How about a second moon

[HydrogenBond]

Here is a hypothetical scenario. What would happen if we could go to one of the distant planets and borrow one of the moons that has surface water. What we do is alter it orbit and slowly bring it into orbit around the earth. We would now have a moon that could support life. We would have to seed its oceans and plant things to bind the soil. If the plants thrived they would create an oxygen atmosphere. We can then add animals.

[Jay-qu]

and at the same time screw up the tides - who know the ramifications of messing around with the hydrosphere. Not to mention that it would be incredibly hard to do, how do you propose to move this moon?

[HydrogenBond]

Like I said it is hypothetical. I thought it would be fun to terra form something close by that already has the basics needed for life in place. As far as getting it here maybe a pulley system. I think someone who invented pulleys said if he had a place to stand he could move the world. A little moon should be a piece of cake.

[Tormod]

It would probably be a lot easier to work with the moon we already have, and it wouldn't screw up things so much (and apart from the fact that it's already in place, it's also conveniently close).

 

There's plenty of water there, as long as we can thaw the polar ice, and we'd need to keep it in huge closed basins but that shouldn't be too much of a hassle. In fact the base that is to be established on the moon by 2018 and thereafter will need to do this. I'd say we'll have a living moon within a hundred years. If you wanna tow one from elsewhere, you'd have to go at LEAST out to Jupiter (since the Martian moons are slightly uninteresting and Venus and Mercury have no moons) and that would take, let's be optimistic, a couple of hundred years to figure out. Hypothetically speaking, of course. :rolleyes:

[Jay-qu]

It would be cool to have a moon like endor :rolleyes:

 

Our moon is covered in the regolith, a thick layer of fine dust, wont this have to be cleared where you want water or else you would end up with a thick sloppy mud..

[Tormod]

Our moon is covered in the regolith, a thick layer of fine dust, wont this have to be cleared where you want water or else you would end up with a thick sloppy mud..

 

Like I said, you'd need to keep the water in basins (ie, pools which separate them from the environment). That not only keeps it from turning the regolith into mud, but it also has the added bonus of not having all the water vaporize into space in milliseconds. :rolleyes:

[Jay-qu]

..and would also have to be heated would it not? ice is pretty useless for drinking :rolleyes:

[Tormod]

..and would also have to be heated would it not? ice is pretty useless for drinking :rolleyes:

 

Man which part of "thaw" did you now understand? :hihi:

[Jay-qu]

yeah but after you thaw something if left at sub zero temperatures it is prone to re-freezing... :rolleyes:

[Janus]

Problems with terraforming the Moon:

 

It's to small, At 1/6 the surface gravity and 1/81 the mass of the Earth, you would have a devil of a time maintaining an atmosphere of any thickness.

 

It rotates too slow. You will have to find some way to "spin it up". Otherwise you are going to end up with 14 days of sunshine and 14 days of night. under present conditions the daytime temp on the moon reaches 212°F and drops to -300° at night. Now while an atmosphere(if you can maintain one: see above), can help moderate this, 14 days of sunshine and 14 days of night are going to lead to some hot daytime temps and cold nightime temps. Also, since weather is generally driven by such differential heating by the Sun, you are going to have a lot of wind to contend with.

[EWright]

Here is a hypothetical scenario. What would happen if we could go to one of the distant planets and borrow one of the moons that has surface water. What we do is alter it orbit and slowly bring it into orbit around the earth. We would now have a moon that could support life. We would have to seed its oceans and plant things to bind the soil. If the plants thrived they would create an oxygen atmosphere. We can then add animals.

 

Hmmm.. you realize we've crashed several spacecraft into Mars upon their arrival, right? Are you sure you want to try to put a moon into orbit around our own planet? :lol:

[Roadam]

About that roration of the moon. What if we redirect some astreoid or comet to push it into rotating faster. The moon is also lighter than venus which I was previously thinking of hitting with something. HEHE

[sergey500]

Not only would that completely distroy our already-destroyed-enviroment, but how do you intend to stop that moon? Make it move, I can understand...not really. How do you plan on moving a moon? And stopping in the Earth's orbit?

 

Sure, let burrow Europa from Jupiter, it won't mind. Then what? Its all ice on top, if you bring it closer to sun who knows, weak gravity will let the water evaporate.

 

Let just stick with our moon for now. Learn from mistakes and so on.

[Eclogite]

About that roration of the moon. What if we redirect some astreoid or comet to push it into rotating faster. The moon is also lighter than venus which I was previously thinking of hitting with something. HEHE

Two or three decades ago I had a dream in which I emerged from an underground chamber to discover I was on a terraformed moon. It was an especially vivd dream, so I spent sometime thinking about how one might achieve such a result.

 

I decided the best bet was to hit the moon with several, perhaps thousands, of comets at carefully selected angles and positions. The comets would be directed in from the Oort cloud by rocket power generated from their own mass. Once they struck they would not only spin the moon up to a more manageable day length, but would provide the volatiles for an atmosphere and hydrosphere (not to mention the organics for an eventual biosphere).

 

The problem is that the moons low gravity has a hard time retaining that atmosphere for more than a few thousand, or tens of thousands of years.

 

On the original point, if you move one of the ice moons in from Jupiter or beyond, you wind up with a massive water world, with an amazingly deep ocean. Kevin Kostner eat your heart out.:hihi: