Doubtful, because if Mars had a molten core, it would also still have a magnetosphere

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Yup yup. Which makes terraforming mars a impossible task. The sun would strip away the atmosphere. Although it might be theoretically possible to generate a artificial magnetosphere, the power requirements would be... incomprehensible I think. Far, far beyond anything we can generate at this time. Shielding space craft and suits is one thing, doing the same to a planet is an entirely different beast.

so melting the Martian ice to make an atmosphere is plausible?

Mars doesn't actually have to have a molten core to have some residual magma flows between the surface and the core.

Electrical Engineer here: I have run the numbers in the past. From some quick spreadsheet numbers, it's not the power but the size of the field that is needed. For example, you could run a superconducting tape around the equator of Mars and manage a reasonable field with human power levels in a realistic number of turns. Granted a high temperature superconductor to do so does not yet exist but the point is not the amount of power to generate the field but the size of the field that is prohibitive.

There are discussions of setting a device in space between the sun and Mars but that has it's own challenges/issues.

What would be needed for a planetary based shield? How many turns and how many megawatts would be needed? Could nuclear perhaps satisfy the requirements?

Hey, it would be cool if it does

It was a couple years ago we chatted about this on Reddit and I can't seem to find the thread now, but here were our inputs:

• Earths magnetic field strength
• Mars circumference
• Assumed 100kW solar (steady state feeding into the loop at various points so multiple solar fields and power injection points)
• Permeability (assumed for Mars)

Ill try to find the previous post. It has been a couple years but I remember N was something like 100 or 1000. for the coil to produce a sufficient field.

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It would be a balancing game: adding to the atmosphere what is taken away. The entire atmosphere wouldn't be "blown away" very quickly.

This is not to imply feasibility of terraforming mars.

Wow are you a rocket scientist

And Mars does have a molten core. Evidence was found since 2003 and again by InSight in 2021.

Liquid core does not automatically equate to an intrinsic magnetosphere.

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Thank you. I am very curious as to what it might take

> Could nuclear perhaps satisfy the requirements?

If you have a superconducting tape that goes around the whole planet, half of it is in sunlight.

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Yeah so to be clear, N would be the number of times the superconducting loop would need to circle the planet. We used superconductor so we could assume lossless. But you could do this with conventional materials also. It would just take a lot more.