Stavinair t1_iu4p561 wrote on October 28, 2022 at 3:08 PM

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

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?

Houston_Here t1_iu4xx4c wrote on October 28, 2022 at 4:07 PM

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.

Stavinair t1_iu68x4a wrote on October 28, 2022 at 9:27 PM

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

Houston_Here t1_iuhjyg0 wrote on October 31, 2022 at 11:52 AM

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.

toodroot t1_iu6o5oj wrote on October 28, 2022 at 11:24 PM

> Could nuclear perhaps satisfy the requirements?

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