Terraforming Mars: What it takes

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Ethan Siegel, Astrophysicist

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January 21, 2009 on 1:01 pm | In Solar System |

Ahhh, Mars. The bright, red dot in the sky. The one planet, other than Earth, that is the most likely candidate for life in our Solar System.

But we couldn’t live on it now, at least, not yet. Reader kampfgestfj writes in to ask about the prospects of terraforming Mars, to make it habitable by humans. Right now, we could reasonably go there with spacesuits, and bring our own supplies, food, water, air, etc., just like we do on the international space station (artist’s impression shown below):

But what if we wanted to make Mars like a second Earth? What if we wanted to breathe the air, grow plants and flowers, raise animals, and perhaps even have rivers and oceans? What if we wanted to turn Mars from this:

Into a place like this:

Or, in other words, how do we transform Mars into a more Earth-like planet? Ideally, once we did that, it would be suitable for us to live there. Amazingly, there are only three things we’d need to do to Mars to make it ready to populate, and they’re all related to one another.

1.) Thicken Mars’ atmosphere, and make it more like Earth’s. Earth’s atmosphere is about 78% Nitrogen and 21% Oxygen, and is about 140 times thicker than Mars’ atmosphere. Since Mars is so much smaller than Earth (about 53% of the Earth’s radius), all we’d have to do is bring about 20% of the Earth’s atmosphere over to Mars. If we did that, not only would Earth be, relatively unaffected, but the Martian atmosphere, although it would be thin (since the force of gravity on Mars is only about 40% of what it is on Earth), would be breathable, and about the equivalent consistency of breathing the air in Santa Fe, NM. So that’s nice; breathing is good. What else?

2.) Mars needs to be heated up, by a lot, to support Earth-like life. Mars is cold. Mars is damned cold. At night, in the winter, temperatures on Mars get down to about -160 degrees! (If you ask, “Celcius or Fahrenheit?”, the answer is first one, then the other.) But there’s an easy fix for this: add greenhouse gases. This has the effect of letting sunlight in, but preventing the heat from escaping. In order to keep Mars at about the same temperature as Earth, all we’d have to do is add enough Carbon Dioxide, Methane, and Water Vapor to Mars’ atmosphere. Want to know something neat? If we’re going to move 20% of our atmosphere over there, we may want to move 50% of our greenhouse gases with it, solving some of our environmental problems in the process.

These greenhouse gases would keep temperatures stable on Mars and would warm the planet enough to melt the icecaps, covering Mars with oceans. All we’d have to do then is bring some lifeforms over and, very quickly, they’d multiply and cover the Martian planet in life. As we see on Earth, if you give life a suitable environment and the seeds for growth/regrowth, it fills it up very quickly. Look at this clear-cut forest and the regrowth there after only 10 years:

So the prospects for life on a planet with an Earth-like atmosphere, temperature ranges, and oceans are excellent. With oceans and an atmosphere, Mars wouldn’t be a red planet any longer. It would turn blue like Earth! This would also be good for when the Sun heated up in several hundred million years, since Mars will still be habitable when the oceans on Earth boil. But there’s one problem Mars has that Earth doesn’t, that could cause Mars to lose its atmosphere very quickly and go back to being the desert wasteland that it is right now: Mars doesn’t have a magnetic field to protect it from the Solar Wind. The Earth’s magnetic field, sustained in our molten core, protects us from the Solar Wind:

But on geologically dead Mars, where the core has cooled and solidified, there is no magnetic field there. This means that it has no defense against the Solar Wind, which will, relatively quickly, simply blow the atmosphere off of the planet:

So what’s the fix?

3.) Mars needs to be given a magnetic field to shield it from the Solar Wind. This can be accomplished by either permanently magnetizing Mars, the same way you’d magnetize a block of iron to make a magnet, or by re-heating the core of Mars sufficiently to make the center of the planet molten. In either case, this allows Mars to have its own magnetic field, shielding it from the Solar Wind (the same way Earth gets shielded by our magnetic field) and allowing it to keep its atmosphere, oceans, and any life we’ve placed there.

But this doesn’t tell us how to accomplish these three things. The third one seems to me to be especially difficult, since it would take a tremendous amount of energy to do. Still, if you wanted to terraform Mars, simply these three steps would give you a habitable* planet!

* — Seeds of life not included. Bring your own.

46 Comments »

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I was happy until reading about the lack of a magnetic field

How do you heat up the core of a planet or permanently magnetize it? Seems like an awful lot of energy would be needed for that

Brilliant idea to send some of our green house atmosphere over to mars - a giant garbage pit haha - I wonder how cost effective it would be to start doing that?

Comment by Kampfgestfj — January 21, 2009 #
I highly recommend the novel trilogy “Red Mars”, “Green Mars”, and “Blue Mars” by Kim Stanley Robinson. They’re wonderful pieces of fiction and are for the most part very scientifically accurate. To thicken the Mars atmosphere in the books, they rely upon plants to release the gases. In Star Trek, Mars’ atmosphere was thickened by slamming comets into the planet.

Comment by Brian — January 21, 2009 #
Hmm.. Sounds interesting.. So how tremendous is a tremendous amount of energy? It seems that we are already lacking of energy..

Comment by Sophos — January 22, 2009 #
Heating up the core of a planet would take an awful lot of energy; more than we know how to create. If we want to make an estimate, we’d be talking about raising 10^20 kg of rock/metal by a minimum of about 2,000 degrees Celsius. The specific heat of rock is about 0.2 calories/gram/degree Celsius. This means it will take about 4 x 10^25 calories, or about 1.6 x 10^26 Joules of energy. This means we would need about one million tonnes of antimatter to have that sort of energy.

Like I said — a lot! It’s thought that Mars lost most of its heat through that giant volcano (Olympus Mons) over a timespan of about 1-2 billion years.

Brian, although these are nice ideas, they aren’t feasible. You’re talking about adding 10^15 tonnes of gas to Mars. Plants don’t add gas, they breathe in just as much as they breathe out, and the mass of a typical large comet is only about 10^11 tonnes. So these things are hard to do — collide 10,000 large comets with Mars and have all of the comets become gas? They’re neat ideas, but like I said, practicality is something that needs to be considered and we don’t know how to deal with.

Comment by ethan — January 22, 2009 #
Is there another way to stop solar flares without a magnetic shield or a ridiculously big physical shield (lol) - solar sails that eject out of satellites?

It looks like pocket colonies would do best and terraforming is out of our league.

Comment by Kampfgestfj — January 22, 2009 #
But why would we want to? I think it’s more interesting as a scientific playground. No need to go messing up other planets and moons as long as we can’t take care of this one.

Hmmm. I guess it might be convenient to have a quarter of Humanity elsewhere when the asteroid hits, but meh.

Comment by Sili — January 22, 2009 #
What about the surface composition of Mars? Is it a suitable mix to (eventually) sustain life as we know it?

Comment by paulo — January 22, 2009 #
I tend to agree with Sili that we shouldn’t go around messing up other planets. Then again, if humanity is to survive as a species, we have to find another home somewhere. My take on it is if we can prove without a doubt that a given planet (such as Mars) has no life on it whatsoever, then terraforming for human habitation would be acceptable. For the case of Mars, proving it has no life today might be possible, but proving it never had life will be extremely difficult. If we greatly alter the planet, it might destroy whatever record of past life might exist there. Thus, I would hesitate a great deal when considering terraforming alternatives for Mars.

As for the magnetic field idea, I can’t imagine how we could magnetize the planet or melt the core to induce a geodynamo. I suppose if we could drill radioactive heat sources and/or nuclear bombs to the core, we could impart a lot of energy there, but it would probably not be nearly enough as would be required. We don’t even understand the Earth’s magnetic field generation well enough, let alone that of another planet. I think a better way to mitigate the threat of solar wind would be radiation shielding in buildings/clothing and perhaps genetic modification of plants/animals to build resistance to it.

Comment by Brian — January 23, 2009 #
The soil on Mars is close enough to the soil on Earth, as far as we know, that it should be able to grow things just fine. I think that when we get the technology to colonize other worlds easily, we’ll do it. The ethical concerns that Brian has are ones I do not share, and so it will be up to people like him to convince people like me that Mars deserves to remain its own planet, free from our influences.

The reason the magnetic field is so important, and the reason the solar wind needs to be stopped, is that if left unattended, it will blow the atmosphere off of the planet and into space. It’s thought that is how Mars’ atmosphere got to be the way it is today!

Comment by ethan — January 23, 2009 #
[…] to terraform it! It’s easy! Ethan Siegel over at Starts With a Bang concludes that there are only three things that we would really need to […]

Pingback by Carnival of Space #87 « The Martian Chronicles — January 23, 2009 #
Mars’s core is already molten - all the geophysical data and modelling says as much. The problem is that the currents in the core that generate a field have died away for some reason. So kick starting the magnetic field might be easier than we first imagine.

Alternatively wrap some humungous superconducting cables around the Red Planet and set a current running sufficient to make the shield we want.

Finally, even though it is an oft repeated claim, Mars is losing atmosphere to the solar wind, what isn’t usually discussed is the magnitude of the loss. The high loss-rate when most of its original air was blown away was due to the solar-wind being 1000 times stronger than today. The Sun has settled down a lot since then and the present day loss rate would be quite small. A magnetic field might be nice to keep the cosmic ray flux down, but it shouldn’t be seen as an absolute necessity.

Comment by Adam — January 23, 2009 #
I think the problem with the atmosphere is more than the magnetic field. Looking at Venus the magnetic field is ~10^-5 that of earth. Something has to replenish it faster than the solar wind and weak gravity strip it away.

Comment by Jim — January 23, 2009 #
Just drop kudzu on the martian equator and watch the fun.

Comment by mark a. thomas — January 23, 2009 #
[…] “Amazingly, there are only three things we’d need to do to Mars to make it ready to populate… […]

Pingback by Terraforming Mars in Three Simple Steps | The Blog of Record — January 23, 2009 #
Isn’t there already a lot of water and CO2 locked up in the poles and permafrost of Mars? Slamming asteroids into the martian poles would evaporate a lot of water and CO2, which would act as greenhouse gases and maybe heat the planet enough to release a lot of the permafrost.
The phoenix lander has already analyzed the soil, found ice under it and determined that it is suitable to grow plants in.
I think Adam has a good point. You could wrap huge superconducting cables around Mars, of put them in high orbit even.

Comment by David — January 24, 2009 #
Mars is volatile rich and bitterly cold. We need to give it a major industrial defrost to make it Earth-like.

Comment by Adam — January 25, 2009 #
David,
That was precisely the model that is used in the Star Trek universe to terraform Mars: slam comets and asteroids into the polar caps to evolve the volatiles there. I’m not necessarily advocating that idea, but it is nice when scifi tries to do something that might actually make sense.

Comment by Brian — January 27, 2009 #
If the Martian Core is truly molten we may have a shot. We do need to figure out how to make it generate a magnetic field, but perhaps making a great solenoid would have a shot?

Comment by ethan — January 29, 2009 #
why stop at mars? as soon as we figure out a way to start making mars hospitable, we will need to start finding ways to escape our solar system. Isn’t our sun due for explosion in a couple billion anyways. Ha Ha colonize outer space…..

Comment by dani — February 24, 2009 #
Well, you may be putting the cart before the horse, but umm… well, it is stimulus package time. Give it a shot!

Comment by ethan — February 24, 2009 #
thank you for the information …….

Comment by Alex — March 3, 2009 #
Seems like you may be better off stealing an icy moon and a gassy moon from Saturn or Jupiter to add mass/water/atmosphere to Mars. Maybe raid the asteroid belt just beyond Mars for ice. You need more water than what;s there, for sure. It’s all moot until you manage a way to magnetize mars to protect from the solar wind. But if you’re moving planetoids, why not just move Venus further out, into Mars’ orbit and magnetize it? It’s almost the same size as the Earth. Of course there’s that retrograde rotation problem… and the whole hot-as-a-self-cleaning oven problem…:)

Comment by nick — March 10, 2009 #
[…] Moon TheSpacewriter’s Ramblings Footage from Barack Obamas parade featuring the NASA float. Terraforming Mars: What it takes Starts With A Bang! This is all in the news again due to the hype around methane. Is Space Travel […]

Pingback by Link list – 22nd January 2009 | Astronomy Link List — April 6, 2009 #
I loved this post. I enjoy sitting around dreaming of such prospects (when i was younger i used to dream of inhabiting a planet the size of Jupiter so that there would be plenty of room ) Anyways, i DO think it is necessary to find another home from earth. Populations will not cease to increase, and we are getting crowded as it is. What will happen with this population growth is a planet with every piece of dry land built up like New York City. At which point, without vegetation we would die, so it isn’t a matter of If we should do it, it is How Quickly can we do it, that is the question at stake.

The planet’s natural history (if anything significant) would certainly be disturbed with terraforming the planet, however, realistically our two options are either 1) spend massive amounts of economic and natural resources to fund and produce the energy required to send scientists up there to excavate (and if we consider the fact that we’ve still not unearthed all the artifacts to paint an accurate picture of our own history here on it seems like our resources would completely run out before any significant advancements.) or 2) terraform and excavate what we can while in the comfort of an inhabitable planet without the need for expensive and restricting suits. terraforming the planet would certainly not Destroy the artifacts relatively close to the surface. it would be a good idea to give ‘er the ol college try, though, before terraforming — if we find something then we’ll know to take greater care during the process. when working to heat the core we’ll be digging pretty deeply anyways so if we run into scientific gold near the to-be-core region (which WILL be destroyed) then that care that i spoke of earlier will kick in and some more time will be spent investigating that before commencing further.

The magnetic field — if we go with heating the core it would be relatively easy to do it using atomic bombs. a 1 Megaton weapon gives off about 4.18×10^15 Joules of energy[see bottom for the website cited]. definitely not the 1.6×10^26J that we need, but it’s a step in the right direction and the cheapest off the top of my head. the downside, of course, would be radiation. i know that airbursting atomic weaponry in the atmosphere would be catastrophic, showering the planet with toxic radiation — but i don’t know the extent if done in the core. this area could be contemplated for a while, but i’ll move on. The Tsar Bomba was ~50Megatons, which was the largest ever made, and produced ~2.1×10^17J.[Link 2 at bottom for reference]. One thing to keep in mind, though, is that approximately half of the energy produced is actual thermal energy. the rest would not be lost, but it would not assist in heating the core very much. Again, i don’t know the ultimate consequences of this, but cost-wise and energy-wise it seems to be our best bet.

Another method could be to just set up a nuclear powerplant (which would be INCREDIBLY expensive to send all the parts and pieces to Mars along with a crew to maintain and run it) and send its power down to the core. I guess this would essentially be more efficiently using the nuclear fission principles of the atomic bomb in a more controlled and wholly ‘cleaner’ manner.

something else we could consider trying, although even more expensive, would be to set up the nuclear power plant (or two or three) and drive ALL of the current through one thick-ass wire that circumnavigates the globe at the equator. current driven through the ‘coil’ will produce a magnetic field that may give us the results we want (google ‘magnetic field coil’ and check the images for an idea of how the magnetic field looks with this). if you are genuinely interested in this method shoot me an email and i’ll crunch some numbers for you to give you an estimate on how much electricity it would require to generate such a field given the Mars radius and possible across-sectional area. note that the magnetic field of the earth is ~1/2 Gauss, which isn’t all that strong.

-Michael

http://www.atomicarchive.com/Effects/effects1.shtml

Comment by Michael — May 4, 2009 #
I need some information on the social and environmental issues of terraforming Mars. This is for my Science project at school. Thks in advance
- Oliver

Comment by Oliver Lee — May 27, 2009 #
fUNFNN

Comment by Pmjmpxxl — July 13, 2009 #
I think in order to protect mars solar winds we could do a little bit of both solutions. magnetize the planet ever so slightly and reheat the planets core half way so as to not take as long. and about a month or so after the first launch we send up the 20% of our atmosphere and some green house gases so that the core doesn’t freeze again. then send some plant life along some of earth’s less dangerous less needed bacteria so the planet isn’t poisoind and earth doesn’t die out either. then a few years later after the plants have produced some oxygen we send a few of earths species land, sea, and air. keep tabs on them to see if the planet will support life then we can move up there.

Comment by William smith — August 15, 2009 #
The easy answer is to dump a heap of politions on the planet and the hot air they produce, mars would be inhabitable in no time.

Comment by Jeffrey — September 2, 2009 #
i thank its great that we could terroform mars into a earth like planet but theres only one thing, i know anything is possible but wouldnt it be eazer to find a way to move venus back some from the son, it already has a thick atomosohere and its clounds have water vapor, idk eather way is fine and i love mars but it seems like a lot less work with venus.

Comment by Ryan — September 8, 2009 #
It seems like Mars currently has plenty of wind & solar energy generating capabilities. If we made sure the very 1st step towards terraforming we took was to create sustainable magnetic fields at 2 opposite pole positions. It might be slow going but it would be safer when we finally got to the human portion of the project. Initially we need to send the prototypes & components materials needed for solar powered Replicators to begin harvesting minerals from the north & south poles. The minerals they collect will first be used to create more Replicators. Once sufficient quantities have been created, they can begin building supplemental energy sources by way of windmills that should just about encompass Mars’ equator. Some of the Replicators task would be to convert the abundant silica into large solar panels. Others would begin the process of creating synthetic diamonds ( these will be need for deeper burrowing into the north and south poles, as well as conducting the enormous amounts of energy that will be required to electrically magnetize the new poles ) After all Replicators have successfully burrowed about 30 miles down into the newly created pole regions, and all wind and solar arrays have been activated, they will all perform their final act which is to become the material the new electro-magnets of the new poles are made of.

Comment by Joseph — September 27, 2009 #
Going back to the magnetic field, I had a foolish dream the other night that I was in a seminar and the presenter was saying that the reason Earth has a magnetic field is because of moon and the molten core. The moon hold the core in place due to tidal attraction and the Earth rotates around the core thus generating a Magnetic field. Mars does not because, its moons do not exert enough pull to hold it place even if Mars may have a molten core.

Possible?

Comment by KMGuru — October 18, 2009 #
To heat the core of Mars . . . move Mars closer to the sun. Why not move Mars on the exact opposite side of the sun from earth? The technology doesn’t exist yet to be able to move Mars, but it simplifies a LOT of other issues surrounding colonization, travel, creating an atmosphere, and terra forming.

Comment by John Bagwell — October 30, 2009 #
OK, let’s see what we have at our disposal.

1. TONS of greenhouse gasses which Mars needs and we are supposedly killing our planet with. So we need to create a device that would collect these gasses and a system to transport to Mars. It would also boost our economy since unrestricted creation of greenhouse gasses would uninhibited manufacturing and agriculture, giving us all the goodies we want, Hummers, Escalades, Lamborghini’s, Kobe beef, and a personal jet for everyone, but without the consequences of an uninhabitable home planet. Excess would not only be promoted, but necessary for our survival and the project, thus filling in humanities two opposing natural instincts and used for the greater good. (It doesn’t matter which side of the political spectrum you fall on, if we got rid of the gasses and sent them to Mars where they are desperately needed…. problem solved!) (A kibosh on carbon credits too. Instead we would be paying for shipping!)

2. We have a nuclear arsenal that could blow ourselves to kingdom come many times over. This could be used to power many nuclear reactors on Mars, especially in the polar regions where we want to melt the ice and the ice is needed for the steam power anyways. We could get water into the atmosphere, and possibly use it to power some sort of artificial magnetic field until we can make a core like Earth has. (What would Iranian leaders faces look like when we told them that we inadvertently sent their uranium to Mars for enrichment processing!) (Also, on the subject of making a magnetic field. Come on, we built a hadron collider under the border of France and Switzerland, why not on a larger scale under the polar regions of mars that we could use to create a magnetic field. The resulting antimatter could be used to power our future space traveling vehicles with as an added bonus…)

3. We always want to out-do ourselves. From the pyramids of Gaza and Maya, Tesla versus Edison, to the nuclear arsenals and cold war efforts of the Soviets and the US, and everything in between; we thrive on competition as a species. Mars North and Mars South could be our next great competition. As for the naysayers who don’t believe we don’t have enough power to change the atmosphere on Mars. Many people say we can are doing it to Earth now, why not Mars?

In all, I don’t only think that it is possible, but that it is necessary for humans to terraform and colonize Mars. We have 7 billion people living on Earth and are expected to grow to something like 27 billion in the next 100 + years bringing about food riots, wars, and eventually the apocalypse and all that. (Instead of a “Madmax” world where an antisemitic saves the day for a group of unruly mentally challenged children against a horde of mutated bad guys with an 80’s singer with questionable acting skills as their leader, we could have the “Governator” save the martian horde of mutates by discovering and unlocking an alien device which would solve the transforming issue for us anyway) It would provide the necessary boost to the economy, save the planet, and fulfill the dreams of all of us who look out into space in wonder. We could even get Al Gore and George W Bush to both sign on and do a movie about it. Two opposing movies of course, so that the anti-partisanship could remain intact and be used for the competition theory but with both sides making the conclusion to terraform Mars. (I know, I’m sick… Just know that I mean it all in light humor to bring a smile to your face and not to insult.)

Comment by Chris — December 6, 2009 #
what would fix both the problems of the atmousphere and the magnetic feild would be an increase in mass. It is estimated that the earth is at about the smaller end of the habitable size range. all of the enerjy which earths core has was created from kinetic enerjy formed by asteroid impacts. hence if you could persuade a large number of asteroids to collide with the planet you could get the mass and the heat to serve the required perpous to creat another earth. By most calculations the asteroid belt that resides about one AU from mars would have at least as much mass as earth so more than enough rock to give mars enough size to hold down a stable atmousphere and a molten core

Comment by George — January 23, 2010 #
Terraforming Mars is relatively easy and cost efficient if we really look at the technology we have right now, and work as a planet to develop better ones. We already have perfluorocarbons, artificially created chlorofluorocarbons that have as much as 100 times more energy in them. All we have to do is send in millions of those perfluorocarbons with some of our atmospheric gas we have right now (in pressure containers), and bam, in about a decade, Mars will already be heating up. As for the magnetic field, slamming in a huge asteroid would create a huge shock, which could shake up the core, and make the molten rock in the core move faster. That would eventually create a magnetic field. And huge amounts of heat would be released as well (an added bonus). This is pretty easy, considering Newton’s law, an object in motion stays in motion unless another force is acted upon it. So using nuclear powered boosters on rockets and making them either push asteroids to Mars, or latching onto the asteroids and driving them into Mars would make this very easy. Also, importing more water from Ceres, the dwarf planet in between Earth and Mars, would help with the greenhouse gas (warming) process. Once Mars has heated up significantly, anaerobic bacteria could be sent, paving the way for more complex life forms. If we start within the next decade, we could have life on Mars pretty soon! Although the cost is high, if all the nations of the world pool together their resources, it wouldn’t be so much. (And as an added bonus, we would have world peace for working together!)

Comment by Prodigy — January 25, 2010 #
I think we should blast olympus mons with a nuclear weapon or astroid. if that volcano erupts, then mars would get warmer. Its easy too. just have to create a pocket for the magma.
marshas magma just to make clear. After the volcano erupts ash would be everywhere and can add thickness (c02) to the atosphere. After a few years, the ash would have cleared, and bam! instant warmness. my thoery might be wrong.

Comment by refresh — March 15, 2010 #
Mars, Is and could be the only planet we could wish to terraform within a century. Mars is there to be mankinds back up. All of the ideas we have could be possible. But there are rumors of Obama cutting Nasa funds, So if thats true. Nobody might be terraforming Mars anytime soon or going there for the matter

Comment by Caeden — May 9, 2010 #
Surely if you managed to hit up the core your second main problem would be doing it without making the planet unstable for another billion years.

I can’t imagine how we could heat it up without starting off volcanoes and daily Earthquakes.

Comment by Alien — June 1, 2010 #
The concept with Venus is to create a shield to cut off sunlight allowing the planets atmosphere to rain down onto the surface then freeze. The concept allows a soletta in polar orbit to provide a normal 24 hour day.
So could a similar shield cut off the solar wind allowing a soletta in polar orbit to provide sunlight? Would make for a weird day.
When I say shield I dont mean a star trek style shield I mean a real thin shield two to three times teh width of the planet in solar orbit.

Comment by Brian — June 17, 2010 #
The real problem is that mars simply doesn’t have enough mass to really support life. It only has roughly 38% of the mass of earth so humans couldn’t really live healthily on its surface. The effects of low gravity environments on human bodies is extremely detrimental. By using some of the larger, movable objects (for instance Jupiter has like 50 extra, temporary moons that could be moved) in our solar system we could crash them into mars adding mass and creating a magnetosphere with all the heat created in the core from the impacts(a lot). Moving these objects could be achieved with a spaceship full of uranium. Uranium is the second heaviest stable element and we could use its gravitational pull to move large asteroids which would then move larger objects with their gravity. So you see, this would solve several problems with the same stone, using something everyone wants to get rid of to make a habitable planet for future generations of humans. Unfortunately this will take a lot of time.

Comment by Guy — June 19, 2010 #
We’ve already been traveling to Mars for almost sixty years. I know you’ll all write me off as a loonie for saying this, but there is maybe one or two of you that are open-minded enough to find the truth about what’s REALLY been going on behind the public space program. NASA has been lying to us for a long time. No, I don’t believe that the lunar landings were hoaxed. Just because they couldn’t take a good picture and had to fake a lot of them doesn’t mean man never stepped foot on this satellite.
As to Mars, what I’m talking about, of course, is the fact that there are underground bases there, and if you look in the right places, you’ll find these facts. There are propulsion drives that exist NOW that take man to and from Mars. The Aurora space program has been around for a long time, and it uses a He3 fission drive. Yes, I know, this sounds like Sci-Fi. But it is truth. Whistleblowers have risked their lives and their friends and families to bring this out. You will NEVER hear this on the mainstream news.
Please don’t be tied in to the science that was taught us– the “laws” of heat and thermodynamics are nothing more than that. Quantum physics has turn science on its side– why not other previously held beliefs shifted as well?
Anyway now the Aurora is being replaced with a matter-antimatter drive, and the Aurora is what will replace the junky old Space Shuttle.
Terraforming? Yes, the technology has been given to us by offworld civilizations, and indeed, it has been initiated on Mars. If you want to know what the best greenhouse gas of all is, it’s water vapor. Not CO2, or methane.
Look up The Disclosure Project, who’s behind it and why. Do a search on Bob Dean.
The ARE such things as stargates. Not like the show, but actual portals to other places and dimensions. And, as you’d expect, the military and its black ops divisions control them. As do the ETs who use them as well. I know some of this strays off topic, but I want to throw a wrench into this mainstream-type discussion.
Now don’t just sit back, without doing some research and really trying to prove these things wrong, and say I’m a nutcase. I’m one of the sanest people you will meet. Sure, most people here will, but there will be a few, maybe one or two, that feel my sincerity, and honestly and with an open mind look into what I’m saying.
I’ve not told one thing here that isn’t VERIFIABLE FACT.
Well, have a nice day, eveyone!

Comment by saturnx311 — June 21, 2010 #
Oh, reading my post over, I didn’t give more than 2 sources. Believe me, there are MANY more. So don’t think I just took the word of a few people to say what I’ve said. And here was just a tiny snippet of what I’ve found out. You will find lies and garbage but you’ll find the truth too. It’s learning to discern between the two that is a process all by itself. So have fun. If you remain calm and don’t be too prideful of the paradigm you are thinking within now, you will find out things of which you’ve never dreamed.
Thanks.

Comment by saturnx311 — June 21, 2010 #
Hello everybody
I’m sorry to say but somebody caled Noam
already design a scheme - in 1988 I think
at the “Together to Mars” Contest - to blow all
our nuclear weapons on Mars in order to thicken
its atmosphere.
What happened to that idea ??

Comment by Andreas — June 28, 2010 #
wonderful—–mars—-from—name—-montra—trimek—-pig—-thailand——-thankyou—-nasa—-and—-mars

Comment by montra---trimek---pig---thailand-- — August 1, 2010 #
Been thinking about this since I was about 5.
The very notion that any planet could possibly be even close to Earth has always intrigued me. I hope we will be able to accomplish the feat of terraforming Mars very soon.

Comment by Anoynomous — August 20, 2010 #
Jeg lugte a KUT!

Comment by :D:D — August 24, 2010 #

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Terraforming Mars: What it takes

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