Laffed 'til I cried!! Made my day, Babe

As we start to freeze our butts off in the Grand Solar Minimum, I hope they drag Gore out in his wheel chair and let him freeze to death in his "Global Warming".

The trouble with that Godzilla alias is that me dino finds it kinda hard to keep a low profile.

Greatest Dino Monster ever!

The atmosphere is 90% CO2 it proves the green house theory is a big hoax

Simple plants turn CO2 into C and O2. I suggest evergreen because of the cold climate. The carbon stays in the plant the oxygen and water vapor gets released into the atmosphere

Not surprizing, they ARE a government operation. Elon Musk, for all the nasty stuff about him, sent a car on the way out....

If there's so much CO2 in Mars atmosphere, why is the planet so darn cold? I thought CO2 caused global warming. Someone needs to sick algor on this quickly.

Ah, yes, me dino enjoyed happy times when I operated under that alias.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGNhL...

NASA is stealing outside competitive ideas again, ie, from Robert Zubrin-Mars Society and others then claim it as there own. There are no more creative thinking people left at NASA. Even when they're talking about sending astronauts to Mars they don't say anything about creating centrifugal gravity or a magnetic field around the craft to deflect interstellar particulate radiation. I remember reading a long time ago in Analog Scifi magazine an article about doing that.

Maybe you should change your ID to Godzilla!

I'm sure that is at the root of the offer, I would think more detailed study of the offer would tell us if success is just a experiment or a real system. I still think the need for an electromagnetic field strong enough to help protect an atmosphere is a bigger issue, as the solar wind strips molecules away probably as fast as created at this point.

Fudge! Back to the drawing board.

Unfortunately, because the atmosphere on Mars is so thin due to its gravity being unable to retain much, all the water you were to crash on the planet would vaporizes and escape back into space.

Maybe a better endeavor to try and turn common materials into gold.

And where is NASA getting this money?? Besides I have read where CO2 is not a problem here on earth.

Me dino read that Earth got its water from asteroids and meteors crashing on it.
Must be plenty of that in the Asteroid Belt.
So me dino sez divert some of those heavenly bodies to blow Mars all to hell.
Econazis would protest about all those lovely fireworks transforming all the planet's scenic pristine whatevers,
but we wanna terraform Mars anyhoo while me dino loves to see gargantuan explosions. Bwahaha!

The intention is to make methane (CH4) and oxygen, which theoretically should be possible using the atmospheric or solid CO2 and water, which has been confirmed to exist on Mars. I suspect what NASA is looking for is a small enough generating system that can reside in a small unmanned rover as a proof of concept before we start sending people there.

This is similar to a project I worked on several years ago where solar energy (light) and carbon dioxide were used by specially bred algae to produce oxygen and complex hydrocarbons. I am sure NASA is aware of this as it was a NASA project. I have given the process some additional thought over the years so maybe I should submit my ideas. Should be fun.

Why not send up a bunch of blue/green algae and spread them in as many places as possible? Cyanobacteria use Photosynthesis, so Oxygen is a byproduct. Also, once there is enough of them (much as we are already doing here on Earth) you can create fuel from them. The only issue is the lack of water on Mars' surface. The other issue that comes to play is the overall amount of Iron in Mars' soil. There is a hypothesis going around that one of the reasons that Oxygen is limited on Mars is that the majority is bound in the Iron making Hematite or Goethite, the majority of the rest is captured within the CO2 in the planet's atmosphere. Unlike Earth where the majority of the Iron has sunk to it's core or trapped in the mantle, Mars hasn't had such fortunes. So there are a few obstacles to overcome besides just converting CO2 into something a little more useful. That is, unless you want to fuel a base, provide some oxygen for it's inhabitants, and maybe some food/fertilizer.

"Why not just compress our CO2, mix in a bunch of hydrocarbons and oxides from pollution and ship it there as "gas bombs"."
My understanding is Mars has CO2. So in sci-fi stories, they usually have technology to use the CO2. I remember two of them where they brought something they could react with CO2 to make fuel for a return trip. Red Mars, though, went the other way and considered releasing locked up CO2 into the atmosphere just to get more pressure and higher temperatures. As it is, the atmosphere is so think, I don't think you could survive with an oxygen tank.

Regarding the magnetosphere, in As It Is on Mars they store stuff on the roof to absorb the radiation. In Red Mars they live underground, but incidental exposure to radiation causes them to focus their medical efforts on repairing damage to DNA replication, which leads to a startling serendipitous discovery.

Excellent point, they ARE talking about terraforming, which should be considered an engineering science project, requiring a package deal to make it work, just taking a stab at one little part of it does not seem logical, more like a PR stunt. Good point AJ.

As speculated in Shadows Live Under Seashells, using nuclear fission in timed pulses COULD re-moltenize(?) and create a rotation in Mars' core to construct a magnetic field which would trap greenhouse gasses (warming the planet in conjunction with orbiting solar mirrors)

I know its all speculation, but nothing I wrote is out of the realm of possibility. The real question is how long term a plan does NASA have considering this is very short term need they are addressing.

Why not just compress our CO2, mix in a bunch of hydrocarbons and oxides from pollution and ship it there as "gas bombs".

750K worth of funny, but they may be seeking a way to counteract the lack of a magnetosphere and also to address the low gravity.