Terraforming Ganymede

[Selena]

Hello all!

 

I am in the midst of writing a young reader's Sci-Fi book and am having difficulties with some of the hard and theoretical science aspects! Is anyone here willing to help me out?

 

The sub story is based around terraforming Ganymede and part of the problem I'm having is in finding general terraforming theories. I've found tons of specific stuff for Mars, the moon, and Venus, but most of that doesn't help me!

 

So, the main points I'm stuck on currently are:

1. Increasing Ganymede's gravity without altering its orbit or destroying it
   
2. Creating an atmosphere (I've got a good idea for this, and will go into details if asked)
   
3. And, creating a permanent heat source
   

Any questions, insights, opinions, etc would be greatly appreciated! Thanks everyone

[YT2095]

for #1 you Cannot increase the grav without adding Mass, and by Adding mass, you`ll affect its orbit, there`s no way around this at all.

 

sorry and all that....

[Daymare17]

1 is pretty much impossible, sorry.

 

For 2 and 3 I suppose you can do what they are planning for Mars, build greenhouse gas factories on the surface. This creates atmospheric pressure amd traps sunlight to heat the moon up. Once the ice has melted you can drop bacteria and algae to create oxygen. Look in the "terraforming Mars" thread for details.

[insane_alien]

can you not make a mini dyson sphere around the planet to hold in an atmosphere? its more fesable(sp?)

 

whats your idea for making an atmosphere? i'm interested

 

fusion power and electric heaters you can get the fuel from jupiter just send down some big gas collectors to skim the jovian atmosphere and filter out what you don't need.

[Selena]

So, for starters, all of this is completely impossible given the time frame I'm using in the book and current technology. (I feel the need to state this because I've only been on this site for 2 hours and I already look like a moron! Normally it takes me much longer to accomplish that! )

 

Ganymede already has a negligible oxygen atmosphere. My though is that you find a way to make the atmosphere stay put (increase gravity, put up a dome, whatever) and then heat things up a bit. You melt some of Gan.'s ice stores, creating H2O; you burn the H2 to increase heat, and release the O into the air. Then you pump in some He (helium) from Jupiter's atmosphere and you're good to go. The end atmospheric goal is 40% oxygen, 59% helium, and up to 1% of other - non toxic preferably - gases. Also, you want to keep the atmospheric pressure low (thus the higher O content) because it saves you work when you're creating an atmosphere. The only problems are that oxygen is highly flammable, and helium causes voice distortions (kinda cool, but maybe not).

 

So, what problems are there with this scheme that I'm not seeing (other than the things I'm avoiding, like Ganymede's gravity )?

[insane_alien]

right first of all burning H2 requires oxygen which is counter productive, try using fusion reactors to provide the heat. if your going to insist on increasing the gravity of the moon then here is how you do it.

 

1.collect practically all of the major asteroids from the asteroid belt and the jovian asteroids plus a few of jubiters smaller moons.

 

2.clump them all together (gravity will do this for you) put it in orbit around jupiter and let ganymede crash into it

 

3.besides the fact that it is now nolonger ganymede you have increased gravity.

 

4. you might want some oceans so why not crash Europa into it as well

[Selena]

Well, that's defiantly one way of increasing the gravity... But I don't think that's going to work for me

 

Most likely for this I'll make something up (I was hoping to avoid that)... What about changing the rotational speed? Centrifugal force works against gravity, so if you slow down the speed of the rotation, would you have marginally higher gravity?

[Xyph]

Centrifugal effects would probably make too little difference to be noticable - on a highly speculative note, though, you could try something like inserting a lump of degenerate matter (neutronium, quarkonium - probably the latter would be better since it's less likely to destabilise) into the core. I'm not sure you wouldn't just end up with a black hole, or what other undesirable effects it might have, but at least you'd be able to keep Ganymede looking pretty much as it does now if it worked. Getting it there probably wouldn't be too much of a problem either, since it would just fall towards the core anyway, but there might be seismic effects on the way.

 

If you increase the gravity, the orbit is going to be altered, though - there's no way you can avoid this.

 

Heating it up is probably going to require an orbiting artificial sun of some sort.

 

 

...Helium? That's going to be unhealthy on the vocal cords.

[Selena]

I'll accept changing the orbit, so long as what ever I decide to do doesn't guarantee and degrading orbit!!

 

Helium doesn't actually damage the vocal cords (or so I'm told), the effect is caused by sound traveling faster through He than N or O. I played with the idea of adding equal amounts of Sulfur Hexafluoride to balance things out, but decided against that!

 

I am still unsure what to do about heat considering the time frame... Less than 100 years in the future. Jupiter is a heat source, and if the change in mass (for extra gravity) causes Ganymede to move close to Jupiter, that's one possibility but not nearly enough because I don't want it that close! I don't like solar mirrors, and I am hesitant about relying on industry or greenhouse gases... Hmm

 

I do like the idea of using neutronium or quarkonium to increase the gravity... That just might work... Hmm

 

Thanks so much, you've given me a lot to think about!!!

[[Tycho?]]

Less than 100 years in the future you're beat for any sort of terraforming. In that time frame any colony would just have self-enclosed structures, and probably not very big ones either (100 years is not really much time considering the magnitude of the task). Terraforming is a very time consuming task, and one that would require very large feats of industrial production as well as technological advance.

[Selena]

I'm not worried about my time frame - it's sci-fi remember - and the story line is strong enough to support the science. My main concern is getting the science as close as possible. I don't want to violate the laws of physics or thermonuclear dynamics, etc, in the story. I will of course have to make most of it up, but I want those things to be based off of current scientific theory or fact.

 

So, are there any other relevant theories (no matter how implausible) that might help me in this endeavor? Any other ideas or suggestions for my main three problems?

1. Increasing Ganymede's gravity
   
2. Creating an atmosphere
   
3. And, creating a permanent heat source