> At least we know how to transform CO2 into oxygen.
That's so, but the atmosphere on Mars is so thin it's not as if you can step outside there either - you'd die quickly as it's well below the Armstrong limit. You still need a full-body pressure suit on Mars.
Venus, FWIW, is 96.5% CO2 and has a surface pressure of 93 bar. That's a lot of oxygen if you just want to make some for your space station.
Personally I hold out hope for terraforming Venus. Adding gravity or atmosphere to Mars seems like it'd be much more difficult.
They were talking about adding a jet to pump CO2 out of the atmosphere. Is there a chance you could direct the jet such that it intercepts Mars in a useful way?
Then you get to rebalance both the planets atmospheres at once.
However, Mars has pretty weak gravity so even if you could, I don't know if it would stick around.
Depends on the timescale. Mars obviously has an atmosphere half-life much shorter than Earth's. At the same time, if its lifetime is a million or even a couple thousand years, it might be entirely suitable for terraforming for humans, depending on the rate at which we can replenish it.
Of course, at some point we have to ask questions about how renewable a resource various elements are...
That's so, but the atmosphere on Mars is so thin it's not as if you can step outside there either - you'd die quickly as it's well below the Armstrong limit. You still need a full-body pressure suit on Mars.
Venus, FWIW, is 96.5% CO2 and has a surface pressure of 93 bar. That's a lot of oxygen if you just want to make some for your space station.
Personally I hold out hope for terraforming Venus. Adding gravity or atmosphere to Mars seems like it'd be much more difficult.