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Houston_Here t1_iu4kuki wrote

Reply to comment by Stavinair in Quakes on Mars reveal there may be magma beneath the surface | New Scientist by GullyShotta

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.

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Stavinair t1_iu4p561 wrote

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?

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Houston_Here t1_iu4xx4c wrote

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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Stavinair t1_iu68x4a wrote

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

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Houston_Here t1_iuhjyg0 wrote

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.

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toodroot t1_iu6o5oj wrote

> 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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