Here's something that's been on my mind lately with all the mars colonization talk...
On mars, water boils away easily, correct? How exactly does that play out with planetary heating and atmospheric thickening? What would be the proper order of events to ensure retention of as much moisture as possible? It'd be incredibly counterintuitive if we boiled away the ice caps in the process of heating the planet, turning it into even more of an uninhabitable desert than it already is.
It's not really boiling like we think of it. More like evaporation.
Is the moisture held by Mars' atmosphere or does the vapor escape into space? I would think water's escape velocity is high enough that Mars should be able to hold onto it, but I might be missing something.
>On mars, water boils away easily
It boils because of the lack of atmosphere. You can see a similar, but less dramatic, effect on earth at high altitude. I've no idea how to answer the rest of your question.
Solar mirrors and greenhouse gasses.
In firt place the problem of the water evaporation would be solved if it had a more dense atmosphere, but anyway Mars has no magnetic fild and it's exposed to the solar wind so it lost 100Kg atmophere per second so its no cost-effective. Venus is a different question.
>Venus is a different question.
Venus also lacks a magnetic field.
>> Venus
>> Lacks a magnetic field
Venus is a magnetic goddess
>What would be the proper order of events to ensure retention of as much moisture as possible?
Use roofs
I know but anyway it has a dense atmosphere, the same gravity as earth (more less), an ozone layer, volcanic activity and its only to make the planet rotate to produce one. There no reson to terreform Mars instead of Venus except cause it would take more time.
Sorry *100g
what will you do with all that sulfur? by the time humans can terrarium another planet we will have the technology to reach a speed close enough to the speed of light... resulting in interstellar flight that would be aided with time dilation
you could reach alpha centari in just a few years (it would seem like a few years to you), even if its a 40 year trip
we already have two theoretical space ship that can do this (orion and Medway).... what's holding us back is the lack of habitable planets (haven't found them yet) and our inability to keep humans alive for very long in space
if we can survive a trip to mars, however, we can survive a trip to another star
technological advancements happen in leaps... we are at the beginning of the next golden era of space travel due to renewed interest... I'm not talking about spacex, im talking about an entire wave of new developments that are beginning right now
forget mars... forget venus... forget the moons of the gas giants... we will travel between stars before the 22nd century
holy shit, auto correct fucked up my post... terraform* medusa*
Should we even think about colonizing Mars before we invent nuclear fusion?
How the fuck would we get enough power to heat up and breath life into AN ENTIRE dead planet?
Millions of years versus thousands is nothing to scoff at.
Solar mirrors. Atoms thin aluminum on mylar sheets in orbit at the Mars-Sun lagrange points. Thousands of square miles of the stuff slowly put in place over decades or centuries.
Don' think so, by now we have the intelligence and resources to start a Venus colonization (not terraform) and we are able to make space habitats (if we don't have it yet is cause of the lack of money).
There is no reason to colonize Venus. It cannot be self sustaining and would not contribute anything to an interplanetary economy.
the sun would deorbit them
what is solar pressure
what stops us from finding an actual earth like planet and sending some crew there? even a 10000 year journey would feel like a few years to a crew in a ship that travels somewhere close to the speed of light
But it woul help us to learnt how to colonizate a planet and imprube ourselves as an specie.