Going back to the topic of colonizing Mars again. I think it is more likely that we will create large space habitats around moons or planets out in our solar system that are close to something that can be mined, and larger colony might be eventually built on a strategic moon with very little gravity...all in the name of science and mining. Perhaps some people will go to these places as tourists eventually. All visits to these places will be short term, because there's no place like home as they say.
Bespin. Without any doubt. Thanks for your answers.
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Tatooine! Now regarding settling on Mars, I think VR/AR tech is evolving fast enough that if you miss trees and wind on Mars, you'll be able to experience it. Say you're bored of the baren landscape by day 90, then you tell you built in assistant to augment the scenery through your visor with whatever you want while leaving reality intact enough for carrying out the work. You'll also be able to enjoy experiences of anything on Earth with a VR suit inside the habitat that will be real enough to fool your senses. You may need to get a Neuralink implant, but that also likely won't be a big deal by then. 🤷
Tatooine, I wanna see a green moon :) Incidentally, according to a PSYC course I took once, we best remember the first and last items on a list - can you see a bias in your votes?
Frasier - what do you think of the movie "Dark Star"? Back in the day, 1989, I found Alan Dean Foster's novelisation of it. and I thought it was totally awesome. Yawrens went by before I got hold of the movie on DVD. I know that this is nada to do with what is being spoken about here, but....I am a silent one. Anyways, I thought it important to acknowledge that you are awesome, and anyways - why not have a QA concerning some scifi movie stuff?
In my humble opnion..terra forming Mars or the moon is our only hope for survival.. Its time to start nudging comets made of mostly ice..send them to the moon or Mars..do not be afraid of this action..man is much more devastating... The moon with an ocean will be great..🌍
Have been a sub for a long time and I'm still occasionally surprised by how good your video looks and how good your audio sounds. Thanks for the quality! Happy New Year, Fraser
Thanks Frazer :) [Tatooine] Can we terraform the Moon is my fave Q&A, I did not know it was possible for The Moon to hold an atmosphere...I learn something new everyday.
Since the Oort Cloud theoretically extends all the way to the "edge" of our solar system, is it possible that objects from _our_ Oort Cloud could possibly be drawn towards, or even impact, exoplanets in _neighboring_ star systems (like Alpha Centari)? Also, do our neighboring star systems have their _own_ "Oort" Clouds that interact with ours at the dividing line between our two systems?
So, follow-up question to the Mars colonization question: I agree with your assessment, but what is your thoughts on the prevalence of O'Neill Cylinder (or similar) as a proxy for terrestrial colonization? I've always assumed it will be far more likely given the engineering complexities are orders of magnitude less.
Coruscant. Strong question, stronger answer! Some of the things the Ancients (like Eratosthenes) worked on (like the world being round), will always stand. Missing gravity in the standard model? Maybe or maybe not.
The Yavin question made me think of a 1979 Andy Griffith TV movie called Salvage. In the movie, Andy owns a junkyard and teams with a failed astronaut and a woman that developed an extremely powerful but extremely unstable explosive/rocket fuel. They build and launch their rocket on a trip to the Moon to recover all the abandoned "junk" left by the Apollo astronauts. I was 11 when it aired and really enjoyed it. It was turned into a series called Salvage 1 but was cancelled with only 16 of its 20 episodes having aired. Salvage 1 is yet another TV show from my childhood that I have tried to find a way to watch as as an adult. But the problem, as I understand it, is that while it wouldn't cost much to (physically) offer failed shows from the 70s or 80s to a streaming service, the effort to secure contract releases from all the credited actors and musicians is not deemed to be worth it. Nobody ever considered home video releases at the time these contracts were negotiated, much less video on demand/streaming. But it seems a waste to just leave them sitting in a vault somewhere. Eventually, those shows will move in to the public domain. But one, I doubt I will live that long and two, them being in the public domain will hardly incentivize studios to release them. Maybe the studios could negotiate a standard deal with SAG-AFTRA and the union representing TV musicians that would apply to any TV show or TV movie that aired prior to 1990 and didn't have existing streaming deals. That wouldn't disturb deals already negotiated for more popular shows while providing fair compensation for artists and their heirs. Studios could then release most of their back catalogs and generate revenue they wouldn't otherwise receive. The unions could hold payments for artists/heirs that can't be located. It might require a law from Congress to make that arrangement legal, but I am not sure if anyone would be against such a law. BTW, I think a low quality VHS recording of Salvage is available on RU-vid. I appreciate both the uploaders for making movies and shows like this available and the studios that own the rights not to issue strikes.
I remember that show. They were going to use an old cement mixer for the command module cockpit. Take off slowly to reach orbit, which is a mistake. I remember Andy talking to a buyer of a world war 2 fighter seat with a bullet hole in it.... it didn't have one so after he hung up he shot the thing with a 45. Funny.
Well , if it were out of fuel, it wouldn't be long before the instrumentation couldn't be kept in the shade and the important things that make it useful get burned up...that might likely happen before it gets far from it's current position... I am not a NASA engineer, I couldn't even guess at how long though. I'm more curious on the odds on where it might end up! It's at a balance between orbit of earth/moon and interplanetary.. what's its most likely trajectory when it does drift? Second most likely? Worst case? Any fun orbits?
5:29 Sure, Fraser! I'm sure when I look down below, the referenced link will definitely, _actually_ be listed in the show notes... right?? I've been watching this channel for far too many years to be fooled by you again! You're not getting me this time! 🤣🤣🤣
Question about the twin paradox: If Alice remains on Earth, always experiencing the same acceleration (10 m/s²), and Bob goes on a trip, but his ship always maintain the same acceleration (10 m/s²) for the entire trip, holding a speed close to the speed of light for the majority of the time, when Bobs meets Alice again, will be any time dilation between the two?
I see a lot of things written about terraforming moons, planets, even about Dyson spheres on how we would be able in the future to do this and that, and how theoretically is possible, probable, or even very close. Thing is, I think people have spent too much time reading sci-fi books and watching movies, and too little time walking outside in the "real world". We're not even able to take away 0.1% of CO2 out of the earth's atmosphere and we want to get a whole planet a whole new atmosphere and perfectly manipulate and fine tune it? 🤦🏻♂
Tatooine! (am I doing this right?) Why can we give a planet (or moon) an atmosphere but not a magnetosphere? Can't we just build a really big magnetic field?
Completely agree on Mars. It sucks. And it will continue to suck even if we manage to terraform it for a variety of reasons. I'll take orbiting habitats over Mars any day.
Another thing about all our probes and rovers and why we would want to recover them. They have been exposed to harsh/exotic environments, studying how they have degraded is valuable materials research.
I personally believe that there will be a long line of people who would go to Mars, and a then a long line of people wanting to leave. Think of how many well educated and fit humans have left their carcasses on Everest, and I say that with respect, because many people chose their version of purpose over self preservation, and depending on the opportunities and the model for which people would leave for, I think there’s a ton of pioneers and straight up crazy risk takers and everything in between to get a base going. Edit: one example are the thousands working in the oilsand projects in Canada. For the people who do that work, the money is great for what they do, and it is to tolerate the isolation and conditions. Another example would be the pioneers of the Oregon Trail, because the incentives were worth the risk for them. Point being is the model for which people go needs to be proper. In the argument is that there’s no reason to go other than to just check the place out, then yes, I agree with your outlook. 🍻
can the oumuamua be really a intersteller spacecraft, and what if every object is just the peaks and valleys of a 4d hypersphere just like taking a 2d slice of earths surface, is the orbit of planets slowly increasing due to the solar radiation
Tatooine We can't even seem to terraform the earth back into something less dangerous, like prior to the industrial revolution levels of pollution and greenhouse gases. Not having to travel off world should save at least a few billion on the project.
19:31 fully agree. for me, a very amateur astro-fan, stars in very dark places are overwhelming in numbers - thus I believe constellations were created when people start noticing patterns during not that clear nights, when there are not many stars visible
Ad Tatooine: Place Lunar colony at South Polar Aitken basin and you can have eternal sunlight for solar panels and green houses, and frozen water for water(!), oxygen for breathing and fuel (hydrogen and oxygen), close at hand! Build into the side if the crater and you are radiation shielded but can still have windows 🙂
Solar will be useless now that we have figured out fusion that takes less energy to do than it creates, 1.5x more. Once engineered at scale, which will be rapid now that the science is out, we have essentially figured out unlimited energy so long as we have a good supply of Deuterium and Helium 3
@@SamtheIrishexan No. The 1.5 times more is how much energy the lasers put in vs. the fusion energy out. BUT: Charging the laser consumed "well above 400 megajoules"! That is 327 times more energy spent, than energy gained from fusion. Also, a monolithic energy plant on the Moon, means you have a very singular point of failure which would be catastrophic = A very bad idea!
@@astroartie1872 the national ignition facility on Dec 13th announced the core released more energy than was put in. I understand that we wont have the reactors tomorrow, but that is one of the last hurdles, now just engineering it at scale.
#Tatooine Before we even attempt to terraform the moon and Mars, would it not be more logical to try to terraform something much closer like the Sahara Desert and then Antartica?
If we are traveling at a velocity close to the speed of light relative to the rest of the universe (say traveling to Alpha Centauri) would the microwave background radiation be redshifted behind us and blue-shifted ahead of us? And does this mean that there actually is a preferred inertial reference frame in our universe?
Yes, the CMB defines a reference frame that everyone -- even in different galaxies -- can agree on as being the same. And yes, any observer can measure his velocity relative to this frame. In our own case, due to the movement of the Earth, we see a "dipole" in the raw data. But, this has been corrected in most presentations/visualizations we see.
I have a question I have been wanting answered for a long time. why haven't we used crispr gen editing to make an existing extremophile able to live on venus and terraform it for us? it has gasses that some lifeforms here already use for energy like at the bottom of the ocean or in hydrothermal vents.
@Smee Self very funny. XD but seriously like I know I'm not an astrobiologist or whatever but from what I've read this seems to me as very easily done.
@Smee Self you don't know life is there already and even if it was it's just bacteria level at most. And you dont need to be rude. You don't have to question anything about me. Good day.
Wow-terraforming the moon-it is a complete vacuum and there is no Earth/Mars like day/night cycle. It's 2 wks. To see it transformed from a stark grey world into one with an atmosphere that scatters light would be amazing.
@ Fraser Hi mate. This is in relation to engineering an atmosphere on the Moon and all questions assume that we're also able to create a magnetic field for the Moon - Would we need to deliver MORE gas to deal with the lower gravity of the Moon? I mean, a lower gravity would lead to a gas of 'x' volume having a lower density and taking up a greater volume on the moon. Lower density would equate to a lower atmospheric pressure, yes? To achieve a desired pressure, we'd need to have more gas for a given volume, than we would on Earth, right? How much more? If we were doing this on Earth, 1 cubic meter of space contains 44.64 mol. of gas and since each mol. is 22.4 litres, we'd need 1,000 moles of gas for 1 cubic meter. 1 cubic meter = 1,000 litres, so we could just say that on Earth, 1 litre of volume contains 1 mole of gas. What would this be on the Moon? I'm certain it would be different, I just can't work out how different... Also, is there a practical limit to how much gas can be accommodated/ accumulated on the Moon? At some point, the volume a given gas occupies will be so great/ so far from the surface, that the Moon's gravity will have difficulty holding on to it. But then again, Venus doesn't have a particularly high gravity and yet it holds on to over 90 atmospheres of pressure worth of gases. Does that mean that we could "overfill" the moon? Could we accidentally end up with an atmospheric pressure of 10 atm on the moon? Or 20? Or 100, even? Or do you think the pressure would max out at around 10 atmospheres, with excess gases being swept off into the ether?
Lunar-Terra forming may be attempted simply by sending a few ton roll of reflective plastic membrane to a deep crater with a mirror making rover. Smelting it to minerals, metals and O2
While doing this may be useful for supplying materials to moon bases, it would be a drop in the bucket compared to what is needed to terraform the moon.
@@ronbrideau8902 the way I have heard terraforming used is always in terms of fixing the whole planet/moon. I believe most people interpret it this way. Your use is fine, but expect confusion if you don't clarify the definition you are using.
the more concerning question: WHY would you terraform the Moon? not even our much smaller mega projects were done for fun alone. To just imagine the terraforming of the Moon, first, we have to come up with a reason. to farm there? Space habitats and good ol' Terran agriculture will offer way better ways to produce food. Mining? Mining will be possible on a dead Moon, too. Tourism? Tourists (even now) would be interested in a dead Moon. Besides, VR will one day kill tourism. By the time we could terraform the Moon, we will not need a terraformed Moon. so why would ANYBODY terraform it?
14:02 How come every animation I see of JWST makes it look like it's going around in a circle? I don't mean the "horizontal" circle that follows earth's orbit (and the plane of the ecliptic), I mean the "up and down" circle that makes it look like JWST is going above the plane of earth's orbit, then below it, over and over? Is JWST actually making that circle? If so... why?
Comments on Mars sucking are Earther-biased and lack imagination of future tech and societies. We're not likely to have a substantial Mars base for decades yet, decades in which tech will advance, making it much easier and pleasant to live on Mars. By then you can have a very safe, well insulated, form-fitting Mars suit "second skin" that lets you move freely, that senses the environment around you and modulates it to be suitable for your senses. To you, wearing it and walking around on the surface of Mars, it feels pretty much the same as you feel walking around on Earth wearing light clothing. (We're likely to get that sensory suit tech from VR developments, btw - not something that has to be developed just for Mars.) We already have very compact tech (reported in 2022) that can scrub nearly all CO2 from air at a rate suitable to recycle breathing air, powered by hydrogen. So no big and bulky air tanks - you'd carry small cryo-tanks of oxygen and hydrogen - a few liters would give you hours of air supply. And if you grew up on Mars, you would not be expecting or even missing plants and animals and flowing water outdoors. "Oh, those are nice enough, but those are indoor-domed-park things, not natural Mars things." But also, by the time we get a Mars colony of any substantial size, advanced biotech may enable plants that can tolerate Mars' near-vacuum conditions, wild as that may seem to us today.
The Yavin answer is interesting. Surely Musk and the Mars society people know how much Mars sucks. The Wait but Why guy starts his article on Mars colonization explaining how bad of a time Mars is "if Mars was a place on earth, nobody would want to live there" But they all still believe in building cities on Mars. It's a heck of a lot easier than building O'Neil cylinders
With Vega-C failure, How come that ESA got so far behind compared to SpaceX and NASA? Ariane 5 was so far ahead of everyone else in the past… They will never catch up with them
Biggest problem with terraforming in general from my perspective is that most planets we'd like to terraform are way too far from the sun to terraform "easily." The moon, Venus, and Mars are the only I can realistically see getting even started on in the next 500 years. I think the problem with Venus is how thick the atmosphere is though and how slowly it rotates, making you really have to go full sci-fi and bust out complex mirrors arrays and really fine tune everything for eons. Mars is a great candidate. The moon is just such low surface gravity... do we even *want* it? at least it has nice soil, in some senses.
Fraser, would you like to tell us more about JUICE mission that is expected to be launched in 2023? Do you think it will happen this year and what discoveries we may get? thanks
Regarding adding an atmosphere to the moon, could it be more efficient to use something like a Nicoll Dyson Beam to bake the oxygen out of the moon rocks? I'm not seeing the codes you're referring to at 4:32. Technically, there is a down in space, but it's relative to the dominant source of gravity. For example, down in our solar system would be toward the sun. Down in the galaxy would be the central black hole, Sagitearious A.
Why can't we see the Earth-Sun L3 point? I understand why we can't see it from _earth_ (or earth orbit), but don't some of our spacecraft -- for instance, solar observatories like Parker -- orbit the sun independently of earth's orbit, and therefore would be able to see around the "back" of the sun? Or wouldn't something like Voyager have been able to see "behind" the sun on its way out?
Q: Regarding the Fermi Paradox, could supernovas limit the emergence of intelligent life? What percentage of stars will never in their lifetime be affected by supernovas? The data must surely be known and the calculation ought to be fairly simple...
Sorta philosophical here: Is a black hole, particularly a supermassive black hole like Sagittarius A* properly still part of the universe? There's no communication possible through the event horizon that I know of; only gravitational effects.
The moon's gravity (or any other body) is mostly irrelevant to whether or not it can retain an atmosphere. What matters, is whether or not it has a magnetic field to protect that atmosphere from being blasted away by the power of the Sun. The solar wind ionizes gasses, and they go blasting out into the void, with that wind, never to return. Venus only still has an atmosphere because it's so packed with volatiles and its atmosphere is so dense, that it can withstand being constantly ablated by the Sun, even at that distance. If it had an atmosphere more like Earth's, it would be long, long gone by now. When it comes to the moon, it has nothing at all to protect an atmosphere. And frankly, neither does Mars. It's really impossible to terraform either in any vaguely practical way. That said, it could hypothetically be possible (because it's a hypothesis, not a theory) to construct essentially a kind of giant balloon-shell around a moon, or a small world like Mars, or maybe even Mercury. Something tough enough to keep out the radiation, and possibly deflect or concentrate the Sun's rays as needed to reduce or raise the surface temperature. On the moon, it could literally be a balloon tethered to the surface and "held up" purely by the 1 atmosphere of pressure needed to make the surface habitable. On Mars, it might require the construction of a framework of orbital rings. It would also have to be either easily repaired, or self-healing in some way from micro-strikes. It might also hypothetically be possible to "activate" their cores somehow, but since Luna is tidally locked, and Mars' moons have little effect on the planet, both cores would die quite quickly again anyway. It's also not a guarantee that either would be capable of generating a sufficiently strong field in the first place. Finally, it's not worth it. Planets suck. Their weather and climate is all but uncontrollable, they're terrible locations to get resources from, they're difficult and expensive to get on and off of. Planets are a marginally passable cradle to birth new civilizations, but they're absolute garbage as a foundation for building that civilization into space. Space habitats are far more economical, and far more effective. Terraforming a planet is like refurbishing an absurdly gigantic Flintstones type car and then being homeless in it when you could've just built a dozen modest, truly comfortable and nice, long-lasting houses instead.
I think the best definition of "down" is just the direction towards the center of gravity of whatever the dominant object you're orbiting is. So it's subjective depending on where you are, but it's still down. Like orbiting is falling "down" but just moving so fast laterally that you never hit the ground, but gravity is still pulling you towards it. It's more that for humans in space, there might as well be no up or down because either one is the same as the other, so that's the main reason behind saying there's no up or down in space.
On the moon the low G would cause us health problems. Terraforming would be difficult. Domes built above lava tubes would be OK with large spinning living spaces underground for the Lunatics who live there.
Fraser Cain, how dense is the surface of the sun? If it were the same as our own atmosphere how dense would that be if it expanded to our orbit? We are about 93 million miles from the sun, that is about 140 times the diameter of the sun. So the sun would have to expand it's diameter double that to 280 times to reach us. So the density would drop ... let's see 280 times 280 is 78,400 times 280 again for the 3rd dimention is 21,952,000 so the density of that atmosphere would be one 20 millionth of what it is now.... completely harmless.
Hoth Here's an interesting question : Based on the current understanding of the universe, could we, in theory, see past iterations of our Galaxy or even see the beginning of the Milky Way? If so, how would we be able to determine that is indeed our Galaxy and some other Galaxy. Consider the time light is observable. For example, a star is 10 light-years away, and we are observing the star as it was 10 years ago, not as it is today.
Question: Tiny Measurements in Infinite Space. In one of the Q and As you mentioned that the moon is moving away from earth at 4cm per year and Titan is moving away from Saturn at 11 cm per year. I wish to know scientists are able to make such tiny measurements in the vast space? 4cm Seems nothing compared to the distance of moon from earth! Also, how other accurate space measurements are made to such incredible precision? Thanks. Vote: Coruscant
Awesome show Fraser! My question is regarding stellar motion and momentum. When we see stars in a galaxy rotating around the (possible) central SMBH, they largely appear to rotate in the same direction. Where did their momentum come from? Assuming all the gas to form the stars started out largely randomly moving - where are the 'balancing' reverse motion stars?
Q: on Earth, you can just walk down a stream, river or beach, turn over a rock and find a fossil of ancient sea life. Rovers on Mars have been looking at rocks for decades and have found nothing like that. And considering the surface of Mars is really old, older than most of Earth's surface (because of geological activity) doesn't that suggest multicellular life likely never evolved on Mars?
Kamino , so refueling stars wouldn't work, as gas giants would just get turned into rings and all the good stuff blown away... ☹️. I'm also thinking that even if with some future clarktech lobbing a planet straight on would likely just hasten it's death by adding whatever iron from the planet to the star that would accumulate in the core and blast off more hydrogen with the chaos of collision.. counterproductive..
The moon has a little water, all the oxygen and metals and silicates we could possibly want, but we need gigatonnes of carbon, nitrogen, more hydrogen, potassium, phosphorus, etc. Nitrogen and phosphorus are probably the bottle neck materials, we know where we can get water and maybe CO2 ice as well
Wow, that is awesome about terraforming the Moon. Would power stations in a line making a powered ring around the Moon give it a magnetosphere? And the plant cycles could be taken care of by charging batteries on sunny days and running lights with them on sunless days. We already have solar-powered grow lights.
Yavin We just need to find a large enough underground space. Then our imaginations will really kick into gear. Harder to be enthusiastic about theoretical spaces. Embrace the beautiful irony of futuristic cavemen Fraser.
If we don't even the motivation to colonize Mars then Alpha Centauri and the rest of the galaxy are impossible squared. We might as well give up now. I don't agree with Fraser on this. I think he underestimates the nomadic and migratory instinct of human beings.
Tatooine - That part about the moon was a fascinating thought experiment - I never even considered terra-formation. If we could add several artificial magnetos (spinning metallic asteroids?) at the Earth-Moon LaGrange points such that one would always be on the sunlit side - probably requiring constant correction of some sort, we could create an analogue for a magnetosphere. Then (very gently :) ) direct comets and icy asteroids into the moon over hundreds or thousands of years - creating a ~habitable place faster than we could terraform Mars. Without the sun stripping away gasses, a proto-atmosphere could be created as more material would sublimate from the existing regolith to add to the atmospheric composition. Question is, would the deflected solar particles expose the earth to significantly higher radiation while the moon was in front of the earth in relation to the sun, or simply be deflected by the earths own magnetosphere as usual?
Sheesh, do you realize how hard that would be First, you'd have to make it spin. Then double it's size, at least. Then an atmosphere. You'd probably have to move it's orbit too. Simple, eh.
Fraser Cain the way to teraform Mars is to crash a huge amount of water ice from the asteroid belt into Mar's dark side. This would knock Mars a tiny bit closer to the Sun, very slowly, it would add to the gravity, very slightly, it would add water, atmospheric pressure, and oxygen, thus heat and weather and other minerals needed for plant growth. All occupants before this might be wiped out by the impact storm. How else would these asteroid impacts help Mars and would there be any drawbacks to these impacts?
I am suddenly very interested in terraforming the Moon, only after its been fully and thoroughly explored of course, but getting rid of that pesky, nasty abrasive lunar regolith via wind and water erosion would be great, and launching things to the moon from Earth would be made much easier with atmospheric braking, spaceplanes would become the preferred method of travel from Earth and moons atmosphere, it would be great, has Isaac Arthur made a video on this yet? Time to go check
I can totally see it as a simulation with the developer going with the simplest newtonian laws of physics and then product comes with a complaint about this ultraviolet catastrophe, cant have that... and has to patch it adding quantum physics but keeping it close to newtonian so it doesn't break expectations. I doubt the dev got it right the second time, deeper laws comming for sure :'D HOTH ?
Kamino - I think the questioner was wounding, as i am, if Jupiter with a mostly metallic Hydrogen core would add any extra life to the Sun if it crashed into it? Extra/added H to burn in the core.
Basically Terra forming, interstellar travel and other big problems in space need much bigger power supplies than we have. I think that is a doable problem over time. Not a short time but who knows? All of a sudden, someone figures out a great source of anti matter...find it, produce it, whatever, the main thing is you have access to it. As long as you don't blow up Earth you would then have a much larger source of power than we have ever had. Possibilities of what we can do go to a new level. Other choice is we never go out of the solar system and just become good at using everything we have access to.
because of the low gravity and a few other factors, i don't think the Moon is a good candidate for classical terraforming. instead, it could be paraterraformed, basically means doming the majority or whole surface over. the domes would enable the Moon to immure its new atmosphere. though the only way to get an Earthlike day-night cycle on Luna would be to use orbiting shades and mirrors because speeding up lunar rotation would likely have negative tidal effects on Earth.
I'm not a fan of Moon terraforming, mainly due to issues with the low gravity causing a range of problems. It could even be dangerous for Earth. Here's what I mean... If the moons gravity is so weak that solar wind could strip it away in 10,000 years then we have to ask ourselves where all of that gas is going to go? I'm sure much of it would leak harmlessly into space but Earth is the nearest point where there's higher gravity so it'd likely capture a lot of the gas that the moon loses. In fact, Earths gravity is strong enough that our atmosphere actually extends beyond the moon although it's exceptionally thin at that distance. Either way, there's little reason to assume that Earth wouldn't be constantly siphoning off atmosphere that the moon loses. So we'd risk Earth becoming more like Venus just to make our uninhabitable moon, slightly more habitable. I'd say enclosed domes and pressurized habitats are the only sensible methods to keep our presence on the moon although there's no telling how long it would be healthy to stay there for each individual, again because of the low gravity. Could someone stay on the surface of the moon for 30 years without putting their body at risk of deteriorating the way we see with astronauts in Zero-G? Mars also has this problem to an extent but at least the gravity is high enough there to give us a better shot at being able to live on the surface for very long periods of time. Terraforming Mars also poses no risk to Earth unless someone really wants to make the argument that we're going to wake up microbes that hitch rides to Earth and kill all life here. It's possible I suppose but seems far less probable than many other dangers that face us when exploring planets and moons in this solar system.
Hey Fraser. I just wanted to say your videos are spectacular. If you're looking for an idea for a new video, I'm not sure but I would imagine that a lot of people would very much enjoy watching a video about building a substantial moon from asteroid material for mars to help warm the core.
"..click on the notification button, and then also agree to have this posted into your dreams.." Yeah, nah...Haha, ok. Good one Fraser! I apreciated that.
I have a question. :) It is impossible, that is understood, however, if the sun were to suddenly disappear, how long would our moon continue to rotate around Earth? Would the Earth hold onto the moon, or would it fly off in a separate direction? Jupiter would most likely have a large role.
Mars will never happen, because the economics on Earth can't make such a large investment in construction, maintenance and resupply, that would never turn a profit on the investment. Long before the tech could come to exist, most, if not all economies will have collapsed, re-started, and collapsed again.
Tatooine , how would one create a magnetosphere, how much energy would a planet sized one require? And isn't the tidal forces of having a unusually large Moon that allows the Earth to keep a liquid enough core to have magnetic field? Isn't this almost a requirement for life and should be considered when looking at exoplanets?
