With the current atmosphere on Mars, is it possible to grow any sort of vegetation on that planet and slowly acclimatize the planet for human occupation? Does anyone know if NASA or any other space agency is working on a project like that?
131551
dude above this comment addressed some of the problems . . . but what about the solutions?\n\nFor my astrobiology class I did research on terraforming Mars, and learned quite a bit.  The first thing that would need to be done is landing, constructing miniature chemical fixing plants that could do to the atmosphere exactly what we're doing to this planet right now: release greenhouse gases that otherwise would be locked in the regolith. This would have to be done first to allow the planet to warm up a little bit, but this would take a few hundred years. You see, this would project would have to have the full commitment of the entire human race over a few thousand years for this to be "completed."\n\nAfter a few hundred years of warming,  you might actually outgas enough atmosphere from the regolith to hold liquid water stably, you might have a little more CO2 to build atmos. pressure, but growing algae or anything would require genetic engineering, since algae, im sure, is not going to grow in soils containing peroxides and epsom salts. They would fix the atmosphere to contain more oxygen. This would also take a few hundred years as well.\n\nAssuming we had the patience for this, we could have some sort of atmosphere close to 60% the pressure of ours within 600 years, and the temperatures from the 50s-70s (one scientific paper said something about 77F being reached feasibly). So this terraforming is do-able, but do we need to? have we finished discovering things on Mars before we start erasing it with running water and weather systems? \n\nSome say there is still a lot of water on Mars, enough to make an ocean covering the entire planet about a few feet deep (thats a lot), but that would take a lot of work to achieve.  Also, you have to realize that all this work would not be permanent.  Mars has no magnetic field, and thus no real protection from the solar wind which would slowly strip the planet of its atmosphere. \n\nthe "mars project" would be fruitful but not permanent, and would work for probably a good several millenia, but would need maintenance. . .  \n\nim done typing
560177
MARS... quite possible
378379
We could terraform Mars and probably Venus and make them liveable if we really wanted to.  And, we could set up colonies and humans could live there and raise families.  However, if you're talking about mass emigration, e.g. the relocation of humans to another planet, that's a completely different question.  \n\nThink about this.  The largest ocean vessels we can build today are the Nimitz-class aircraft carriers.  They carry a crew of 5000.  Without the aircraft and supplies, they could carry 10,000 to 12,000.  \n\nLet's assume that we could build a space craft capable of moving 10,000 people from Earth to Mars and that we have 1000 of them.   And, let's assume that it takes a month to make the round trip.\n\n1,000 ships x 10,000 people x 12 months = 120 million people per year.\n\nThere are 6.6 billion people on Earth.\n\n6.6 billion / 120 million = 55 years\n\nSo, it would take 55 years to move our population to Mars.  It just isn't feasible to move humans elsewhere on an emergency basis as you suggested.  Think how much fighting there would be to get on one the ships.\n\nWe would need a number of very advanced technological breakthroughs to make it happen.  Examples: room-temperature superconductors, propellant-less (gravitic?) propulsion.\n\nIf you are on Earth when the giant comet or asteroid hits, you're just doomed.  Colonies on other planets would be our insurance policy against loss of our species, but not the loss of our individual lives.
476718
Of course you can.  Ceres would actually be a fairly good starting place to take material from as the energy required to loft something off Ceres would be much less than doing it from Earth (though not as good as from our moon, however).\n\nThe limitations of Ceres, however, is that since it is further from the Sun than we are, you cannot get as much free energy using solar panels as you could from the moon.  And then, there is the issue of where you want to position your settlement.  Since you write that you want it in the asteroid belt itself, I assume this is for mining asteroids.  And the problem is that the asteroid belt is huge, since it goes around the sun past the orbit of Mars, and that it has much less material in it than Mars (of course, Mars material is mostly deep, while asteroid are smaller) but the real thing is that asteroid mining operation would involve a lot of travelling, and that would make it rather slow.  There may be a lot of rocks, but they are far from one another, this is NOT a crowded area, and collisions between asteroids are extremely rare.\n\nIn the end, it is a matter of describing what your settlement is for, that dictates a lot of the orbital characteristics, and from that, the choices that could be made to make it as effectively as possible.\n\nAs to how to orbit something from Ceres, with an escape velocity of 0.51 km/s -- almost one fifth that of the moon -- comparatively small rockets is all you'd need.
173186
First to answer you second question: No we’re not terraforming Mars at present. Now for the first question: At this present point our technological development is woefully adequate to handle the issues of keeping this planet’s atmosphere from going into a greenhouse condition. Furthermore, it has taken by some estimate approximately 75 to 100 years for us to bring about this greenhouse climate change, which in a crude sense is a form of terraforming.\n\nThe idea that we could terraform Mars at this present time would be extremely impractical, it would cost hundreds of trillions of dollars, and it would take a very long time to see any results (on the order of hundreds of years). Plus you’d have to figure in the technology needed for such an undertaking, which although is probably available (with our technical capabilities), we’d then have to figure out how we’ll get it there. This would be no small undertaking. You have to remember that Mars has an atmospheric pressure that is less than 1/10 that of Earth and it has a very scant amount of water free-flowing on its surface. The vast majority of the water is locked up in the polar icecaps. Therefore we’d have to increase the amount of Oxygen as well as the atmospheric pressure and free up most if not all of the water on the planet. Plus we’d have to somehow produce an Ozone layer in the Martian atmosphere. Not to mention that Mars doesn’t have an electromagnetic field anywhere near the strength of ours. So basically there would have to be a whole lot of work done to actually terraform Mars.\n\nThe likelihood that some one country could undertake the process of terraforming an entire planet at this time would be highly unlikely.
79551
No, aliens are not living on Mars at the present time because the current conditions there could not support life. There is a possibility that life once existed there, based on evidence of previous existence of water. The "face" and "pyramids" that you're talking about on Mars are just glitches in the photography that have been proven to be incorrect.
29665
This question can't be adaquately addressed in this forum.  There are a couple websites you can refer to for these answers.\n\nhttp://solarsystem.nasa.gov\nhttp://www.nineplanets.org
640664
This site has up-to-date release-quality photos (ie. not raw data, just the images that are good enough for a regular person to want to look at) from the Mars Exploration Rovers (Spirit and Opportunity):\n\nhttp://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/mer/
675143
Yes, we will discover other planets that also sustain life, and we will do so within our lifetime.  I do not mean that we will physically go to these planets but we will discover this by placing much more powerful telescopes in orbit around Earth.  There is a definite signature that we will be looking for and that will be the presence of Oxygen in another planet's atmosphere.  If a planet does not have any oxygen in its atmosphere then it would not be able to support life.  There was a time billions of years ago on Earth when there was no oxygen in the atmosphere and at that time there was no life on Earth.  We may not discover other intelligent life on other planet's during our lifetime but i am sure that we will discover other planets that are supporting at least plant life if not primordial single cell life as well.
283989
First off, there's no air in space...therefore you'd have to have a pretty huge supply of contained air for breathing.  On the space station, they have just that, a lot of air canisters attached to the main systems.  They get resupplied when the next ship reaches them.  On a long journey like star-trek proposes, it would be impossible to resupply the air.  However if you have specific routes, I don't see why a remote, or route serving space station wouldn't be possible.  For exploration travel, I don't think it's possible, we can reach a point then there we could build a station and start over, basically.\nAs far as matter/anti-matter engines.  We very well may have other ideas for long term travel(but still have to get over the air resupply)as far as propulsion goes.  I'm sure there are a few governments interested in engines that could take us beyone our known galaxy, however mostly their interest lies in the power behind the engines.  Anything that powerful would also be harnessed into power for a weapon of some sort!  On this planet, I do not think the people/governments of the world are ready for that kind of power.
568424
First we would need a secure dome to live in, to retain the air we need to breathe, and a way of removing the carbon-dioxide from it - plants are good at this - and we would need to keep the dome heated, as Mars' warmest day is colder than Earths' coldest, I remember reading.  We would have to use hydroponics to grow food, and meat would be a luxury of the past. Expect an awful bland diet for years. Gravity is something like 2/3rds of ours, so our activity in the dome would be pretty easy, but you'd need to learn how to sprint again, if you were into running, and imagine the hundred metres being run in not just under ten seconds, but perhaps six!  Mars would actually be a great place for the elderly to retire to - less fall injuries, less heart stress.  Children born on Mars would grow very tall, perhaps damaging them - tall has its' downsides for humans, particularly back and circulatory troubles.  Nuclear bombs detonated out on the Martian plains would generate enough heat to release the water scientists tend to agree is frozen in there, in the soil and rock, and if large panels of black material were laid out, their albedo would catch and retain heat.  We need a thick, oxygen rich atmosphere.  Mars' is very thin, and with little oxygen.  Such 'Terra-forming' (making Earth-like) would be a huge undertaking.\n  So there you are, stuck in your dome, bored, hurt yourself badly from running at 40mph, vegetarian, with nine-foot tall kids, and Grandpa is 168.  Perhaps death would be preferable...
420881
the international space station currently has three crewmembers in it should be completed by 2010 with the last missions of the space shuttles. next nasa will go back to the moon by 2020 and plans to leave men their for extended periods of time. after that would come manned missions to mars and then to other planets and moons. we could colonize more of our solar system in the not too distant future, but eventually we will learn the secrets of interstellar travel. Then we can go to other, more earthlike planets across the galaxy and accross the universe. at that point we might even find some other intelligent life. that would be cool.\ngo to nasa.gov, orion is the program that will get us back to the moon and then to mars.
324489
It would be barren, cold from the lack of atmosphere, rusty, and some winds.  And you would need to bring your own air, since mars has none.  Mars has a high temperature of 70F, and it drops from there.  Sorry.  The atmosphere, mainly made of carbon dioxide, would suffocate you.  If you didnt have these problems, you would see plenty of rusting dust, mainly since iron is a element in this soil.  Some 60 mph winds would blow at you as well.  But because of the lack of atmosphere, it would mearly feel like a 6 mile per hour wind.
194014
Possibly, but i believe venus is a better candidate.  The higher gravity of venus (very earthlike) would allow it to sustain an atmosphere like ours if we can solve 2 other problems...more solar radiation, and a retrograde day that is months long.\n\nThe L.O.V.E. project (Life On Venus Enhancement) I made this up when i was a kid:  solution 1 - put lightweight, but very large reflectors into orbit around venus, on the day side they will block light in a 24 hour pattern, on the night side they will provide sunlight in the same pattern.\n\nsolution 2 - release into orbit around venus a cloud of particles to reduce the solar radiation and also use the reflectors/shades described above.\n\nAs the temperatures approach earthlike conditions, introduce water (capture a comet probably, or change it's orbit subtly to get it to venus.)\n\nIt's possible there is substantial water on venus tied up in some chemical situation or another, we don't know enough about it.\n\nand btw, for the other answers claiming mars is too hot, um, no?
257353
There are many.  What follows are just a few, and I am certain many people would put them into different catagories:\n\nDeforestation is one.  Humans have cut down many areas of natural vegetation and either replaced it with crops or built cities on it.  Plants return oxygen to the atmosphere from carbon dioxide; they reflect light and adsorb heat from the sun.  Both plants and the soil help adsorb water and pollutants.  The more of the planet we pave, the fewer trees and less soil exist to regulate these functions.\n\nPollution is another.  We dump our trash on land and in the oceans.  We create chemical compounds that wouldn't exist in nature and spread them in the land, water, soil and air.  Some directly effect the health of living things; others effect things like the ozone layer, taking away natural system that protect life on this planet.  We dump the heat from our indutrial processes into the atmosphere and water.\n\nAnd, now, we're relatively certain we are creating enough waste of carbon dioxide, water vapor, and other gases in our atmosphere to trap excess heat in the atmosphere.  Enough of it to warm the entire globe just fast enough that plants cannot adapt.  Fertile zones will change.  Crops may fail.  Livestock (and wild animals) that depend on plants for forage may die.  Areas that we now comfortably inhabit - with suitable climates and drinking water may become desert.  Others may end up under rising oceans as glaciers melt.\n\nWhat can we do about it?  Everyone will likely have a different answer.  As an American, I have to say I am more guilty than many others who will read this.  The average American family (about 5 people) owns 9 internal combustion (gasoline or diesel) engines; in a still developing nation like China, there is one engine for every 159 people. If the Chinese lived like the American, how much soot, smog, waste heat, and carbon dioxide would be produced on a single summer day of driving, lawn mowing, and boating?  How much could our planet take?\n\nThe answers aren't easy.  In the short term, we can use applicance - from light bulbs to computers - that are more efficient in how they use the energy we make.  We can think about how to reuse things to create less waste; or not use them at all. (Seriously, how much of your groceries really need to be double bagged?  And does your produce really need to go in another bag inside that?) We can decide whether we really need to build a new 3 bedroom house for ourselves, or if an older, smaller place can be refurbished to suit our tastes. \n\nBut, ultimately, we use too much.  We burn too many things to create the energy we use.  Period.  But, what are the alternatives?  Deforest vast tracts of land to crate wind and solar farms?  I will leave you to draw your own conclusions, but it seems more and more like the future of our existence on Earth depends on the right answer.
170684
Wow! another brain-tickling question from Neuro-Prof! What imagination! Yeah, that would be pretty interesting to see. I think a planet with such conditions will be a home for people who'd be considered super-heros by us on earth. Silicon would make their skin rough and abrasive. That would be just awesome!\n\nNow, coming to your question, I think the conditions that would favour such an atmosphere should be-\n1- Extremely high pressure. Pyrolysis is one of the methods to break Si-H bonds.\n\n2- Extremely high temperature.\n\n3- Reducing Atmosphere / Abundance of Dihydrogen. As compared to our earth's oxidising atmosphere, a reducing atmosphere would contribute a lot more in breaking the Si-O bonds.\n\nGreat question, I must say.
4088
You could use a catalyst to turn CO2 into a oxygenate.\n\nPlants would be the most efficient and cheapest way possible as far as I know. But plants won't just grow on mars, you would need to make the conditions suitable for plant life to survive. I think they were talking about man-made global warming to increase the atmosphere and warm it up for possible teraforming. \n\nAlso, there is water on mars already and why would you want it to rain carbon?