Terraforming
Transcript:
Imagine a planet covered in plant life, air that we can breathe, and oceans cover a large portion of the surface. Does this sound familiar? It should because it is the planet we live on Earth, but what if we were to make another planet to match this description. The process of making a planet more Earth-like is called terraforming. Terraforming is a theme for many sci-fi books but is it possible to do this. To take a barren planet like mars and turn it into a home where we can live without spacesuits. Terraforming is not an easy process, but it is possible. It will take many centuries to change a planet into something like earth where we can live normally.
Before continuing I would like to mention that I got most of my info for this video from Isaac Arthur and his video on the subject.
The things that we would need on a planet to make it earth like are breathable air, water, and temperatures that we can live in. Also, some other things that will be useful are daylengths that are not too long and gravity that is like Earth’s about 9.8 meters per second squared. All these things are possible to change on a planet, but the cost of doing so would be astronomical. It would take billions of tons of even the lightest air to make an effect on the planet.
Air on earth is made from about 20% oxygen and 80% nitrogen. Water is a molecule of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom. So, to get both breathable air and water on a new planet we would need to transport these three gasses. Another option for getting water onto a planet is to redirect ice asteroids to collide with the planet. Lastly to change the temperature we could use greenhouse gasses like carbon dioxide to heat a planet as well as giant shades to block the sun and cool the planet.
Where would we get these resources. It is not like we could just bring them from Earth. Attempting to fill a planet with these resources would severely drain our own supply of them. Because of this we must look towards other planets, moon, or asteroids to find these resources and bring them to the planet. So where would we get them.
For oxygen, we could use the oxygen that has been sequestered into the rocks of mars. Of course, to get access to this oxygen we would need to melt the rocks that contain the oxygen. Even if used efficiently this would take thousands of years to get enough oxygen for a small ocean.
Nitrogen to make breathable air can be found on the atmospheres of Titan and Venus. Titan is a moon of Jupiter and is more likely to be a better choice because there is lower gravity on Titan than most planets. Because of this low gravity it would be easier to build a mass driver, a tall structure that peaks through the atmosphere, and would launch capsules of the required air.