to something resembling Earth's atmosphere. Of course Mars has some atmosphere, but what we would need to live there would be enough atmospheric pressure to keep the nitrogen is our blood dissolved. Mars isn't capable of holding enough atmospheric gas to keep that kind of pressure.

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Praxus

It is possible to have a similar atmosphere on Mars as it is on Earth.

Mars has a gravitational pull of around 1/3rd that of Earth and a surface area of around 1/3rd that of Earth. That means that if you introduced the same ammount of atmosphere that there is on Earth, you would have the same pressure at "sea level" on Mars that you would have at sea level on Earth.

The distance from the surface to the end of the atmosphere would be 3 times that of Earth however.

The gas wouldn't just drift into outer space.

Leader

What bases do you have to believe that the gas will not drift off into outer space? Mars simply can not hold an atmosphere that would have to extend three times farther then earth's atmosphere.

Confed999

Mars could have a very similar atmosphere to Earth according to scientists. This site has a list of the terraforming methods being discussed: http://www.redcolony.com/methods/ . The rest of that site is quite good as well.

Ironduke

Even if the atmospheric composition could be made to be exactly the same as that on Earth, it would be like breathing at 30,000 feet. Some kind of compressor would be needed.

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Leader

Good luck with that. That will take some significant technological advances.

Praxus

My far fetched idea...

I would deliver a nuclear weapon every 10 miles on the polar ice caps in the 100-200 kt range. Each warhead will have a parachute and it will release it when it slows to a speed where the warhead can survive. This would be several thousand nuclear weapons which would rapidly turn frozen CO2 and Ice into it's gascious form.

Confed999

Nah, the atmosphere could be alot more vast than that. All one has to do is look to Venus or any of the gas giants, as well as many of the giant's moons, to see that atmospheres can be alot bigger than Earth's. I've never heard anyone question that the pressure on Mars could be made similar to Earth, except for a question about quantities of specific types of gasses. The reality of the whole thing is that if enough CO2 could be released increasing the pressure to the point that a habitat being holed wouldn't be catastophic, then all that is required for humans to breath would be CO2 filters and a compressor. We have both of those allready. Additional equipment may be required to extract/simulate the other gasses needed, nitrogen will be difficult.

Confed999

Too much dust is counterproductive to the process.

Ironduke

Yeah, Mars is already quite dusty.... and the dust would block out the sunlight, perhaps for many years.

I don't think radiation would be a problem.... Mars is already quite "radiated"

Praxus

Why now just through tons of algea on the planet? That way people could survive outside.

Confed999

That would be a major part of terraforming. For example, there are bacteria called methanogens that could survive Mars today, they create methane, an important greenhouse gas. The single celled organisms also have the big bonus of being easily engineered into something more useful, customizeable.

Praxus

You could geneticly engineer it to produce the gases that you want.

Confed999

And from the materials you have in surplus. It's been used here to create bacteria that attack nitrogen compounds, like explosives, for enviornmentaly sound methods of disposal. There's allways the chance of making something really nasty by accident and there are alot of people against "messing with nature", or it would be used more.

Confed999

Can you believe these little buggers are still kicking? Spirit has just passed the 3 times it's estimated lifetime mark, and it's still exploring. It's nice, that after so many failures, they have something work out better than was expected.
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/home/

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