[egberts1]

I often wonder about terraforming (on places like Mars planet).

Earth obviously had the leg up on water accumulation during its accretation stage (Hadean period).

Perhaps we can start generating oxygen early over there on Mars using a one-step CO2->O2+C catalyst.

This comes to mind: https://www.pnas.org/content/109/39/15606

[isoprophlex]

There's like... six millibars of pressure on mars? Admittedly almost all of those six millibars are CO2, but still. Turning all that into O2 might still not support ~photosynthesis~ bootstrapping plant life, let alone humans breathing.

Edit: also sorry to be a party pooper but I studied organocatalysis for a while and you must understand that these research papers about catalysts are almost always so incredibly far away from industrial viability. The ligands take long to prepare, the metals are expensive... and whilst these things might be solvable with enough money, the fact remains that they have turnover numbers that are finite.

(The TON is the amount of substrate the catalyst can transform before becoming deactivated)

Even with a TON of 1.000 (paper quotes < 10) you'd be able to produce 1.000 moles (32 kg) of O2 from one mole (has 100 g Ru, 2000 USD) of this expensive ruthenium gizmo. Oh and it's an electrocatalyst so better get some planet-scale power generation in place, first.

[matkoniecz]

Turning C02 into 02 would not help supporting photosynthesis.

For photosynthesis oxygen is a waste product, it needs C02.

[isoprophlex]

Hehe oops you're right, i meant "plant life"

[ftrobro]

First we would need to create a huge magnetic field protecting Mars from the solar wind that has blown away the atmosphere Mars previously had.

https://www.sciencefocus.com/space/how-did-mars-lose-its-atm...

https://astrobiology.nasa.gov/news/how-to-give-mars-an-atmos...

[egberts1]

how do we know that the magnetic field is a product not just the iron core of the Earth but perhaps large quantity of selected molecule in the atmosphere? Nitrogen or oxygen?

[ftrobro]

Earth's magnetic field follows the flow of magma inside Earth (not the solid iron core). There would not be any pole reversals if the magnetic field was created by something constant like the distribution of molecules in Earth's atmosphere.

https://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/2012-poleReversal...

[skywal_l]

I wonder if terraforming is possible, not because of technological limitations but just because of the limitation of humanity's ability to execute such large scale projects.

Given an unlimited amount of raw materials and energy, terraforming a planet like mars would probably take decades (centuries?).

Private funded projects usually have a TTL of a couple of months to at best 4/5 years and are driven by short to medium term profits. Public funded projects are on a longer timeframe. Taking a recent example, according to Wikipedia, "serious planning" for James Webb started in early 90s. So that's ~30 years.

But do we have example, in modern times, of project lasting more than a century? I have Notre-Dame in mind, any other? The construction of Notre-Dame was driven by religious fervor. I wonder if we could muster the same amount of will based only on a profit motive.

[matkoniecz]

Sagrada Família is under active construction since 1882, 139 years ago (with some pauses due to civil war etc).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagrada_Fam%C3%ADlia (it is much better inside than outside)

[eCa]

As awesome as it is[1], I don’t think it is ’based only on a profit motive’ as the gp implied they were looking for.

[1] Both the building and the project.

[tomaskafka]

Perhaps we'd better make sure we try to terraform Earth, as it's much closer to being liveable, than Mars.

Colonizing Mars is like the whole 'I can't bother to learn Bash, so let's rewrite our whole app to Kubernetes in next 5 years' thing. A procrastination.

[andrekandre]

even if we could generate oxygen, isnt the gravity on mars not strong enough for normal human development?