Sahana Kumar edited untitled.tex  over 8 years ago

Commit id: dfc1c5d9865cba7ec1df1824cdd9cbc29c81d16d

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Terraforming other planets is a long-standing human goal. With the ever-increasing threat of global nuclear warfare, the need for a back-up planet has become more real. Mars is a great candidate for terraforming due to its similarity to Earth and its relatively close proximity. Humans could effectively solve two problems at once by terraforming Mars using radioactive material. Our project will investigate the amount of energy needed to terraform Mars and to see if radioactive material can realistically provide that amount of energy.  Before bombarding Mars with nuclear weapons, we have to decide what terraforming would entail and what we would consider to be "habitable" conditions. We intend to addresses several key questions: What does "habitable" mean for a planet? And how much additional energy does Mars require to be "habitable?"  For the purposes of this project, we have decided to set a surface pressure of 1 bar and a surface temperature of 300 K +/- 50 K as our terraforming conditions. goals.  An Earth-like surface pressure is important for the human body and most of our human technology and practices. Mars also has reduced gravity compared to Earth, so an increase in surface pressure would further help humans adjust to a terraformed Mars. We have a somewhat wide temperature range because humans have the technology to survive those temperatures. There are also accurate in situ temperature measurements from the various spacecraft at Mars, so we can more accurately discern the energy difference between Mars today and our Terra-Mars by using temperature as our benchmark. Our project addresses several key questions: What does "habitable" mean for a planet? And how much additional energy does Mars require to be "habitable?"