Post #1516562

okay if I see one more thing credulously discussing plans to terraform Mars or colonise it, I'm going to explode MARS HAS NO MAGNETOSPHERE IT CAN NEVER BE TERRAFORMED the energy and resources required to produce an oxygenated atmosphere on a planet the size of Mars would cause the destruction of Earth, because you have to bump-start the the planet-wide process with trivial ingredients like 'a layer of nutritious top soil covering the entire crust' and 'massive amounts of water not already found on that planet' and 'the largest fleet of machinery ever seen in the known universe to shuttle these materials around the solar system and lay them down on the planet's surface at scale, all of which require steel, aluminium and fuel to make before they even do any work' but even if you got enough trees planted down, or built big enough synthetic air-exchangers to convert billions of tonnes of water to oxygen to produce an atmosphere at the right density and pressure... THERE'S NO MAGNETOSPHERE the atmosphere would wick off into space, pointlessly, and even in an absolutely optimal balance with artificial overproduction to compensate for it... THERE'S NO MAGNETOSPHERE you wouldn't be able to stand unprotected on the surface without dying of radiation poisoning from the Sun and neither would any of the other life you introduced YOU CAN'T MAKE MARS A THING