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[WillowLuman]

How'd they find it?

[MonkeyHead]

BBC article: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-30784886

High res MRO images spotted it and some of its landing mechanisms.

[10ebbor10]

That's really sad actually. Following the failure, the entire Beagle program was scrapped. Had they known that they were this close, there likely would have been a Beagle-3 and maybe further.

[Graknorke]

And it probably wasn't even a systematic error, just some random, unpredictable problem. Bah.

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

Terraforming Mars.
Who thinks it's a good idea?
Who thinks it's a bad idea?
Who's undecided?

[MDFification]

Terraforming Mars.
Who thinks it's a good idea?
Who thinks it's a bad idea?
Who's undecided?

Terraforming takes too long and costs too much to be something we can view as anything other than a potential future goal. I say we focus on learning how to create enclosed biomes (biodome, anyone?) that are self-sustaining, and then on creating enclosed human settlements on the Moon and Mars. It'd allow us to colonize other worlds in a more reasonable timeframe with a more reasonable cost, and it's a necessary step to get economic infastructure into space anyway if we want to end up terraforming.

On the other hand, we should practice our terraforming on Earth in the meantime. Not just because it's a step along the road to Terraforming actually becoming feasible, but because the climate needs it - we've already messed up the Earth to the point that climate change can't be stopped by just capping emissions. We need to learn to use large-scale geoengineering and bioengineering to control the climate, so we can reverse damage we've done and even optimize the Earth (we have a lot of deserts that could seriously use some greening - a huge portion of the Earth's surface isn't hospitable enough form permanent settlements and could be colonized before we colonize space).

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

Ya but the terraforming on mars would be opposite. It needs an atmosphere so we could easily make CO2 on it then bring in plantlike things until it had enough atmosphere to bring plants and such.
The second part would be similar to what earth needs but not the first part

[Rez]

Terraforming is too far out of reach.  We don't know enough about Mars.  We don't know enough about or can't build robust enough life support systems that would be required for people to work and live on or around Mars.  Almost all isolated life systems have a nearly immediate fall back; Earth's surface, which is much more survivable at it's worst than vacuum.  We haven't sent people further than Luna and quite of few of those people nearly died doing so.

There's a lot that must be done before terraforming is even on the table.

[Gentlefish]

Also it has no magnetic field in place that prevents the scouring of the planet's atmosphere from solar winds.

So we'd have to create our own, artificial, giant magnetosphere.

[mainiac]

Terraforming Mars.
Who thinks it's a good idea?
Who thinks it's a bad idea?
Who's undecided?

It's an inefficient means to an end.  There are better ways of creating habitable space.

Also it has no magnetic field in place that prevents the scouring of the planet's atmosphere from solar winds.

So we'd have to create our own, artificial, giant magnetosphere.

Just putting a few meters of material (such as ice) between humans and the radiation sources would also do the trick.

[Rez]

His point was that atmosphere would simply blow away if we could create it, not that dealing with radiation is impossible.

The response to which is, we'll just keep smacking comets into it as long as we have it populated.  Of course, even if it had an atmosphere, you'd still get cancer as fast as a ginger on a beach if you spent much time outside.

ed: The idea of simulating a planet sized magnetosphere with an artificial device strikes me as feasible as a ringworld.

[MrWiggles]

Solar Erosion, like all erosion is painfully slow.

If you have the inclination to change the chemical makeup of the atmosphere of the entire planet, then you have the ability to replenish it every couple hundred years.

[LordBaal]

To my understanding even when the atmosphere would indeed be wasted by the solar winds it would take so much time (in order of thousands or millions of years) it would still be practical to do. I could be wrong on those numbers however.

Terra forming, in the case of Mars, could be a by product of heavy industrialization on the planet. Which by it's low gravity could allow us to build space elevators with current engineering and materials, which would in theory make possible to use Mars as source of raw material and or base of heavy polluting industry with little regard of environment.

However the question is, what could be imported from there? Of course it would be an excellent exercise and impulse to the fields of extra terrestrial colonization, terraformation and space travel technologies, but I think it would be feasible only if we encounter huge quantities of rare minerals OR earth governments put enough taxes and restrictions on certain industrial enterprises that at some point it becomes cheaper to do them outside earth.

[Sheb]

You can't really have industry pumping out CO2 in Mars like it does on Earth, because you don't oxygen to burn fossil fuel (and it's unlikely there as fossil fuel in the first place).

[LordBaal]

You can't really have industry pumping out CO2 in Mars like it does on Earth, because you don't oxygen to burn fossil fuel (and it's unlikely there as fossil fuel in the first place).

There's plenty of oxidizing agents, the thing is they are stuck in the rocks in the form of iron oxide (aka rust), I do not know which alchemy secrets could be used to unlock it from there, but I'm sure there's some way. I read somewhere that huge greenhouses (possible to do with few/light materials because the reduced gravity) could unlock gases from the soil, dunno if oxygen would be among those.

Supposedly heavy water is more abundant on Mars than here, if fusion energy ever becomes a thing, I guess they could use that.