“And let’s face it, the Democrat party has installed by law every single manner to cheat and pervert an election known to man in order to prevail. That is a fact that no one can deny.”

https://www.sigma3ioc.com/post/he-must-never-be-allowed-to-win

Yeah, voila!

Made me laugh.

Well, I will tell you one thing if the Democrats prevail in this and future political contests this entire argument over developing Mars will be entirely moot. It will never and can never be realized. Socialism cannot provide the resources nor the capitol nor the intellectual inspiration and brain power to do so.

Today’s Socialist Democrat agenda is an American Capitalist death spiral. And if America is unable to muster the resources to build on Mars it will not be done. Does anyone really think a Globalist agenda run world utopian government would be able to command a Mars transformation be accomplished?

I do not.

Think of a Space / NASA / Tech enthusiast and nerd who votes Democrat is much like an American Jew who can only justify voting Left and against everything that they declare they are allegedly about.

And have no doubt about it is now a confident hard Left and anti-American Globalist ticket.

So, vote one way and go to Mars.

Vote the other way and stay right where you are.

Beyond that, I doubt that such a huge endeavor as trying to artificially generate a magnetic field for the whole planet Mars would be cost-effective. Simply don’t bother doing that. Solar radiation isn’t the principal danger to martian settlers anyway—cosmic radiation is. The (supposedly nonexistent—according to Cotour) martian atmosphere provides sufficient shielding in this regard (especially for cosmic rays incoming at a glancing angle) that habitats on Mars need not be placed wholly underground, but merely must have soil piled on the (flat) roof, while they can be open (with picture windows) at the sides. Then, if one feels like it, maybe on the side also do a little work to replenish the lost atmosphere. Voila! Mars is habitable.

Timing in all things is EVERYTHING.

The only initial mode of transformation that seems to make sense to me would first begin with a device that would be placed in the appropriate orbit around Mars and project a long-term electromagnetic field that would shield it from the never abating radiation of the sun.

I suppose a nuclear or solar powered device? How big might it have to be?

I think without something like that or finding a plant that could be sewn all over the planet that could live under excruciating conditions that would over time reproduce and serve to transform the planet are the initial ways to begin. But that is one hell of an electromagnetic generator and that would be one hell of a plant.

That or creating an environment underground and above and slowly expand its footprint.

Either way you look at it a very big deal.

Your article says it has a very hot iron core. possibly verging on molten. But not close enough to cause any convection or rotation that would create a magnetic field.

Which also means that the core does not have enough energy to push any fluid of any kind to the surface. Not even geothermal water gets any place close to the surface.

To get to deep subsurface liquid water you would have to go tens of miles deep.

The core of Mars is not hot enough to move or flow. So it is essentially useless. The engine of Mars is shut down.

Cotour: Considering the cost is of course essential. Americans stopped doing so decades ago, and it is destroying our country. As I noted to Col Beausabre in another comment, the pioneers on these worlds will decide, and because they will be pioneers, faced with death continuously in a difficult environment, they will do very good cost-benefit analyses and do whatever they can afford.

$100 billion dollars? A half a trillion dollars?

And where does this long-term commitment money come from to experiment on a planet that has no appreciable magnetic field and gravity that tends to keep an atmosphere in place? Mars has no atmosphere for a reason as far as I understand.

Just curious, and I am not trying to be a stick in the mud.

On Earth is the molten core that pushes it back up. Mars does not have this.

Water will never pool on the surface. It could hang in the air but not on the ground. Maybe as ice but not for long.

Water extraction from the atmosphere would be great if the temp could be raised enough to melt it into the atmosphere. No roads, transportation costs or pipelines to worry about. Let the atmosphere bring the water to anyone who needs it.

Physicist Peter Hague in his substack Planetocracy answers that: {quoting…}

The measured loss rate of Martian atmosphere is 1-2kg per second. Each year, the UK alone emits 405 million tonnes equivalent CO2, of which 79% is actual carbon dioxide. Taking the carbon content of that alone (3/11 of the total mass) that means the UK is adding around 2,700 kg of mass to the Earth’s atmosphere per second. Replenishing Mars’ atmosphere, if necessary, would thus be fairly trivial.

{un/Quote}

As far as water goes, there’s lots of water on Mars.

But if several thousand cubic miles of water could be added inside a hundred years it would last unassisted for several thousand years.

More than long enough for humans to no longer need a second planet.

Dave in Denver: Typo fixed. Thanks.

errata: /the papter also/, very last paragraph