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An absolutely bonkers plan to give Mars an artificial magnetosphere:
As the study points out, if you want a good planetary magnetic field, what you really need is a strong flow of charged particles, either within the planet or around the planet. Since the former isn't a great option for Mars, the team looks at the latter. It turns out you can create a ring of charged particles around Mars, thanks to its moon Phobos.
Phobos is the larger of the two Martian moons, and it orbits the planet quite closely—so closely that it makes a trip around Mars every eight hours. So the team proposes using Phobos by ionizing particles from its surface, then accelerating them so they create a plasma torus along the orbit of Phobos. This would create a magnetic field strong enough to protect a terraformed Mars.
It's a bold plan, and while it seems achievable, the engineering hurdles would be significant. But as the authors point out, this is the time for ideas. Start thinking about the problems we need to solve, and how we can solve them, so when humanity does reach Mars, we will be ready to put the best ideas to the test.
Simple solution, really. It's the dependencies that are a bear...
Journal Reference:
R. A. Bamford, B. J. Kelletta, J. L. Green, et al How to create an artificial magnetosphere for Mars How to create an artificial magnetosphere for Mars
(DOI: doi.org/10.1016/j.actaastro.2021.09.023https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actaastro.2021.09.023
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 23 2021, @03:10PM (3 children)
If Mars gravity isn't enough then space colonies make far more sense than trying to put habitats on Mars. When you're in orbit (whether around the Sun or Earth or the Moon) it's easier to set the levels of "gravity" you want. Can't do that on Mars.
And most of the advantages of Mars (lots of land) can't really be exploited due to the effectively nonexistent atmosphere. If you need to cover all your farmland on Mars and pressurize it, that's not going to be much cheaper than a farm in space.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday November 23 2021, @10:16PM (1 child)
I have read that microgravity, essentially weightlessness, is a health hazard. Really need some gravity, enough to give a sense of up and down, and that continual drag on motion. How little is the question. If the moon's gravity is enough, then Mars will do just fine on that. It's all the other problems-- the thin atmosphere that we can't breathe, the lack of a magnetic field to shield us from radiation, and let's not forget that it's just plain damn cold. By comparison, Antarctica is positively balmy. The killers are those problems we do not yet know are problems. For instance, suppose Mars is highly enriched in the heavier isotopes. We can't live exclusively on heavy water, we'd die of deuterium poisoning.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 26 2021, @07:26AM
Yes and when you're in orbit, with our current tech levels you can set artificial gravity to 1G, Mars G, Moon G, etc and take all the guesswork out of the picture and actually start answering those questions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_gravity [wikipedia.org]
You can't do that on Mars.
But no, instead of spending money and time doing actual science to figure out useful stuff like that which will be useful for many generations (e.g. if we build space colonies and need to reduce artificial gravity to cut costs in some places), they're spending time and money on "let's go to Mars before we're scientifically ready".
There's some centrifuge stuff on the ISS but it's quite a recent thing and not very big: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/news/Spinning_Science_MVP_Arrives_At_ISS/ [nasa.gov]
The original one was cancelled: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrifuge_Accommodations_Module [wikipedia.org]
No money for that but there was money for many trips to Hawaii[1] to answer questions that have mostly been answered by the US nuclear submarine bunch.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HI-SEAS [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Wednesday November 24 2021, @08:31PM
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