Building a planet, the possibility, the benefits and how

[Marshalscienceguy]

Scientists are trying to figure out ways to save earth and to move to other planets if earth or earths atmosphere/orbit is ruined. If the magnetic field is created by our core we need to core to survive, we also are effected by the sun and the moon. The moon effects the currents and the sun gives us heat that we need. Our atmosphere is what protects us from debree and getting too much heat from the sun. Beneath the atmosphere is weather. Weather is effected by a number of things including what lays under our crust. We cant remove the sun, we cant remove the magnetic field, you can always stop things like earthquakes. So why would we want to move to a planet that probably has worse natural disasters? We understand magnetism so why couldn't we create an artificial magnetic field? We could make a ship where we could not only live on the crust but we could live in the core as and mantel as well. We could even make the outside of the ship heat resistant so we dont have to worry about being blown up by the sun when it implodes. Now I am not saying we can do this all now but considering they are putting so much funding into finding alternative planets why not just fund making a new planet? We didn't have enough water in certain areas so we created irrigation. Why does the same rule not apply to this? We have to worry about Earthquakes, Tsunami, volcanoes, tornadoes and hurricanes. We keep trying to figure out ways to stop this why not just eliminate them all together?

[`hýsøŕ]

how would you get enough resources to build such a planet? already there's limited space on earth

[Greg H.]

Well, for one thing, the engineering challenges associated with sending people to another world have already been solved - now it's just a matter of scaling them up to support more than three people at a time.

The engineering challanges of finding, harvesting, and assembling something that weighs [math]5.97219 \times10^{24}[/math]kg are so far beyond anything we have ever conceived, I doubt we'd know where to begin. Not to mention, building something that large would most likely result in an unstable orbital trajectory around the sun, which would be extremely bad.

[renedascientist]

you could have a modular design and send out sections of the "planet" rather than building and sending out the whole thing at once. you could have many expandable, interconnected pods that will eventually form the larger whole.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflatable_space_habitat

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/news/beam_feature.html

after the foundation was built, then a larger infrastructure could be assembled. other modules could be sent with "self sustained" biosphere or a small version like that of the aquaponics system http://theaquaponicsource.com/what-is-aquaponics/

this system could be used for CO2 filtering, food, and fuel for the "planet" to run on. (rocket engines and generators)

other modules could later be sent up with communications and computer systems, and others.

 

personally i think it would be better to build a structure like this on a small moon or large astroid then it could be transformed into navigable "planet."

the population count would still be small, but larger than the 3 or 4 of the ISS

[CaptainPanic]

I think `hýsøŕ addressed the main issue already: where would you find the resources for a planet? A planet is huge!

 

Even a dwarf planet, like Pluto, has a mass of 1.3 x 10²² kg. The crust of the earth has an average density of about 3000 kg/m³. We would therefore have to mine for 4.3 x 10¹⁸ m³ of material from our earth's crust to make a planet the size of Pluto.

 

To get an idea of just how much that is, we pretend we actually do this. The Earth has a surface area of 510072000 km² or 5.10072 x 10¹⁴ m². So, we would have to excavate about 8.5 km of the entire surface of the earth (including all the oceans) to make that planet. And then we would have to shoot all that material up into space, make sure it lumps together to form a new planet. And then we would have to find a stable orbit for it, where it won't crash into any existing planet.

 

I hope this answers why we don't "just make a new planet".

 

Frankly, I think we have a better chance to terraform Mars or the Moon.

[EdEarl]

Frankly, I think we have a better chance to terraform Mars or the Moon.

Moving asteroids to Mars, to increase the size of Mars, add water, and move it a bit towards the Sun, IMO, would be easier than making an entirely new planet. We are already studying how to move asteroids. We would need better robotics to do the work, and we are near to making robots that can build and repair each other; not an intelligent replicator, but manually programmed robots.

 

This process could remove many asteroids that might crash into civilizations on either Earth or Mars, and make the solar system safer. Would make Mars more attractive for development. Would take a long time; IDK how how much the bombardment would affect Mars. It might take millennia for it to cool sufficiently.

 

Unfortunately, all the asteroids amount to about 4% the mass of Earth's Moon, which would increase Mars mass less than 1%. To make Mars larger would require robbing moons from another planet, which requires more energy than moving an asteroid.