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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: 4, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday November 23 2021, @03:15PM (4 children)
We can't even permanently colonize the shallow ocean floors - been tried since the 1960s, conclusions are consistently: "too expensive."
We put highly trained military personnel into artificial environments for a few months at a time, at extreme costs, with extreme supply chain requirements. Submarine crews dine on steak and lobster as inadequate compensation for the pressures of life in their artificial environment. I'm sure we _could_ start an isolated colony of 30+ people and have them pro-create, but only at the expense of literally millions of people working to put them there and support their continued inadequate efforts at self sufficiency for decades.
When I was 6 (1973) I thought we should be doing everything we can to "get out there" and colonize the moon, Mars and beyond. And, we still should. We should get over our domestic and international squabbles and cooperate to solve these bigger challenges. but until we do put this economic competition aside in favor of cooperation, we're going to be stuck in the mud. Six year old me didn't appreciate the bigger problems standing in the way - the science of space travel obviously worked, why weren't we continuing to develop it?
Teachers of the mid 1970s would point out: Columbus sailed the ocean blue in good 'ol 1492, but Plymouth colony didn't stick until 1621 - 129 years later. While we like to think that we make faster progress today, and we do in technical matters, nationalist crowd psychology is barely advanced, if at all, from where it was 500 years ago.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday November 23 2021, @07:20PM (1 child)
Part of me thinks that colonizing the solar system will be accomplished by private players. They'll take all the risks, figure out what works, and enjoy a halcyon period before the criminals who call themselves governments try to muscle in on the action.
Maybe, though, with decentralization in software, and increasingly hardware, it may not pan out the same way it always has. It used to be that governments and the powerful had a monopoly on information, but now that monopoly has been broken. We're still going through that process, of course, but we can see the light at the end of that tunnel. It's possible that we can see that phenomenon spread to hardware and energy.
Maybe we'll get human colonies that successfully maintain their autonomy. They'll attract the best and brightest and become incubators for the next quantum leap in human capabilities. Ganymede, Mars, Europa, Enceladus will form the constellation of competition for the title among our grand kids. It's far-fetched, but then the world we live in now wasn't even a twinkle in the eye when I was a kid.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday November 23 2021, @07:53PM
The current culture of openness, and the tech revolution that made spying / copying trivial, should continue to be transformative. Anybody with the resources (Bezos through Branson - pretty thin slice of the population, really) should be able to pull off manned launches to wherever they have the balls to pay for. However, the billionaires exist as a result of each other's tolerance. If one gets too far out of line, the others will take him down. If one starts behaving badly on the Moon, according to the others, I believe they will quickly find their operational profit margins flipped into the red - it's amazing how easy that is to do with government incentives, taxes, and regulatory filing requirements.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday November 23 2021, @10:34PM (1 child)
Underwater colonies is a good point. I've been thinking of Antarctica and the most inhospitable deserts on Earth as examples of much easier places to live than Mars, but which we mostly still find not worth the trouble.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday November 23 2021, @11:15PM
I mean, shallow (like 10-20 meter) seafloor colonies have so much going for them: relatively protected from storms, near constant temperatures which can be in comfortable ranges, abundant oxygen, relatively easy to access potable water, and even food sources nearby. These days, you could put up a windfarm right in the colony for power. If you're just offshore from a major city you've got quick access to advanced medical care (particularly if you're saturated to 10m or less depth, even if you're saturated to 20m decompression is quicker and easier than a de-orbit from LEO). Certainly instant communication as good as anywhere on the surface. Appealing views out the windows... And, other than commercial (oil) operations, I believe there have been fewer long-term residents in underwater habitats during the last 20 years than we have had on the ISS during the same time period.
🌻🌻 [google.com]