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[mainiac]

So, quick, honest question here then: Wouldn't Olympus Mons(sounds cheesy, I know) or a similarly high mountain on mars be the first acceptable spot for a colony?

Well the advantage is that the martian atmosphere is extremely thing there so it would be easier to launch off the planet.  Not like super easy but easier.  The downsides I can think of is that you cant use parachutes or air-braking to land there and it's not going to be convenient to any resources you need.

A decent sized mars colony might build a spaceport on Olympus Mons but I dont think it would be where you would want the first settlement.

[x2yzh9]

Terraforming a completely uninhabitable planet is probably the least useful expenditure of Humanity's resources. It'd be much more efficient to borrow from scifi and instead just build very large, orbiting colonies. Think about it, what's a better use of effort: trying to convert a huge, polluted garbage heap into a livable space, or just building a new home where we can dictate the conditions as precisely as we need to?

And granted our robotics advances sufficiently, those barren planets can still be useful in being huge, unmanned mining operations, providing cheaper materials for our colonies since transferring materials off of a smaller planet (or moon) needs significantly less power due to the smaller gravity well.

And granted our architecture advances sufficiently, transferring materials off of smaller planets won't even need much fuel, we'd just build a space elevator to accommodate each mining operation as it dismantles each planet for materials.

So the matter of interstellar travel isn't one of trying to flip every big rock into a two-bit bastard Earth, but rather making the best use of existing resources to build a long string of hobo houses  that gradually stretch into deep space. That's how I see the colonization of outer space being economical.

Well, I can actually agree with this point. You see, I talked long ago about it in a talk session with someone and I basically held the belief that as millions and billions of years go on old stars will die and new ones will form, hence the hobo/nomad kind of thing-But that would be millions and billions of years from now. so on that note, I got ninja'd.

So, quick, honest question here then: Wouldn't Olympus Mons(sounds cheesy, I know) or a similarly high mountain on mars be the first acceptable spot for a colony?

Well the advantage is that the martian atmosphere is extremely thing there so it would be easier to launch off the planet.  Not like super easy but easier.  The downsides I can think of is that you cant use parachutes or air-braking to land there and it's not going to be convenient to any resources you need.

A decent sized mars colony might build a spaceport on Olympus Mons but I dont think it would be where you would want the first settlement.

That actually sounds like a decent idea, a spaceport/space-elevator on olympus mons with a link to outer-lying colonies would be something that stimulates my thought process. That would be useful in a sense of the word, a compromise so to say.

[Gigaz]

You don't even need to go to Olympus Mons for a space elevator. The gravity is weak enough to have a Kevlar rope from the ground to the stationary orbit. Phobos is an issue, though.

[origamiscienceguy]

Olympus Mons would bend good place to rest out a space elevator.

Does mare have a geostationary orbit?

[mainiac]

You don't even need to go to Olympus Mons for a space elevator. The gravity is weak enough to have a Kevlar rope from the ground to the stationary orbit. Phobos is an issue, though.

Maybe a space elevator is a long term solution but you are probably gonna want launches before then.

[Max™]

There's a reason I said "Hellas base" in the hypothetical comparing a rescue mounted to the Moon and one to Mars, a couple of days to hopefully help survivors vs a couple of months to collect bodies? Self-sufficiency that far away sounds like an obvious requirement, but it's more likely that we'll pre-load the situation with supplies beforehand and try to maintain regular drops, as any colony would be a long way from getting by on their own.

Plunking one down in Hellas rather than up higher gives you a bit more atmosphere to work with, 12.4 mbar vs the 6.1 mbar at the average altitude.

As for an elevator, Olympus Mons isn't the right target: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavonis_Mons sits across the equator.

You know what they say about Martian shield volcanos, when they sit around the geographical vicinity, they sit around the geographical vicinity.

[mainiac]

Why would you even put an elevator on a mountain at all?

[Starver]

Olympus Mons would bend good place to rest out a space elevator.

Does mare have a geostationary orbit?

No, but Mars has an areostationary orbit, which is what you mean... 

(11,000 miles high; c.f. 22,000 miles for GEO)

Phobos (3,700 miles) could cause problems. Or maybe be actually boosted up as part of the solution. Diemos (14,000) might be disruptive to the counterweight, but if you're shoving one around, why not the other?   

[Max™]

Why would you even put an elevator on a mountain at all?

It's a convenient spot for one, but you'd probably want at least two others bracketing Hellas, which has the higher local pressure, approaching the triple point of water, and as a relic of the Late Heavy Bombardment probably has all sorts of interesting goodies underneath it to justify it as an obvious site for a major colony. There's a long tradition of mining craters, why stop now?

Moving and breaking apart Phobos and Diemos to serve as counterweights and local materials if not just dropping them to try and get some volatiles out of the polar caps seem doable.

Though, none of this is easier than floating aerostats above Venus, so hey, if you're gonna throw time and funding at Mars why not get the spectacle of deorbiting a moon in there for good measure!

Worth remembering, the Tharsis Montes are huge shield volcanos sitting on a huge bulge on the far side from Hellas Planitia, and the Himalayas would be foothills by comparison. Pavonis in the middle there, Olympus off to the left, Valles Marineris visible to the right

[Starver]

What you're saying is that we should fire projectiles at the planet, add a lot of extra heat to the system and send machines that would encourage the spread of some kind of weed (probably red) and wipe out any indiginous organisms as we go (assuming we can't farm them for liquids)..?

[x2yzh9]

Let's assume the goal is an Earth-pressure atmosphere, with is 100 times the current one. Looking up CO2 asphyxiation, it looks like 1% atmospheric CO2 would be the operational limit for humans, so going above what's already on Mars makes little sense if we can't breath it. But we could theoretically jet some off Venus to Mars, to process it into the 20% O2 we need. The amount would be 20x the current Martian atmosphere, so 5.0 x 10¹⁷, or 1/1000 of the Venusian amount.

Keep saying, an easier way to do it rather than shipping atmosphere would e to 'aerobrake' asteroids. They vapourise in atmosphere releasing various volatiles, you don't get massive craters, and it's MUCH cheaper and easier for the same amount of atmosphere.

The first thing we'd need to deal with on Mars is that the land's coated in perchlorates. It's toxic, and it would take a LONG time to clear up. Maybe develop bacteria, fungus, algae or something to do it, but it would still take a good number of centuries, likely.

Actually there was someone who proposed the same thing-I forget where the article is, but to surmise it I would say it was basically 'Bio-engineered fungus' that would literally spread so quickly and adapt to the martian surface that it would suck out nearly all the CO2 you need and replace it with oxygen within a course of 100 years give or take.

So, that was really promising, the only possible downside would be say, viruses spawned from it. It would require constant monitoring on a massive level however to catch viruses as they go into the ecosystem and well, basically create life and such. I mean, if you're going to have a terraformed mars, you're going to likely have to watch out for a couple(or many more) viruses and bacteria.

[Starver]

What you're saying is that we should fire projectiles at the planet, add a lot of extra heat to the system and send machines that would encourage the spread of some kind of weed (probably red) and wipe out any indiginous organisms as we go (assuming we can't farm them for liquids)..?

Assuming there ARE indigenous lifeforms.
And we don't need machines.

(Yes we do! Giant three-legged machnes with sirens on them...  Have I labourd my point enough yet?  )

[JoshuaFH]

Let's assume the goal is an Earth-pressure atmosphere, with is 100 times the current one. Looking up CO2 asphyxiation, it looks like 1% atmospheric CO2 would be the operational limit for humans, so going above what's already on Mars makes little sense if we can't breath it. But we could theoretically jet some off Venus to Mars, to process it into the 20% O2 we need. The amount would be 20x the current Martian atmosphere, so 5.0 x 10¹⁷, or 1/1000 of the Venusian amount.

Keep saying, an easier way to do it rather than shipping atmosphere would e to 'aerobrake' asteroids. They vapourise in atmosphere releasing various volatiles, you don't get massive craters, and it's MUCH cheaper and easier for the same amount of atmosphere.

The first thing we'd need to deal with on Mars is that the land's coated in perchlorates. It's toxic, and it would take a LONG time to clear up. Maybe develop bacteria, fungus, algae or something to do it, but it would still take a good number of centuries, likely.

Actually there was someone who proposed the same thing-I forget where the article is, but to surmise it I would say it was basically 'Bio-engineered fungus' that would literally spread so quickly and adapt to the martian surface that it would suck out nearly all the CO2 you need and replace it with oxygen within a course of 100 years give or take.

So, that was really promising, the only possible downside would be say, viruses spawned from it. It would require constant monitoring on a massive level however to catch viruses as they go into the ecosystem and well, basically create life and such. I mean, if you're going to have a terraformed mars, you're going to likely have to watch out for a couple(or many more) viruses and bacteria.

Not an expert speaking: The only thing worrying about entrusting microorganisms to terraforming is that they can run wild, and they can mutate. Oxygen in high concentration is actually toxic to humans, and if you build a perfect life-form that makes oxygen like crazy, telling it when to stop make be the hardest part; presuming we don't perfect bio-engineering to the point where we can program them to only make oxygen up to an ideal saturation.

And if we CAN'T order them or program them to stop, then obviously we'd have to kill them once they reach their goal. The best and most efficient way would be to introduce a 'perfect predator' organism that feeds off of the first ones, and then let them run wild as they gobble up all the oxygen producing organisms. Now, if the first ones can mutate AT ALL, we run the risk of them adapting some defense to the predator, and then they'd become ecologically balanced at some point; OR they'd defeat the predator and continue going wild.

But so long as we get an ideal saturation point, and the planet isn't oversaturated to the point of toxicity, or saturated to the point where the planet is a big fire cracker that could potentially burst into flames, which is what happened to Earth at one point and is in fact one of largest mass extinction events in our history.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

A quick read suggests oxygen toxicity only exists at different pressures, and it's also irreverent for the listed reason of going up in flames long before then.

[Max™]

Happy little irreverent O2 molecules dancing around, one of them bumps into a rock, the rest turn and look in horror as it starts to react.