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Robert A. Heinlein - atmospheric processor question
bit:
In 'Aliens 2', they use atmospheric processors to convert the alien moon's noxious atmosphere to make it breathable, "Takes decades," Van Leuwen tells Ripley. "We call it a 'shake and bake' colony."
S-F writer Robert A. Heinlein was -among other things- a mathematician.
I vaguely recall that he once calculated that with X number of giant Aliens-type 'atmospheric processors' (written a couple or three decades before 'Aliens'), seems to me he 'crunched the numbers' and figured it would take -X number of years- (he gave a specific number which I forget) to make the atmosphere of Mars breathable.
Does anyone have the direct Heinlein quote and actual info on this please?
If he put it in a story, what book?
'When Mars had water' (courtesy of Rense.com & Dees); my only comment on the picture is that if it had water it must have had water vapor clouds, which -at least on Earth- are white.
CWuestefeld:
This doesn't answer your question, but....
In the novel Red Mars, Kim Stanley Robinson discusses an approach that is probably both faster and more efficient.
They distribute a lichen everywhere they go on the planet, leaving behind the means to pump oxygen into the atmosphere. Every one of these little things grows and multiplies, powered just by the existing environment and sun. And that multiplication means that once things get going a little, you've got a huge mass of little factories converting atmosphere for you, all for free and at an ever-increasing rate.
MilesAhead:
I read a SciFi novel maybe 6 months ago. I don't recall the author or title, but it was all about diverting comets to Mars to get the water from the ice. A byproduct would be a thicker atmosphere.
Naturally there are some shenanigans to do with using the comets as weapons for ransom etc..
bit:
This doesn't answer your question, but....
In the novel Red Mars, Kim Stanley Robinson discusses an approach that is probably both faster and more efficient.
They distribute a lichen everywhere they go on the planet, leaving behind the means to pump oxygen into the atmosphere. Every one of these little things grows and multiplies, powered just by the existing environment and sun. And that multiplication means that once things get going a little, you've got a huge mass of little factories converting atmosphere for you, all for free and at an ever-increasing rate.
-CWuestefeld (March 20, 2015, 03:51 PM)
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Yes, I was going to suggest something along those lines as a viable alternative in the form of air-born microorganisms, but the lichen sounds much more interesting. After all, lichen grows on rock, and the surface of Mars -which is close to the same surface area as all of Earth's dry land- is one big stretch of rock.
I read a SciFi novel maybe 6 months ago. I don't recall the author or title, but it was all about diverting comets to Mars to get the water from the ice. A byproduct would be a thicker atmosphere.
Naturally there are some shenanigans to do with using the comets as weapons for ransom etc..
-MilesAhead (March 20, 2015, 05:40 PM)
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Mars could certainly use the water.
Someone I know says he can't recall where & when Heinlein published it either, but tells me Heinlein was an engineer for the US Navy, not a mathematician per se.
When Heinlein 'crunched the numbers' for using mechanical atmospheric processors to make the atmosphere of Mars breathable, it seems to me he had to come up with an awful lot of giant units, and even at that, the time required was measurable in thousands -if not tens of thousands- of years.
After all, on a Martian global scale, you're talking an astronomical 3-D volume of air to process.
But the precise amount of time and numbers of processors escapes me.
The ^lichen method would actually be a very good approach, although current GMO abuses with Franken-foods have given the subject of genetic engineering a bad rap.
x16wda:
The ^lichen method would actually be a very good approach, although current GMO abuses with Franken-foods have given the subject of genetic engineering a bad rap.
-bit (March 20, 2015, 06:21 PM)
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Yeah, GMOs... ask the Thrints what happened to their food animals, the frumious Bandersnatch, that their genetic engineers, the tnuctipun, created for them... ;D
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