Should we/could we terraform?

Is terraforming a possibility? And if so, would it even be worth it given the time it would take?

>And if so, would it even be worth it given the time it would take?
The biggest problem with humanity is it's utter contempt for overhead costs.

would terraforming the moon be possible if we surrounded it with massive superconducting rings to make a magnetic field strong enough that we could sustain an atmosphere? I saw a paper about doing it for earth and they said something like the power from 12 nuclear power stations could easily produce a magnetic field something like 10% the strength of the earth's (i cant find the paper now but anyone else who has read it please correct me if im wrong) and it got me thinking about the moon.

No. Gravity is way too low. Same with Mars though gravity isn't that far off to keep the atmosphere in place for an extended period.

The problem. With Mars is the Cores gone solid, how the fuck would we heat that?

It would be far more energy and space efficient to make O'Neil cylinders or other orbital habitats and live in them, then it would be to terraform a planet and live in the thin shell of air and water that that provides.

Possibly if we ever reach a point where we have more energy and planets than we know what to do with we might start terraforming some of them for those who want to go back to living in a gravity well.

if i jump in one of those, does the ground move below me?
if i fly a helipcopter in one of these, which way is up?

Not practically. You'd need constant asteroid/comet bombardment to Mars to get geological things going again and to put enough moisture on it for atmosphere. the added mass will help increase gravity too.

The down side is that if it isn't done correctly if could ruin space travel for 10,000+ years after the last impact. Although, it'll take 10,000 years of impacts just to do this then another 100,000 years or more for things to settle properly and see if it actually worked. Even then humans won't have enough gravity on Mars to stay properly healthy through multiple generations.

You want something "soon"? Use O'Neill Cylinders.

O'Neill cylinders are so fucking stupid, its an accident waiting to happen

>automobiles are so fucking stupid, its an accident waiting to happen

What if we drilled a whole to the center of Mars with an atom bomb?

Its unknown wether its possible and it greatly depends on the body you're terraforming. The Moon and Mars would always demand more resources due to their gravity. They would require a conveyor belt of rock and ice to offset the material they'd lose due to the lack of magnetism and gravity.

It spins so that you're being pulled towards the outside of the cylinder, if it was spinning fast enough to simulate a single earth gravity then you wouldn't notice any perceptible movement of the floor beneath you. Down is towards the outside of the cylinder, up is towards its center, the further up you go the weaker gravity gets. A helicopter flying in the center of the cylinder would essentially be in zero gravity.

liqufying mars' core would with explosives would be a viable way to restart the core's magnetosphere. nuclear weaps probably wont do it though, need something like antimatter or straight up fusion

>if i jump in one of those, does the ground move below me?
Yes, but not by very much.

>if i fly a helipcopter in one of these, which way is up?
The exact dynamics of flying a helicopter under centrifugal gravity are somewhat complex. However, for low speeds or large cylinders/rings, the behaviour will be the same as on Earth.

if you have that sort of tech, why would you bother with terraforming mars in the first place?

>if i fly a helipcopter in one of these, which way is up?
Towards the middle, silly.
>if i jump in one of those, does the ground move below me?
Yes and no. Assuming you start off standing on the ground, both you and the ground have the same initial velocity. When you jump, you'll maintain that tangential velocity, so even though the ground is "moving" below you, you're "moving" too and you end up landing almost in the same place.

Now, if you REALLY want to get into it, you might account for the fact that Coriolis effects would cause you to have higher angular velocity during your jump (due to the slightly reduced radius) and land ever so slightly AHEAD, not behind.

All of this is amazing but I prefer Bishop's rings.
Pdt:
Do you all guys think that we could make one with nowadays technology?

>All of this is amazing but I prefer Bishop's rings.
Ring structures in general make a fair bit of sense, but Bishop Rings are a little on the large side.

>Do you all guys think that we could make one with nowadays technology?
No.

> Is terraforming a possibility?
Not within the foreseeable future.

To do anything non-trivial in space is going to require a qualitative leap in propulsion technology. I.e. not chemical rockets, and even nuclear rockets aren't that much of an improvement.

Stuff like terraforming or self-sustaining space colonies are pure fantasy right now. It's comparable to the Romans planning a space program: it's not just that we don't know how, we don't really even know what we should be working on.

A cylinder is just a series of rings put together so you should like cylinders a lot more since they have more rings.