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Klondike2022 t1_ixpjp5n wrote

If we crash that moon into mars will it be more like earth?

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Exploding_Antelope t1_ixqlgos wrote

It will give you three temperature points and four steel, and let you take eight plants from another player.

In actuality, yes, but to a fairly negligible degree. You’d be adding some energy and maybe a bit of greenhouse effect to the atmosphere, so it might get a degree or two warmer from the impact, but not permanently. And you’d be adding mass, but not nearly enough to have a noticeable increase in gravity.

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Klondike2022 t1_ixr3p0y wrote

Darn it. We can work on Venus then. There must be something we can do

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Exploding_Antelope t1_ixr6a4z wrote

Well, Phobos alone might not do the whole trick, but there’s lots of other asteroids near there. I’ve heard there’s this “belt” thing?

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Klondike2022 t1_ixrb3y0 wrote

Worth a shot. Or we can take this belt and mash it into a new planet

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peterabbit456 OP t1_ixrnzm3 wrote

I have a plan for Venus.

  1. We put a bunch of mirrors at the Venus-Sun Lagrange point #1. Reflect light away from Venus. Cool it down until the atmosphere freezes. (This is a 1000 year project.)
  2. Once the surface pressure is down to 1 Bar or 14.7 PSI or 101 kPa or whatever, start building chemical plants on the surface to convert those puddles of liquid nitrogen and frozen blocks of CO2 and sulfuric acid into solid minerals, so the air pressure won't rise when the heat is turned back on.
  3. Turn the heat back on, by turning some of those mirrors sideways to the Sun.
  4. Introduce life. Hydrogen from sulfuric acid and oxygen from CO2 make water. Chemical plants from step 2 have made some fertilizer. Plant some plants. Water them.
  5. Bring in the people.

It might take 2000 years total, but we can remake Venus in Earth's image.

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Klondike2022 t1_ixrwlmd wrote

Sounds like a good investment for the future of humanity. We must tell Elon at once!

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peterabbit456 OP t1_ixrhlq9 wrote

No.

Phobos, where it is, is one of the greatest resources in the Solar System. We can mine the whole thing until there is nothing left, or turn it into an O'Neil space station with a clear conscience, since it will be gone soon anyway, on a geological time scale.

Once we master space-based mining, we can turn Phobos into a fleet of spaceships, or a vast array of silicon solar panels to beam space-based power to Mars, or make mirrors to reflect sunlight onto Mars, to warm the planet to Earth-like temperatures.

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