terraforming Mars so the transformation
of Mars from the current hostile dry
and cold desert into a world which could
support life will be one of the biggest
mega projects for Humanity in the next
centuries if set in motion but the key
question of course is is terraforming
Mars even possible could we even do it
with a technology that we currently
possess or let's say with a technology
that is not in the realm of the
extremely far future or is it absolutely
impossible after all well let's try to
analyze the major obstacles and see if
there would be a way to overcome them in
order to terraform Mars
in the last episodes of the JS space
report we already talked about the pros
and cons of first colonizing moon versus
first colonizing Mars if you have missed
those videos we will link to them in the
description down below what would be the
next step after we have established huge
cities on Mars let's say that at some
point the future Mars government under
the rule of the benevolent Elon mind
uploaded AI merged Overlord would decide
that it was time to start the mega project
of terraforming Mars we know that we are
involuntarily
very good at Mars forming Terra it is
evident that humanity can have a big
impact on an entire planet we have
demonstrated that ability on earth so
it's only logical to assume that we
could do something of a similar
magnitude also on Mars albeit into the
opposite direction of course the idea of
terraforming Mars was put forth by Carl
Sagan already in the 60s even though he
first proposed to terraform Venus Venus
is another highly interesting topic by
the way and we will certainly do a
separate episode on terraforming venus
later Carl Sagan visualized Mars
terraforming in an article called the
planetary engineering of Mars published
in the journal Icarus in 1973 later other
scientists picked up the idea with the
term terraforming first emerging in 1982
coined by Planetologist
Christopher McKay for the Journal of the
British interplanetary society since
then many problems and obstacles have
been analyzed in countless scientific
papers which we would need to overcome
in order to transform Mars into a life
friendly planet
One increasing the density of the atmosphere
Mars's atmosphere is as we know really
thin it consists of 96% co2 the rest
being argon nitrogen and traces of
oxygen the median pressure is only 0.61
kilopascal on average with the
highest pressures in the very low-lying
Planes reaching a maximum of one point
two kilo Pascal this is way below the
Armstrong limit of six kilopascal below
which humans need pressure suits in
order to be able to survive now in order
to walk on Mars without a pressure suit
so with only an oxygen mask supplying
100% oxygen under positive pressure the
pressure would need to rise to at least
19 kilo Pascal at 24 kilo Pascal a
simple mask supplying oxygen would
already suffice we know similar
pressures on Earth from the highest
peaks of the Himalaya Mountains however
in order to really have a second earth
the pressure needs to be raised to at
least 50 kilopascal minimum in a quite
recent paper called inventory of co2
available for terraforming Mars from
2018 link in the description scientists
analyzed if Mars even has enough
carbonates in the polar caps or in the
soil which if released would allow to
reach such pressures well it turns out
that only 0.6% of necessary carbon
dioxide is present in the polar caps so
really sorry Elon but nuking Mars won't
work which proves that even geniuses can
be wrong from time to time
a further 0.5% could be obtained from
clathrates which is a snow like
crystalline substance composed of water
ice and carbon dioxide 1.2% from
minerals and the further 4% by releasing
adsorbed co2 from the Martian soil so in
total we would only be able to reach 6.9
percent of the necessary carbon from all
available sources
but fortunately there might be a way to
overcome this because the paper also
states that there are carbonates
so-called deep carbonates present very
deep in Mars's crust and mantle which
are currently not accessible by any
present day or near future technology to
release these deep carbonates this would
require some serious future technology
but even only releasing the 6.9% would
already prove quite challenging as it
is and there are two further big
problems which would need to be solved
two lack of magnetic field you know that
Mars is unfortunately too small to have
retained a molten core which on earth
allows for the formation of a molten iron
dynamo in the core which in turn creates
a magnetic field strong enough to
protect us from the high-energy
particles of the solar wind Mars being
so small the dynamo ceased functioning
long ago having cooled too fast thus
Mars now lacks a protective magnetic
field so the solar wind is constantly
stripping off Mars atmosphere according
to data from maven Mars has lost in this
way at least 80 kilo Pascal of co2
pressure during the course of the last
billions of years and it is still losing
atmosphere at a speed of one to two
kilograms per second Mars atmosphere
weighs 2.5 times 10 to the 16 kilograms
so Mars will lose another 10% of its
atmosphere in the next 10 million years
therefore releasing large quantities of
co2 from the Martian soil crust or
mantle into the atmosphere would have to
overcome this effect sure the effect is
quite small as we saw but in order to
have a stable atmosphere which doesn't
need constant replenishment it would be
really good to also have a magnetic
field right fortunately there is a good
idea out there to achieve this we could for
example arrange a very strong magnet at
the Mars Sun Lagrange point l1 as
proposed by NASA scientist Jim green in
2017 this magnetic dipole satellite
would have to create a field strength of
1 to 2 Tesla so a really strong magnetic
field this would of course require as
you can imagine a quite potent energy
source and comes with its own problems
which will need its own video to talk
about but this solution is probably
doable
this strong magnet would then deflect
the solar wind just enough being 320
Mars radii from Mars so that the solar
wind would circumvent Mars and therefore
not stripping it anymore off its
atmosphere this solution would also
drastically reduce the radiation on Mars
from high-energy solar wind particles
but we would still have to solve another
problem namely
three the low gravity
problem Mars surface gravity is as
we know slightly below 38 percent of
Earth's while it is not certain yet how
detrimental this will be to the
long-term health of future Martians one
thing we do know in order to achieve a
thick atmosphere with a pressure of 50
kilopascal or more the atmosphere would
have to reach very far above the surface
of the planet even now the scale height
of Mars's atmosphere is 11 kilometers
which is more than that of Earth's eight
point five kilometers the scale height
is by the way the height at which the
atmospheric pressure has decreased by a
factor of e e being the irrational
Euler's number of 2.718 rounded to three
decimal values so even at Mars low
atmospheric pressure of 0.6 kilopascal
the atmosphere being so thin still
reaches further into space because of
the very low gravity which is also a
reason why Mars is losing atmosphere
quite easily
probably a magnetic shield
at l1 as previously mentioned would
suffice to overcome this problem even
with the weaker gravity of Mars the
planet would then be able to hold on to
its atmosphere however unfortunately
there are still more problems to solve
four the nitrogen problem let's say we
manage in the far future to release the
deep carbonates and together with the l1
magnetic dipole shield Mars would slowly
get a co2 atmosphere of up to 0.5 Earth
atmospheric pressure so the pressure at
a height of around 5,000 meters above
sea level on earth which people might be
able to get used to after a long period
of acclimatization then we would
introduce some bacteria which would
release vast amounts of oxygen into the
atmosphere all the oxygen atmosphere on
earth was created by cyanobacteria
starting already 3.85 billion years ago
and accelerating around 1 billion years
ago in the great oxygenation event
but a pure oxygen atmosphere is
dangerous because things burn really
easily as oxygen is so reactive a
staggering 78 percent of Earth's
atmosphere actually consists of nitrogen
not oxygen oxygen currently only makes
up for 21% of Earth's atmosphere
therefore in order to have stuff not
explode or catch fire too often on a
future hypothetical terraformed Mars we
need vast quantities of nitrogen while
there's only very little nitrogen in the
rocks of Mars
there's fortunately a lot of nitrogen in
the outer solar system especially in the
Kuiper belt if we would divert
a few dwarf planets from the outer solar
system by attaching massive fusion powered
tugs to them and get them onto a
collision course with Mars we would not
only get massive amounts of nitrogen
released into the Martian atmosphere but
no those dwarf planets would also bring
us vast
amounts of water plus the collisions
would actually heat up Mars releasing a
lot of deep carbonates from the crust
and mantle into the atmosphere now of
course these collisions must be
extremely precise and carefully planned
not to endanger the future Martian bases
or Martian cities and the chunks should
also not be too large therefore it would
be advisable to have the dwarf planets
disassembled into smaller chunks by a
giant fleet of some automated drones and
as the dwarf planets also possess large
amounts of water
we would increase Mars water reserves at
the same time the dwarf planet Eris for
example is supposed to have a subsurface
ocean of liquid water heated up by
internal radioactive decay okay then so
giant magnetic dipole shield at l1
redirecting and disassembling quite gigantic dwarf planets easy peasy
but wait there's still one more problem
to solve
five the perchlorate problem
we know that Mars soil contains a quite
high concentration of perchlorates
namely a mass concentration of 0.5%
perchlorates being a chemical based on
bonds of four oxygen and one chlorine
ion these levels would be quite toxic to
humans if inhaled and also unhealthy for
plants in fact not many plants would be
able to withstand perchlorates at all only a few plants such as Eichhornia crassipes
would be able to grow in the
Martian soil at all but if we want a
terraformed Mars we want to be able to
walk around outside without oxygen mask
and also want to have plants and trees
grow in the soil and we also don't want
to inhale toxic Martian dust into our
lungs when being outside especially
considering that Mars is a very dusty
place with giant dust storms stirring up
gigantic amounts of dust into the
atmosphere so then what to do
well if we would be in the later stages
of terraforming so we would have
overcome all of the previously mentioned
obstacles we could introduce bacteria
which live off perchlorates newer
research link to a paper in the
description indicates that in fact some
strands of bacteria can live off
perchlorates and reduce the perchlorate
concentration in the soil over time
these bacteria would first have to
reduce the perchlorate concentration in
the Martian soil significantly then at
some point we would introduce some
genetically modified cyanobacteria which
would create giant amounts of oxygen
only quite a lot later then could we
introduce plants
by taking all the previous points
into account we can see that
terraforming Mars won't be easy there
are quite a few technical challenges
which need to be overcome but can it be
even done well at some point in the
further future probably yes every single
one of the mentioned problems could be
overcome with the necessary level of
technological advancement but of course
for that we will need a very big and
well-established space infrastructure in
the entire solar system with huge ships
and bases even in the outer solar system
so we don't see a project of this
magnitude being started before the 22nd
or 23rd century but we think that as
long as something is technologically
doable humans will attempt to do it it's
in our nature and if you want to know
the top ten reasons which make Mars so
compelling to colonize you can check out
our previous video right here so then
thanks for watching the JS space report
and I would say see you next time and on
2 the future
