Ultimate Terraformed Mars MARK V Milestone Release

[acrosome]

Don,

Howdy, I'm new here. I found this forum (and Celestia) a couple of days ago after intensive google searching for Mas terraformation schemes. I have to say- beautiful work. You cannot get enough praise for it. My package manager loaded Celestia without a hitch (I run Ubuntu Linux) and I'm still playing around with it. I'm not yet confident enough to try to import textures, though.

Anyway...

I'm coming at the subject of terraforming Mars via my status as a science fiction snob. I don't actually know anything about the subject. But I have a question... Given that you say your terraformed Mars will be colder than Earth (despite the thick atmosphere), how do you justify so much liquid water around the the south polar cap, as seen in your post of 2008/08/31? Is there some other interesting phenomenon at work here of which I am unaware? (Reading this forum has already prompted me to learn about Hadley cells and jet streams- thanks!)

I guess everyone has slightly different visions on this subject. My Mars would probably be too cold for liquid water at those latitudes.

Thanks again!

Dean

[fsgregs]

acrosome:

Welcome to the Celestia forum:

There is a set of very detailed educational lesson plans for Celestia. They take the user on extended journeys through Celestia space, while focusing and teaching about specific topics. One of them is titled, "Activity 5 - The Terraforming of Mars", and specifically deals with the terraforming of Mars , beginning in the 26th century. Obviously, much of it is speculation, but you should find it an interesting one-hour journey.

The Activity uses 24 separate surface textures of Mars as it changes from its current state to a fully terraformed planet with atmosphere, plants, lakes, seas, cities, etc. All of the textures are beautifully detailed and were done for me by Don Edwards about three years ago. His current project in this post in an effort to update the last texture (fully terraformed Mars).

You can download the educational lesson plans and Activity 5 by visiting our add-on website at http://celestiamotherlode.net/catalog/educational.php

FYI

fsgregs

[acrosome]

fsgregs,

Please, call me Dean. "Acrosome" is just a login name I have been using since college, when we were discouraged from using our real names for some reason.

I had actually already found the CelestiaMotherLode by trolling this forum, including the educational activities. But, honestly, I'm still puzzling out the interface, let alone trying to change texture maps or run those activities... It's on my to-do list, though.

Thanks,

Dean

[Don. Edwards]

Dean. "Acrosome",

Well let me try and do a little simple explaining. An atmosphere 2.5millibars or 2 and one half times as think as ours has some unique characteristics. One it tend to hold allot more moisture than one bar of air does. So the atmosphere would be a bit more clammy than most of us are used to. Well except for those of us in the Pacific Northwest that is. Also when I used the term colder I didn't mean by any sense that it would be tremendously colder. To give an example of what the climate would be like on this Mars all one has to do is imagine taking the Earth and cutting the the tropical and sub-tropical zones away and of course the arid areas as well.

So we start with Earth.



Remove the above mentioned zones.



Join the sections and adjust to fit.



We end up with a planet that has an average cooler climate than Earth. With a 2.5 millibar atmosphere that acts as a thermal blanket we are able to keep the polar regions in roughly the same latitudes they are on the Earth. The Northern Ocean would also be acting as a thermal conductor. As it's currents rotate and move warm water north you get a similar effect as the Gulf Stream in the Atlantic warmer water is brought up to the colder north but it has the effect of warming that climate so it maintains a more temperate temperature. Also these oceans are no where near as deep as they are on the Earth. So they not going to have the deep cold waters that we have here. The currents will be stronger and the wave action will be larger due to the lower gravity. Breakers on the beaches would be a surfers dream but they also could be quite dangerous in some places.

When I am finished with the texture I plan to include a detailed map and explanation of all the climate variables, climate zone types and the types flora and fauna that would be found in any given region.

Of course the texture as it stands does not take into consideration the seasons one would see on this Mars. But your concern about the southern polar sea isn't needed. It would only be in a melt stage as seen in the high southern summer. In the southern winter that sea would be completely frozen over. Remember seasons on Mars are roughly double ours. So its six months of winter not just three. But that leaves a very long growing season, a whole Earth year, and a long autumn.

Of course there are other concerns about a terraformed Mars. One being its orbital instability. That might have a solution if we can figure out how move large objects in space. One very hypothetical idea is to move a large asteroid into orbit. Of course it would have to be big enough to tug on Mars and stabilize its axial tilt. I think Ceres might do the job. But of course that opens a whole other kettle of fish. How do you park it in the right orbit. How far should it be so that it has the proper tidal effects. There are many animals that use the lunar cycle on Earth to reproduce. So what happens when there is no moon. We would either half to consider not introducing these animals to the environment or give them a substitute. I am sure that the thousands of years it would take to terraform Mars we would have gained the knowledge of how to de-orbit Ceres and re-orbit it around Mars and settle it into a nice effective orbit. Hey its no more crazy as the idea that we can use asteroids to gradually pull the Earth away from the brightening sun to save it or at least postpone its eventual death. Of course the same technique could be use to de-orbit Mars closer to the sun. How the rest of the solar system would take it is any ones guess.

Science and science fiction are very close bedfellows. What was once considered completely outlandish or impossible is being looked at with a whole new slant.

Don. Edwards

[acrosome]

Don,

I understand the whole "cut out the tropics" model- as a matter of fact I think that you mentioned it in a previous post. I also know that it leaves some details out, such as the fact that seasons would not be as dramatic at Mars' equator as they are in Maryland, etc. Though, Mars' orbit is a bit more eccentric that Earth's, is it not? So perhaps there would be some seasons of note. And Mars won't have a world-ocean, which has implications, especially with the circum-boreal current acting like the Antarctic current, and all. So...

I would LOVE to see your climate charts (so that I could thieve your ideas mercilessly).

But, still, having "the solar system's biggest mud puddle" around the south polar cap bugs me. Or, perhaps it would be the solar system's biggest arctic peat bog... Is there a depression there? If not, wouldn't any melt just run off as rivers, until it hit the end of it's watershed? My USGS map shows the south pole being on a "peak" above the datum, though there is a depression pointing off towards Argyre at 330 east. Don't get me wrong- it's your show, and I can't say enough good things about your work- I'm just thinking about it from the point of view of *my* vision, which is colder and thinner than yours and more akin to a thicker version of Robinson's Green Mars (primarily because colder is much more interesting to me). After all, I live in what essentially is or was temperate mixed forest, so temperates bore me. Thus the taiga, tundra, and high altitudes grab my attention, as do temperate rain forests. (And the tropics are too complex- you can have HUNDREDS of tree species in one hectare of tropical rain forest!) That's also why 2.5 bar seems a bit ambitious to me. The atmosphere on Mars would still reach very high with 1 bar at a sea level around 2km below the datum, so wouldn't the thicker (as in thickness, not as in pressure) atmosphere still give you some protection? I read somewhere on the Mars Society forums that 250 millibars (of mostly CO2) on Mars would have equivalent column-thickness to 2/3rds sea level on Earth, so I assume that 1 bar on Mars would be even better. (EDIT: I found another discussion on the Mars Society forums where a 1 bar Martian atmosphere is described as providing better solar radiation/UV protection than at sea level Earth with it's magnetic field.) And breathing 2.5 bar would be tiring- not very friendly to the elderly or infirm. It would be like living your life while scuba diving to 15 meters. Air, which behaves like a fluid, becomes more viscous as pressure increases, thus increasing work-of-breathing.

Anyway, enough about my "vision", since it's not really germane here. I have a lot more reading to do on the Mars Society website before I can comment intelligently about all of this,anyway, especially the atmospheric pressure thing.

I'm already designing my own biosphere- again, for my own purposes- based primarily on North America, because that's what I know. (Along the way in my life I took some biology and ecology classes en-route to my biochemistry B.S.) I've only been working on it for a few weeks and already it is obvious that it is going to be a years-long project.
Merely perusing my choices of lemming and deciding on three 'best' species took me a couple of hours. And, my Lord, the lichens! And all those arctic ground plants! A few really interesting ones, alas, are too fond of limestone, and I didn't think anyone would think it was a trait worth engineering out of them. A half-dozen peat mosses... I've settled on three epiphyte beard lichens for the temperate rainforests, so far. And I finally settled on a mere four species of saxifrage, primarily because I could not easily find information on many of the others.
Higher up the food chain gets simpler, and I have been trying to reduce the number of 'redundant' species, figuring that as long as I throw in a few more adaptable ones they would realize niches from which they are out-competed on Earth. How many species of owl do I need, after all? So far I have only two truly good candidates. I figured that most migratory birds wouldn't cope well, alas, with a world with almost no magnetic field , a 24-month year, and no truly recognizable moon. Let me tell, you, having no migratory birds really wrecks havoc on an arctic ecosystem.
I also filled a few holes in the ecology: for instance, I have included guanacos and vicunas, since North America could use an easier medium-sized grasslands prey species than pronghorns, and used to be lousy with camelids, anyway. (They probably evolved there.) Truth be told, I haven't decided if I do actually want to include pronghorns. If I did, I'd probably have to allow cheetahs, since pronghorns evolved to outrun them (sort of) and otherwise don't have a good predator in North America other than H. sapiens sapiens. And should I include lions? After all, Panthera leo atrox prowled the North American steppes until the Holocene extinction, and the continent really needs something that can take on adult bison- the gray wolf really isn't up to it. But, then that would bring up the whole issue of breeding mastodons, etc., and I'm not sure that I want to go there. I did include yaks as a non-North American species, primarily because I like saying "yak", but also because they are a great cold and altitude tolerant species that is domesticatable. (Is that a word?)

And, let's face it, large mammals are all that most people are interested in anyway. They could care less about how much effort I put into selecting a few ground squirrels, let alone my tundra flora.

I drew the line at specifying nitrogen-fixing bacteria species for the legumes, and generally only listed the fungi species in the lichens.

I could go on and on. For instance, I was going to make Elysium the 'Australia of Mars', and see if I could set up a totally different ecology there based upon Patagonia, Tierra del Fuego, the Valdivian temperate rain forest, and the southern Andes. (But that's AFTER I get the mainland straightened out.) I realize that this leaves out all sorts of cool Asian critters, in particular from the Himalayas and Himalayan plateau (can you say "Snow Leopard?), but I'm not terribly familiar with that region and I have to limit myself somehow. I've also been pondering if I should include penguins, since I'm sticking with the North American motif on the mainland. Perhaps have them only in the Hellas Sea? For THAT matter, how salty are these bodies of water? Should I be assuming that the salt has leached into them yet, or am I stuck with salmon and river dolphins? Designing a 'freshwater pelagic ecosystem' would be a real pain, but I guess I could model one on the great lakes... Rats. I really want those giant and colossal squid. And I LOVE some of the more obscure whales (again, migratory issues) and cold-water sharks. I'm pulling my hair out over a lot of this.

I have found many resources on the net, but one in particular is http://plants.usda.gov, which includes in most species profiles a handy map of North America showing its range. http://www.birds.cornell.edu/AllAboutBirds/BirdGuide does something similar for birds. I haven't found such a resource for mammals yet, and I've just been relying upon my own knowledge and wikipedia so far, but I'm sure its out there. Some college ecology professor has brief write-ups of many biomes at http://www.marietta.edu/~biol/biomes, including temperate rain forests.

And I haven't even TOUCHED agriculture yet!

Anyway, as you can see you have struck upon my pet subject. Enough babbling.

[Don. Edwards]

OK, Let me try address a few things.

First off there is a depression at the southern polar region. I don't have access to my information, its on my desktop computer, but it has a name I just can't think of it off hand. Its an ancient impact zone nearly the size of the Argyre impact basin. It is rather eroded but it is there and it would flood it there was water available. Most textures of mars do show its boundries if you look. But because polar regions are so severly stretched in a rectangular texture its hard to see.

Second. Mars has some rather extreme seasons. With a tilt of nearly 24 degrees its seasons are just a tad stronger than ours. Yes the equatorial zones would have less seasonal variance, but as you stated with the more eccentric orbit will also ad to the seasons. I have a chart that shows how the seasons unfold on Mars. Plants and animals tend to adapt to some change. But considering that most of the trees on Mars will be a form of conifer of one kind or another. Not to say there won't be deciduous trees and plants, there will be quite a few.

Third, an atmosphere of 2.5 bars is really nothing.We have some deep water environmental labs that have atmospheres much higher and the only side effect is the fact that one has to decompress. With a lower gravity the higher atmospheric pressure will help compensate in a few ways. The gravity may be weaker but the atmosphere pushing down on your body will make it feel a little more like Earth, not much but a little. Also with a 2.5 bars of atmosphere, the air being denser means that flying animals will not have to work as hard. In many cases there wings may shrink. Other animals will most likely start to see size increase because of the higher oxygen levels and lower gravity. Like the tress not having to fight against the high Earth gravity, on Mars they can grow faster and much taller. The same thing would happen to animals and humans alike. Without the gravitational pull of Earth the average height of humans will probably go up to 7 or 8 feet in just a few generations. Possibly even taller. The same thing would happen to animals. Of course not all animals will make the change to be bigger. Some will opt to stay small to keep niches that they fill.
It can get all very complicated and I really didn't plan on getting this involved into the deep biological side of things. I was planning just a simple climate and zonal explanation of things.

One thing to keep in mind here is you are not populating a continent but an entire planet. Even though its smaller I would consider migrating all animals possible that live in zones that would be there. So yes there is room for yaks and lamas and cheetahs and lions. Also leopards and jaguars can come along because they have a fairly diverse habitat as well. This is endless. Also being that we may come up with a way that migratory animals and birds could migrate across the planet don't count them out either. I strong magnetic beacon set at the north and south pole may possibly do the trick.

Well I think this covers some points

Don. Edwards

[acrosome]

Don,

By all means, please, let me know about that south polar depression. As fate would have it I had been erroneously looking at the NORTH pole when I saw that depression at 330 E. Looking at the south pole I see no depression whatsoever. As I mentioned I'm using pdfs of those USGS topo maps that you can download for free and, while they are GREAT maps, they use a 1000m contour so I may not see this depression on them. That's the best I got. It can be found at http://pubs.usgs.gov/imap/i2782/i2782_sh2.pdf.

And, Don, I'm thick, but I'm not THAT thick. I know that Mars has seasons. : ) Heck, I even know that the seasons are much more dramatic in the southern hemisphere. My comment on seasons at the equator was just to demonstrate that I knew that you couldn't just think of the weather at equatorial terraformed Mars as equivalent to Maryland, because the Mason-Dixon line (being around 40 N) has more extreme seasonal variation than the equator does. I lived in Pittsburgh until I was 18, and the temperature can swing from sub-zero Farenheit and dry in winter to 100F and impossibly humid in summer. Would equatorial Mars have such a severe range?

I'm interested in discussing the 2.5 bar thing with you more, if you are willing. It catches my attention because few of the schemes for terraforming Mars that I've read have ever mentioned a goal higher than about 1 bar. As you know, atmosphere is THE big issue, here.
I am pretty sure that the thicker atmosphere wouldn't "push down" on you to any noticeable degree, though. Air pressure doesn't really work that way; you don't feel lighter on top of Everest, for example. And, I wasn't implying that healthy people can't live at 2.5 bar indefinitely, as you mentioned with the deep sea facilities. But nonetheless the air would be thicker, increasing work of breathing, and so not being great for the very young, very old, or infirm. (Notwithstanding any minor benefit from a higher partial pressure of O2, which taken to extremes has it's own problems.) No kidding. I took classes on hyperbarics in medical school. It is physically and noticeably harder to draw breath at higher pressures.

But I apologize: this may not be the appropriate forum in which to discuss such trivia. The Mars Society has a monumental amount of material on the subject, as I am discovering. We can stick to your textures, if you prefer, because it is difficult not to appear critical when hashing out stuff like this. (And I am definitely NOT trying to be critical. I'm just trying to collect educated opinions on the matter; witness my recent Hadley cell and jet stream learning.) Heck, I have become a tittering fan of your textures...

By the way, on that note, do you have your Terraformed Mars Mark III texture available anywhere? The last time I looked it still wasn't on your website. (I have graduated to changing textures on Celestia.)

And, I will still be eagerly awaiting your weather, climate, and ecology ideas, whenever you can produce them, since that is where my interests truly lay.

Dean

[Don. Edwards]

Dean,

Below is a segment from the south polar region of said PDF imagery. I have marked the regions of the ancient impact zone for you. As you can see it is half buried by the south polar cap and its associated sedimentary skirt. Its not listed as a crater but it northern boundary is called an escarpment. I just wish I could remember its name. By the way I seem to find its name on any Mars information sites either. But its real and it is named. The second image is from Google Mars showing another view and its a bit more clear.




Most of this polar elevation is frozen soil and fines. If the temperature on Mars was to be raised to a higher level much of this south polar elevation would disappear as the water was melted and evaporated out into the atmosphere. You would in essence end up with a south polar depression somewhere along the lines I have on my texture. There is some room for adjustment on my part in the texture but we are dealing with a hypothetical planet Mars here and not one we see today or will see in the foreseeable future. I am sure I need not remind you that as water freezes it tend to expand. We could end up seeing some very drastic changes of the martian surface if terraforming were to actually occur. I chose to limit these changes for these very reasons.
I could have cut a bumpmap of Mars up into small pieces and imported them into the 3d application Bryce and used one of its features to erode the bumpmap and create an even more drastic change for the planet. I still have not completely ruled out doing this. But at this time it just makes more sense to finish the texture I have and wait and see if I really want to tackle doing something on a scale like that. If I did do something like if would probably end up being used for something else entirely. We are talking about allot of time going into that project.

OK, as for the equatorial climate. Yes yo would have a climate similar to what you described at that latitude. But we all have seen how very mild winters have no real effect on the way that plants grow. So yes there would be longer growing seasons, the equatorial climate would be allot more mellow without the drastic temperature swings the more north or south would have. But certain plants and trees would still go about there own yearly cycle of growth and then going dormant. I used to live in mild southern California. Just because the climate there is so mild and sunny so much of the year does not mean there are no seasons. Trees in southern California still drop there leaves and go dormant during the winter months. Its how long the days are. I would be more interested to see how trees and plants will adapt to a 2 year long cycle of growth. Will they simply have a longer growing season, or will they have two growing seasons per martian year. These are the questions I am interested in and have yet to find decent answers too. Here on Earth we can force trees and other plants to have two growing seasons in one earth year. Can it be done the other way. I would assume so but I truly haven't done much research into that and for that I am at fault.
I would estimate that we would see the average high temp at the equator on terraformed Mars no more than 90 degrees but with a high humidity level. Than is nearly a 30 degree difference form the Earth's high temp. And of course that would be if conditions were just right. I would say the average temp there would be in the mid 80s with the humidity level following along the same pattern but also limited to whether it is a forested region or open grasslands. Because there is no landmass in the northern polar region, the north polar cap during summer could very well completely melt. Again there is some wiggle room. The southern polar cap being mostly land locked with just a circumnavigational sea would stay more frozen during the southern summer. Hey we are starting to talk about climate modeling here. Not something I can claim I know how to do. I can do climate theorizing but that's about my limit.

OK, the thing with the atmosphere and the 2 to 2.5 bar pressure atmosphere is really nothing. I have personally been in temperature and atmospheric controlled test rooms at one of places of past employment with a major consumer conglomerate at its technical facility in California. I have been in a pressure controlled room of 2 bars and can say that its no more difficult to breath than a very warm humid day. Yes there is just a little more effort to breath but not enough to cause distress per say. I am an asthmatic and found the higher pressure conformable enough. We humans have the uncanny ability to adjust to changes in our climate. The people of Ecuador and Peru have developed larger lungs and ribcages due to the lower oxygen and air pressure at the altitude they live at. Most well above 10,000 ft. These people sometimes have some discomfort when coming down and breathing normal air. But I don't believe they are dieing from it. People that migrate to Mars are most likely not going to be the old and infirm or newborn infants. Lets be honest here. They are going to be of an age were there health is not going to be an issue, say between 21 and 50 and they would adapt to the increasing air pressure as time went by. Also if babies are born in an environment of 2 bars or more they would know nothing different. It might make an issue if say a 2+ bar martian born human went to Earth. Sure they would have deal with the lower pressure and a higher gravity well. I see the colonization of Mars as a dividing line in human evolution. You will have Earthers and you will have Martians. Moving to Mars is going to be a big commitment on any colonists part. It won't be a walk in the park, at least at first. Also if there were cases of people having problems with the thicker air it would be quite simple to use the then un-needed areas of old pressurized colonies to house them until a time they can return to normal martian air pressure or to be returned to Earth. Again we are only talking 2 to 2.5 bars not the 5 to 7 deep sea divers and explores are exposed to. The plus side is that this air is going to be more oxygenated then normal air on Earth. So for each breath you take your lungs will be exposed to more oxygen than before. Well I think that covers things.

Oh by the way, I got started on this whole terraforming Mars kick back years ago when I bought a copy of Time Life Magazine and it dealt with the idea of terraforming Mars. I still have the magazine stashed away. Once I get my things from storage I can give more specifics but they were calling for a 2 bar atmosphere in the article as well. It just makes more sense than to maintain a 1 bar atmosphere on such a small planet.

Don. Edwards

[acrosome]

Don,

Thanks for the information on the south polar depression... I'll buy that.
Actually, shortly after my last post I had wondered if the south polar contour lines that I was seeing represented the surface of the ice sheet rather than ground level. So I guess they do. Hmm. Even so, I think the poles would be colder than they are at 90 degrees on Earth, too. If your equator is colder than Earth's, then why aren't your poles? Unless you are warming them with mirrors or something? Moholes? Whatever- it's your world, boss. Or maybe I'm just having trouble reading those maps without latitude lines- what latitude do you show those summer caps reaching?

And I never knew that Google Mars existed! Thanks again! Fun site. I wish it had lat/long lines on the maps- I can't find a way to turn them on, if that option is available.

But, enough already, I have indicated that I understand that there would still be seasons on the Martian equator; I'm not sure why you keep writing to me as if I were insisting that there would not be any. All I am insisting upon is that they wouldn't be as drastic as seasons are on Earth at 40 degrees latitude. I probably could have expressed that better initially. Again, I'm stupid, but not THAT stupid.

But you're still not selling me on the air pressure thing. Your appeal from authority from being in a 2 bar room in California is not very convincing, if only because I'm a physician who works in critical care and thus can claim authority, too. You felt no particular difficulty at 2 bar, as most scuba divers don't, because you are fit (I assume; and bear in mind that I have a very low standard for what is "fit" in medical terms) and fit people can tolerate startling environmental extremes, as you have pointed out. I know how human respiration works, and I know what a Reynolds number is. I also scuba dive, and have spent quite a lot of time at 2 bar, though I will be honest enough to admit that breathing 2 bar through a regulator is probably a fraction harder than breathing 2 bar ambient. Here's a quote from a textbook, "Variations in Human Physiology":

*****************************************************
4.10.1 The effects of increased air density
As the density of air breathed increases so does the mass of gas moved with each breath and the work of breathing. The maximum voluntary ventilation is approximately proportional to the reciprocal of the square root of the density. This means that at a depth of 30 m (4 bar) the maximum voluntary ventilation of a man breathing compressed air is only 50 percent of that at sea level. However, in practice, compressed air is rarely breathed for deep dives because of the intervention of nitrogen narcosis (see 4.10.2.1). Rather, the nitrogen in the gas supply is replaced by helium, which has only one-seventh the density of nitrogen so that the same increase in the work of breathing is not found.
Breathing compressed air also increases the work of breathing in another way: as the density of air breathed increases, so flow of air in the airways becomes more turbulent, resulting in an increase in airway resistance. In addition, an increased density of gases hinders their intra-alveolar diffusion.
As a result of these factors, whereas maximum work capacity at sea level is normally limited by cardiovascular transport of oxygen, the limitations underwater are largely ventilatory.
****************************************************

The turbulence thing is where the Reynolds number comes in.

So, I would propose that if you took a ventilatorily compromised patient and removed 30% of his voluntary ventilation by putting him at 2 bar (1/sqrt2 is approximately 71%, right?) that he would do poorly. At 2.5 bar you have cut it by 37%. Now, there may be compensating factors- for instance the partial pressure of oxygen. By the way, what gas mix do you propose for your 2 bar atmosphere? If a good chunk of it is helium, then my point fails. But that would be difficult to do. Or, if your answer is to have ICUs in sealed buildings at lower pressure, well, then ok. You had better build a lot of them, but I can buy that. Heck, there are probably ventilation-related problems that hyperbaric oxygen will HELP, though the joke in medicine is that hyperbarics is a cure in search of a disease. (The only thing it is really proven to treat effectively is the bends.) In particular, treating anaerobic infections in such a manner MAY hold some promise.

But you can't tell me that breathing 2 bar will have no significant effect.

Probably the best (i.e. most cool) effect of a 2 bar atmosphere on Mars is that humans might be able to fly in bird-suits.

Again, there are an amateur's thoughts. I'm largely bouncing these thoughts off of you to see if I am horribly wrong somewhere, as I was with the south polar depression thing. (In my own private thought experiment 2 bar seems like a poor solution, and getting 1 bar will be hard enough.) I still eagerly await any climate and weather thoughts that you may have... because I'm drawing a blank. And I feel your pain about weathering the bump map. Back when I started day-dreaming about making a map of a terraformed Mars I ran into the same problem- all of that flowing water would drastically alter many fragile landforms. I mean, as things stand most of the more drastic water-eroded terrain features are though to be relatively young, and caused by aquifers breaking out or permafrost melts.

[Don. Edwards]

Hey Dean,

I should be able to get to the Time Life magazine article shortly if all goes well and I can go into more detail with about about the whole 2bar issue. I have managed to pull my computer and all its associated parts out of storage and should have it setup sometime tonight. I hope everything will be working fine.

OK, the main reasons for having the 2bar atmosphere is superior warming. With less heat output from the sun in a Mars orbit you have to adjust the atmosphere accordingly. A 1Bar atmosphere in a Mars orbit is only going to give half the warming it does on Earth. That would end up giving you about the equivalent of a high arctic and antarctic climate on average. It would warm up in the summers but the winters would be very cold, colder than anything on Earth and Mars would probably fall into an ice age and that is not the goal. A 2Bar atmosphere has at least twice the thermal properties needed to warm the planet not counting added custom green house gases.. So with a lower light/heat source at a Martian orbit you need to increase the atmospheric pressure to compensate. Using a soletta or mirrors would help in the earlier stages but one has to realize that they can't be relied on forever. Even with this 2Bar atmosphere you still won't get a climate like Earths. As I stated before you end up with a cooler one but one that won't fall back into an ice age so easily. We would also have to maintain a good degree of greenhouse gases in the upper atmosphere to keep the balance. Sorry if some of this sounds like a broken record.

Another thing the 2Bar atmosphere will give you is more soluble oxygen per breath. Not that we need it but it will be there. Of course oxygen levels must be maintained at the right level or you could end up turning the surface into massive blowtorch. Also because Mars has next to no magnetic field a thicker atmosphere is needed to help absorb and block some of the radiation. Even with a thicker than Earth ozone layer there would still be dangers if there were a really bad solar flare. Hopefully by this time we will have created some kind of shield, but not having a magnetic field could pose the biggest risk of all. As a physician I am sure you can see the concern here. As I stated in the previous post, and as a physician you should realize the stringent controls that will be in place before anyone leaves for Mars. Of course as people age there is sure to be issues, but we are talking of things that are taking place a few hundred years from now, not tomorrow or in ten years time. I am sure medical technology will have grown by leaps and bounds by then and most of the things you are thinking of as issues may simply not exists that far down the line. As a physician I know that you have an empirical way of thinking on these things and it can be difficult to let go and give into the what if.

Once I have the article I will either scan it into postable documents or transcribe the whole thing and post it.

I am also thinking of creating a discussion on this topic over in the "Physics and Astronomy" section as it is really starting to change this thread. I would have Seldon move our conversations over to to the new thread.

Talk to you soon.

Don.

[acrosome]

Don,

As I've said-it's your world, Brother. Do as you like. I'm just trying to learn here, for the sake of my own thought-experiment.

I understand why a thick atmosphere is desirable, as far as warming and radiation shielding, really I do. I guess that what I didn't understand was that you are trying to design a terraforming scheme that will leave Mars as stable as possible without constant human intervention. So I guess I was assuming there was more reliance on artificial warming, like moholes or solettas. But even with your thicker atmosphere Mars would still be very much an artificial environment. I don't think that you will ever eliminate the need for human intervention every so often.

I'm pretty sure that a 1 bar atmosphere will solve the radiation problem, from what I've read on the Mars Society forums, because the air column will reach so much higher. (I guess that works best at low elevations, though.) I admit that the math is beyond me and that I am relying upon the better-informed opinions of others to make that statement. But, wow, a 1 bar atmosphere is a difficult enough goal, without shooting for 2 bar... Where will you get all that nitrogen? (Or whatever inert filler you want.) We really have no idea how much nitrates are in the ground there, and you can't very well use CO2 to make up the difference, unless you want people to still live in domes. (Though that would surely solve the warming problem.) On the other hand, maybe we'll get lucky and find huge deposits of nitrates along the old shorelines.

The oxygen problem isn't really a problem- just make the 2 bar atmosphere 10.5% oxygen. That will result in the same partial pressure of oxygen as on Earth. Voila- no blowtorches. But maybe you would want it a LITTLE higher to make up for that 30% loss in ventilatory capacity.

I'm sure that there will be stringent health criteria for Martian emigration- at first. But by the time Mars looks like your texture there will have been many generations born there- right? So, at some point someone with CF or IPF or something will be born. If nothing else natural mutation (from your radiation problem) produces de-novo CF mutations pretty reliably. Unless you propose a massive eugenics program. But waving a magic wand labeled "genetic engineering" or "nanotechnology" is not very intellectually gratifying.

Hmm. Well, anyway, I'm kind of done discussing the 2 bar thing, so no need to move the thread. I've figured out that you have rather demanding end-goals that might require it. Come to think of it, a thicker atmosphere might result in a higher albedo and thus LESS insolation. Again, though, I don't know the math, so I can't say where the point of diminishing returns might be. It's probably quite a bit higher than your 2 bar, though, so I guess it's not a problem for you.

Do you have any ideas about a formula for how quickly atmospheric pressure falls with altitude on Mars? To, for instance, figure out what the pressure is at 2000m if sea level is 1 bar?

[Don. Edwards]

Well unfortunately I seem to have lost my copy of the Time magazine with the article. I am going to see if I can find it online. I kept the magazine for years and I am pretty sure the article ran about fifteen years ago. I unpacked all the books I have left in my colection and I thought I had it saftly tucked in the binding of a large world Atlas. But upon getting all the books out and on the self no magazine in the atlas. So somewhere along the line I lost it. I am bummed out about it. I had kept it for this very reason. Oh well life goes on.

Don. Edwards

[Don. Edwards]

Hey Dean,

I was wrong about the magazine. It wasn't TIME it was its sister publication LIFE magazine.


The Magazine was the May 1991 issue, one of the reasons I got it was that the month I was born, lol.
Here is the link to magazine on the LIFE site. Unfortunately it has to be ordered.
http://www.originallifemagazines.com/LIFE-Magazine-May-1991-P3042C527.aspx

I am still going to see if it might be available somewhere.

Don. Edwards

[duds26]

For radiation shielding you need an atmosphere.

- alpha: a few centimetres of air
- beta: a few decimetres of air
- gamma: a few hundred metres of air

(earth atmospheric pressure)

But also a magnetic field can also act as a shield (a deflector more of)
from high-energy protons and other charged particles.

You might want to consider this.
And here is some use to my post, new information:
even a small shield can deflect protons in a limited area,
permanent magnets size of houses could be used to shield area's of like a few square kilometres from charged particles from the solar wind.

[Don. Edwards]

Just a quick line to let everyone know that things are still moving forward on this. The previous graphics glitches that cropped up in the base texture have been fixed. I have been also trying to adjust the amount of vegetation on the texture to represent what would be expected at certain elevations and latitudes. Its not perfect but for the most part The choices have been locked in. In saying that I think there will end up being 2 versions on this texture with 2 varying levels of vegetation covering the planet. I am also reworking the Tharsis ice field or ice cap. I have decided that the old one looked a little to artificial at least to my eyes. I have since implemented a new one that is solely based on true altitude. It is still very nondescript at this point and no real edge detail. I may partly leave it this way. As it would be like transitioning from barren ground to lightly dusted with snow to a gently and increasing ice cap that would have a gentle slope up Tharsis rather then the abrupt one I had in the previous textures.



BTW, these changes make it official, we are now at Mark V version of the texture.

Don. Edwards

[Johaen]

BTW, these changes make it official, we are now at Mark V version of the texture.

Can't say that you're not dedicated.

Awesome work on your textures. I love all the work you've done.

[fsgregs]

WOW!


Frank

[LordFerret]

Don,

About that Life magazine issue... have you checked with a public library at all? I don't know how good your library system is where you live, but here where I'm at I can put in a request for just about anything and they'll acquire it (on loan) from any number of sources. You might want to give it a try.

[ElChristou]

Don, note I haven't study the topo of Mars, so be patient; looking at your pict I cannot avoid to think that with such snow/ice around Noctis Labyrinthus, Valles Marineris should be completely filled up, no?

[Don. Edwards]

ElChristou,

Well yes and no. Valles Marineris topographically kind of runs down hill from Noctis Labyrinthus. I guess downhill is the wrong phrasing. It not as deep at the Noctis side so you could never fill Marineris to the rim unless you increase planet wide sea levels to extreme levels. The thing is just so dam deep and the water would just flow out the other end as its wide open. There would no doubt be massive waterfalls and rivers dumping melt water run-off into what is not covered in ice of Noctis Labyrinthus. The rivers would flow east down and into what would be the Marineris sea. I think its to big to be considered a fjord. All the water going into Marineris would continue east and north out into the ocean. Of course my textures don't even take into account for the amount of erosion done to Tharsis by all that ice. I guess in time the ice would cut away at all the big volcanoes and would leave some very interesting mountains in there place. But we are talking millions of years for it to get that far.

I once loaded a large section of the Tharsis and Valles Marineris region into Bryce and used its erode/weathering tool to see what it would all look like. Valles Marineris was almost totally filled in by the erosion materials and the mountains were very much changed to say the least. I wish there was a way to better use the tool for making a more accurate texture but it also eroded the edges of the texture so allot of post work would be needed. I chose to leave the planet in a state that at least everyone could recognize it as Mars. But that doesn't rule out me trying it again in the future. It is possible that Terragen or one of the other 3D terrain modeling programs might be able to do it. I have never used any of them enough to find out.

Don. Edwards