Massive Mars Greenhouse Effect Domes Would Heat Themselves

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Terraforming Mars has three major parts

1. Raising the temperature
2. Building the atmosphere
3. Building up a magnetosphere or creating some form of solar and cosmic radiation protection.

There is a new study which indicates that domed cities and colonies of various sizes could have the right temperature for liquid water with a 2-3 centimeter dome of silica aerogel without additional heating. They would heat up under the dome by 50 degrees kelvin without any heaters. Just the greenhouse effect would heat the area under the dome.

Regions on the surface of Mars could be modified in the future to allow life to survive there with much less infrastructure or maintenance than via other approaches. The creation of permanently warm regions would have many benefits for future human activity on Mars, as well as being of fundamental interest for astrobiological experiments and as a potential means to facilitate life-detection effort.

Large Domes Have Been Made on Earth

Mars has one-third of the gravity of Earth so making larger domes will be easier on Mars.

Singapore’s new national sports stadium (completed in 2014) is the world’s largest free-spanning dome, measuring 310-meters (1017 feet) across, and its roof can be opened or closed to suit the tropical climate.

The 55,000 capacity National Stadium has a 19,500 sq-meter (4.8 acres) retractable roof, which can open or close in just 20 minutes. The roof is made with a multi-layer ETFE pillow. The moving roof incorporates a matrix of LED lights, making it one of the largest addressable LED screens in the world.

The EFTE for the roof is a 0.15mm to 0.25mm-thick Fluon ETFE fluoropolymer film. Fluon ETFE Film is made of a high-performance thermoplastic fluoropolymer, and features excellent transparency, non-stick and insulation properties, and resistance to heat, chemicals and weather.

The Seagaia Ocean Dome (measured 300 meters in length and 100 meters in wide) was one of the world’s largest indoor waterparks, located in Miyazaki, Miyazaki, Japan.

Previously NASA scientist Jim Green proposed a concept of placing a magnetic dipole satellite with a 1-2 tesla magnet placed in an orbit between Mars the Sun would allow Mars to restore its atmosphere. Simulations indicate that within years, the planet would be able to achieve half the atmospheric pressure of Earth. The magnetic field would also protect Mars colonists from some solar radiation.

Without solar winds stripping away at the planet, frozen carbon dioxide at the ice caps on either pole would begin to sublimate (change from a solid into a gas) and warm the equator. Ice caps would begin to melt to form an ocean.

The atmosphere of Mars is relatively thin and has a very low surface pressure.
Silica aerogel can mimics Earth’s atmospheric greenhouse effect to warm Mars to a temperature where the ice melts and Earth plants can survive. Through modeling and experiments, the researchers show that a 2- to 3-centimeter-thick shield of silica aerogel could transmit enough visible light for photosynthesis, block hazardous ultraviolet radiation, and raise temperatures underneath permanently above the melting point of water, all without the need for any internal heat source.

Regions of the Martian surface could be made habitable with a material — silica aerogel — that mimics Earth’s atmospheric greenhouse effect. Through modeling and experiments, the researchers show that a two to three-centimeter-thick shield of silica aerogel could transmit enough visible light for photosynthesis, block hazardous ultraviolet radiation, and raise temperatures underneath permanently above the melting point of water, all without the need for any internal heat source.

Nature Astronomy – Enabling Martian habitability with silica aerogel via the solid-state greenhouse effect

There was a National Space Agency study for 25-mile wide domed city on the moon. A similar scale domed city could be built on Mars.

77 thoughts on “Massive Mars Greenhouse Effect Domes Would Heat Themselves”

  2. Considering that future tech may be CHON based (more abundant than metals, and more versatile), the Venusian atmosphere is valuable ore. Blowing it off into space is not a good idea.

  3. Anchor it to an asteroid Sun-ward of the L1 point, while variations in the solar wind would have a large effect on the low-mass magnetic shield it would have a small effect on the asteroid, and whenever a solar storm is imminent shorten the cables between asteroid and shield pulling the shield Sun-ward of L1 to offset the thrust from the stronger solar wind.

  7. Bring  Fluon ETFE Film pillows with 3 compartments to Mars. Inflate inner and outer compartments with Mars water. The middle compartment should have a silica aerogel tile. These pillows should be interconnected and reinforced with SPECTRA fibers. Both ETFE film and SPECTRA fibers are incredibly strong and durable and resist elements. I estimate 2mm thick ETFE film and 1cm thick SPECTRA ropes will be strong enough to naturally contain 1 ATM pressure. Unroll this large several hundred sq meter film and make a deep perimeter trench. Cement and ancor the unrolled edges of the film into the ground. Let it sit for a few weeks in the sun, out gassing from melted CO2 and other gases will self inflate the dome, additional Mars air can be pumped in with electric compressors. Attache the airlocks on the sides. Bring in the fertilizer and trees, plants, create irritation system and hook up to water source (melted ice) and electric power. Let photosynthesis do its job.. Next step move in and start another sphere next door.

  8. You get shielding by having tonnes of light atoms between you and space. Here on Earth we have 10 tonnes per square metre.

    You won’t get 10 tonnes per square metre of gas in a tall dome unless it’s very, VERY tall.

    At atmospheric pressure, air is 1.3 kg per cubic metre. So to get 10 tonnes you need to stack that air 7000 metres tall.

    Of course then you find that the air in your 7km tall stack is compressing the air at the bottom of the stack, and so the density increases as you go down. As you want the density at the bottom to be one atmosphere that makes the rest of the stack lower density, so then it needs to be higher still.

    I don’t have the time to grind the numbers, but dozens of km tall anyway.

    Much easier just to have the roof of the dome be much thicker and made of something suitable to provide the radiation blocking.

  12. Considering the air is itself effective radiation blocking I wonder how much protection you would get from a ball like sphere say 500 meters in diameter.  Considering Mars has only 1/3rd Earth gravity I think putting up such a sphere would be doable, even its service is doable with an appropriate service elevators system and robotics.

  14. So those round balloon like domes will provide more protection by having taller atmosphere. Also what if you run superconducting electric coils along the surface of the balloon to provide local magnetic field?

  15. That NASA study did some serious computer modeling of the effect and they say it would terraform Mars and very fast too.

  16. Now that my wild speculation muscles have been warmed up, try this one:

    We put another such magnetosat just in from Venus. But this time we design the magnetic field to concentrate the solar wind and so blast away all the excess atmosphere that’s keeping the place so hot.

    For added bonus points, steer the stream of gas from Venus so it lands on Mars. (OK, that’s going to be just about impossible even at the whiteboard stage given they are both orbiting the sun at different speeds.)

  17. Maybe, maybe not. If a single sat works in a world were space launch from Mars has become routine, the total cost of the sat and its field generating apparatus could be lower than the necessarily larger Mars bound setup. Maintenance costs in orbit could even be lower.

  19. I think they anticipate a thermal runaway from even a little atmosphere, given that it would be mostly CO2. But, yes, expecting just ending stripping to restore an atmosphere on a human timeframe seems… optimistic.

  20. I expect inflatable domes for agriculture, of the sort I discuss, with deployable foil insulation. (Think “space blankets”.) Most of the heat loss would be radiative in the thin atmosphere, and it only takes a few microns of aluminum to stop that.

  21. Or you can just put the thing on Mars itself, in which case it’s easily accessible for maintenance, anchored without any need for thrusters, and so forth.

  22. So… now you know you have to put a space weather sensor network in a wide orbit around Mars to help decide when to switch the array on and off or counter-thrust. Those cubesats wouldn’t break the bank and nudging satellites photonically with externally powered laser thrust will be a well established tech before we actually build this. Jim Green might indeed be on to something.

  24. OK.

    So we have a deep space probe, that has a giant magnetic coil on it, but not the power source required to energise it.

    And we dock this probe to a space station that does have a huge power source on it, located sunward of Mars. And over the course of a year or so we energise said coil to produce a planet sized magnetic field.

    This sits there, protecting the Martian colony, during quiet solar periods.

    Then, a huge CME suddenly appears. We undock the deep space probe and allow it to be carried away into deep space, thus launching the deep space/Oort cloud/gravitation focus point/whatever mission that has been on hold for several years.

    Meanwhile, all the Martians have retreated to the underground shelters and only come out at night when they’re safe from the sun.

    Then we start charging up the next probe to provide another round of protection.

  25. Does anyone have a link to this “add magnetic field, the atmosphere magically returns” paper?
    Because the skimming rate of 100s of millions of years seems far too low for just turning it off to have any effect.

  26. The issue is that the solar wind strength isn’t constant. You can’t just position your magnet to balance against it, because it fluctuates.

    It fluctuates a LOT. You get solar flares and things and the wind strength can shoot up by orders of magnitude.

  27. Night-time temperatures on Mars are typically -70C or less. Thin, clear domes will lose too much heat and freeze the plants.

    I don’t actually expect anyone to build see-through domes like in the pictures above. What I expect is dirt and rock-covered domes, with smaller windows to pipe in sunlight from heliostats (steerable mirrors)

    That approach provides radiation and thermal control, *and* some protection from meteorites (common at the inner edge of the Asteroid Belt, where Mars lives) and rocket/tank farm accidents.

  28. The half-life of the Martian atmosphere against solar wind stripping is on the order of 500 million years. That calculation comes from the fact that there was once enough atmosphere for running water, and it is not all gone yet, and also from current loss measurements from the MAVEN spacecraft

    So it just doesn’t matter on the timescale of human civilization. If we are around long enough, or *Mars* is around long enough, we can top up the atmosphere, or dome the planet to prevent leakage.

    On time scales of a million years, we may end up mining Mars into non-existence to build space colonies. Atmospheric leakage then becomes moot.

    Beyond the middle of the Asteroid Belt (i.e. Ceres) the Solar System is chock full of water and other ices. That is simply due to it being cold enough out there. So topping up the atmosphere won’t be a problem.

  29. Since the L1 is basically a balance between the Sun and Mars,
    Could the Parking spot be attenuated with the Sun’s “blow” in mind and keep the probe a little closer to Either the Sun or Mars so that the end result is a true station keeping zone?

  30. I take it all back. I just found the solution to the cosmic radiation problem: Build your colony over one of the local crustal mini-magnetospheres, which produce protecting fields nearly as strong as Earth’s global one.

    This was discovered by the Mars Global Surveyer Spacecraft in 1996: “Mars’ crustal magnetic fields themselves are a mystery, because they are nearly as strong at the surface as the Earth’s magnetic field – a few tenths of a Gauss, compared to a third of a Gauss on Earth. Plus they are arrayed in east-west bands of alternating polarity, extending for over 1,000 kilometers north to south like a bar code across the planet’s surface. Scientists still do not know what materials produce this strong field, or why it occurs in alternating bands.

    Mitchell said the crustal fields have been there for four billion years, fending off the solar wind. Despite this protection over part of the planet, however, the solar wind is still considered the most likely cause of the loss of Mars’ atmosphere.”

    ….So with that solved, Musk will simply have to find one of these protected areas which also has ice in the soil. In these locations, the silica gel, and a very strong dome, should be all that’s needed…….https://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2000/12/15_mars.html

  33. True, but you can’t decide where to put them. They’re where they are, and that’s that.

    But a good candidate for early exploration, that’s for sure.

  34. I found the solution to the cosmic radiation problem: Build your colony over one of the local crustal mini-magnetospheres, which produce protecting fields nearly as strong as Earth’s global one. This was discovered by the Mars Global Surveyer Spacecraft in 1996: “Mars’ crustal magnetic fields themselves are a mystery, because they are nearly as strong at the surface as the Earth’s magnetic field – a few tenths of a Gauss, compared to a third of a Gauss on Earth. Plus they are arrayed in east-west bands of alternating polarity, extending for over 1,000 kilometers north to south like a bar code across the planet’s surface. Scientists still do not know what materials produce this strong field, or why it occurs in alternating bands.
    Mitchell said the crustal fields have been there for four billion years, fending off the solar wind. Despite this protection over part of the planet, however, the solar wind is still considered the most likely cause of the loss of Mars’ atmosphere.”…..So with that solved, Musk will simply have to find one of these protected areas which also has ice in the soil. In these locations, the silica gel, and a very strong dome, should be all that’s needed…….https://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2000/12/15_mars.html

  36. I found the solution to the cosmic radiation problem: Build your colony over one of the local crustal mini-magnetospheres, which produce protecting fields nearly as strong as Earth’s global one. This was discovered by the Mars Global Surveyer Spacecraft in 1996: “Mars’ crustal magnetic fields themselves are a mystery, because they are nearly as strong at the surface as the Earth’s magnetic field – a few tenths of a Gauss, compared to a third of a Gauss on Earth. Plus they are arrayed in east-west bands of alternating polarity, extending for over 1,000 kilometers north to south like a bar code across the planet’s surface. Scientists still do not know what materials produce this strong field, or why it occurs in alternating bands.
    Mitchell said the crustal fields have been there for four billion years, fending off the solar wind. Despite this protection over part of the planet, however, the solar wind is still considered the most likely cause of the loss of Mars’ atmosphere.”…..So with that solved, Musk will simply have to find one of these protected areas which also has ice in the soil. In these locations, the silica gel, and a very strong dome, should be all that’s needed.

  38. “the magnetic field could be much smaller” seems to mean they are deflecting the ions more efficiently by being further away(edit: upstream). But that leaves the residents open to cosmic ions. Until the atmos forms.

  39. Quick look seems to rely puffing up” the field with the rings all along the lats, rather than a single eq plan. I feel like there may be differences between protecting the atmos from skimming and protecting residents from radiation, if given the atmos is not there yet.

  41. Not sure but it seems likely that a key reason for space based magnetic fields is that the magnetic field could be much smaller. That would be a big plus but even if that is the case it looks like there are other problems that may outweigh that benefit and make them less feasible than ground based ones.

  43. Not to dispute, but with the (simple case) single equatorial loop, aren’t the “poles” being hit much larger than with Earth’s condition? Or is like a center of mass thing, where the shape of the field stays the same? (which seems wrong to me!).

  44. No, it works fine as just a loop around the equator, though the actual proposal was several loops, spaced out at different latitudes.

    Yes, the planet still gets hit at the poles. *Earth* gets hit at the poles, that’s why we have aurora.

  45. You *could* use 10 meters of silica, for domes that require significant radiation protection. Balloon domes with internal stays would be more efficient for agriculture, I don’t think the surface ionizing radiation level on Mars is too high for that, once the UV is out of the way.

    10 meter silica domes would be hard enough to fabricate, (We couldn’t make on Earth with current technology!) that you’d just bury the dome under dirt and use artificial lighting, instead.

  46. I could have perhaps done *the math* many years ago, but it also looks like the magnet has to be small and in the middle of the planet to protect the surface, right? Otherwise the sweet zone is way out in space, with the whole planet being hit as still under the pole of the magnet. Now, that may yet protect the atmos from being skimmed, however.

  47. It was proposed to be stationed at L1. That’s not exactly “connected to a planet”; L1 isn’t stable, objects that drift away from it don’t automatically return.

    Yeah, if you built it on the planet, as I support, it would be fine.

  48. This would be very cool if could do it on the moon. Strap on a pair of wings in 1/6th gravity and go flying, à la Robert Heinlein (and Icarus and Leonardo da Vinci).

  49. Takes a lot of thrust to move something heavy that is connected to a planet. Without seeing the math I remain skeptical that the sun blowing the things off the planet would be a problem.

    I do think it is more likely things would be underground (and necessarily smaller) and sunlight piped down via fiberoptic. This also allows one to control the heat. It’s possible now to run a fiberoptic to your basement from outside and put sunlight down there, without all the heat. The trick is keeping the mirrors focused as the sun moves across the sky and that’s doable, just expensive on a small scale basis (like for your home).

  50. I suppose the two plans could be combined. The only issue I see is that creating a magnetic field around the moon would channel the radiation to the magnetic poles; This happens on Earth, which is why you get the aurora, after all.

    But without an atmosphere, wherever you put those poles would be heavily bombarded by radiation.

    Find, it’s just rock, but we actually would not want the lunar north and south poles to be bombarded that way, because it would interfere with accessing the water traps there.

    So for magnetic purposes, you’d want the loop to be perpendicular to the spin plane. While for solar purposes you want it to coincide. Conflicting requirements, alas.

  51. “We could do it on the Moon, too, if we wanted.”
    Shimizu Lunar Solar Power idea does exactly that, but to transmit power from the currently sunlit half of the Moon to the central (as seen from Earth) radar/transmitter. Could also provide shield!?
    Anyway, Shimizu does not look good compared to Criswell. Shimizu still requires the same area of cells, but they need the conductor long distance to get to the radar. And it cannot really start until the whole conductor is done. Criswell has cells close to the radar, which is advantaged by being spread out on limb slopes, yet appearing continuous from Earth’s fixed position in the lunar sky.

  52. It’s infeasible because the thrusters would have to be so massive, and running all the time, that you’d just throw up your hands and put the magnet around Mars’ equator, instead.

    And, how fast do you think you could ramp down a field like that, anyway? They store energy, you know, where are you going to dump it? The system in question would store about a year’s output from a decent sized nuclear reactor. The dump system would have to get rid of that in the space of hours or maybe days, CME don’t provide a lot of warning.

    Our spacecraft are not routinely flung out of the solar system by such events, because our space craft do not have magnetic fields the size of planets around them. Such fields have actually been proposed as propulsion systems.

  53. It’s a NASA study, and NASA does stuff in space, I guess.

    I’ve read it, it’s a lousy study, doesn’t take into account the momentum picked up from the solar wind. And that’s a BIG omission, that renders the proposal infeasible. The magnet would just get blown away by the solar wind unless it had enormous station keeping rockets.

    People have actually run the numbers on doing the field by running field coils around the equator. OK, technically the study on this I’m familiar with was for Earth, to see if it would be possible to replace Earth’s magnetic field during a field reversal. But it’s applicable to Mars, too.

    It’s perfectly feasible given modern superconductors. We could do it on the Moon, too, if we wanted.

  55. So, why does this plan not do it? I was simply expressing surprise at the plan presented, with the magnet far away.
    And that opens questions as to the relative role of atmos v magnet in protection, esp on Earth. (edit: and cosmic v solar ions) I’ve heard the pole reversals are not that bad for the surface, as the atmos stays put for that short time. Yet also, ELEO seems protected with only the magnet, indicating each is sufficient alone, for the present.
    The magnet is needed long term to protect the atmos from “skimming” loss by low angle ions hitting the edge. They still hit, but are heading down at the poles and don’t knock atmos molly queues away.

  56. If it is infeasible and it could work with massive thrusters, your argument appears self refuting. Furthermore, the magnetic field could be turned off during a CME. Our spacecraft are not routinely flung out of the solar system by such events.

  57. > Why not put the magnet on Mars?

    There are two ways to do this. One is to reduce the iron oxide that makes Mars orange to iron, magnetize it, and point all the magnets in the same direction. The other is to lay superconducting cables along lines of latitude (east-west) and run a current through them

  58. Who will prohibit it? Remember there is no such law prohibiting building infrastructure. Plus this is the best way forward that will actually contain humans and germs inside.

  59. Mars requires about 2.6 times the mass of air to get the same pressure. But even the same mass of air would be more effective shielding for Mars, because the atmosphere would be much deeper, giving cosmic ray showers more time to extinguish.

  60. Thin domes, either 2-3 cm of aerogel, or like the illustrations above, are idiotic from a structural standpoint. The difference between sea-level Earth and ambient Mars pressure generates a lifting force of 27 tons/square meter. This would have to be resisted by the dome structure and a heavy foundation. To get a sense of what this force means, standard home floor loading is 0.2 tons/square meter. So you need 135 times as much structure as to hold up a residential floor.

    The answer is heavy domes, either weighted down with local soil and rocks, or using *thick* glass. 27 tons works out to 10 meters of silica/quartz. A thick dome will provide radiation protection, and hold heat much better than a thin one. If the weight of the dome equals the pressure differential, the fabricated structure for the dome can be minimal.

  61. As I noted back when that L1 magnetic shield was proposed, it’s not feasible: Deflecting the solar wind produces thrust, which will be radically variable. L1 isn’t really stable, it doesn’t HOLD anything placed there, so the magnet would need station keeping thrusters, and rather massive ones.

    Even if you equipped it with thrusters capable of handling normal operation, the first time it got hit with a CME, it would be on a one way trip out of the solar system.

    You’d have to put it on the planet itself, to have a decent anchor. Which means it has to be a loop all the way around the planet.

  62. Never will be allowed to do such infrastructure before a clear understanding about possibility of life on Mars..

  63. I love the artwork but I think it does not have to be a dome.  Could be just rectangular flat roof structure aka gigafactory built with silica aerogel reinforced with thick glass and polycarbonate.  If the structure and the tiles is robust enough they will resist the outward pressure.  You could have many internal columns to hold the roof in place.

  64. Err’bodeh’s mama on the NASA Human Performance Centrifuge! … There was no way I would have been able to resist getting in on this. xDDD Thanks for letting me twelve years old, again LOL.

  66. Until the first rock falls from the sky through the bad vacuum that some prefer to call ‘martian atmosphere’.

  67. Given that Mars’ gravity is less than half Earth’s… I would think that to get the half the atmospheric pressure would take even more tonnes of atmosphere per square metre of ground.

    So… I’d think that the amount of radiation blockage you get from 10 tonnes of air is equal, regardless of what pressure that air is at.

    So that implies that 1/2 atmosphere of pressure on Mars would mean more gas per square metre, and hence more radiation shielding, that we get on Earth.

    The magnetic shielding is a different matter. A sunwards shield does nothing to protect you from stuff coming from another direction.

  68. My vague impression is that radiation is (mostly) stopped by a combination of

    • Earth’s atmosphere
    • Earth’s magnetic field

    And I’m sure I’ve seen ideas being floated about running some superconducting cables around Mars’ equator to generate a planetary magnetic field.

  69. I agree with the slow stripping by solar wind. That is what I remember hearing. But then, like your question about step 2, “Simulations indicate that within years, the planet would be able to achieve half the atmospheric pressure of Earth.” would not come from stripping being stopped, but from ?
    Anyway, Earth gets cosmic(?) and solar ion protection because the magnet surrounds the planet from within, rather than blocking/protecting from a distance. Or is the atmos our cosmic protector? My orig question refined. Assume magnet, but not sure.
    anyway, Why not put the magnet on Mars? Or a pair on the poles? Would the planet block it? Probably an old/answered question.
    Both Mars transit ship and Mars habitat designs have magnet protection ideas that should also aid permanent Space habs, until they make enuf slag from processing to hide behind.

  70. If that’s true, which I hope it isn’t, forever, then Mars civilization would always have to be largely underground, or buried.

  71. In terms of the radiation, the magnetic shield would definitely not block out as much cosmic radiation as does Earth’s magnetosphere, if very much at all, really, as it comes from all directions, and the atmosphere would not be nearly as protective ass is Earth’s. Considering both those problems, I have a hard time seeing life, and especially human life, thriving on the surface even with the atmosphere and the magnetic shield. Sadly.

  74. I think the idea is

    1. Block the solar ions, which are the vast majority of the radiation, even if not the most energetic and dangerous.
    2. Because solar ions are no longer stripping the atmosphere, the natural levels of outgassing will start to build up the atmospheric pressure.
    3. WIth more atmospheric pressure, the surface temperature goes up.
    4. With more surface temperature, the outgassing accelerates.
    5. Steps 2-4 repeat until you get about 1/2 Earth atmospheric pressure. About the same as El Alto, a city of a million people, so that is clearly habitable.
    6. That much atmosphere will block a lot of the high energy cosmic rays, though not as much as on Earth. (Though maybe as much as at El Alto?)
    7. It’ll still be freezing cold by Earth standards, so put up some huge aerogel domes to act as literal greenhouses.

    You need the magnetic shield to get the extra atmosphere. You need the atmosphere both to stop the cosmic rays, to provide at least some of the heat, and to give you the atmospheric pressure. You can’t keep atmospheric pressure in with just a few cm of aerogel, it’s far too weak.

    Of these steps, the one I’d like to see more detail on is step 2. Because I vaguely recall that the rate of atmospheric stripping was some minute amount like 1% per million years or so. Enough to strip a planet that’s 4.5 billion years old, but negligible on a human scale.

  76. I love the idea. But just so nobody overestimates the effect of the silica gel on radiation, it only protects from UV waves, but not at all from cosmic and solar ionic radiation, which is by far the deadliest threat to life. Without that magnetic shield installed at L1-Mars, and a very powerful one that would not only deter solar ions but the far more powerful cosmic ions, the silica gel domes would remain totally lifeless. And that magnetic shield wouldn’t be cheap, to say the
    least.

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