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Space/Science » in reply to re: How would we move Mars?

re: How would we move Mars?
gbaikie — (archived)

"Sorry, it's a novel idea, but what would that do to Earth's rotation around our sun? "

Unless, you want Mars fairly close to Earth's Orbit, it shouldn't have any affect on Earth's rotation around the Sun.

[Of course my suggestion would be to use a reflector if the desire is to make Mars warmer. If you had this reflector, one wouldn't really have a night on Mars. And the constant light might be more of a benefit then compared increasing Mars global temperature.]

Venus orbital distance from the Sun is 107.5 to 108.9 million km from the Sun. And Venus is about 8 times more massive than Mars.
Earth orbital distance from the Sun is 147.1 to 152.1 million km from the Sun.
If you subtract 108.9 from 147.1, you would get Venus and Earth closest distance they will ever get to each other. So that's is 38.2 million km [or about 23.7 million miles].

With Mars it's 206.6 to 249.2 million km from the Sun.
And if you subtract 152.1 from 206.6 you get the closest possible approach of 54.5 million km [33.8 million miles].

In terms of average orbital distance, Earth is 149.6 million km and Mars is 227.9. So a difference of 78.3 million km.
Compared to an average orbital distance with Venus of
40.7 million km.

So, assuming one could cause Mars average orbit distance so it's 38 million km closer to Earth orbit, Mars would still have about 1/8 of gravitational affect that Venus currently has upon Earth [which is some effect near zero, so an 1/8th of near zero- this is actually worse than being excessively concerned about a "dramatic increase" of .038 % of the atmosphere]

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