Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Yeah and Mars is a shitty place to live. And will always be a shitty place to live. No amount of fantastical "terraforming" is going to create a magnetosphere.


Well actually... you can create a magnetic shield in front of the planet by putting a large nuclear reactor powered superconducting magnet at the Sun-Mars L1 point that would fully shield Mars from charged particles from the sun. No new technology is required besides making the thing relatively maintenance free. https://phys.org/news/2017-03-nasa-magnetic-shield-mars-atmo...


Well, maybe you can.


Making a magnetosphere should be easier than terraforming an entire planet. It's just some hundreds of thousands of kilometers of wires, and you can even use the wires while you are at it.

He obviously has plans to do neither of those. What makes me question why does he even want to go there... But a magnetosphere strikes me as "earlier infrastructure", while terraforming is "is that even possible?"


That sounds bad until you consider all the other alternatives.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: