Blue-Green Algae: Terraforming Mars

[Wayne Mack]

Here is a brief experiment showing that blue-green algae may be suitable for inducing an oxygen atmosphere on Mars. Blue-green algae could be the key to making Mars like Earth

 

[CupofJoe]

Personally I'm against it
We can't even look after the planet we have and now there are plans to go screw up an entirely new one?!?!?

 

[mosaix]

Here is a brief experiment showing that blue-green algae may be suitable for inducing an oxygen atmosphere on Mars. Blue-green algae could be the key to making Mars like Earth

Thanks for the interesting link @Wayne Mack.

My personal feeling is that, as far as possible, we should leave Mars as a giant research lab. Okay, scientists are going to have to live there and for extended periods but I think that should be in sealed living quarters rather than any attempt at terraforming.

 

[Finch]

Most people on this site would be interested in the possibility of humans colonizing another planet. The Russians have spent a lot of time studying the effects of living in an environment that is different from the Earths. Humans have developed over millions of years on this planet. All the evidence would suggest living on Mars with it's lower gravity would be impossible. The idea of trying to alter the environment is fantasy.

 

[Wayne Mack]

My personal feeling is that, as far as possible, we should leave Mars as a giant research lab. Okay, scientists are going to have to live there and for extended periods but I think that should be in sealed living quarters rather than any attempt at terraforming.

The challenge with avoiding any sort of terraforming, even within a domed environment, is that the colony is at the end of an extremely long supply chain for basic necessities. Without a self-sustaining environment, the risk of fatal disaster would be too high.

 

[Dave]

I don't why it says "some experts believe" as it is fairly well established that it was a cyanobacterial bloom that mostly contributed to Earth gaining an Oxygen rich atmosphere. However, there are a number of problems that I see with the concept as they propose:
1. I don't believe the blue-green algae around today is anything like that in the Precambrian, they have evolved just like everything else.
2. Because of that I'm not sure it would survive in the low atmospheric pressure - they acknowledge that they needed to increase the pressure from 1% to 10% in the lab, but don't say how will they do that on Mars.
3. They say they only needed materials present on Mars - but the question is not about presence but surely about quantity - Earth is a Waterworld - in the Precambrian just as now, the Earth had plentiful water. The fossilised cyano-bacterial structures we can find were formed in liquid water. Where is the water on Mars?
4. Most Oxygen is produced on Earth by oceanic plankton (estimated at 50-80%) drifting plants, algae, and some bacteria that can photosynthesise. I think we can assume that it was cyanobacteria floating in seas that produced an equivalent proportion of the Oxygen.
5. You might as well just say, plant trees on Mars - trees are the most efficient plants at photosynthesising. Easy to say, much harder to get them to grow in the conditions there.

And that's even before you start to ask any of the other questions people are asking, like should we do this morally, ethically, and does Mars have sufficient Gravity to hold onto the atmosphere?

 

[Venusian Broon]

And that's even before you start to ask any of the other questions people are asking, like should we do this morally, ethically, and does Mars have sufficient Gravity to hold onto the atmosphere?

It's not so much the gravity but the lack of magnetic field that is the killer. Mars does not have one and is therefore continually losing atmosphere because of the solar wind. Any attempt to terraform the planet would have to take this into account. Also Mars gravity being slighter than Earth means that it's atmosphere extends further than Earths, which does not help mitigate this lose process at all.

This article from the Natural History Museum, 2018, states that we probably couldn't raise the atmospheric pressure, using accessible CO2 sources, to more than 3 times current levels - so 3% rather than 1%.

It's official: we can't terraform Mars

Scientists have concluded there is not enough carbon dioxide on the planet Mars to terraform it.

www.nhm.ac.uk

.

That's not saying there might not be more drastic ways of getting enough material down onto the surface to produce atmospheric gases...but the sheer volume of gases required make any such schemes work are currently in the realm of Sci-Fi.

 

[Dave]

It's not so much the gravity but the lack of magnetic field that is the killer.

On the Magnetic Field problem, I read something about producing an artificial magnetosphere by placing a strong dipole at the Mars L1 Lagrange Point. It would only result in a shadow over the planet but would be enough to protect it from the solar wind. I know little about this, but a quick search shows the idea came originally from a NASA talk: NASA proposes building artificial magnetic field to restore Mars' atmosphere - ExtremeTech

 

[Venusian Broon]

On the Magnetic Field problem, I read something about producing an artificial magnetosphere by placing a strong dipole at the Mars L1 Lagrange Point. It would only result in a shadow over the planet but would be enough to protect it from the solar wind. I know little about this, but a quick search shows the idea came originally from a NASA talk: NASA proposes building artificial magnetic field to restore Mars' atmosphere - ExtremeTech

This seems fine in principle (although the people proposing it state that the idea is 'fanciful' - I assume the actual engineering required!) but I could find no talk of exactly what you'd need to do to build such a magetic field. How big is this 'inflatable thing' that would generate the field? How much mass would be required to carry into space? It may turn out to be a pretty long term project

 

[Wayne Mack]

Although terraforming the whole planet may not be feasible, establishing a dome might make this more feasible. Within a controlled volume, CO2 pressure could be raised. Although more advanced plant life could be introduced later, something like blue-green algae could serve to initiate the process.