Fill Mars with Water: Explore Elon Musk's Plan & Alternatives

[r_rajesh77]

Look into this url

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/mars/news/mars-20070315.html

Some points to note are

* The polar region contains enough frozen water to cover the whole planet in a liquid layer approximately 11 meters (36 feet) deep.

* The radar sees through icy layers to the lower boundary, which is as deep as 3.7 kilometers (2.3 miles) below the surface.

Elon Musks wants to heat up Mars using a nuclear weapon. But the radiation according to me will make the planet uninhabitable for a long time.

Here is my solution. we all know about microwave open which heats any object placed inside. I would say let's have a ionised beam conductor in hollow cylindrical form. inside this pass the microwave which will be confined inside the ionised beam as it is a waveguide, (ionised beam being a conductor) for the microwave. Microwave will get reflected by conductors. Have this in satellite of mars. Have many such satellites and heat up the surface of south polar region of Mars with such a setup.

 

[phyzguy]

Why don't you try calculating how much energy your plan would take? It is approximately equal to all of the energy consumed by the entire world for about 1000 years.

 

[r_rajesh77]

In microwave ovens, Microwave heats only the food and not the container & surrounding air. This electromagnetic energy, when it reaches water molecules, charges them, thus in turn heats them. In my case, I don't think I heat the air through which microwave passes and i just heat up the ice. That means the power required is not that much.

 

[russ_watters]

In microwave ovens, Microwave heats only the food and not the container & surrounding air. This electromagnetic energy, when it reaches water molecules, charges them, thus in turn heats them. In my case, I don't think I heat the air through which microwave passes and i just heat up the ice. That means the power required is not that much.

Why don't you try actually calculating it instead of taking a wild guess? What is the heat of fusion of water? How much ice is there to melt? Multiply.

 

[rootone]

Attempting to defrost several billion tonnes of frozen water and CO2 with microwaves won't require a lot of power?
I think if you calculate it; it is actually a lot of power.
However. whatever power it takes, what do you suppose is going to supply this power?

 

[r_rajesh77]

I don't have the actual numbers. But If were able to heat up the ice in 10 square meters within 10 seconds. Use 100 satellites to do the same job. It will be 1km * 10 meters every 10 seconds, per day it will be 24 * 60 * 6 = 8640 kilometers * 10 meters every day. In an year we can cover 8640 * 365 = 3.1536 million kilometers * 10 m per year. Atleast a significant amount of water can be melted within a year.

 

[rootone]

OK, but still, how are these gigawatt microwave satellites going to be powered?
And if it can be done, why not just place the heat generators on the surface,
which would probably be more effective than having them in space.

 

[r_rajesh77]

Probably you need nuclear powered reactor in space. AFAIK, Americans and Russians have sent reactors to space.

 

[rootone]

Yes, but those only generate a few kilowatts, sufficient to power the onboard electronics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_space

 

[r_rajesh77]

MegaPower project can produce upto 10MWe as mentioned in

http://www.world-nuclear.org/inform...ons/transport/nuclear-reactors-for-space.aspx

 

[Nugatory]

MegaPower project can produce upto 10MWe...

You mean it might, if it works - the research project is still testing much smaller devices to understand the engineering challenges.

But let's assume it does work. How much ice will a 10 MW reactor operating continuously melt in a day? Don't guess, calculate.

 

[r_rajesh77]

Microwave oven uses 1200 Watts for 30 minutes a day, the info obtained from
http://energyusecalculator.com/electricity_microwave.htm

A long radio wave is at resonance for ice and it is easy to melt ice at this frequency than at microwave frequency.
Probably you need to send Radio wave inside ionised beam cylinder which will reflect to keep it inside the ionised beam cylinder.
http://www1.lsbu.ac.uk/water/microwave_water.html

Although I am not sure of math of exact power requirements to melt ice.

If the input power is not sufficient (10MWe produced by reactors), Probably we can consider as futuristic.

Someone can help me in arriving at math, which I thought of working out later and keep posted.

 

[Gigaz]

Also, microwaves excite rotational modes in water molecules. They are pretty good at heating liquid water, but much worse at heating ice.

 

[russ_watters]

Although I am not sure of math of exact power requirements to melt ice.

Google "heat of fusion of ice" and tell us what you get. This isn't a joke; you need to start taking this more seriously or we will start locking your threads. We don't do idle speculation here.

 

[r_rajesh77]

Here is my calculation.

But before i calculate i would like you to read the below url contents and especially the reply by Floris.

https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/12657/how-fast-does-an-ice-cube-melt-in-a-microwave ---> (1)

He would also have referred to
http://www1.lsbu.ac.uk/water/microwave.html ---> (2)

Please have a look into the above url.

Microwave oven uses 1200 Watts for 30 minutes a day, the info obtained from
http://energyusecalculator.com/electricity_microwave.htm

i.e 2400 watts for a hour.

Let me take a example. If we keep five litre milk in microwave oven, the milk will heat up in 20 seconds. For one hour the amount of milk boiled will be 5 * 3 * 60 litres = 900 litres, and the input power that we would have used would be 2.4kwh.

In a day, the amount of milk boiled would be 24 * 900 litres = 21600 litres and would have taken 57.6Kw.

If we have a reactor that generates 10 MWe, then the number of days it will last will be 10000/57.6 = 174 days and the amount of milk boiled would be 21600 * 174 litres = 3,758,400 litres.

It will almost be the same for the water to heat up just like milk.

The resonance frequency of water is near microwave frequency and that of ice is long radio waves, which is around 1 KHZ. We need a RF setup rather than a microwave oven apparatus.

url denoted by (2) above says Water and ice Ih show similar dielectric behavior at the melting point but separated by about 10^6 Hz. So if we have RF apparatus, we will have 3,750,000 litres melted in 174 days.

 

[fresh_42]

But before i calculate i would like you to read the below url contents and especially the reply by Floris.

You cannot demand from others what you're not willing to do. The calculation might be more difficult than you think:

1. Is there a layer of frozen $CO_2$ which has to be melted first?
2. If so, how thick is it?
3. What are the melting points of $CO_2$ and $H_2O$ under the atmospheric pressure at the Mars poles?
4. What is the temperature distribution of these layers?
5. Which energy is needed to melt $1\,m^3$ of these substances under the circumstances above?

I admit that this might be a bit too detailed to get roughly an impression about quantities. Therefore you could at least do a best case estimation to see how much water you will be able to melt. But keep in mind, that it will freeze again as long as it isn't provided with a continuous heat supply. It is your proposal, so it has to be your calculation, too.

 

[Vanadium 50]

But the radiation according to me

Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts.

It is approximately equal to all of the energy consumed by the entire world for about 1000 years.

I get 8000.

we will have 3,750,000 litres melted in 174 days.

I didn't check this number, but taking it at face value, how long will it take to melt 1,600,000,000,000,000,000 liters? Part B: will the sun still be around then?

Furthemore, fresh_42 is right - it will just freeze again. This will raise the temperature of Mars by around 0.00000000001 degree.

 

[sophiecentaur]

To get the whole of Mars to have a similar surface temperature to the Earth's by solar heating you need an effective solar constant that's of the same order as the Earth's. The relative distances are about 230:150. To make up for the reduced energy flux, that would require a total energy gathering area more than twice that of what it would need in Earth's orbit. That would require a area of added solar collectors that's about the same as that of the planetary disc. "Surface temperature", in that context would not necessarily be the ground temperature, of course but if the aim were to mimic the Earth's atmosphere, eventually, the temperatures would be similar, I guess.
A simple mirror (slightly convex) would do the job and it could cover an area almost as big as the planet so you would have no 'over cooking' problems' from what would actually be seen as an orbiting image of the Sun. To avoid the effect of 'phases' of the reflector, you would probably need to have twice that area or perhaps two , orbiting on opposite sides of the planet. I guess that one big one, with an orbital period related to the day length could give a weird day/night cycle. Could be good or bad for any introduced lifeforms.
But this is not a trivial bit of engineering.

 

[ISamson]

Elon Musks wants to heat up Mars using a nuclear weapon. But the radiation according to me will make the planet uninhabitable for a long time.

This will damage the current ecosystem and formation of the entire planet. Would anyone like for that to happen to Earth??
We could firstly study Mars deeply how it currently is.

 

[r_rajesh77]

>>it will just freeze again.

Probably the clouds will bear water if we heat it up.

 

[Vanadium 50]

Probably the clouds will bear water if we heat it up.

Enough.

You're just making stuff up. We made the mistake of taking you seriously - and you've ignored everything we have written, and just made more stuff up. Sorry, but this isn't science. You might want to seriously think about changing direction here.

 

[r_rajesh77]

I just had an idea and I was brainstorming with experts to check if it works.

 

[fresh_42]

I just had an idea and I was brainstorming with experts to check if it works.

... which on the other hand means, we allowed you - against our rules - to expose a personal theory, probably hoping you could learn something about the huge quantities involved by doing some calculations: You proposed a local mechanism to change global parameters.

Thread closed.