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.
