Breaking beds on Mars, in which the protagonist of the film "The Martian" succeeded, is possible in reality. Water from lava tubes, fertile soil, methane bacteria and chlorofluorocarbons to raise temperatures, mini-biofactories and extremophile lichens - we talk about the most realistic crop technologies on Mars.
Growing potatoes by pouring urine on them, as the protagonist of the book and film "The Martian", Mark Watney, did not work in reality. This can kill most higher plants: there are too many salts in urine, and nitrogen is in compounds that are not directly absorbed by plants.
Shot from the movie "The Martian" (2015)
Watney's method of producing water from hydrazine without laboratory equipment is self-destructive: this type of rocket fuel is extremely toxic.
Water on the Red Planet can be found without human casualties. Despite the fact that those streams of liquid water, the traces of which were recently presented by NASA, are too saturated with perchlorates, poisonous to plants, Martian lava tubes (subsurface caves) with a volume of millions of cubic meters, according to planetary scientists, contain a significant amount of water ice, free of perchlorates or completely demineralized.
Fertile Mars
Promotional video:
What's with the "soil"? A team led by Dutch ecologist Wieger Wamelink bought artificial soil samples from NASA that are chemically identical to the Martian and lunar regolith. On them, as well as on the ground from a depth of ten meters, a significant number of plants were sown, including ordinary tomatoes, watercress and field mustard.
They poured them with demineralized water, corresponding to that which can be obtained from lunar and Martian water ice. The results were extremely unexpected: many plants, including the three indicated species, not only germinated, but also gave seeds, and best of all - on the "Martian" sample.
The "lunar" soil did the worst, but the terrestrial one took the honorable second place - and this despite the moderate content of aluminum and perchlorates in the simulator of the Martian soil. Again, the researchers emphasize: since there is practically no nitrogen in the Martian atmosphere, on the Red Planet itself it is highly desirable to introduce excrement into the soil containing the required amount of this element.
Pots with "Martian" and "lunar" soil
The simulation of Martian agriculture in the experiment was carried out at 20 ° C and the earth's atmosphere. The Wamelinka group believes that the plants on Mars will be grown in glass-covered (UV-stopping) greenhouses with heating and additional lamp illumination. All this is very far from what the once popular song promised us: "And apple trees will bloom on Mars."
Non-lifting virgin land
Since there is soil and water that can support plant growth, the natural question arises as to whether it is possible to spread terrestrial plants outside the sealed greenhouses, where additional gases will have to be injected, necessary to ensure normal pressure.
Elon Musk's recent half-joking proposal to light two artificial pulsating thermonuclear suns over the poles of Mars that would melt frozen carbon dioxide, unfortunately, is hardly realistic. On the polar caps, according to today's data, less than 20 thousand cubic kilometers of dry ice.
The most powerful thermonuclear bomb ever created by man ("Kuz'kina Mother"), when exploded, evaporates less than a quarter of a cubic kilometer of this material. Of course, in the 1960s, Kuz'kina's mother was blown up, artificially reducing its capacity by half, but even without this, it will not evaporate more than 0.5 cubic kilometers.
Mars Colonial Transporter as seen by an artist
The most powerful missile designed today is calculated by the same Elon Musk for the Mars Colonial Transporter project. However, it will not be able to deliver more than 100 tons of cargo to Mars at a time, which is approximately equal to the weight of the four aforementioned relatives of Kuzma.
Melting just two cubic kilometers of dry ice per super-heavy rocket means Musk's plan would require up to ten thousand flights (a million tons of bombs).
Recall that the delivery of a ton "Curiosity" to Mars cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and even if SpaceX manages to reduce the delivery price tenfold, a thermonuclear spring on Mars will cost mankind 100 trillion dollars. Is there no cheaper way?
Ready Martians
This summer, at the American Congress of Microbiologists, Rebecca Mickol of the University of Arkansas reported on a fun experiment: four extremely common anaerobic bacteria were subjected to pressure of 0.006 Earth's, which corresponds to conditions on the surface of Mars.
As it turned out, all these organisms are able to tolerate such changes without sporulation and not lose their ability to produce methane.
Previously, the same species, including Methanosarcina barkeri, have already shown that they are not afraid of extremely sharp fluctuations in temperature, and environments with a high content of perchlorates, and some of the terrestrial bacteria successfully feed on these very perchlorates, which are poisonous for you and me.
Methanosarcina barkeri
Importantly, all these bacteria produce methane, and Methanosarcina barkeri also produce carbon dioxide. Both the first and second are powerful greenhouse gases that can dramatically reduce heat loss on the planet's surface.
Alas, this does not mean that it is enough for us to bring M. barkeri to the Red Planet and calmly watch how it terraforms it. The fact is that most of these anaerobes require hydrogen, of which there is hardly a lot.
Finally, areas on Mars have already been discovered where there is a suspiciously high amount of carbon dioxide (seven times more than normal) and sometimes methane appears. A number of scientists blame the possible Martian analogues of M. barkeri for this. If they still haven't terrafomized Mars without our help, then they simply lack nutrients - for example, the same hydrogen.
In theory, one could try to create by genetic engineering a bacterium that feeds on perchlorates and is as resistant to Martian temperatures and pressures as M. barkeri, but in practice, we can talk about a realistic scenario of a microbial greenhouse effect that would make Mars as warm as Earth, it is too early.
Big chemistry
And yet there is nothing supernatural about making the open Martian surface suitable for terrestrial plants. At the moment, the greenhouse effect heats Mars (in comparison with the atmosphereless variant) by only five kelvin, while in the solar system there are examples of planets receiving hundreds of kelvin heating from greenhouse gases.
True, there are still few such gases on Mars: even by melting all the dry ice at the poles, the greenhouse effect can be doubled at most, which will not result in a radical increase in planetary temperature.
However, there is a way out. A number of gases do not transmit infrared radiation over a much wider range than carbon dioxide or methane. Lower chlorofluorocarbons strongly block its waves with a length of 7.8 to 15.3 micrometers, which is why the greenhouse effect from them is up to 30 thousand times stronger than from the same amount of carbon dioxide.
How much CFC will be needed to heat up to the melting of the poles is a difficult question, depending on how much frozen carbon dioxide lies beneath the surface of the Red Planet. Since the study of its depths has not yet begun, the quantitative estimates of ice volumes differ sharply.
Polar ice on Mars
According to the most optimistic calculations, even 40 million tons of these substances will be enough to melt not only the carbon dioxide of the polar caps, but also that part of the dry ice that is contained in the surface of the rest of the planet.
The melting of this entire mass will increase the density of the atmosphere to 0.3 of the earth's, which is several times higher than the Armstrong limit - the point at which saliva begins to boil on the tongue at 37 ° C.
In this case, not only the ability to walk the planet without a spacesuit will be achieved, but also a greenhouse effect sufficient to prevent the surface of Mars in the tropics and at the equator from being exposed to severe frosts at night.
But 40 million tons is too much to be delivered from Earth. This is only 60 times the average production of lower chlorofluorocarbons on Earth, where they were used in the production of aerosol cans until 1992. Organizing highly robotic chemical production on Mars is not as difficult as it seems - the specific gravity of fluorine and its compounds in the local soil is one and a half times greater than on Earth.
Martian greenhouse project
And all the same, we are talking about creating a large chemical industry there, which will have to work in a continuous mode for decades. Even if we start its work right now, carbon dioxide on Mars will completely melt only by 2075. But even after that, the factories should not be stopped: to melt all the water ice on the planet, it will take, according to various estimates, at least the same amount of time.
Theoretically, already from the moment the dry ice melts, Mars will become suitable for some terrestrial plants. Back in the 1970s, it was shown that some algae feel fine in pure carbon dioxide, without any oxygen. Cyanobacteria have similar qualities.
In principle, after reaching positive temperatures, such organisms can begin to produce oxygen on an industrial scale. But for this scheme to work, it will take a huge amount of time - perhaps up to 100,000 years. Well, we never see the planet green?
Throw a bottle
Something can be done now. The German Aerospace Agency in 2012 found that the arctic lichen, Xanthoria elegant, could well photosynthesize in the low latitudes of Mars (from +20 to -50 ° C). During the experiment, which lasted 34 days, the lichen not only remained viable, but also demonstrated photosynthesis at those moments when the simulated Martian day provided it with temperatures above zero.
It seems that despite the pressure of one and a half hundred times less than the Earth's, a fundamentally alien atmosphere, radiation and even ultraviolet light, some terrestrial photosynthetic organisms near liquid water may well exist on Mars right now.
Lichen P. chlorophanum on Martian soil
This possibility should be checked. This is why NASA is currently working on the Mars Ecopoiesis Test Bed initiative. Within its framework, they plan to send a container the size of a small bottle, equipped with a transparent lid, to the fourth planet of the solar system.
The descent vehicle will need to screw such an open-bottomed "bottle" a few centimeters into the ground in areas where there are periodic streams of salt water, and allow the local "soil" to get inside the object.
As the area next to the bottle passes through the freezing point of the water, the bottom of the device will let the liquid water through, allowing organisms inside to use it.
Extremophilic algae and cyanobacteria will be placed in an experimental mini-canister, which will be given the opportunity to prove on the spot their ability to photosynthesize under ultraviolet light and other Martian charms.
Mars Ecopoiesis Test Bed Container
In the next phase of the same program, NASA plans to create larger, sealed structures, covered from above, but freely receiving water and soil from below for their photosynthetic organisms.
In such closed minibiospheres, it will be possible to produce oxygen, which will be useful in the future for astronauts who land on Mars.
Oxygen biofactories can theoretically make life much easier for arriving astronauts, relieving them of the need to carry oxygen supplies from Earth.
Waiting for a superpower
Realistically speaking, one should only expect the first step of the Mars Ecopoiesis Test Bed to be implemented. It will require sending about a ton of payload to Mars, which is comparable to Mars rover missions.
In other words, in the coming decades, we will most likely reliably find out whether we have the opportunity in an isolated space to terraform a piece of another planet with terrestrial organisms.
More large-scale actions - the same package of astronauts - are not yet to be expected. NASA plans to fly to Mars in the same way as to the Moon - that is, on disposable rockets, perhaps only with the help of ion engines. Flights to the Moon cost more than $ 150 billion, and a trip to Mars for technical reasons will cost several times more.
The situation can change only if Elon Musk's Napoleonic plans are implemented, but when it comes to the influence of the personality on history, it is very difficult to predict in advance whether his grandiose projects will come true.
It is almost impossible to imagine that the American authorities will be able to allocate funds equal to the annual US military budget for the conquest of Mars. Something like this can only be expected if another superpower takes over, initiating a race of prestige.
However, now it is not the 1960s, there are no other superpowers on the planet, and, obviously, both manned expeditions to Mars and the first attempts to terraform it are postponed until their appearance.