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Teraforming Mars

2-Decades post-MNT (Molecular Nanotechnology)

January, 2000
By Bill Spence
Publisher for NanoTechnology Magazine

When people speak of teraforming a planet, they usually speak in terms of hundreds of years. This is because these people were unaware of the eminent arrival of a technology enabling engineering feats of mythic proportions.

After the arrival of humans possessing nanotechnology, Mars could be transformed into a shirt sleeve environment in just two decades -- utilizing a few inventions made possible with self-assembling machinery.

The human imagination has always been larger than the wallet. Be on notice: this size differential will be decreased considerably with self-assembling machinery... Welcome the era of Mega-Engineering Projects, beautiful gigantic projects that normally could not be afforded by an individual or by all the collaborative assets of the planet, and/or -- projects that physically could not be constructed with first wave industry. Nano was made for space. Because of the novel economics (if you can design it, you can build it ultra cheap) and the performance of nano-supermaterials embedded with all those nanocomputers -- enabling Mega-Engineering Projects, solar space becomes wide open for massive colonization in a short time frame after the arrival of the assembler.

We will not look into why Mars will be teraformed, let's just say it is inevitable for the usual excuses. If recent discoveries from deep core samples on Earth are any guide, Mars probably has microbial life underground where water-bearing strata is kept warm by the core.

Like magnetically propelled trains, such Matter Slingers are familiar technology. These would be assembled from matter mined on asteroids with autonomous systems (minernites?) Naturally, construction in deep space of huge accelerators resembling spiny sea urchins one hundred miles wide will have to wait until the self-assembly feature of MNT (Molecular Nanotechnology) makes the concept economically possible.

Travelers on the Hot Ship system would lounge in a comfortable One-Gravity environment, perhaps on the observation patio in open space located at the Nose of the ship, protected from the solar wind by a loop of superconductor generating an immense magnetic field, clad in paper thin nano-space suites, sipping cocktails while gazing at a blazing Milky Way. With such a system technically and financially feasible with MNT, we need to rethink how we view space development and, if so inclined, actually consider our personal future involvement. Gone is the concept of long dangerous voyages only governments can afford. Because of self-replicating economics, Hot Ships should be plentiful, available at one's convenience and inexpensive to fly (per billion miles) -- the Spacer's new car.

Bishop notes Mars can be reached in only three days even if on the opposite side of the Sun. Taking a trajectory traveling just inside the orbit of Mercury would be a cosmic experience. Your ship would be reaching its maximum velocity of the trip. The sun, already gigantic and covering a large portion of the field of view -- would be visibly growing at an alarming rate. More and finer detail of sunspots and surface phenomena appear before the eye. The traveler sweats it out in hopes navigation is functioning properly, as they stare face to face -- so close -- to this seething ancient god.

Such a dramatic close approach may become a popular tourist destination. If people can travel to Mars, the asteroids, the outer planets, have lunch with a view of Saturn's rings and do so in comfort and with speed, if people can vacation and do business with Space Cities located any-where with travel times of only hours or days, people will go. Space will boom.

Teraforming Mars with Nanotechnology

"2011: ...And the long awaited Diamondoid Assembler Breakthrough arrives.

"Now the pace of space colonization starts its dramatic acceleration with self-replicating machinery. Nano-space advocates break out their preengineered plans and get cracking. The first near-Earth asteroid retrieval mission launched. Small Moon stations and a large Mars stations follow the next year."

2025: Earth-to-Orbit shuttles are mass-produced. Mass Drivers and Orbital Loop launch device in place on the Moon. Beamed power stations feed ion/electric Earth-Lunar shuttles. South Pole Accelerator assembled without traditional human labor, to feed high orbit Mass Driver (precursor to the InterWorld Rapid Transit System), and provide water for the Moon.

"2030: Comet wildcatters set out for the outer solar system to tap cometary resources." (Bishop)

NanoSpaceTool #3

Comet Catchers are (initially) very small robot fusion powered ships, a Hot Ship variant that stocks up on fuel before it gets out of range of the matter slingers (have not been grown out past Pluto yet). These puppies brim with smarts (nanocomputer power) and fly out to the Ort Cloud, identify an appropriate gas comets -- the bigger the better. These robots land on these huge frozen mountains of Oxygen, Hydrogen, Methane, Helium, Co2, rock, metals etc. -and with these materials begin building (growing) a monster fusion engine com-posed of thousands of active thrusters working in parallel, perhaps one hundred miles square. Size and thrust is practically unlimited. The engine will use hydrogen locked up in ice for fuel and part of the comet as reaction mass on a trip back to... Mars.

The trip back takes just a little longer than the trip out. We are talking about a really big fusion engine. With careful Newtonian navigation this comet and many like it will make controlled slow speed crash landings in designated spots on Mars, building up AS MUCH atmospheric pressure as desired. Later, some comets are parked in Mars orbit and mined for specific gasses to complete a breathable atmosphere (enough CO2 already, need more Nitrogen). The unused gas is sold to other nano space businesses, like the people who make fuel pellets for the matter slingers.

NanoSpaceTool #4

Now Mars has a dandy atmosphere assembled in an extraordinary short span of a few years. Lots of water came with the comets. But the planet is still a bit cool even with the extra gas, and we will want big liquid oceans to moderate temperature (and afford waves for one third G surfing!). To heat Mars quickly, and unlock additional water frozen underground... Heat Pipes. (Bishop)

The surface of Mars is cold, but the core is still hot since its creation. Not as hot as Earth, with its bigger mass, but plenty hot enough for what is now needed. With nano, it would be almost child's play to design self-replicating, self-boring heat pipes that run down deep in the core and transport thermal energy to large metallic radiators that pop out of the ground every quarter of a mile or so. The radiators are designed to look like trees -- hey, humans are aesthetic creatures, and anyway they'll be replaced by real trees as soon as this burg heats up, which won't be long.

Incidentally, such a grid of closely spaced heat radiators controlled from a central point will create the first ever glob-al weather control machine. Heating one area of the planet will cause convection currents flowing to cooler areas. If there is an ocean in between, thunderstorms are (quite reliably) predicted.

"Welcome to the Red Texas Terraforming Visitors Center, established in 2042. This center and the Mars Terraforming Project is the result of nearly 82 years of advancement in nanotechnology." In 1959 Dr. Richard Feynman stated in his talk, "There is plenty of room at the bottom..."
From the January 2000 Issue of NanoTechnology Magazine
(17 Mb .PDF Source: Mac Format / >(PC Format)
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Dan