In all the discussions of creating an Earthlike environment on some other planet, I almost never see discussion of changing a planet's orbit to put it into a similar distance from the Sun as the Earth.
The energy required is of course massive but, if there's some way to do it, the payoff would be immeasurable.
I'm fully convinced that the only way Mars can be made inhabitable is through this method. The increase of solar radiation on its surface from bringing it close to the Sun would put its temperatures above the melting point of ice freeing the huge reservoir of water we seem to now believe lies beneath its surface. From there it's a matter of finding ways to extract oxygen from that water to rebuild the atmosphere.
Obviously you can't just attach rockets and tug it where you want it. The energy required is more massive than we can provide. Perhaps manipulating smaller but still massive objects in our solar system for directed impacts on the surface could change the planet's orbital velocity enough to move it closer to us.
I'm curious what others on here feel about this idea. I know it's very far-fetched and the physics probably work against us but just how much could we move the thing or any planet for that matter?
It's probably science fiction but it's a great fantasy imagining a very visible Martian surface in the night sky and a weeklong journey to its now-wet surface.
Art
How would we move Mars?
The whole thread (45 posts)
- How would we move Mars?
- Terraforming & Electromagnetospheres
- Weird.
- There is a way....to move an entire planet
- Create a black hole just behind Mars which would slow its orbital velocity and act as a gravitational tether
- Mars has no magnetosphere
- How about Venus?
- re: How would we move Mars?
- Might not work because any atmosphere released by heat would soon be lost
- Might not be necessary
- Why bother?
- re: What about Earth, then?