From: bliss-sf4ever@dslextreme.com   
      
   On 2/20/26 13:53, William Hyde wrote:   
   > Tony Nance wrote:   
   >>   
   >> An article I just ran across   
   >> https://bigthink.com/books/science-fiction-mars/   
   >>   
   >> Titled   
   >> "Science fiction blinded us to the perils of settling Mars"   
   >>   
   >> With an immediate by-line of:   
   >> "Science fiction romanticized Mars as a place of adventure and future   
   >> settlement; science tells a very different story."   
   >>   
   >> In which the author and his main source tell us that Science Fiction   
   >> has Mars all wrong.   
   >>   
   > Wow, talk about low hanging fruit.  But I suspect his rent was due.   
   >   
   > Even  the children's science books I read many decades ago made it clear   
   > that 99% of the science fiction versions of Mars were far too optimistic.   
   >   
   > And even those books erred on the side of habitability.  There was some   
   > emphasis on the fact that equatorial temperatures could reach 80F, and   
   > the atmospheric pressure given was well above the actual value.  The   
   > poisonous soil was of course not known.   
   >   
   > In 1990 a writer in the British Interplanetary Society journal estimated   
   > that a decent atmosphere and hydrosphere could be produced with ten   
   > thousand properly placed 10mt bombs.  I'm not entirely sure any longer   
   > what he meant by decent.  A fifth of an atmosphere, at a guess.   
   >   
   > If this is so, the atmosphere would indeed leak away into space, but on   
   > a timescale that is very slow compared to the human one.  It would not   
   > be necessary, as the article implies, to continue to bombard the planet   
   > with nuclear weapons.  The atmosphere could be maintained with less   
   > drastic but still enormously expensive means.  Which opens the way for a   
   > Leigh Brackett story about people dwelling on a cooling and drying post-   
   > technological Mars...   
   >   
   > But getting the temperature up to the point that liquid water won't all   
   > condense in ice caps is also a difficult problem. The CO2 levels   
   > required are very toxic.  We need a molecule which is strongly absorbing   
   > in the IR, chemically neutral, and which does not disassociate into   
   > something damaging in the upper atmosphere when struck by UV radiation.   
   >   
   > A gigatonne or so of that in the atmosphere, and all we have to worry   
   > about is radioactive waste from the bombardment and  the poisonous soil.   
   >   
   > All in all it would be easier to move Mars closer to the sun.  Then deal   
   > with the soil.  Might not be possible for a little while.   
   >   
   > William Hyde   
      
   	If we get to the point of moving asteroids and the like odds and ends we   
   might be able to get enough dense elements into Mars to give it decent core   
   then water and Oxygen would not leave so fast.  Moving Mars inward would   
   take a lot more energy than we can consider presently.   
      
   	bliss   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)