Creating an atmosphere on mars, or the moon?

Correction, Venusian atmospheric pressure is 90 times that of Earths, far from 92 ocean depths The "if the atmosphere were more transparent" could be an exageration I can't find the source on that though it was some book I have around here. But it wasn't written as an exageration, but you know how some things get carried away anyways.

Venus has almost no water so that will be a problem, I don't know why it doesn't specifically but Sulfuric acid which is H2SO4 when broken down can yield something like this. 2H2SO4 -- > 2H2O + S2 + 2O2.

So you can get a LOT of necessary components of life from that deadly poison vapour that calls itself Venusian clouds.

Originally posted by FreeMason
Oh also from that same NASA website presented by kinglizard, they state that "chloroflourocarbons" contribute to a thickening of the Ozone layer.

Well, no actually it is CFCs that are known to cause the destruction of the Ozone.

Ok you don�t like the previous link lets try
NASA�s Aerospace Scholars at the Johnson Space Center and their opinion on terraforming and the use of chlorofluorocarbons.

ShadowXIX while it's more theoretical for me to discuss because it's not my field, it is still important to look at.

The "equilibrium" of Mars is nearly complete, there is no geologic activity and any activity there has been is localized to the Tharsis Bulge and Valles Marineris Rift. Yes, notice how they call it a "Rift" now, it's now known that Valles Marineris was not created by water erosion like our Grand Canyon was.

Earth has life because it has an unequal system, take for example the "carbon-cycle".

It is fuled by the tectonic activities and life-forms of Earth, without the tectonism though all the carbon would eventually be locked in stone and dead sea animals such as coral-reefs and what not.

Frankly I don't know what scientists believe Mars can be terraformed, the books always referred to for Martian terraforming are those "Red Planet, Green Planet, Blue Planet" trilogy. Which is not very credible in my opinion.

Now as for where our technology will be in the future, who knows, but where it needs to be to make Martian terraforming plausible would be much like that of the Martians in the recent version of "Mars Attacks" where they were able to absorb a nuclear explosion into that little sack thing. Because man can not stop a volcano in its eruption, or absorb the impact of a meteorite, or dissipate a tornado just as it hits the ground or a hurrican before it hits shore, there is no reason to believe mankind can create these affects either.

We can not create tornados in any country, or hurricanes, or volcanos and so forth.

So why we'd be able to do it on Mars is beyond me. If such technology ever does exist, I'd be more worried what we'd do to our own planet than what we'd be able to do with Mars.

Their take on chlorofluorocarbons has nothing to do with what the previous example you gave was, which was Ozone alteration. The previous example was corn-ball, this is more reasonable.

I want to point out their initial presuposition which is in my opinion what seperates this from do-able, and write-able.

Could people live freely on Mars one day? Today Mars is a frozen desert with a carbon dioxide atmosphere that is too thin for liquid water to exist. Water may however exist deep underground in subsurface aquifers.

So if there's water under the surface of Mars (and that is an extremely big if), then we can terraform Mars (breifly as Mars is a dead world for a reason, which means it will want to return to its state of death if we do not solve that reason, and that reason is not atmospheric but tectonic and size. Both of which we have no power to change the later though we could change if we bombarded Mars with the Moon and Ceres, adding their combined masses into a larger form.)

The article gives no argument as to what to do if there is no water in giant underground aquifers. And if you don't have a contingency plan then it's not possible with-out luck, and luck is not always on our side.

Also I'm still skeptical of the quality of thought behind the effort. Again "do-ability vs. write-ability".

I can write all day about terraforming Mars, someone wrote three books on it.

Just as many people wrote about going to the Moon, but NASA did not decide to do what Jules Vern wrote. He only happend to be lucky in concept, the reality is hundreds of volumes of technical manuals and data figurations that would allow us to build a craft predicted to go to the Moon and return.

I've never seen such practical data gathering and research for terraforming any world. It always is "write-able" articles and books and such, never do-able.

No one will take any of these articles and begin doing it without quickly encountering problems, such as "what if there is no water under the Martian surface".

Or what if we melt the ice-caps (the northern especially) and find that not only did it not have its desired affect, but now the gasses we released are escaping into space and will be fully gone in 500 million years.

Anyways, more important to me which makes me skeptical, is the bit at the top that says:

"Aerospacescholars.jsc.nasa.gov: An Educational Outreach Program Between NASA's Johnson Space Center & the State of Texas."

For two reasons:

1) JSC does not head the planetary sciences department, that is why JPL is working with the Mars Rovers, JSC handles Public Relations and Manned Space Flight once cleared from the tower and many numerous other things.

2) Educational Outreach is public relation gimicks. It's far fetched, and has little to do with science. The thing that bugs me the most is that they now have 3 Astronauts selected to be "Educator Astronauts" giving classes from space to high schoolers and such below. Two are Geologists, I am thankful though because while I believe Geologists are going to be sent to the Moon and Mars in the future, not fighter pilots (this was shown by sending Harrison Schmitt on the last and most important expedition of Apollo, Apollo 17.) But these educator astronauts have the lowest educational history I have ever seen compared to non-pilot Astronauts, one only has their Bachelors in Geology.

My point is, NASA which is strapped for funding, is doing what I see as desperate things, now that's probably a bit biased, but sending an Astronaut up for nothing but publicity, which is all educating from space really is, is in my opinion a sign of desperation.

And it's sad because those Astronauts can do the job just as well as the others, and they should not be sent up as "educators" but as Astronauts and should be given assignments that show this and so forth and so on....Politics is beating NASA down.

And so their educational outreaches in my opinion are never very valid, only very imaginative and they use good science but they stretch the limits between do-able and write-able in order to capture the imaginations of future voters, because every voter is worth some tax dollars.

IMO, no possibility for the moon, possible on Mars.

We could do something with pretty much anywhere, given enough raw materials. Mars or the moon either one could be done one small area at a time under domes, until the entire surface was covered. No worries about atmosphere escaping into space or cosmic rays coming in if it's all under a protective dome. Not sure if you'd technically call this 'terraforming' due to the fact that it would all be contained, but it's technically possible with the restriction of raw materials available.

FreeMason's view about the equalibrium makes a good bit of sense (to me, at least). Mars has pretty much played out, Earth is prime, and Venus is WAY out of whack.

Venus is interesting for it's possibilities. At one point, Venus was likely an extremely similar place to earth. Unfortunately, something very, very, big gave it one hell of a whack. A whack big enough to send the whole planet spinning the wrong way, which still hasn't reverted to it's original rotation yet (still turning very, very slowly the wrong way). The entire surface is 'new', geologically speaking. The entire surface has been resurfaced by volcanic activity. The runaway greenhouse effect could well have been started by the impact debris, further supported by the resulting volcanic activity. Basically, all the ingredients we need are there, just in such a screwed up mess that sorting it all out would be extremely difficult.

Look at it in real estate terms. Mars is a run-down old place that, if given enough investment, could be technically livable. Earth is ready to move into, a good place to be. Venus, while once being as nice a place as Earth, has been trashed really badly and would require an extensive clean up job.

LoL I really like the real estate analogy, I just picture Venus being not trashed, but more like buying an imploding furnace.

I would say terraforming is what the name means, "making earth" so yeah you can put a bunch of domes all over the planet but that's not really how we live on earth