Update:
Euler’s method reveals how many modiefied 100MT Tzar bombs we need to signficantly altering Halley’s comet by bringining it to a complete stop. If we did it did crash into the sun, we could even cause it to hit Mercurcy or Venus should we be so inclined. Mars on the other hand requires a comet with a different orbit than Halley’s such as the one that almost hit it recently.
SUMMARY: DEFLECT A COMET TO HIT MAR’S ICE CAPS TO REPLENISH MARTIAN ATMOSPHERE
I at first had this idea of creating a deep enough crater on Mars by deflecting a comet such as Halley’s Comet which has a large enough speed (70km/s) with sufficient kinetic energy to transfer millions of Tzar bomb nukes equivelant to excavate the crust 55km deep so that the bottom of it will sustain 1 bar of atmospheric preassure. This will make living on Mars so much easier when people can just walk around with scuba tanks or grow plants to grow their own oxygen. But this will only be a micro climate habitable zone of only a few thousand acres(at least 6,000 acres).
I also then realized that the comet has so much energy that we might as well deflect it in such a way so that it hits one of the ice caps on the poles of Mars. What this will do instead is transfer all that kinetic energy to the existing ice caps there thus vapourizing and melting most of it so that the atmosphere will be replenished. This would eliminate the need for the Crater which only terraforms a tiny bit of real estate on the planet at the bottom of a crater. Instead we can use the energy to melt the existing ice caps instead of excavation. Also the comet it self will have material to pass on to the new atmosphere to be replenished. There is sufficient CO2 (carbon dioxide) to keep the planet warm afterwards to prevent the new atmosphere from freezing back.
Also we don’t need a new magnetic field in our lifetimee as the degredation of the Martian atmosphere takes millions of years. Using a comet instead of conventional nukes means we don’t suffer from radioactive fallout. This is clean energy that we use to melt the ice. However we will need to take a second look at the 1950’s Orion Program of using nukes to propel a spacecraft because that’s the order of magnitude in ISP we need to shift the trajectory of a comet such as Halley’s to hit Mars. We have studied how Shoemaker Levy hit Jupiter.
We can perhaps consider recreating the event with another comet, shift it’s trajectory, break it up and terraform the Red Planet. This is basicly Elon Musk’s idea of nuking Mars without nukes but instead a comet that we artificially deflect. But we will still need nukes, just H-Bombs used to do the deflecting on a pusher plate on the Orion themed pusher space-ship.
UPDATE:
Above: Advanced concept of using an artificially generated magnetic field to absorb the momentum of a nuclear explosion from an H-Bomb munition encased in matter designed to turn into electrically charged ion plasma on detonation. If turned around it can fire those nukes at a comet to push it by vapourizing the ice and using it as propellant.
At first I thought we will need to redesign the Orion Spaceship to be a sort of a tug/pusher vessel. After recent calculations I have come to the conclusion that this won’t work. There simply isnt enough propellant to push upon the comet. What we need are nuclear missiles to vapourize ice. The vapor will do the pushing after being energized with the yield of 100 megatons from a modified Tzar bomb with uranium tertiary layer. The standard Tzar bomb doesnt have this and is only 50 megaton, but the updgrades will be easy to implement, the Soviets decided 50 megatons was sufficient to scare NATO with their new terror weapon.
With said 100 megaton 27 metric ton nuclear missile warheads we can then nuke the icy portions of a comet from a distance using the vapourized ice as propellant to boost thrust and Isp to move the comet. Each 100 megaton nuke can nudge a comet such as Halley’s comet by 11m/s or a 1% fragment of it by 1,100m/s (1.1km/s). This is enough to shift a comet trajectory significantly if done at apogee where it is slowest, in the case of Halley’s only 900m/s (0.9km/s). This is called a Hohmann Transfer where you circularize a highly eliptical orbit.
Further optimizations to this idea is to hollow out nozzels in the comet so that subsequent sequential nuking will be from inside a cavity to force the vapor out in a single direction rather than being spread out. This will boost energy coupling from 40 to 80%.
With just 27 100 megaton Tzar bombs we can shift Halley’s comet in such a way that it will impact Mercury should we wish to do so. However hitting Mars will require a different comet in a more favourable orbit such as Comet Siding Spring which almost hit Mars that it’s tail plume ionized the atmosphere of Mars upon impact.
Everything below this line is the history of my train of thought to reach my final conclusion of how we shoud Occupy Mars.
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Micro Climate Crater – New Mars Fourms Discussion:
https://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php?pid=221396#p221396
UPDATE:
My numbers are in this spreadsheet CRATER.xls
Update: I have to delay the paper for 2025 due to commitment for space-plane.org. Also if 100% of the comet is deflected to strike the ice-caps, the entire planet will be below the Armstrong Limit. Maybe only to 0.5 bars at datum but that’s enough to do away with suits and just use scubadiving tanks and regulators. However the comet should break up and if not we should break it up before impacting the ice caps of Mars so that there is minimal deformation to the planet’s pole. That is if our goal is no longer the crater but the entire planet to be under the Armstrong limit.
Original Microclimate Crater Article:
After being invited to write a white paper for the Mars 2024 Convension by Dr Robert Zubrin, I have refined my numbers and made interesting discoveries: First of all only 1% of the mass of Halley’s comet is needed to create this crater according to the ISALE crater simulations formula. That means 2cubic km from 220cubic km from Halley’s is all that is needed at 70km/s perigee speed to impact the Martian North Pole. The high speed of the comet means only 1% of it’s comet material is needed to blow a hole 55km deep for our human needs of 1 bar of atmospheric preassure. We don’t need to destroy all of the comet, just 1% of it. I have to confirm if just the ice part of the comet is enough or if we will need the rocky component instead from the comet. If ice will surfice, it makes our job easier to just laser off the portion we need with a gigawatt powered laser that is designed to vaporize off ice in space. But even achieving that I also learned that we need Nuclear Pulse Detonation Propulsion to shift that mass over in any meaningful way to hit Mars in a reasonable timeframe. Good news is the science is from the 50’s, bad news is we will need to convince the environmentalists that this is ok to use hydrogen bombs to move 1 % of a comet to hit Mars.
After chatting with Chat GBT it turns out that the best solution is to alter the idea below to create the crater on a pole on Mars to limit the effects non globally and also to strike the planet while it’s on the far side of the sun so that this plan does not panic the human race into hoping the comet does not miss Mars and hit Earth if it’s slightly off-course.
Results should look something like this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korolev_%28Martian_crater%29
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According to our calculations Martian Scale Height of 11.1km means that we are only 30km away from reaching 0.7 bars of air pressure from the Northern Basin or Hellas Planitia. Can we deflect a comet or more to the same spot on such an elevation on Mars to excavate 30km? Then the water from the comet can produce a liquid water lake for us since it will be within the Armstrong Limit now and we can introduce algae and plant life in cheap greenhouses to slowly terraform Mars as a micro climate via photosynthesis to convert the CO2 to O2 slowly. The comet the size of Hailey’s would also contribute 1% to the Martian atmosphere with gas. While negilgible on it’s own if this becomes a regular occurance, 100 comet strikes will double the Martian atmospheric pressure and air density. This also means the future Micro Climate Craters can gradually be shallower and shallower eventually only needing to be 15km deep in the future.
Could we deflect enough comets to excavate 30km from the Northern Basin where it’s-7km from the datum? Or maybe Hellas Planitia. We could settle at the bottom of such a cavity and use airships for transportation without risk of explosion in the CO2 atmosphere, we could also live without the need of airlocks at our doors to maintain an air pressure bubble within the Armstrong Limit and we will have supply of drinking soda water and water for rocket fuel via electrolysis producing both breathable oxygen gas as well as hydrogen for rocket fuel and airships. We wont need full pressure space suits just flimsy stratapause type ones.
