The point of challenges like these isn’t to point out why it can’t be done. It’s to show how it could be done. To achieve results, however distant.

Personally, I can’t accept the ideas that a world like Mars is unterraformable, or that there’s no benefit in it. Earth can’t be everyone’s home forever, and where there’s a will, there’s a way – especially where science is concerned. The older generations (you guys) taught me that with the space program. I also can’t accept the idea that y’all would give up so easily. There are many routes to terraforming, and barring victory, you still could have aimed for highest score.

It’s sad.

I’m sad.

You guys can do better.

edit: DBE confirmed on chrome and different computer

Maybe when v. 6 rolls out, we’ll have the old setup (or a relative analogue) back.

*EDIT* Got an “Error: Internal Service Error” when posting this one too. I don’t think the code likes me.

(Edit: Yup, happened again. Error message and subject line strip. Thinking it is post related?

I see you did a lot of HTML formatting on your post. Well done! We haven’t had that sprit here for a while, and it had to take some time. Did you construct in the HZ editor, or did you cut and paste from another source? This site gets weird about code.

I’m familiar with the magneto shield, but I think it has huge problems. The counter weight is good, but natural objects in Lagrange Points still bounce around a lot. Give that disk a good size CME and see what happens. And the energy required is huge, I don’t think solar power is up to the job. Furthermore, the sun/mars L1 is too far away, in my opinion. Mars sits in the tail of the magnetic shield, not in the middle.

Even with the hole in the middle, sunlight gets diminished by shading or diffraction. A hole is a lens. So now you have to build space mirrors to add light to the planet.

Over compensating for loss is just turning up the faucet on the bathtub with the open drain – still a huge waste of resource. Two steps up, one step down.

As far as the the amount of material currently being stripped from planetary atmospheres, I saw a paper recently about that. If I find it, I’ll post it. Lack of data from other planets challenges conclusions.

As far as activating the core, well… First you’ve got to drill down that far, on an inhospitable planet. Second, earth magnetic dynamo is created in the outer core. It’s the frictional effects of the inner core and the mantle that keeps the outer core dynamo moving. The heat comes from radioactive decay in the inner core. You’d have to keep dropping nukes down an impossible hole forever to keep it going. And how do you get that balance of solid inner / fluid outer core maintained?

(Edit-the glitch happened on this comment)

Sorry about that, but how can I terraform Mars when I can’t even get my computer to work?

This is not a “challenge”, its a fantasy.

If the O2 concentration in the atmosphere is high enough, the UV turns some of the oxygen to Ozone, 3O2 < -> 2O3. Note that that’s a reaction that goes both ways, ozone is notoriously unstable. Some ozone converts back to oxygen, but the O3 concentration is now in equilibrium, forming a UV shield for the surface. But without lots of new oxygen being pumped continuously into the ionosphere this can’t happen.

Ir would have happened here on earth, too, (although it would have taken much longer due to our higher gravity) but we have plenty of water and plenty of photosynthesis here to replace the O2.