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[Guardian G.I.]

I think NASA should land the next rover near the "Face of Mars" in Cydonia.

[Askot Bokbondeler]

ptw

[Loud Whispers]

So, crash ice meteors into mars to give it back its water?

The water that the SOLAR WIND STOLE!

Solar wind was thirsty ;-;

[Karnewarrior]

So, crash ice meteors into mars to give it back its water?

The water that the SOLAR WIND STOLE!

Ship in dirty coal to burn for power/greenhouse gases to help restore the atmosphere. Crash ice meteors into the surface.

The melting ice should provide a bit of oxygen, and hopefully plants will thrive there. Green Mars.

Plants like grasses and weedy-type flowers would be good, as would fast growing trees and beanplants. We could keep everything poisonous out!

The question would be how to get a megnetosphere into place to keep the Solar wind from blowing all our new atmosphere off. I guess it would just be giant Electromagnets... But that would take a ton of energy.

[Sirus]

Just do what they did in the totally-accurate-scientifically movie The Core:

Send a drilling machine made of unobtainium to Mars' core and detonate a series of nukes to get the core spinning again, which will jump-start the magnetic field. Easy.

[Scoops Novel]

WMG; we are von newmann machines (which is to say, naturally occuring but seeded life) to be picked up upon when we hit ftl, for purposes of seeing what comes up. . To be honest, there's got to be someone planning a worldwide celebration if we do find life. Hear anything about it?

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Curiosity has found a sediment bed which all but confirms that Mars once held liquid water.

Also the planet is receiving unsafe amounts of radiation, but you knew that already.

[werty892]

Holy shit guys, mars has WATER??? I knew that 3 years ago! /sarcasm

Seriously, it was 99% certain before. Now it is 100%

[MetalSlimeHunt]

We didn't really have any hard evidence before, just the knowledge that it was likely given conditions on Mars.

[Morrigi]

Also the planet is receiving unsafe amounts of radiation, but you knew that already.

Radiation is less of an issue than the media makes it out to be. If the spacecraft was properly shielded and took the fastest route to Mars (taking about six months) and had a shelter for use during solar storms, and any habitats or landers on the surface were protected with adequate shielding (also known as sandbags), then radiation levels would fall to a tolerable range, only increasing the chance of cancer later in life by 1 to 2 percent.

Source: A Case for Mars by Robert Zubrin

[10ebbor10]

Well yeah, everything is no problem when people follow the proper solution.

Because proper shielding is heavy, a solar storm shelter is heavier*, and somebody will need to fill and install the sandbags. There's also the problem with EVA's.

*Besides, the shelter won't help that much. A chance hit by a severe storm would destroy a large part of the craft's electronics.

((Note, same applies to the Earth))

[Morrigi]

Mars's atmosphere is enough to protect against the worst of solar storms, and EVA would be doable without getting too much radiation. Keep in mind that most of the radiation is ultraviolet from the sun and therefore polarized suit visors and the suit itself will block out the vast majority of it.

As for the shelter on the spacecraft, all you'd really need would be a small room in the middle with all the mission's supplies stored around it. I'd say it wasn't rocket science, but...

There is also the magnificent new technology of radiation-hardened electronics, used in just about all spacecraft in the first place. Keeping electronics functioning in deep space is not the biggest problem ever faced, considering that we've done it with just about every probe we've ever launched. Also, standard NASA safety regulations call for backups on just about every essential system and often backups for the backups in the unlikely chance that something does get fried.

[MonkeyHead]

Its pretty well established that most of the radiation dose (FWIW, Nasa operates on not exposing its astronauts to radiaiton that would bring thier cancer risk more than 3% above the background rate) an astronaut would be exposed to on a Earth-Mars jolly would during the spaceflight, not on the surface. Shielding the craft is not the answer (as fully explained in the BBC article) due to launch technology limitations in terms of mass/volume - you cant just have 30 cm bulk of absorbing material at least as dense as aluminium (as thats what it would take to get rid of the dangerous stuff - high energy radiation from outside the solar system) on all exterior surfaces. The real trick will be in shortening the trip from a number of months to a number of weeks with better propulsion technologies (Ion or nuclear pusle methods). With current technologies, NASA estimate the increased risk of cancer on the trip to be around the 5% mark, higher than thier current limit.

[Sheb]

Funnily enough, the amount of radiation they will be exposed to in flight will depend a lot on the duration of the mission on Mars. If it's long and they carry lots of equipment, food and water, it'll be easy enough to just use all that stuff as radiation plating.

[Morrigi]

This.

Look at Table 5.

And this.

http://www.physics.isu.edu/radinf/risk.htm

And this.

http://www.physics.isu.edu/radinf/radrus.htm