It was a project on terraforming Mars that led me down the path of learning the underlying facts and fallacies in the global warming scare. We tried applying the "principles" to Mars and discovered it would not work. You could say we had a vested interest in the models being accurate, but they turned out to be wrong anyway. Because: science.

I'm for using Genesis on DC.

I am about 36% through his trilogy "Green Earth (The Science in the Capital)" which is in a single volume and so far is a 'climate change is going to kill us all if we don't do something quick' type of story. I did like his "Aurora" for a more realistic interstellar voyage lasting about 150 years worth of generations of travelers found the planet too dangerous to live on and where those who got there no longer knew why the journey was begun in the beginning.

"Kim Stanley Robinson, recommended to me by CircuitGuy, did a good job discussing this. "
I'm glad you liked it. The last book, Blue Mars, was really tough sledding to get through. They do point out that the Ann, who was the leader of the people worried about despoiling Mars, was actually anti-life. She had a bout with depression where she would stand in the path of these landslide events, daring fate to take her life, if the runout should continue longer than normal. She eventually mellowed, beat depression, and had a happy life with Sax, who was in favor of terraforming Mars. There was also some weird stuff about the waring parties just accepting things, and somehow the war went away. There was also some gratuitous sex that seemed out of place.
I thought he went easier on his political message in the third book. I saw him speak three years ago, and he's pretty hardcore socialist. I was disappointed by that. https://www.galtsgulchonline.com/post...

I SPECTACULARLY disagree that it's so far in the future. Improvements to the EM drive (which they still don't know how it exactly works) even in the next few years would generate enough thrust (even in relatively small amounts to our eyes) to cut the trip length by 75-80%. That gives us a difference in a perfect one way hohman transfer trip from 270 days to 40 days. That means you could also take more stuff than current plans.

But I do agree with the main article that Mars needs to be a place worth visiting and colonizing. It does us no good to set up a base on that Planet when we can't feed ourselves, restock ourselves, or basically respond to calamities. I.E. If something happens to the first settlers, help would be 40+ days out, and that's just assuming it happens at the perfect time in the planet's alignment AND there's a rescue ship ready to launch.

Terraforming Mars is the best hope (in my opinion), but other avenues need to be considered as well. I.E. Underground bases, biodomes, and so on...

As I wrote, using nuclear power in timed pulses we could (theoretically) both moltenize and turn the core of Mars to create a magnetic field. Also we could heat the planet by using solar mirror to redirect sunlight to melt some of the ice caps.

These are legit hypotheses based on science. I just combined ideas to speculate. Interesting stuff.

Hi William Shipley , Your first sentence made more sense than the scientist promoting co2 and pfc's on Mars.

The lack of a liquid core isn't a showstopper. The radiation levels in the surface are tiny and generally insignificant. Some of us have spent a great deal of time investigating it and in truth there is nowhere else in the solar system that is as suitable. There is less risk there than the moon, or even many places on this planet. Like many things in the popular space, the risks and dangers are very overblown.

The real risk to a Martian settlement is not getting started with a proper supply, of being focused in something other than establishing a food ecosystem and plastics manufacturing.

Other than humans and our ingenuity the primary resource needed for full and lasting settlement of Mars is hydrogen. Mars is essentially the quintessential engineering solution: reduce it to a previously solved problem. In this case the plastic geodesic dome does that beautifully.

On the other side are the rewards. Mars is the economic fulcrum of the solar system. It is the lynchpin for terrestrial orbital buildings and asteroid mining. It is even cheaper and more efficient to launch water to Earth's moon from Mars than from Earth. It is cheaper to get to Mars from Earth than it is the the moon.

Any serious asteroid mining will be dependent on Mars settlement to make it economically viable. And the people who settle Mars will be the next economic power in the system.

Am I wrong in reading the graph at that URL as showing that Mars would retain Xe, CO2, O2, and N2 at least at present temperatures?

dino,
just don't give any more thought since it ain't happening. space travel is going to remain something for the heinline's of the world to write about "science fiction" and you thought there wasn't anything that is perpetual.

It is a much higher concentration, yes. But it is much less of an atmosphere overall - very thin comparatively. That said the bulk of CO2's insulative effect is in the first whisky amounts. It is a very long tail with a steep initial drop.

Even still, on Mars that co2 is treasure.

The Greenhouse effect of CO2 is real. Whether the paltry amount of CO2 that humans are putting into the environment will cause massive climate change is another question. This does not mean that ways couldn't be found to massively add CO2 to the Martian atmosphere.