this post was submitted on 12 Sep 2024
78 points (72.9% liked)

Technology

34889 readers
183 users here now

This is the official technology community of Lemmy.ml for all news related to creation and use of technology, and to facilitate civil, meaningful discussion around it.


Ask in DM before posting product reviews or ads. All such posts otherwise are subject to removal.


Rules:

1: All Lemmy rules apply

2: Do not post low effort posts

3: NEVER post naziped*gore stuff

4: Always post article URLs or their archived version URLs as sources, NOT screenshots. Help the blind users.

5: personal rants of Big Tech CEOs like Elon Musk are unwelcome (does not include posts about their companies affecting wide range of people)

6: no advertisement posts unless verified as legitimate and non-exploitative/non-consumerist

7: crypto related posts, unless essential, are disallowed

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

By Albert Burneko

9:00 AM EDT on September 11, 2024

Mars does not have a magnetosphere. Any discussion of humans ever settling the red planet can stop right there, but of course it never does. Do you have a low-cost plan for, uh, creating a gigantic active dynamo at Mars's dead core? No? Well. It's fine. I'm sure you have some other workable, sustainable plan for shielding live Mars inhabitants from deadly solar and cosmic radiation, forever. No? Huh. Well then let's discuss something else equally realistic, like your plan to build a condo complex in Middle Earth.

...

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (9 children)

Solar panels would be my guess, though you can always build a space based nuclear reactor if you can refuel it and get rid of its waste.

It would certainly need a lot more to figure out an actual feasible plan, but I don't think there's anything fundamentally impossible about doing it with today's technology, let alone the future's.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (7 children)

Mars gets roughly half the light of Earth, so I don't think Solar panels would be realistic (how much solar panel surface would you need to power a magnet of that size?)

I'm also not sure a nuclear reactor is realistic - forget the nuclear waste, how do you get rid of the heat waste?

You'd need quite a big magnet operating at a level akin to superconducting magnets in particle accelerators.

Perhaps someone could calculate more accurate numbers and feasibility, but to me, it currently sounds very out of reach for us (not impossible, mind you).

load more comments (5 replies)
load more comments (6 replies)