Mars is a dry frozen world today but
colonists from Earth will someday be
looking for ways to make it more like
home the first and most important step
in making Mars habitable is to warm it
up the fundamental problem with Mars
today is it’s too cold
we’ll have to warm Mars from its average
of 80 below zero to about 25 below to
get terraforming started in the warmest
regions near the equator and it would
take something pretty dramatic to
generate that kind of heat one person
who has pondered the problem is Robert
Zubrin an aerospace engineer author an
ardent proponent of colonizing and
terraforming Mars initially I thought
about wide array of techniques some of
which involved kake significant violence
he considered hydrogen bombs to melt ice
and heat up the atmosphere or corralling
space rocks from the asteroid belt
and crashing them into Mars
but he’s had second thoughts about that
I’ve come to realize that while some of
them might be workable in principle that
none of them are really workable in
practice zubrin’s long-range vision of
Mars involves people permanent colonists
calling the planet home and they’d want
to survive the process of warming it up
the people who are actually going to
terraform Mars are going to be the
people who live on Mars they are the
only ones who will have a significant
enough stake in the outcome of
terraforming Mars to want to expend the
resources that would be required to
change a planet so they’re not going to
want to do things like exploding
hydrogen bombs on the South Pole in fact
there is an easier way and we’ve been
practicing it on earth for the past 150
years we know how to warm up planets
we’re demonstrating that we know how to
do that right here on earth where it’s
probably not a good idea by burning
fossil fuels the carbon remains of
ancient plants we’re pumping out carbon
dioxide faster than the earth can take
it back in in the process we’re
increasing the ability of our atmosphere
to trap heat from the Sun and we’re
seeing the kinds of results the
terraformers would like to see on Mars
warming up planets is something we know
how to do we would do exactly on Mars
what we’re doing on earth we’re gonna
have to set up literally little
factories on Mars whose intent is to
produce greenhouse gases it would be
prohibitively expensive to bring fossil
fuel from Earth and even if it weren’t
it would take thousands of years to
produce enough co2 to make a difference
but there are more potent greenhouse
gases that could be made from materials
already on the planet at Caltech
Marguerita mera nova has been studying
them exposing them to infrared light to
see how efficiently they capture heat
some of them just let that energy pass
straight through them but some of these
gas actually absorbed the energy the
most potent containing sulfur and
fluorine have a super greenhouse effect
thousands of times greater than carbon
dioxide so they’re really put a lot of
punch in for a very small amount of the
gas
Florina sulfur are both contained in the
Mars soil so you might imagine these
factories pulling in Mars air scooping
up Mars dirt going through a chemical
process producing these super greenhouse
gases and releasing them into the
atmosphere in a sense the hardest part
of this whole story of warming Mars and
introducing life is that first step that
first step of producing the super
greenhouse gases on a planet with no
infrastructure no facilities nothing
everything has got to be built from
scratch
colonists from Earth will someday be
looking for ways to make it more like
home the first and most important step
in making Mars habitable is to warm it
up the fundamental problem with Mars
today is it’s too cold
we’ll have to warm Mars from its average
of 80 below zero to about 25 below to
get terraforming started in the warmest
regions near the equator and it would
take something pretty dramatic to
generate that kind of heat one person
who has pondered the problem is Robert
Zubrin an aerospace engineer author an
ardent proponent of colonizing and
terraforming Mars initially I thought
about wide array of techniques some of
which involved kake significant violence
he considered hydrogen bombs to melt ice
and heat up the atmosphere or corralling
space rocks from the asteroid belt
and crashing them into Mars
but he’s had second thoughts about that
I’ve come to realize that while some of
them might be workable in principle that
none of them are really workable in
practice zubrin’s long-range vision of
Mars involves people permanent colonists
calling the planet home and they’d want
to survive the process of warming it up
the people who are actually going to
terraform Mars are going to be the
people who live on Mars they are the
only ones who will have a significant
enough stake in the outcome of
terraforming Mars to want to expend the
resources that would be required to
change a planet so they’re not going to
want to do things like exploding
hydrogen bombs on the South Pole in fact
there is an easier way and we’ve been
practicing it on earth for the past 150
years we know how to warm up planets
we’re demonstrating that we know how to
do that right here on earth where it’s
probably not a good idea by burning
fossil fuels the carbon remains of
ancient plants we’re pumping out carbon
dioxide faster than the earth can take
it back in in the process we’re
increasing the ability of our atmosphere
to trap heat from the Sun and we’re
seeing the kinds of results the
terraformers would like to see on Mars
warming up planets is something we know
how to do we would do exactly on Mars
what we’re doing on earth we’re gonna
have to set up literally little
factories on Mars whose intent is to
produce greenhouse gases it would be
prohibitively expensive to bring fossil
fuel from Earth and even if it weren’t
it would take thousands of years to
produce enough co2 to make a difference
but there are more potent greenhouse
gases that could be made from materials
already on the planet at Caltech
Marguerita mera nova has been studying
them exposing them to infrared light to
see how efficiently they capture heat
some of them just let that energy pass
straight through them but some of these
gas actually absorbed the energy the
most potent containing sulfur and
fluorine have a super greenhouse effect
thousands of times greater than carbon
dioxide so they’re really put a lot of
punch in for a very small amount of the
gas
Florina sulfur are both contained in the
Mars soil so you might imagine these
factories pulling in Mars air scooping
up Mars dirt going through a chemical
process producing these super greenhouse
gases and releasing them into the
atmosphere in a sense the hardest part
of this whole story of warming Mars and
introducing life is that first step that
first step of producing the super
greenhouse gases on a planet with no
infrastructure no facilities nothing
everything has got to be built from
scratch
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