lightning is collected via lightning rods / or solar power is used to convert ground water/ice to oxygen/hydrogen.

Fiter the hydrogen out with pre existing payload / expel the oxygen into the atmosphere.

hydrogen would then be used to power the filtering system for the hydrogen/oxygen.

lots of these sent to terraform atmosphere equipped for seeking out ice & performing auto installation with said payload.

works for any planet with an atmosphere or that gets sun.
-- Half-life below 40yrs, Jun 09 2006

//works for any planet with an atmosphere or that gets sun.//
And that has relatively-abundant water/ice.
-- methinksnot, Jun 09 2006


Hehehe =- glaring omission

well that's still about 4 of the planets in our solar system.....and I assume those types would be the ones we'd want to terraform.....
-- Half-life below 40yrs, Jun 09 2006


Creating an atmosphere isn't as simple as just making the components at a planet.
There needs to be high enough gravity, relative to low enough solar wind strength, and probably some re-generation capacity too (eventually something is going to use the atmosphere, so it needs to be self-sustaining).
Re: water/ice supply. If we're talking this sort of scale (technology-wise), you may as well start by smashing a comet into your chosen planet to kick-start the process.
-- neutrinos_shadow, Jun 09 2006


I don't suppose you'd be able to terraform a planet without those preset conditions in the first place - short of alchemising it's core into a heavier metal or something magical like that. And as for solar wind, I guess you would always need some protection 1mill+ spf?? : )

I guess once you had a high enough concentration of oxygen to CO2 you would introduce plant life resistant to the other gases present to maintain said self sustaining atmosphere. This could be acheived with genetically engineering plants with extremophile genes as we theorise we have extremophiles that could almost surive on mars??

I don't see any problem with the comet idea.....in fact I like it, hehe nice work
-- Half-life below 40yrs, Jun 09 2006


//hydrogen would then be used to power the filtering system//

Are you using fusion for this? Or fuel cells? Or burning the hydrogen? If the first then you should not need any solar power or lightning. If the second or third, then you are going to use up all the oxygen that you just extracted, and not get quite as much energy back.

Also Oxygen is only 21% of our atmosphere, where are you getting the nitrogen?
-- Galbinus_Caeli, Jun 09 2006



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