This article is more about where is more convenient to make a first off world base than terraform. It’s very hard to make a base on mars and the moon but a moon base is much easier.
Terraforming is a whole another beast though. You’ll need to be able to create industry on Mars with local resources to begin terraforming, notably harvesting solar energy. Wind energy is going to be absolute ass to begin with since the air pressure on the moon in 1% of earth’s so we’d need to do a stupid amount of climate change just to make it as livable as Mount Everest Basecamp. Probably we’d need to electrolyze all of the surface rust for oxygen and then we’d still need to deal with radiation issues because of it’s still missing the molten core.
More realistically we’d need a Dyson sphere around Mars, a shaft that goes all the way to the core and blast it with the power of the sun for centuries to kickstart the core again. Not sure about the calculations on that one. Could off by many factors of 10. Once done it can be sealed and the insulation will keep it going for a longer than we’d have to worry about.
I personally think a floating city on Venus a lot nicer. At 50-60km elevation the air in breathable for humans so we’d just have to make massive blimps.
Jesus Christ when one of them went down it’d make the Hindenburg look like a birthday party. I’m here for this story.
Neither one has a strong enough magnetic field to protect us (or life similar to us) from the levels of solar radiation harmful to life. In my opinion, we’d be better served looking to inhabit one of the Jovian moons. As several others have already suggested, how about terraforming Earth for a change?
If we stopped terraforming Earth to become unlivable, we wouldn’t need to terraform another planet at all for a while.
And if we were capable of terraforming the Moon or Mars then we should be able to fix the problems we have here on Earth anyway.
To be fair, terraforming those mostly involves doing what we are doing here, but on an even higher scale. The hard part is really just getting stuff from here to there.
The next hard part is the dust. Lunar and Martian dust is a huge problem to overcome, and something we don’t have to deal with here. Then there’s radiation, although there’s things we can do to lessen that problem.
I am curious how solar winds would deplete any gasses we vent onto the surface of Mars when it doesn’t have a magnetic field to stop or slow any of it. 🤔
My understanding is that solar winds stripping your atmo is so slow it’s a problem on the scale of millions of years
Let me check a source
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Okay 21k lb during an earth day does seem like a lot
That’s pretty insignificant on a planetary scale, earth loses atmo at TEN TIMES that rate 😄
I’m just worried it’s going to be expensive to keep the atmo replenished
Yeah exactly. It’s easy to forget that terraforming the Sahara desert, or Antarctica, or the ocean floor are probably all much easier than either of these ideas.
Terraforming Antártica would require to melt the ice and basically destroy the ecosystem as it exists. We are doing well then?
Makes sense if what you’re talking about is a pressurized bubble, but that seems like a misuse of the term “terraform”, imo does not count unless people can live outdoors. Mars has the radiation problem but you could fudge a solution to that with genetic engineering, the moon can’t hold an atmosphere so it’s impossible.
Nuts to that let’s go balls deep and terraform the sun.
Let’s get a handle on keeping Earth sustainable first yeah?
Lunar regolith is razor sharp asbestos.
Nein. Fine particulate is a concern on both moon and Mars though.
You’re welcome to review the published peer-reviewed information on this topic: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41526-022-00244-1
The paper explicitly states that while lunar dust has sharp edges and irritant potential (mechanical abrasion of skin, eyes) — it does not establish that the exposure risk is equivalent to asbestos, nor that it behaves identically in terms of chronic fibrosis or mesothelioma risk. In fact, it emphasises that we don’t yet know the long-term human health effects.
The asbestos part… Well. Its not literally asbestos nor does it have anything in common with asbestos in terms of health effects. In fact it might, but we don’t know. So your claim is wrong on every level and i love how you try to cite a paper that does not support your claim x)
I think the dispute is in how literally somebody is reading your statement
