What if we produced, around the Sun, a nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere reaching to the orbit of Mars?

[Boojatta]

Would a mission to Mars be less cumbersome, with either no need for breathing apparatus, or a need for merely the kind of breathing apparatus used in climbing high mountains?

Would there be a problem that heat would be conducted better, making the Earth too hot? Perhaps the star atmosphere strategy could be used to make a home in another solar system where the star (or binary system of stars) doesn't provide enough warmth for the planets on which we want to build homes.

[backscatter712]

1. That would take an insanely enormous amount of nitrogen and oxygen.

Do you have any idea how big of a volume of space you'd need to fill? It's insanely huge.

[Boojatta]

3. Biological systems use catalysts that speed up chemical reactions.

They are also resilient, and can function for millions of years.

Are you suggesting that, at the density of our atmosphere, we wouldn't be able to find a big enough supply of the elements nitrogen or oxygen in any form?

[backscatter712]

16. I'm suggesting exactly that.

In order for the chemistry to work, you have to have a large enough supply of the elements just to begin. Just by my gut-reckoning, we're short by many orders of magnitude.

[Ready4Change]

21. But they can't create out of nothing.

At the very closest, Earth and Mars are about 125 MILLION miles apart. The scale is huge. The Earths atmosphere is only, maybe 20 miles deep, just a thin skin stretched over a sphere of rock with a diameter of about 8,000 miles. A really tiny amount of gas there. Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system, only has a diameter of 89,000 miles. Jupiter is pretty much ALL gas, yet it wouldn't come anywhere CLOSE to filling up a tube of air stretching from Earth to Mars at their closest. And most of the time Earth and Mars aren't anywhere near that close. And I'm only talking a thin tube of air stretched between Earth and Mars, much less filling up the volume of space between their orbits.

But for argument, lets say we COULD create some sort of skinny air tube, just between Earth and Mars, and stretch it out so that it constantly dips into each planets atmosphere. IF it were done, you would not want to fly through that tunnel at what we think of as spaceship velocities. If you tried to travel through this tube at those speeds you'd burn up before you pass the orbit of our Moon. Space capsule, or the Space Shuttle, only survive in atmosphere at those speeds for a few minutes at a time, before friction slows them down. If that process took longer they wouldn't make it.

Instead, let's say you used something like an SR-71. It maintains a steady speed of about Mach 3, it's engines can make use of oxygen in the atmosphere, so it doesn't have to carry ALL of it's fuel. But it only has a range of about 3,000 miles. You run out of fuel long before you reach our Moons orbit (about 250,000 miles, btw) much less Mars 125 million miles away.

The longest distance we've flown a plane with just a single load of fuel was Burt Rutans 'Voyager.' It only flew at about 125mph, in order to save fuel, and took almost 10 days to circle the Earth once. (About 24,000 miles.) Again, far short of our Moons orbit much less Mars, and also WAY too slow.

So no conventional aircraft is going to manage this.

But we don't need a conventional aircraft at all. In our tube of air there won't be much gravity to speak of, so we don't really need wings. Something more like a submarine is called for, sleek for easy passage through the air, just a few tail surfaces for guidance, and some means of creating thrust. How about SOLAR power? We'd have it 24/7 in our tube, so that's a good thing. Lets say we can drive this up to airliner speeds. Say 600mph. I find that getting to Mars at those speeds requires about 9,000 days, or about 24 years. If our vessel could manage SR-71 speeds the trip would 'only' take about 5 years. Still too slow, by far.

In other worlds, even by using fantastical technology you wind up with impractical results.

Given this level of technology I'd propose this. With the same technology instead contain a smaller ball of air, say ten miles across. Float a gigantic balloon with a gondola carrying your passengers up to 60,000 feet, then pluck it out of Earths atmosphere with this air ball technology. (Replacing that air should be childs play, assuming we could have created a tube of air hundreds of millions of miles long instead.) Now, using that same technology, fling our contained ball of air across space to Mars. Since the ball of air is moving through space it encounters no friction, and since the balloon is inside that ball of air it's motion relative to that ball of air is nil. We'd need to keep the acceleration levels we impose on that air ball low, or else we'd rip it away from our balloon or crush our passengers. But, with that limitation (1 g, let's say), we could move that air ball at some really tremendous speeds. Could make the trip to Mars in days, if not hours, in that way.

[Boojatta]

23. Interesting!

Given this level of technology I'd propose this. With the same technology instead contain a smaller ball of air, say ten miles across. Float a gigantic balloon with a gondola carrying your passengers up to 60,000 feet, then pluck it out of Earths atmosphere with this air ball technology. (Replacing that air should be childs play, assuming we could have created a tube of air hundreds of millions of miles long instead.) Now, using that same technology, fling our contained ball of air across space to Mars. Since the ball of air is moving through space it encounters no friction, and since the balloon is inside that ball of air it's motion relative to that ball of air is nil. We'd need to keep the acceleration levels we impose on that air ball low, or else we'd rip it away from our balloon or crush our passengers. But, with that limitation (1 g, let's say), we could move that air ball at some really tremendous speeds. Could make the trip to Mars in days, if not hours, in that way.

[CBGLuthier]

2. please, please please please

send some of that shit you are smoking.

[Boojatta]

6. HAL 9000 series computers have a perfect record of smoke-free operation.

[backscatter712]

19. Hey, HAL followed his programming exactly.

He was given classified information by the U.S. government, ordered to protect it at all costs to protect the mission, and concluded that Dave and the rest of the Discovery crew couldn't be relied on to protect the mission like he could.

[Richardo]

4. Wow.

Where to start?

[Boojatta]

9. That reminds me of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

'This here young lady,' said the Gryphon, 'she wants for to know your history, she do.'

'I'll tell it her,' said the Mock Turtle in a deep, hollow tone: 'sit down, both of you, and don't speak a word till I've finished.'

So they sat down, and nobody spoke for some minutes. Alice thought to herself, 'I don't see how he can EVEN finish, if he doesn't begin.' But she waited patiently.

Link to the above block of text in context

[Boojatta]

10. Wait, I think that I was looking for this one ...

The White Rabbit put on his spectacles. `Where shall I begin, please your Majesty?' he asked.

`Begin at the beginning,' the King said gravely, `and go on till you come to the end: then stop.'

from: CHAPTER XII. Alice's Evidence

[Fumesucker]

5. The closest thing I'm aware of to what you're talking about..

By the way, congratulations on this thread, you've really outdone your already fearsome reputation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Smoke_Ring_(novel)

The story is set at the fictional neutron star Levoy's Star (abbreviated "Voy"). The gas giant Goldblatt's World (abbreviated "Gold") orbits the star just outside its Roche limit. While Gold's gravity is enough to keep it from being pulled apart by Voy's tidal forces, it is insufficient to hold its atmosphere, which has been pulled loose into an independent orbit around Voy. This orbiting air forms a ring known as the Gas Torus. The Gas Torus is huge—one million kilometers thick—but most of it is too thin to be habitable. The central part of the Gas Torus, where the air is thicker, is known as the Smoke Ring. The Smoke Ring supports a wide variety of life. Robert L. Forward helped Niven calculate the parameters of the ring.

There is no "ground" in the Smoke Ring; it is a world consisting entirely of sky. Thus, most animals can fly, even the fish. Furthermore, since the Smoke Ring is in orbit, it is in free fall. There is no "up" or "down", only "in" or "out" from Voy. Most animals have trilateral symmetry, allowing them to see in all directions.

Most plants in the Smoke Ring are quite fragile, as they don't have to support their own weight. A notable exception to this rule are the eponymous Integral Trees. These are trees that are up to 100 kilometers long. Tidal locking causes them to be oriented radially, with one end pointing in toward Voy and one end pointing out. The ends of the tree experience a tidal force of up to 1/5 g. Each end consists of a leafy "tuft", which is where photosynthesis occurs.

[Boojatta]

11. Thank you.

I presume you are aware (although others reading this thread might not be aware) that Arthur C. Clarke developed a practical application for a system of artificial satellites before it was technically feasible to implement his idea.

[Fumesucker]

13. "Any sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from science".. -A Heterodyne..

[Richardo]

20. Yes, but his application was based on actual physics.

Therein the difference between you and your idea, and Arthur C. Clarke and his.

[FSogol]

12. Larry Niven!

I remember that series.

[CJvR]

7. Simple...

...the planets would slow down in their orbits and start falling towards the sun. Same as will happen when the sun grows into a red giant.

EDIT: Oh and the mission would be much harder, drilling through all that gas would devour any mass gains made many times over. Just think about how much fuel your car spends on moving air around - and that is at low speeds.

[Boojatta]

24. Yes, planetary orbits could be a problem.

Perhaps we could advertise "unmoved mover wanted" and
pay a monthly fee to keep the planets moving in their
usual orbits.

[Bosonic]

8. If we had the capability to do that then a trip to Mars should be trivial in comparison

But i'm sure the "gas shell" would have all kinds of weird/potentially disasterous gravitational interactions with the current solar system. There would be better uses for the advanced capabilities of such a civilisation.

[Cirque du So-What]

14. What if nitrogen suddenly became oxygen

and oxygen became nitrogen. That would be pretty freaky, huh? :crazy: :silly: :eyes:

[Richardo]

18. !!

:rofl:

[MannyGoldstein]

15. Wouldn't said atmosphere be pulled into the sun and burn up?

The solar system originally was a giant hydrogen (and some other stuff) cloud, but gravity made it coalesce into the sun and the planets, IIRC.

[Richardo]

17. ...or blown away by the solar wind

One of the two for sure.

[byronius]

22. Reminds me of Heinlein's 'Roads Must Roll'.

Giant belts running at varying speeds that people step onto, complete with restaurants and hotels. A vast project that perhaps overdoes the concept.

Not that I'm objecting to your plan. I like Big Ideas.

[krispos42]

25. It would make for one fuck of a long flight in an airliner. n/t

[drm604]

26. Why not just enclose that atmosphere in a metal shell that we take along with us?

You could call it a capsule.

I think it's actually been done before (just not for Mars).