Phobos is an extremely, almost impossibly porous and light moon in a decaying orbit

>Give me one good reason we shouldn't nuke Phobos out of orbit, Veeky Forums.

We don't have enough other material to take advantage of the collision. you'd need to be bombarding it a few times a year with some pretty big and fast moving asteroids/comets in order to start terraforming. If we can get that sort of thing line up and do it all at once then go for it. Otherwise, it is like pissing in the wind.

You can't just move a moon. Nuclear weapons aren't magic you know. Anyway even if we could I don't agree with destroying nature.

>muh destroying nature
>muh ethics
>muh morals

It'd be better to use a mass driver to bombard the moon with asteroids and comets until it smashed into Mars.

Then use lasers to clear all the debris now surrounding the planet to you can land something on it within the next 2000 years.

Look at this shit. Tell me there's a species that lives here.

#NukeMars2k16

Nature exists for a reason, destroying it usually has unforseen consequences.

>implying that's mars and not just some place out in california/nevada

>And if in fact any alien life forms do exist on Mars
There isn't. And there probably never has been. Can we give up on this stupid wild goose chase and get to colonizing already?

If they were faking it why would they leave it looking exactly the same? The ridiculous level of similarity actually makes it more unlikely to be fake. Like come on how are you going to run a multi-million dollar fakery operation and do nothing else but airbrush out the trees and mexicans?

>that twilight zone episode where astronaut thinks he's stranded on an asteroid
>faggot is just in the Nevada desert

Phobos would make for a very handy platform for s space station though

No mag-net-o-sphere.

We would have to live underground.

>Crash moon, creating nuclear winter
>Lower planetary temperatures even more
>?????
>Move to newly habitable planet

>probably never has been
This is very far from certain

>implying I'd sacrifice my gains living on a planet with gravity that low

You manlets can have Mars.

So what exactly does this impact do? I hear this theory all the time, but nobody ever explains exactly what we would do with Mars after the collision and how it helps make it more like Earth. To me, it seems like throwing debris into the atmosphere would just make it more difficult for surface operations.

Thicken the atmosphere and fill it with more useful gasses. An iceball would be better though

So what do we do with these gases?

Breathe them eventually

>completely missing the meme of the post

>There is literally no reason to not terraform Mars by nuking Phobos out of orbit.
You say that like it's easy.... or even possible.

...

Well, a single tsar bomb could do it probably. It's blast radius was about 50 miles. Compare that to the relatively tiny 20 mile Phobos.

>Give me one good reason we shouldn't nuke Phobos out of orbit, Veeky Forums.

because its the perfect candidate for a colony ship.

Blast radius in space is much smaller than in an atmosphere

>>Nature exists for a reason
>implying the universe has a reason

>tsar bomb
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba
>Weight 27,000 kilograms (60,000 lb)
Meanwhile, the heaviest thing we've ever sent beyond Earth orbit is::
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phobos_program
>They each had a mass of 2600 kg
So, ten times the mass of the biggest thing we've ever sent to another planet...
And I've got to ask, did you really do the math on 50 Megaton blast vs 1.066*10^16 kilos of rock?
...or did you just Google "biggest bomb ever built"?

Why did Japan get so fucked, then?

What do you fucking think m8.

>well congratulations, you got yourself in orbit, now what's the next step of your master plan?
>CRASHING THIS PLANET WITH NO SURVIVORSH

It's not nature, it's fucking rocks.

...

Weyland-Yutani Shill detected.

You can go for a walk in Hiroshima right now, there is probably a McDonald's within 1km from ground zero.

Not really no. Air bursts prevent massive fallout due to better dispersion patters. If you dropped a nuke directly on to something a good amount of radioactive material would embed itself into the earth.

finally a nigga feel me

>terraforming a planet that doesn't have a magnetic field or ozone layer

what's the fucking point

>ozone layer
terraforming would GIVE it an ozone layer

however you are still right because
>doesn't have a magnetic field
is pretty damn important, and that's not going away anytime soon

>terraforming would GIVE it an ozone layer
how, exactly?

couldn't we just restart the core?

>couldn't we just restart the core?
God forgot to install a crank handle.

ozone layers are CREATED by the sun hitting oxygen...

They'd actually grow taller than the average human.
Just more spindly and weaker without constant exercise.

Higher gravity drives more bone density, shorter stature, and heightened immune, cardiovascular, and muscular structure.

Space faring manlets will rule the worlds.

Increase its mass 10x.

>impossibly porous
Can you please explain this bit further for me? Why is it impossible?

Well before we nuke Phobos (if we do have a powerful enough nuke to do that) can at least mine it?

No! No nuking qt moons! Phobos is for headpats only!

opkankeren met je kankershit

muh Ann Clayborne

Producing ozone from freeing all the trapped oxygen in the soil and atmospheric CO2.

>however you are still right because
>>doesn't have a magnetic field
>is pretty damn important, and that's not going away anytime soon

Would it be possible to synchronize the moons' orbits so that their gravitational tugging heats up the planet's core.

Yes, I know that Phobos and Deimos are incredibly small compared to most things, let alone Mars, and that it would have probably little to no effect, but it's fun to think about.

Once a heavy atmosphere is in place the ionosphere will block most of the really harmful radiation, converting gamma rays into UV rays, but we would still need to build habitats mostly underground such that the population could retreat to radiation shelters should a solar flare erupt towards Mars.

A geomagnetic field isn't needed to make Mars haibtable.

WORST CASE SCENARIO:
The mother of all solar flare erupts, sirens go off, and millions of Martians on the day side retreat to their sheltered homes. The flare hits the atmosphere bathing the surface of the planet in intense UV rays. Plant and animal life out in the open dies, but seeds and roots just below the surface regrow quickly and lucky animals repopulate almost as quickly.

An ecological disaster to be sure, but far from a deal breaker.

>putting a dead planet's welfare before humanity
its dead you moron.

You gonna prevent the mining of asteroids because one might have a fossilized bacterium?

You, I like.

Launch or build solar sails in space, use them to slowly carry cargo like robotic construction equipment for human colonies, and then re-purpose the sail as a solar mirror to melt the CO2 ice caps. After several generations there will be enough to make Mars a pretty warm place.

>4
>that twilight zone episode where americans are convinced they landed on the moon

oh... wait

>The flare hits the atmosphere
>atmosphere gone
>mfw no magnetic field

Why are you comparing one of the first nukes ever made, over 70 years ago, to the technology of today?

Do you think that mercury is good for you? Or that lead being put in paint is a good thing? 1940 is very different than today

I propose we should just blast Ceres into Mars' orbit and have it become Mars moon.

It took billions of years for Mars to lose it's atmosphere. It isn't a problem.

Geologist here ......... what?

Seal off olympus mons and let the adults play with the surface

musk wants to melt the martian ice caps with atmospheric nuclear detonations.

Nature =/= living you dumb shit. This is why casual astronomy books are under the "nature" section in the library.
>Don't know what's there
>"There's nothing there"
Remember when we though pressure was too high and the water was too dark for anything to live at the deepest parts of the ocean?

much better to mine Phobos dry in orbit, to reduce energy spent on sending material into orbit to construct Vesuvius pornographic space stations.

Any Bogdanovists here?

Ok, that's not going to create ozone on any timescale we care about. Atmospheric O2 was created around 2.3 billion years ago from what we learn of Banded Iron Formations, paleosols, and redbeds. Ozone wasn't present in the atmosphere at levels necessary to sustain life for another 300-400 million years (best estimate puts the ozone layer at 1.9 billion years ago).

You gonna wait the 300-400 million years for O2 to form Ozone there bub?

hmm you would destory this littel ass?

You know what created the ozone layer on Earth, right? The sun.

You know serious scientists working with Musk said it couldn't work after Musk backhandedly threw the idea out there off the top of his head?

I wasn't aware that radiation poisoning was something that we were able to improve on nuclear weapons.

Forgive me, I'm a lowly software developer.

That's how long it took to form naturally. Musk's description was to create what were essentially tiny pulsing suns over the ice caps, which would in theory speed the process up quite a bit.

Not saying it's viable, but we're not necessarily restrained to a millions of years timescale. Think about how fast we were able to affect our own ozone layer just by tweaking CFC emissions.

Why are you worrying about Ozone? I don't think anyone is going to be wearing short sleeves on Mars for awhile and whatever simple life we introduce won't be horribly affected by the extra UV light.

It has tons of perchlorates and oxides in the soil.
It's a ball of oxidizer and rust with a thin CO2 atmosphere.

Introduce cataclysmic amounts of heat and destruction then you can shape an thicker O2 atmosphere back up.

>Remember when we though pressure was too high and the water was too dark for anything to live at the deepest parts of the ocean?
No, I don't. Enlighten me.
>Don't know what's there
But that's bullshit. We've had numerous flybys and orbiters and half a dozen landings, most of which have involved months if not years of subsequent exploration. And as far as life goes, they haven't found shit. As for the bottom of the ocean, it took only a single 20-minute visit to confirm that life existed there. Still believing that life exists on Mars passed the boundary between speculative hope and delusion long ago.

>any timescale we care about
>You gonna wait the 300-400 million years

1: yes
2: it wouldn't take that long due to...humans

It wouldn't work. The planet really does need multiple and constant large scale bombardment using moons and giant asteroids/comets in order to create a atmosphere it can maintain.

Why Phobos? Wouldn't Deimos be far easier to crash into Mars than Phobos?

Hell yes. We literally nuke fear while colonizing Mars. I like the psychological kick.

>wikipedia

I advocate solar mirrors.

Because life cannot exist without the ozone layer ... at all. The only exception is underwater which filters out the UV radiation in the absence of the ozone layer. It's why life was confined to the oceans until enough ozone was created to protect surface life.

You'll get far less radiation of any sort on Mars due to the inverse square law and Mars's distance from the sun so I don't know how unhealthy it will be. It's perhaps worth figuring out but I'm a geologist, not a planetary scientist. Still, I can't imagine even at Mars's distance from the sun you'll be completely free from needing UV protection.

>it wouldn't take that long due to...humans
I agree with you perfectly. You're simply not going to form ozone by just simply releasing O2 and waiting for nature to do the rest unless you have patience to wait geological time scales. We manufacture ozone all the time, especially in car exhaust, on the surface of Earth it's pollution. Should be easy enough to make with machines, won't be cheap though.

What about algae just below the Martian regolith? It can photosynthesize and everything.

Otherwise, I suppose we just rely on aquatic photosynthesizing algae. Mars will have large bodies of water once we heat it and even more if we bombard it with water filled comets.

>Mars will have large bodies of water once we heat it and even more if we bombard it with water filled comets.
where the FUCK are you going to get comets from?

"If in doubt, nuke it."

~The human race

The planetary system around Sol.

This.

Would you leave everything behind and go on a 1 way trip to colonize Mars?

It's really disappointing how mundane mars is.

You know? As a kid I always imagined its surface blood red with towering spires of stone and shit.

Yes.

Mars is cool as hell. A geologist's wet dream.