Planetary science - biology

[Mega]

Hello @ all,

I'm also into space exploration and I thought about bacterial
terraforming. I know it will be far in the future, not in the next
decades... So it's very hypothetically.
Just thought it may be interessting for some of you too, so I share my
thoughts...

There have been experiments suggesting that lichens could survive
Martian conditions...

Mars is the most friendly and still nearest planet we know.
Yet the problem about Mars is that there is too less pressure in most
areas to make water be liquid.
But there's one region, Hellas Planitia, which is far below the
standard topographic datum of Mars.
Water could be liquid there (11.55 mbar). When water conitains much
salt, studies showed, it will be liquid also up to -50 degrees
Celsius!

If you wold put bacteria there, that create atmosphere, there would be
more pressure globally thus bacteria could spread all over the
planet.
How bacteria could create an atmosphere:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denitrification

It's the opposite of nitrification, and releases Nitrogen and in some
cases also nitrogen oxide into the atmosphere. Nitrous oxides are also
very effective greenhouse gasses that fit perfectly to rise global
avarage temperatures from -50°C to maybe some -30 or -20°C. That means
that in sumer around the equator, temperatures will get friendly (even
nowadays at the eqator in summer you get +20 to +25°C!! )
Nitrogen is very common in rocks and soil on terrestrial planets
(Earth, Mars, Venus) so it would surely be abundant enough to create a
thick atmosphere.


What bacterium would fit best?
It should: denitrificate (exotherm or endotherm?) , maybe also use
fotosynthesis, survive at low pressures (should be no problem), in
very salty water, at cold temperatures. It should be also able to
survive radiation as UV and radioactive rays...
A high growth rate would also be very good.


I'd like to hear some of your thoughts on that topic...

[Ravasz]

Hi there!

I hate to be negative, but I just think terraforming Mars is not
really an option. One of the main problems is that as far as I know,
Mars has low nitrogen reserves, so creating a nitrogen rich atmosphere
is sadly not an option. And it is very cold. And you only have traces
of water. And radiation is high. And there is no air to breathe. And
there is no precipitation. Also, lichens tend to have a very slow
metabolism, so even if you deliver a truckload of lichens and they all
survive somehow, they will take millions of years to make a detectable
change.

I think instead of terraforming it makes more sense to adapt humans
more to the Martian environment. Think of super space suits which
shield radiation, keep you warm and recycle water and oxygen to allow
you to travel from one safe base to the other. In this scenario Mars
can stay as hostile as it wants, as by constructing more and more
bases the possibilities are endless.

[CoryG]

Not to mention the lack of a magnetic field for protection from cosmic
rays and the lower mass - terraforming to the quality of Earth
probably won't be possible until we have a lot of extra energy and
material resources to spend lobbing asteroids at Mars to shore up it's
size. Once the size is large enough to hold 1 Atm of air pressure at
ground level you could feasibly start unlocking oxides in the soil to
make it livable - but would still probably have issues with the lack
of a magnetic field - it will probably take a similarly gigantic feat
of engineering to give it one.

[mad_casual]

Venus is a much more desirable candidate for many reasons:
Mass- Mars isn't big enough to support an atmosphere fit for human
habitation. You could float habitats on Venus' atmosphere.
Productive Energy (thermal and non-ionizing radiation)- Mars' surface
is relatively devoid of non-destructive energy. Venus has too much,
even simple heat pumps would effectively convert atmospheric energy to
other forms.
Destructive Energy (ionizing radiation)- Mars is awash in it. Venus'
atmosphere has a magnetosphere that affords a level of shielding.
Chemistry- Mars has lower water, carbon, and nitrogen in any form on
its surface or in its atmosphere than Earth. Venus has more of all of
the above, typically boiled in acid and at 90 atm of pressure such
that they are unusable to biological systems.
Value- Fixing Venus teaches us lots about "fixing" Earth. Fixing Venus
will be all about collecting energy rather than just expending it.

IMO, put an outpost on the Moon, colonize Mars, terraform Venus.
Anything else is making a purse out of a pig's ear. On that note; the
human body is supremely adapted to this planet and for relatively
short periods of time at that. Bending atmospheres to fit our lungs,
putting chairs in spacecraft to fit our rear ends, and blasting
surgeons and/or medicine around the Solar System is, to me, somewhere
between naive fantasy and religion.

[Cathal Garvey]

Surely for a heat-pump to work, you need to have a gradient, not just
lots of heat.

To ask that another way: Are there larger heat *gradients* on Venus with
which to generate useful energy, or is there just more ambient energy,
which is of no use?

Venus is scary precisely because it used to be almost identical to
Earth, except that Earth developed life and Venus succumbed to runaway
global warming. There but for the grace of an ecosphere go we.

--
www.indiebiotech.com
twitter.com/onetruecathal
joindiaspora.com/u/cathalgarvey
PGP Public Key: http://bit.ly/CathalGKey

[Mega]

"Once the size is large enough to hold 1 Atm of air pressure at
ground level you could feasibly start unlocking oxides in the soil to
make it livable"

Why that? Who says Mars can not hold 1 bar? Venus is Earth sized and
holds 90 bars!!
So Mars' Mass = 1/10 Venus' Mass => Atmosphere = 90/10 = 9 bar.

[Mega]

Venus probably once had liquid oceans for some (or maybe more) million
years.

But all the water was split into hydrogen and oxygen. Hydrogen
escaped into space - Venus is dead... Even if you could cool Venus
down 450°C (to make temperatures +25°C), there was no water at all, so
you could build permanent bases up there, but it won't ever be like
Earth with rivers and seas again.


As Cathal said, you need a gradient. Maybe the solid surface is a bit
cooler than the air?


Recently a new geological model for Venus was developed:
Voltailes as water (just a few 0.01 weight percent) make rocks melt at
lower temperatures. So tectonics developed at the Earth.
Venus had left nearly all its water. So the crust was thicker and no
heat could escape. Then after some time, a global eruption set free
large amounts of heat and gases.
Such eruptions occur every (I think to remember) 100 Millions of
years.
Yet this form of heat transport makes Venus lose much more of it's
core heat a study has shown. So Venus' core is likely to cold to
produce a magnetic field.

[mad_casual]

On Jan 31, 11:32 am, Cathal Garvey <cathalgar...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Surely for a heat-pump to work, you need to have a gradient, not just
> lots of heat.
>
> To ask that another way: Are there larger heat *gradients* on Venus with
> which to generate useful energy, or is there just more ambient energy,
> which is of no use?

1. Ambient energy isn't 'of no use'. Many of the 'eco' options being
looked at on Earth make use of nothing but ambient energy (tidal,
wind, gravity and flow,...). The only trick is on Venus they have to
work at or avoid 500ish degrees C.

2. Between Earth and Venus, there is a fantastic thermal gradient.
Using existing technology, we float manned oil rigs on oceans to drill
miles into the Earth to actively pump out our dominant energy source
and for almost half a century we've had the technology to float
massive structures in an atmosphere 90 times less dense than Venus'. I
don't mean to imply quid pro quo, but 'drilling' into Venus for energy
and or materials seems a lot more obvious and abundant than doing
anything on Mars.

Turn the question around. You're a colonist on Mars and you need to
build something or power something you've built. Where do you get the
materials and energy? Earth? The Sun?

>
> Venus is scary precisely because it used to be almost identical to
> Earth, except that Earth developed life and Venus succumbed to runaway
> global warming. There but for the grace of an ecosphere go we.
>

Correct me if I'm wrong, but there's no evidence that a runaway
greenhouse effect similar to Venus' could occur on Earth and the
planet's history would suggest the opposite. Ignoring gross celestial
differences (Earth's faster rotation, the creation and existence of
the Moon, etc), immediately preceding the Oxygen Catastrophe was the
Huronic Glaciation and 'Snowball Earth' has been hypothesize in
several time periods since. In all likelihood, if we discovered a
parallel universe where life never existed on Earth, Venus and Earth
would have similar albedo except Venus' surface is 500 degrees and
Earth's is -20.

Venus is scary the same way an autoclave or submarine is scary.
Personally, the trip to either planet is going to be about 100X as
"scary" as actually being at the destination.

[mad_casual]

tl;dr-
Q: Why did Mars lose its atmosphere while Earth and Venus did not? A:
It's mass is much lower.

Apologies, I was oversimplifying in my statement about mass. Mass is
one component in the overall equation; solar winds blow the atmosphere
away, rotational velocity affects compression and mixing and imparts
magnetic shielding, albedo controls vaporization, and celestial events
like the formation of satellites contribute to or detract from
atmosphere. If you're going to build an atmosphere from scratch, you'd
probably choose a planet that tends to retain the fruit of your labor
rather than loses them.

Mars doesn't have a rotating iron core like the Earth does, you'd have
to make one (requiring mass). Mars doesn't have the water to create
oceans (maybe never did) to dominate the greenhouse effect you'd have
to make them (requiring mass). Mars has a smaller radius and an
analogous period of rotation to Earth, you'd either have to slow its
rotation (requiring mass) or increase its radius (requiring mass).

[Cathal Garvey]

Work can only be extracted from a gradient of energy, not merely energy
itself. Solar energy is the input of new energy into an existing system;
if you didn't capture it to do work, it would heat the surface it hit,
or bounce around until it did. It's the gradient between the energy of
the photon and the energy of the substrate that allow you to capture
energy into a workable form.

Tidal, too, is not "ambient". Tides are pulled up and down by the
momentum and gravity of the moon, which makes me whimsically wonder
whether the harvesting the ultimate source of the energy (the momentum
of the Moon) means that Tidal would actually gradually slow down the
moon into a decaying orbit.

To offer a simple example; you can extract work from a heat source by
boiling water into steam, and extracting energy from the difference in
pressure between the heated chamber and the outside, or between the
heated chamber and a cooled chamber (where the steam condenses, creating
a pressure-gradient).
If you were to just put the turbine into the heated chamber, without a
gradient, it wouldn't matter how much energy you poured into the system,
you'd get no work done.

To offer another example; "ambient" energy can be analogised to water
content. A vessel may be half full, or entirely full, but that doesn't
affect how much energy it provides. Only when you start to pour the
liquid does its embodied energy become useful; you capture the momentum
of the falling liquid to generate energy. Sure, more water means more
energy can be generated, but unless there's a gradient (somewhere for
the water to fall), you can't generate any energy from it.

So, venus may be a lot hotter than Earth, but that on its own does not
make it any more useful for generating energy, unless you can either A)
Discover a potent gradient of energy within venus or B) Find a way to
let energy escape venus, and then convert that energy gradient into a
potential difference (voltage) for electrical generation.

So, the question: Is venus known for having greater gradients of energy
than Earth, or merely higher ambient energy?

[mad_casual]

On Feb 1, 8:51 am, Mega <masterstorm...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Venus probably once had liquid oceans for some (or maybe more) million
> years.
>
> But  all the water was split into hydrogen and oxygen. Hydrogen
> escaped into space - Venus is dead... Even if you could cool Venus
> down 450°C (to make temperatures +25°C), there was no water at all, so
> you could build permanent bases up there, but it won't ever be like
> Earth with rivers and seas again.
>

Venus is dead with an abundance of energy to revive it. Not all the
water has been split and not all the hydrogen is gone. There is more
total water vapor in the Venusian atmosphere than the Martian one and
it's at a higher absolute concentration (and there's plenty of energy
to collect it), similarly, there's plenty of hydrogen, oxygen, and
carbon to be had. True, we won't coat 70% of Venus' surface with water
without finding a celestial source of it, but the same is true for
Mars. Further, even if we put the water on Mars, we then have to thaw
it and keep it on the planet. If Venus is dead, Mars is dead and the
body is cold.

>
> As Cathal said, you need a gradient. Maybe the solid surface is a bit
> cooler than the air?
>

There's a great gradient running upwards from the surface of the
planet. It's kinda funny that this is seriously a question. The
atmospheric surface is 250K. Not surprisingly, this region contains
the most water vapor and what is considered 'breathable air' (20%
Oxygen, 70% Nitrogen). 50km below this level you have the surface of
the planet at 700K. Even ignoring massive thermal gradients, chemical
fixation, and atmospheric mixing as energy sources and looking
strictly at solar. Mars is still just as dead as Venus and gets a
fraction of the solar radiance.

> Recently a new geological model for Venus was developed:
> Voltailes as water (just a few 0.01 weight percent) make rocks melt at
> lower temperatures. So tectonics developed at the Earth.
> Venus had  left nearly all its water. So the crust was thicker and no
> heat could escape. Then after some time, a global eruption set free
> large amounts of heat and gases.
> Such eruptions occur every (I think to remember) 100 Millions of
> years.
> Yet this form of heat transport makes Venus lose much more of it's
> core heat a study has shown. So Venus' core is likely to cold to
> produce a magnetic field.

You're misinterpreting the theory. The problem isn't that Venus' core
is too cold, it's that it's too hot and too homogeneous. Venus'
interior is so hot that it periodically melts its crust (but it's
somehow colder or cooling faster???); this convection, combined with
slower rotation, causes Venus to have a poor magnetic field. If you
took Earth's iron core and mixed it with the mantle and crust, and
slowed the rotation, you end up with a much poorer magnetic field.
And, once again, there is a weak magnetic field around Venus whose
sources are hypothesized, one thing is clear though, Mars' core used
to be hot and magnetic and now it is neither.

[CoryG]

Well, the simplest method to give a planet-size magnetic field to Mars
would probably be to shoot the moon at it (probably about the same
cost energy-wise as collecting and bombarding the planet with
asteroids - but asteroids probably couldn't impart enough energy at
once to form a molten core) - probably better, one of Saturn's moons
might have the necessary chemicals that combining the two would yield
a suitable planet. In short, we really need a new system of energy
generation and propulsion to seriously consider terra-forming a planet
other than Earth. I'm all for terra-forming Earth to keep it in a
nice balance, but we should really be using nuclear energy - it's the
only thing that is clean (at least when you account for the fact that
enough solar panels at the modern level of photo-voltaic efficiency to
power everything we use would probably be worse that strip-mining rain
forests in terms of area blocked vs presently utilized by plants) -
the more likely option I expect to see is the farming of biodiesel in
a closed-loop form of emission. Cathal made an interesting point
regarding tidal power vs the orbit of the moon, but in the short-term
I'd be more worried about the effects of slowing the natural paths to
equilibrium of the planet with either tidal or wind power, if you use
a dielectric in a capacitor that is better than air you can hold more
charge before it shorts itself out, but ultimately when you have
energy continuously being pumped into the system, the spark is bigger
- the same concept can be applied viewing pretty much anything we
consider extremely bad weather from floods to tornadoes and hurricanes
- though ultimately the issue seems to stem from hippies trying to
think, at least in my opinion.

[mad_casual]

On Feb 1, 10:16 am, Cathal Garvey <cathalgar...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Work can only be extracted from a gradient of energy, not merely energy
> itself.

...in a closed system using only chemistry. Terraforming another
planet is about as open and 'not strictly chemical' as any of our
systems currently get.

>
> Tidal, too, is not "ambient". Tides are pulled up and down by the
> momentum and gravity of the moon, which makes me whimsically wonder
> whether the harvesting the ultimate source of the energy (the momentum
> of the Moon) means that Tidal would actually gradually slow down the
> moon into a decaying orbit.
>

It depends on your definition of "ambient" and yes, slow the Earth's
rotation and eventually pull the Moon back. The question is how much
energy for how long, I think it's safe to whimsically say if we
focused on pulling the Moon back using the Oceans we're talking a
minimum of 10,000 yrs. probably closer to millions.

> To offer a simple example; you can extract work from a heat source by
> boiling water into steam, and extracting energy from the difference in
> pressure between the heated chamber and the outside, or between the
> heated chamber and a cooled chamber (where the steam condenses, creating
> a pressure-gradient).
> If you were to just put the turbine into the heated chamber, without a
> gradient, it wouldn't matter how much energy you poured into the system,
> you'd get no work done.
>

I realize we're talking about simple astrophysics, but I appreciate
the advanced thermodynamics lesson. You're taking the issue out of
context. If I wired a radio beacon to a wind turbine and set one on
the surface of Mars and floated the other on the atmosphere of Venus,
which one would I get more broadcasts from more frequently? Sure,
you'd have to engineer a balloon(ish) device to keep it afloat, but
that's easier than making it 90X more sensitive to "wind". Considering
we did the former and have yet to perform the latter...

> To offer another example; "ambient" energy can be analogised to water
> content. A vessel may be half full, or entirely full, but that doesn't
> affect how much energy it provides. Only when you start to pour the
> liquid does its embodied energy become useful; you capture the momentum
> of the falling liquid to generate energy. Sure, more water means more
> energy can be generated, but unless there's a gradient (somewhere for
> the water to fall), you can't generate any energy from it.

Once again, taking the systems under question out of context (liquid
water, hah!). If I have a cold glass with a sliver of ice at the
bottom and a 700 degree crock pot with 10X the amount of water in the
form of steam, which system has more potential energy to yield?

Think of it in more complex and less 'already solved' (maybe biased)
terms; you're in a -20 freezer with a jacket on, 4 liters of liquid
water, and a plant you want to keep alive. At the far end of the
freezer is an LED-like lamp that produces plenty of broad spectrum
light but doesn't heat the room appreciably. About 2/3 of the way
between you and the LED lamp is a solar panel/oven device that stays
at 700 degrees with a small pot of boiling water on top. About as far
from from you as you are from the heater is a mostly frozen glass
that's less than 1/3 full of water. Survive as long as you can. To me,
the answer is figure out how to regulate the heater, the plant, and
your own metabolism to last until the "LED lamp" goes out and ignore
the frozen glass of water.

> So, venus may be a lot hotter than Earth, but that on its own does not
> make it any more useful for generating energy, unless you can either A)
> Discover a potent gradient of energy within venus or B) Find a way to
> let energy escape venus, and then convert that energy gradient into a
> potential difference (voltage) for electrical generation.
>
> So, the question: Is venus known for having greater gradients of energy
> than Earth, or merely higher ambient energy?

When we're talking about interplanetary travel, what's the difference?
Are you as surprised as I am by alien invasion movies where the aliens
travel across the Universe only to get their asses handed to them by
humans who have "mastered" flight? Aliens couldn't be that stupid,
right?

[mad_casual]

On Feb 1, 2:15 pm, CoryG <c...@geesaman.com> wrote:
> Well, the simplest method to give a planet-size magnetic field to Mars
> would probably be to shoot the moon at it (probably about the same
> cost energy-wise as collecting and bombarding the planet with
> asteroids - but asteroids probably couldn't impart enough energy at
> once to form a molten core) - probably better, one of Saturn's moons
> might have the necessary chemicals that combining the two would yield
> a suitable planet.

I would think it would be much 'cheaper' to bring one of Saturn's
moons or an asteroid in than to push the moon out. Certainly asteroids
provide the most control and/or fault tolerance. WRT 'restarting the
core' should we be so concerned with mass? Let the Sun's gravity
handle most of the v-squared part and worry less about the m?

[CoryG]

On Feb 1, 4:53 pm, mad_casual <ademloo...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Feb 1, 10:16 am, Cathal Garvey <cathalgar...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Work can only be extracted from a gradient of energy, not merely energy
> > itself.
>
> ...in a closed system using only chemistry. Terraforming another
> planet is about as open and 'not strictly chemical' as any of our
> systems currently get.

I don't understand the context of this statement, though if you aren't
using nuclear transformation you are most definitely using strictly
chemical transformations to terraform (aside perhaps from physical
transformation - moving materials from another source).

> I realize we're talking about simple astrophysics, but I appreciate
> the advanced thermodynamics lesson. You're taking the issue out of
> context. If I wired a radio beacon to a wind turbine and set one on
> the surface of Mars and floated the other on the atmosphere of Venus,
> which one would I get more broadcasts from more frequently? Sure,
> you'd have to engineer a balloon(ish) device to keep it afloat, but
> that's easier than making it 90X more sensitive to "wind". Considering
> we did the former and have yet to perform the latter...

I would hope the balloon is anchored, as it wouldn't do much floating
in the air - and for that matter it would be wiser to just make it on
the ground as a windmill on a balloon will still suffer during changes
of wind direction based on the distance it is able to travel before
getting anchored again.

> Once again, taking the systems under question out of context (liquid
> water, hah!). If I have a cold glass with a sliver of ice at the
> bottom and a 700 degree crock pot with 10X the amount of water in the
> form of steam, which system has more potential energy to yield?

If taken alone, the 10x volume would have more in a nuclear sense -
they are both equally nothing in a thermodynamic sense unless you can
mix them, in which case they are both limited by the smaller volume
(since they are the same substance).

> Think of it in more complex and less 'already solved' (maybe biased)
> terms; you're in a -20 freezer with a jacket on, 4 liters of liquid
> water, and a plant you want to keep alive. At the far end of the
> freezer is an LED-like lamp that produces plenty of broad spectrum
> light but doesn't heat the room appreciably. About 2/3 of the way
> between you and the LED lamp is a solar panel/oven device that stays
> at 700 degrees with a small pot of boiling water on top. About as far
> from from you as you are from the heater is a mostly frozen glass
> that's less than 1/3 full of water. Survive as long as you can. To me,
> the answer is figure out how to regulate the heater, the plant, and
> your own metabolism to last until the "LED lamp" goes out and ignore
> the frozen glass of water.

That's not more a more complex set of terms - the only energy to be
extracted exists by moving material between the heat and cold
sources. For example, in your previous suggestion of using the
surface of the planet as the cold spot (assuming that it isn't already
heated heavily, which is unlikely) - there is a reason we can use
underground pipes of hot/cold water for heating and cooling homes and
why basements stay cold in the summer and warm in the winter - the
Earth makes a very good insulator, as do most uneven mixtures of solid
materials - if it were different we would be boiled in lava or there
would be no molten core to the Earth. In the case of Venus, radiating
the heat into space is likely the only option. Venus does have an
extremely slow rotation (over a hundred earth days to a day) - so
hugging the hot/cold area would likely be the only meaningful way to
extract energy without enormous reservoirs to store it and control the
release at approximately 50% of the total change happening naturally
(assuming zero losses and accounting for the differences in
temperature at different parts of the day-night cycle following a
sinusoidal pattern). Ultimately following the horizon would be energy-
intensive in itself, and even to utilize it as wind you would need to
chase it, root your position until the wind stops, then catch back up,
or make a power grid circling the equator and only actually attain
power from a portion of it at a time (still needing to be rooted to
the ground to turn the windmills). And frankly, if it requires
thinking in terms that don't make sense so as to confuse yourself in
such a manner that you can't understand the implications, it doesn't
make them solvable, just that your bong is probably empty.

> When we're talking about interplanetary travel, what's the difference?
> Are you as surprised as I am by alien invasion movies where the aliens
> travel across the Universe only to get their asses handed to them by
> humans who have "mastered" flight? Aliens couldn't be that stupid,
> right?

Changing subjects doesn't change the underlying principles that govern
both. If you don't have a gradient you can't extract the energy
because it is for all intents and purposes, just potential energy.
Personally I believe a focus on developing nuclear technologies will
yield better results than trying to harness anything chemical or
physical in nature, as there is an incredible amount of energy
condensed in any bit of matter that if unleashed in full could heat
and instill a gradient between itself and the surrounding matter -
being able to "burn" dirt or any other matter into electromagnetic
waves would be the apex of energy generation that is likely to arise
from current foreseeable technological trends. In the long term, if
we become nomadic aliens to foreign worlds, it will likely be for the
purpose of attaining matter to burn in such a manner - unless we
figure out how to condense it from background radiation in a less
cumbersome way - but beyond that I can't see how the alien invasion
comment even remotely plays into the thread. On a separate note
though, if you want a good story about stupid aliens, check out The
Gods Themselves.

[CoryG]

> I would think it would be much 'cheaper' to bring one of Saturn's
> moons or an asteroid in than to push the moon out. Certainly asteroids
> provide the most control and/or fault tolerance. WRT 'restarting the
> core' should we be so concerned with mass? Let the Sun's gravity
> handle most of the v-squared part and worry less about the m?

If we just lob asteroids at it (unless perhaps in very quick
succession) it's unlikely to cause the heating and penetration
required to alter the core of Mars and ensure it is molten and in
motion (save perhaps for some unknown physics governing the process,
though from the limited studies of larger bodies without a magnetic
field than Mars, it seems unlikely that mass alone could cause the
effect). Using the Sun's gravity alone wouldn't work to maintain the
orbit, as you would have to break an orbit to begin with in the case
of Saturn's moons just like you would with our own and you would have
to accelerate Mars to a speed that allows the two to balance out when
they collide. If you didn't mind a degraded orbit (which might well
be better, for instance if you could get the resulting planet+moon
combination in the same orbit as Earth, but 180 degrees out of phase
or some other non-threatening difference) you would still have to
break orbit from Saturn, but you might be able to use some of the
gravity (not much) for acceleration toward Mars, with a big additional
kick to ensure it is able to penetrate into the planet with enough
force to get the molten interracial layer of the two into the middle.

[Patrik]

Anyone here read Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars/Green Mars/Blue Mars
trilogy? Highly recommended if you're a fan of "hard" SciFi.

Forget about "restarting the core" of Mars. If I remember correctly,
Robinson's solution was to rain down enough ice asteroids to replenish
the atmosphere. Sure, without a sufficient magnetic field, that's not
a permanent solution on a geological scale, but who cares about
geological scales anyway.

The books also have a nice overview of what kinds of genetically
engineered organisms might be suitable for Mars. Mind you, they're
written about twenty years ago now...

[mad_casual]

On Feb 1, 4:56 pm, CoryG <c...@geesaman.com> wrote:
>
> I don't understand the context of this statement, though if you aren't
> using nuclear transformation you are most definitely using strictly
> chemical transformations to terraform (aside perhaps from physical
> transformation - moving materials from another source).

chemical energy, thermal energy, electromagnetic radiation,
gravitational energy, electric energy, elastic energy, nuclear energy,
rest energy, kinetic energy...

I agree with you, without nuclear energy (and possibly even with),
it's a bit of a shell game shuffling/converting around constantly
diminishing resources. That's one reason why I favor Venus over Mars
to begin with, it brings us closer to the most abundant source of
nuclear energy in the Solar System. Earth's current population is too
large for current solar technology to sustain. The same isn't true for
the atmospheric surface of Venus, not only is there more solar energy,
the non-human (and human) population is much lower, and unlike on
Mars, the atmosphere would already be there.

> I would hope the balloon is anchored, as it wouldn't do much floating
> in the air - and for that matter it would be wiser to just make it on
> the ground as a windmill on a balloon will still suffer during changes
> of wind direction based on the distance it is able to travel before
> getting anchored again.

If I let a zeppelin run in the breeze and let the propellers spin in
the wind, so long as I avoided catastrophic winds (predominantly the
lower part of Venus' atmosphere) and dead spots (no part of Venus'
atmosphere) I'd collect lots of energy from the propellers.

> If taken alone, the 10x volume would have more in a nuclear sense -
> they are both equally nothing in a thermodynamic sense unless you can
> mix them, in which case they are both limited by the smaller volume
> (since they are the same substance).

10X the mass would have more in a nuclear sense. I didn't say either
the glass or the crock pot were in a vacuum. Even if they were in a
vacuum, I could easily bleed steam off the crock pot to power
SOMETHING. Two glasses of water of differing mass is too simple and
too abstract relative to the actual system in question. Even if you
slammed something into Mars, it's entirely possible that you pulverize
or shatter it; converting it back to a proto-planet rather than
liquefying it's cold core.

> That's not more a more complex set of terms - the only energy to be
> extracted exists by moving material between the heat and cold
> sources.

The correct arrangement for maximum extraction of energy from 1.5
glasses of water using gravity: pour all the water into the
gravitational minima absent a gravitational minima, there is no energy
to be collected. However, we're talking about the solar system there
are hundreds of local minima, not to mention thermal, chemical, etc.
minima. Since my example was equal in complexity to Cathal's, would
you mind providing the 'not more complex' arrangement for extracting
the maximum survival out of the freezer situation.

>  For example, in your previous suggestion of using the
> surface of the planet as the cold spot (assuming that it isn't already
> heated heavily, which is unlikely)

I didn't suggest this. The surface is 700 degrees. It would be an
abundant source of thermal energy and molten metal.

> In the case of Venus, radiating
> the heat into space is likely the only option.

Good thing there's an entire Earth-sized planet at 700 degrees and a
massive excess of CO2 to do it with.

>  Venus does have an
> extremely slow rotation (over a hundred earth days to a day) - so
> hugging the hot/cold area would likely be the only meaningful way to
> extract energy without enormous reservoirs to store it and control the
> release at approximately 50% of the total change happening naturally
> (assuming zero losses and accounting for the differences in
> temperature at different parts of the day-night cycle following a
> sinusoidal pattern).  Ultimately following the horizon would be energy-
> intensive in itself, and even to utilize it as wind you would need to
> chase it, root your position until the wind stops, then catch back up,
> or make a power grid circling the equator and only actually attain
> power from a portion of it at a time (still needing to be rooted to
> the ground to turn the windmills).

The atmosphere circles the planet faster than the planet rotates,
around the perimeter of the planet the temperature is rather uniform.
Out from the surface, the planet has an atmospheric thermal gradient
unseen anywhere else in the solar system.

> And frankly, if it requires
> thinking in terms that don't make sense so as to confuse yourself in
> such a manner that you can't understand the implications, it doesn't
> make them solvable, just that your bong is probably empty.

Hey, you're the one talking about relying on nuclear technology that
doesn't exist yet. I wouldn't argue that there aren't nuclear
advancements coming or worth pursuing. But I think you're smoking
something if you think we're going to build and run a nuclear reactor
using human bodies in an environment that doesn't abundantly support
human bodies already. And if we can "live" off of a nuclear reactor
without human bodies, well we'll have solved our problems for both
Mars and Venus, and a number of other planets as well.

> Changing subjects doesn't change the underlying principles that govern
> both.  If you don't have a gradient you can't extract the energy
> because it is for all intents and purposes, just potential energy.

I wasn't really changing the subject. I wouldn't propose going to
Venus if there weren't a gradient and, unlike Mars, breathable air.
The surface of Mars is varies from a low of 180K to a high of 290K
from the light to dark side. Unless these maxima and minima are 11 km
apart and all over the planet, they don't match the 10K/km vertical
gradient that exists everywhere on the surface of Venus. Even if they
are 11 km apart and all over the planet, the solar radiance on Venus
is still higher than Mars.

> Personally I believe a focus on developing nuclear technologies will
> yield better results than trying to harness anything chemical or
> physical in nature, as there is an incredible amount of energy
> condensed in any bit of matter that if unleashed in full could heat
> and instill a gradient between itself and the surrounding matter -
> being able to "burn" dirt or any other matter into electromagnetic
> waves would be the apex of energy generation that is likely to arise
> from current foreseeable technological trends.

I think burning the candle from the other end would be a good idea as
well. As I said before one can look at the problem of human running a
nuclear reaction and equally say the problem of death is cause by the
toxicity of nuclear energy as by the susceptibility of humans bodies
to that energy.

>  In the long term, if
> we become nomadic aliens to foreign worlds, it will likely be for the
> purpose of attaining matter to burn in such a manner - unless we
> figure out how to condense it from background radiation in a less
> cumbersome way - but beyond that I can't see how the alien invasion
> comment even remotely plays into the thread.

Terraforming Mars or Venus, we're implying abundant travel between the
two (or three and some asteroids and the moons of Saturn, etc.).
Saying we can travel between planets freely but can't find energy
gradients is like saying the aliens can fly across the universe but
don't have air support for ground troops. Everyone's considering
planets in the from the basal isolationist physics point of view and
ignoring the fact that that's the opposite of the goal (or one of the
major subgoals). One easily foreseeable solution to my 'man in the
freezer' example includes taking the glass of water and pour it in the
pot of boiling water on the oven.

[Mega]

You seem to forget one thing:

The solar winds are charged particles. When they hit an atmosphere,
they induce a field. This field saves Venus' atmosphere from being
tossed into space.

If we created a thick atmosphere on Mars, the charging of the solar
winds would protect it itself from erosion!

"True, we won't coat 70% of Venus' surface with water
without finding a celestial source of it, but the same is true for
Mars."

The second one is not true.
Mars has had abundant water and still has in frozen form. It has polar
Ice caps, the North caps consisting of much water ice and the South
pole are nearly pure water ice.

[mad_casual]

On Feb 2, 10:54 am, Mega <masterstorm...@gmail.com> wrote:
> You seem to forget one thing:
>
> The solar winds are charged particles. When they hit an atmosphere,
> they induce a field. This field saves Venus' atmosphere from being
> tossed into space.
>
> If we created a thick atmosphere on Mars, the charging of the solar
> winds would protect it itself from erosion!

First, you aren't going to be able to build it up from scratch. The
swirling of the atmosphere as a whole is what creates the shield.
Small parts of an atmosphere will just blow away, not to mention that
a sparse cloud of ionized atmosphere isn't the best place for
organisms to live.

Second, you're going to need lots of atmosphere to create even a weak
shield as on Venus. Slam whatever you want into Mars to form an
atmosphere, if you don't shatter the planet, in the short term, you're
going to get a hot planet covered by a thick cloud of hot gas that
will seem vaguely familiar.

Lastly, you're talking about a recreating a Goldilocks astrological
event that we aren't entirely sure how it occured the first time.
Unless you've chosen the perfect rock to hit it with at the perfect
speed and time, you're just as likely to get Venus out of the equation
as Earth.

IMO, ideally, before you slam whatever substrate into it, you'd have
spent some time cooling a hot planet (or two) down so that you could
cool the planet quicker and redistribute/store the energy more
usefully.

[mad_casual]

At what point of engineering does an organism pass from being a "life
as we know it" to being a machine?

i.e. If a microorganism were engineered that ate CO2 and aluminum and
encased itself in a metal-plastic (e.g. metallized mylar) bubble it's
pretty conceivable it would still be considered and organism. If they
were programmed with a type of quorum sensing that caused touching
bubbles to coalesce and a critical mass of bubbles to rupture entirely
I have trouble thinking of them as just microorganisms. If they used a
process more akin to photovoltaics than to photosynthesis to collect
the energy necessary to make these bubbles or collapsed the bubbles to
form metal endospores, I'm pretty sure they'd be considered robots at
that point. But if they still used lipid bilayers and a water-based
solvent system, I can easily see a case for considering them as life
too.

If we were going to 'reenact' the Oxygen Catastrophe on Mars, life on
Earth is going to have to do some things that life on Earth has never
done before.

[Anselm Levskaya]

Peeps,

After fighting for 4 billion years to escape the depths of a gravity
well, why in gaia's name would your first goal be to jump down another
one? Space is the Place. No friction. Lagrange-Point-Transfers.
Plenty of matter to replicate yourself with.

-A

[Mega]

Because you have gravity and water (ice). On the best planets you also
have an atmosphere for making oxygen (sabatier process). You don't get
hit by micrometeroids. And you may go out of your habitat without a
space suit.

[Mega]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4tgkyUBkbY&feature=plcp

Has anyone heard of Mars One?

It's a private initiative that *will* put humans on Mars given the funding.
To get fundings, they will do a kind-of-big-brother show on Mars.

It's gonna be a one-way ticket.

[Eugen Leitl]

On Tue, Jul 03, 2012 at 12:13:39PM -0700, Mega wrote:

> Has anyone heard of Mars One?
>
> It's a private initiative that *will* put humans on Mars given the funding.
> To get fundings, they will do a kind-of-big-brother show on Mars.
>
> It's gonna be a one-way ticket.

I think many people would pay good money to see BB monkeys die.

Too bad about the lag, though. You can't prod them in realtime.