Terraforming Mars. No, the sun won't blow away a Martian atmosphere. Not right away.

I see this idea come up every time there's talk about terraforming Mars - that the solar wind will strip away any atmosphere we manage to install, thus rendering the entire idea pointless and futile.

Thing is, that's not how it works. Not really.

We have a few very theoretical ideas about how Mars could be terraformed, and they do all have a number of hurdles, but the solar wind is very, very low in the long list of "reasons the universe wants us to stay in our room".

This is typically how people present the idea of the solar wind stripping away Mars' atmosphere. We go through all the trouble of putting a bunch of perfectly fine water and oxygen onto Mars, and this asshole sun comes along and blows it away.

Right. It does do that.

But it does it at about 9 000 kilograms (~20 000 lbs) a day. Holy shit, that's a lot, right? That's like, ten thousand pizzas.

I've run some numbers, and with the disclaimer that I am neither an astronomer, a mathematician or really even all that good with numbers, I estimated that a Martian atmosphere, with a pressure similar to Earth would have a mass of 710 000 000 000 000 000 pizzas.

I'm willing to admit that these numbers could be grossly incorrect, but not-incorrect-enough to mean that it wouldn't take -millions of years- for the solar wind to blow away a recreated Martian atmosphere.

So, what are the hurdles that actually keep us from creating Planet Bob in our own backyard?

Like the man said,

"Nothing is impossible[...]. What you want is simply expensive."

All the commonly cited hurdles to Mars exploration and beyond have solutions, either already in use, in testing or on paper. Thing is, NASA and other space agencies have limited budgets that needs to support dozens of experiments across the solar system (and further). They (usually) need to provide some kind of return on those experiments in order to secure more funding, and there's just no need to go to Mars and build a bunch of water parks right now.

So how can you help get people - maybe yourself - to Mars?

Push your politicians for more funding to your national space agencies. Join said agencies, do some science. Fly some rockets. Make sure to carry your PowerBook 5300 with you in case of alien invasion.

THE END.