Good one. I'll look it up.

You are a Mars nut!

"Any more recommendations, perhaps ones that don't preach anti-capitalism as much?"
By chance I found this book As It Is on Mars. It's also part of a trilogy. It's out of print and an unknown author. I think if they could slap the name of an author like Ben Bova's name on it, it would be famous.

Anyway, it is strongly pro-capitalism. It's the story of three people stuck on mars, condemned to die. Space agencies of the world can't rescue them, but they gift them the equipment and the area as a gesture. By working round the clock for a year, similar to the story in The Martian they manage to survive and thrive. Astronaunts from a future mission join them. They create an agreement to live by, a Constitution that says rights and property will be respected. Outsiders become envious of their affluent life, thinking by sheer luck they got stuck on Mars and fell into a gravy train. In fact they built everything they have, starting only with their employers' gift of the remaining supplies and equipment.

The way I tell it sounds like preachy parable, but it's not like that. It's just another good Mars colonization story, but pro-capitalism.

Yeah, I had the same view of Ann in the first two books. It was a cool series, and I got some good thinking material out of it. Thanks. Any more recommendations, perhaps ones that don't preach anti-capitalism as much?

"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...

Actually I was working at JPL when NASA was founded by President Eisenhower. The first space project I worked on was Explorer 1 in 1957 and I stayed through Ranger, Surveyor, Mariners Venus and Mars and the Viking lander. I wound up managing a radio astronomy facility for Cal Tech and was "forced" back to graduate school.
You are correct. Planetary atmospheres are extraordinarily complex and poorly understood. The issue really goes back to why planets have atmospheres in the first place. The accretion model is nice philosophically but creates more questions than it answers. Relative atomic and molecular abundances play a roll but so does the presence of a magnetic field, thermal equilibrium, solar wind and so on. I have studied these things for over 50 years and know less now than I did when I got out of school. (That seems to happen a lot). I think the real challenge regarding Mars terraforming is that we don't know what we don't know. We are just now beginning to ask some of the right questions.

There has to be something more than gravity and mass for atmospheric pressure. Take Titan which has a 1.45 atmosphere pressure and about 98% N2 atmosphere while only 0.0225 of Earth's mass and surface gravity of only 0.85 of the Moon's surface gravity. If it were closer to the sun , perhaps it would lose a large part of it.

You came a bit later than me. I applied to NASA at Ames research around 1964 and was given a GS7 rating in materials science, my one and only life time GS rating, and to Argonne National labs about that time but decide to go to grad school in mathematics. Some of us were spending some time trying to find analytic solutions for the three body problem to no avail.

You are quite right. Thanks for pointing out my sloppy thinking. I should have reviewed my reference further before using it. The Mars atmosphere problem is very complex and Jeans escape is only a part of issue. Back in the 70's and 80's while working at JPL part of my job was Mars lander and rover design. The atmosphere of Mars plays a big part in the design criteria for these projects and Jeans escape was one of the considerations but not the only one. The lack of a substantial magnetic field is another. The real problem is that the gravitational field of mars appears to be insufficient to support atmospheric pressure at the surface of more than a fraction of a PSI. Terra-forming is an incredibly complex process but I will not be surprised if a solution to the pressure problem is found.

I was only questioning your "gravity on Mars is insufficient to retain an atmosphere consisting of oxygen and nitrogen" and realize the other problems like O2 and N2 being broken down to atoms of O and N which are probably too light to stay for long periods. Probably best to keep government out of the terraforming business and get out of the way if private parties wish to do something with Mars after it is found to be free of living organisms.

Fascinating. Do you have any links to the output of that project, or is it not publicly available?

That chart is interesting but it does not tell the whole story. The Martian atmosphere consists of approximately 96% carbon dioxide, 1.9% argon, 1.9% nitrogen, and traces of free oxygen, carbon monoxide, water and methane, among other gases.

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosph...)

The atmospheric pressure at the surface is less than 0.2 psi. This would require a pressure suit. The abundant CO2 is great for plant life and photosynthesis will produce oxygen. But moving out of underground or domed structures will be a long way off.

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 main radiation risk is from the sun, specifically solar flares. Distance from the sun benefits Mars in this aspect. The spread and relative weakness if it that far out makes it not an issue of significance. Now this may seem like it spells doom for light levels but here the counterbalance is atmosphere. With its much thinner atmosphere a higher percentage of solar makes it to the surface than on earth. I don't recall the precise latitude but I seem to recall it being somewhere in Canada that marks the same amount of light levels at Martian surface.

Whomever told you that about life and the magnetosphere was probably confusing the genesis and early development of life with a thriving technological civilization moving to different planets. ;)

Last words from the moochers: "For hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee"

It is a pleasure to hear of your experience at MIT.
I wish you well in your scientific journey and look forward to reading your future contributions.

Isn't the Martian atmosphere 90% CO2? Unlike earth 13%

If I recall the Martian atmosphere is about 90% carbon deoxide that is CO2

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.

I had assumed the radiation effect would be the same as on earth and was told that without our magnetosphere life could not exist because of the solar radiation. I don't think terraforming Mars is impossible and I think that moving toward other planets and solar systems is inevitable if we are to survive. If we take same philosophy of looting with us it won't be much different than being here. If I had the chance to travel among the stars I would, but they have to speed things up a lot for me to be interested in going.

I'm for using Genesis on DC.

It was an MIT multidisciplinary research project. It was "true" science in the sense that where we wound up as a result of the data and facts was very different from where we expected to. But we had to go where reality took us.

We didnt look at that level of terraforming because we were focused on current and near term technology, and because much of the perceived requirements went away with a more detailed understanding of Mars itself and what it would take to settle it.

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.

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?

So the mothership never got to where it went?
Wow, maybe it slipped into a black hole or maybe the Mysterians got it~
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHbL8...
or it got Green Slimed~
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g79_l...

There is another major problem of colonizing Mars that I seldom hear mentioned. It has no liquid core! Without a spinning metal core there are no magnetic lines of flux protecting the surface from harmful radiation such as the earth's core does. Even if it is warmed up and the atmosphere is created that would allow liquid water the radiation will kill any living thing on the surface. At best people will still have to live and farm inside of pods that can protect them, having a thicker atmosphere and liquid water on the surface will be more convenient a thick and warmer atmosphere will also mean less heating requirements. I think the challenges of living there are greater than anticipated.