DeepT
3772
This makes me want a game where I can explore mars 1st person and then teraform it.
Moar exoplanets! Direct imaging, 300 ly distant, very young sun, very huge planets in very distant orbits. The article hints it may one day lead to some new theories on planetary formation.
Thanks, VLT.
I think of this as not so much a solar system as a multiple star where some of the stars are brown dwarfs.
I need to find a good character concept to fit the name Megaripples.
sure, here or there I guess
Good chance for the 2020 Mars mission launch on Thursday!
Gooooooo, Mars!
Eh. Mars. I canât get too excited about that. OK - maybe about the copter :)
Meanwhile - Venus, our closest neighbor after The Moon hasnât had any real surface exploration since Magellan thirty years ago. Considering that the planet underwent a complete destruction of its surface as recently as 300 million years ago, and may have been very hospitable to life previously⌠huge potential for dramatic discoveries going to waste. Even if it isnât hiding evidence of lost civilizations under its thick clouds, its one of the least understood planets in the solar system.
JoshL
3782
CraigM
3783
Yeah the problem with Venus is, from an engineering standpoint, it is a much more difficult location. Also Mars is a much better hypothetical place to create colonies.
Terraforming Venus would involve a much harder, and currently technologically impossible, lift. Plus Mars is, like Mars, theoretically possible to live on without actual terraforming.
Not self sufficient, but technologically feasible at todays level.
Definitely Venus is much more challenging - but modern electronics and cooling systems (with the right energy source) are capable of meeting the challenge for a surface mission. Also - as the XKCD comic alludes to - there is also the potential for airborne missions that fly within the atmosphere, but above the (most) hellish atmospheric conditions.
But even besides that, Venus needs a long term orbital probe to produce high definition maps of the surface - either via radar, or via infrared imaging - our existing maps are only at the 100 meter resolution - it should be possible to increase that by at least an order of magnitude.
Two Venus missions are being considered and developed this year, but it would be several years until launch. Most likely, at most one of these Venus missions will be finally chosen next year to actually build and launch it (2/4 finalists in the Discovery program may be chosen, the other two are an Io volcano mission and a Neptune/Triton flyby.)
Edit: I think the current best observations are coming from this resurrected Japanese mission that few people are hearing about:
Its actually likely the next mission to Venus with be an Indian lead one, with substantial international support - Shukrayaan-1. Supposedly it will launch in a few years. Its an orbiter that will park in an eccentric orbit (way easier than running burns to get a circular one) which will allow it to do very high resolution research of some areas of Venus during closest approaches. The Indian lunar missions have been very very tight lipped with their data - so not sure how much weâll actually see (compared to the much more open Chinese/European/US programmes)
Europe has at least one mission to Venus that is in the running for being selected to run in the 2030s - the EnVision orbiter, which if selected (next year) would launch in about 12 years and be capable of detecting centimeter level movement of the surface.
Russia keeps talking about developing about a Venus mission - but Iâll believe it when it arrives. They havenât had a successful interplanetary mission in this century.
Oh, I missed that Shukrayaan-1 got mostly(?) funded, nice.
We can never terraform Mars because solar winds/radiation will just strip away whatever atmosphere we create. It needs an active liquid metal core to generate a planet-wide magnetic field. When Elon Musk talked about terraforming Mars I was floored he hadnât taken this into consideration.
CraigM
3789
Full terraforming is not required to establish permanent/ semi permanent habitation, the same as the moon.
Venus, in any capacitance, would require extensive full terraforming.
As for the lack of magnetosphere rendering terraforming moot? Iâm not an expert on that subject, but do not think it is quite so clear. The degree of atmospheric stripping would require a great seal of research for sure.
There is still an ongoing debate over how feasible changing Marsâ atmosphere is in the long-term, and weâre always learning more with new study. It really doesnât appear to be possible in the near future, but people throw around âneverâ far too easily. It may be very unlikely we can do it for decades to come, but that doesnât mean humanity canât do it at all or that it requires new physics.
For example, there are ideas for a large magnetic field satellite placed at the Sun-Mars L1 point to deflect a sufficient amount of the solar wind from hitting Mars in order to bring its atmosphere closer to equilibrium. The required strength of such a shield sounds like itâs within our reach now, but the size is not.
Others have proposed even larger projects for inducing a magnetic field from the surface of Mars. This is science fiction now, but it does not violate the laws of physics. It requires engineering, resources, and improved materials beyond what we can accomplish now, but that doesnât mean in canât happen in future centuries.
