Surviving Mars: Green Planet to introduce terraforming, releasing in Q2 this year

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: TheRiddickThe whole idea of terraforming mars is a bit of a pipe dream. The amount of energy and resources needed makes it impractical and impossible for humans to achieve, but whatever..

Yeah, well, if you want to have fun thinking about terraforming it's pretty much the only game in town. It's not like anyone's gonna terraform Jupiter, or even Venus.
I do wonder about fiddling with the orbit of something big and made of volatiles to smash it into Mars (which appears to be one of the game options). That would give you some water and atmosphere to start from. You could use its own substance for reaction mass so it wouldn't be so huge a project . . .
Impractical, sure, but impractical things have been done before. Impossible? I wouldn't think so.

I wonder how long the atmosphere would last before you would have to do such a thing again. I've been toying with the idea of a deflector (basically the same system as in an electron gun) in Mars's L1. The idea being to deflect enough solar wind (and you can use the reaction to stay in place) to reduce atmospheric tear-off, and maybe provide some cover for would-be astronauts.
Unfortunately, I am afraid that you would need an excessively large structure, or very high potentials to create a decent electric field, and protection aura. I haven't done any calculations, though (yet).

Of course, the answer is to place a portal on Venus and another on Mars :D
(though if I had a portal gun, I would place one in the bottom of the ocean, and the other under a rocket...)

Now, in my opinion, an (arguably more) interesting question is the following: you have the tech to terraform Mars. Would you do it? There are so many potential fossils, bacterial and geological features you might destroy forever doing so...

I just hope they took a semi-realistic approach to terraforming (lichen/bacteria first, I guess?). Given that I've seen windmills in their previous trailers, I have slight doubts, though.
All right, I just hope it's fun :)

Edit: I was making sure the keywords I put were specific enough to turn out some interesting info for the curious, and it seems that NASA already thought about such a shield: https://phys.org/news/2017-03-nasa-magnetic-shield-mars-atmosphere.html
I had the idea first, though, of course ^_^
(actually, a lot of people seem to ask the same question if you look for "Mars L1").


Last edited by MayeulC on 9 April 2019 at 9:03 pm UTC

Quoting: TheRiddickThe whole idea of terraforming mars is a bit of a pipe dream. The amount of energy and resources needed makes it impractical and impossible for humans to achieve, but whatever..

Impossible? Well, a thousand years ago it was "impossible" that mankind took to the air. There is only our current stand of knowledge. Which is valid only for as long as it is.

Realistically speaking, I'd also assume we'd go for other planets before Mars. Why terraform if you can find something that doesn't need terraforming? Limited colonies on other planets around our sun, for science, resources, etc. Sure. Full-on colonization/terraforming? Probably not.
I refuse to believe there wouldn't be any other habitable planets out there somewhere. And reaching them, I'm quite fond of the idea of generation ships travelling through space (sign me up, btw, not too fond of this particular rock), that's always been a bit more "realistic" as far as sci-fi goes.

Quoting: MayeulC

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: TheRiddickThe whole idea of terraforming mars is a bit of a pipe dream. The amount of energy and resources needed makes it impractical and impossible for humans to achieve, but whatever..

Yeah, well, if you want to have fun thinking about terraforming it's pretty much the only game in town. It's not like anyone's gonna terraform Jupiter, or even Venus.
I do wonder about fiddling with the orbit of something big and made of volatiles to smash it into Mars (which appears to be one of the game options). That would give you some water and atmosphere to start from. You could use its own substance for reaction mass so it wouldn't be so huge a project . . .
Impractical, sure, but impractical things have been done before. Impossible? I wouldn't think so.

I wonder how long the atmosphere would last before you would have to do such a thing again.

Not long in astronomical terms. Which is to say, it might go away in just a few hundred thousand years or something.

You have a point about what might be destroyed.

Surviving Mars was already on my wish list, but this DLC makes it sound more interesting. I want it more.

Quoting: TheRiddickThe whole idea of terraforming mars is a bit of a pipe dream. The amount of energy and resources needed makes it impractical and impossible for humans to achieve, but whatever..

I wouldn't say impossible.
We merely have to find an energy source and develop a technology that lets us smash a few celestial bodies into Mars to increase its mass by a few times so it can hold an atmosphere that's of any use to us.
While not throwing Mars out of orbit.
Also while hopefully turning it into molten rock so it can get a magnetic field going so the solar winds don't annihilate said atmosphere.
Then we'd only need to let it cool down for a few million years so we have something solid to walk on without scorching us - unless we also have a large enough fridge by then.
And we should maybe keep our current accommodation habitable for long enough to achieve that feat.


Thankfully we have games to live our pipe dreams :)


Last edited by poisond on 10 April 2019 at 1:19 pm UTC

Quoting: poisond

Quoting: TheRiddickThe whole idea of terraforming mars is a bit of a pipe dream. The amount of energy and resources needed makes it impractical and impossible for humans to achieve, but whatever..

I wouldn't say impossible.
We merely have to find an energy source and develop a technology that lets us smash a few celestial bodies into Mars to increase its mass by a few times so it can hold an atmosphere that's of any use to us.
While not throwing Mars out of orbit.
Also while hopefully turning it into molten rock so it can get a magnetic field going so the solar winds don't annihilate said atmosphere.
Then we'd only need to let it cool down for a few million years so we have something solid to walk on without scorching us - unless we also have a large enough fridge by then.
And we should maybe keep our current accommodation habitable for long enough to achieve that feat.


Thankfully we have games to live our pipe dreams :)

I'll say again: I'm pretty dashed sure the "Mars can't hold on to an atmosphere" thing is true, but largely irrelevant at a human time scale. It's not like you put an atmosphere around a small asteroid or something. It would take ages to lose it.

I think for humans, the bigger problem that isn't mentioned much is Mars doesn't have much of a magnetic field. So you could have an atmosphere, with oxygen, and a greenhouse effect warming the place up, and plants, and you still wouldn't be able to go out in it except every once in a while, except at night I guess. The solar wind would slowly kill you; treat it like the Earth outdoors and you'd just rack up too many rads. Probably makes normal Earth animal life impossible too--again, except maybe nocturnals like bats who hide in caves during the day.

Quoting: Purple Library GuyI think for humans, the bigger problem that isn't mentioned much is Mars doesn't have much of a magnetic field. So you could have an atmosphere, with oxygen, and a greenhouse effect warming the place up, and plants, and you still wouldn't be able to go out in it except every once in a while, except at night I guess. The solar wind would slowly kill you; treat it like the Earth outdoors and you'd just rack up too many rads. Probably makes normal Earth animal life impossible too--again, except maybe nocturnals like bats who hide in caves during the day.

Totally worth it to make a new Pitch Black movie with real mutated bats.