from Hacker News

Can We Terraform Mars?

by piplikoc on 4/20/21, 6:39 PM with 10 comments

• by phildenhoff on 4/20/21, 7:57 PM

  The author writes "since Mars has 38% of Earth’s gravity, it can only retain an atmosphere of about 0.38 bar". My understanding of atmospheres work is, at best, non-existant, so does anyone mind explaining what happens if we over-pressurize Mars?

  This question might totally misunderstand the situation, but the Martian atmosphere is about 2.5x10^16 kg right now [1]. Let's say I have a Very Large Tank, with an equivalent amount of gas at the exact same composition as Mars, but at an exotically high pressure. Then, I quickly dump the gases into the atmosphere, and now the Martian atmosphere is 5x10^16 kg. Is the pressure no higher?

  Does the pressure spike to, say, double at first, and then slowly burn off from the atmosphere flying out of the influence of Mars gravity, returning back to a steady 0.38 bar?

  [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Mars

• by raffraffraff on 4/20/21, 9:40 PM

  "No". We can barely keep a perfect planet hospitable to life that fucking evolved on it.

• by simonblack on 4/20/21, 11:25 PM

  We don't have the ability to keep things at the right levels on Earth, with all of the Earth's population and resources at hand.

  With just a few people (soon, maybe???) and practically no resources on hand, to expect to do better on Mars is ridiculous.

• by B5C8ECB24DB47D1 on 4/20/21, 9:49 PM

  On the fiction side, I can recommend the Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson.