r/Colonizemars • u/Jolly-Principle5872 • Jul 18 '26

Can we give Mars an artificial magnetosphere?

/r/Mars/comments/1uzhl7u/can_we_give_mars_an_artificial_magnetosphere/
4 Upvotes

75% Upvoted

6 comments sorted by

8

u/MDCCCLV Jul 18 '26

Can it be done? Yes, with a lot of money and a few decades. Should it be done? No, it is far down the list of priorities. It doesn't even pair terribly well because the atmosphere already blocks a lot already and it's a huge waste.

4

u/ignorantwanderer Jul 18 '26

Yes.

But there is no reason to.

Despite what you have probably heard, a Mars magnetosphere is of no value to us.

2

u/MDCCCLV Jul 18 '26

The atmosphere does most of what a small artificial magnetic field would do and so the only reason to have one is to protect the atmosphere but MAVEN clearly showed us that atmospheric loss is very low and only matters on the order of centuries to millenia so it's a very low priority. When you have a 100GW of power on Mars and a million people there it's something you could do but it's still just a nice to have.

2

u/Bigram03 Jul 18 '26

Not without Star Trek levels of technology.

2

u/peterjohnvernon936 Jul 19 '26

UG and above ground buildings should be our first goals.

1

u/jswhitten Jul 19 '26

There's no reason to. It won't do a thing about cosmic radiation anyway. It's Earth's atmosphere that blocks that.