Terra-forming Venus vs Mars

Sticking with the format mentioned in the opening round. This round will be for me to point out shortcomings and oversights by my opponent's plan. I shall break this into two parts. First, problems with the solutions my opponent provided and second, problems with no solution provided. To the comments about short comings of Venus that my opponent mentioned, I'll be waiting until R4 to address them. Do not consider them dropped. 1)Problems with solutions my opponent provided. We shall first jump to the moon (I hope all the readers have practiced their jumping skills). First, we need to address the faulty assumption that the mass of the moon is required for the tilt. This is tied to the tilt, but completely. It is the gravitational effects of the moon which is needed, not just mass. So a lighter moon can be closer and a heavier moon can be further (as I did with mine). Second, we need to stop and look at these masses. The moon has a mass of 7.35e22 [1] to achieve its gravitational pull on Earth. The entire asteroid belt is only 3.6e21 [2], about 4% the mass of the moon. At that mass difference, this new moon would have to be less than 19 thousand km from the center of Mars (our moon is 384,000 km from Earth). We should note that this is very close to the Roche limit [3] of 10,600 km (how close a satellite can be in orbit before being torn apart by tidal forces). This number takes into account the difference of densities (Mars being 3.94 and the Asteroid belt being 2.07). The questions of "how" to form this moon will be brought up later, but we must ask which is really easier and requires less technology. Moving an incredibly large body or moving some not-quite-as-incredibly large bodies, collide them into each other without accidently harming anything? My opponent brings up the CO2. First, I'd like to point out that he has misread his source. It says that in winter, as much as 25% of the CO2 condenses at the caps, not that the atmosphere is 25% CO2. It is, in fact 95% CO2, just like Venus [4]. Moving on, he states that Mars will be easier but this is inaccurate. It is simply "quicker" since there is less to convert. He has not shown how it will require less technology, or more reasonable technology, only that there is less to do and Time is not one of our measuring sticks. This is the same regarding N2 in the atmosphere (though we will address an issue momentarily). My opponent also mentioned the water at the poles. Let us look further into this. First, we should note that only 15% of the polar caps are water ice, most is CO2 ice [5], and the estimated total water on Mars (all in ice) is 821,000 cubic km [6], or 8.21e17 kg of water. This may sound like a bunch, but it is less than 1/1700 the amount of water on earth. On a planetary scale, this is nothing, so water is still going to need to be formed in some way. 2)Problems not addressed by my opponent. We need to first ask, "How will you form this moon?" For Venus, Mercury is a single target to work on over time. It is large and very easy to find, on some nights, it is even visible to the naked eye from the surface of earth. However, my opponent is talking about rounding up ALL the asteroids to form a single (albeit very small) planetoid to use as Mars' moon. Will this be formed while still in the belt using Ceres as a core? Will you try to move Ceres (or another asteroid) into the lunar position and grow the moon from there? How great is the danger of trying to shoot millions of house sized asteroids across the solar system into a single spot. And how does my opponent plan on moving all of these? Namely the smaller ones? For the smaller ones, nukes would be too powerful. Even though this planet is less than 1/100 the size of Mercury, it will take over 10x the number of nukes to move it all. It won't it also take a vast amount of technology to plant all of these? The tech to land on an asteroid that is too small for meaningful gravity is far greater than that to move a single small planet. Sure, moving Mercury will take a boat load of time, but that is not something to worry about, the tech to do it is here now, and has been here for decades. Let us jump back N2, as I said I would. On Venus, we will actually be removing N2, though bacteria to make fertilizer for plants, however on Mars, N2 needs to be brought in. My opponent has not said where this N2 is going to come from. Not many planets have nitrogen on them, and taking from Earth can be very dangerous to life here on Earth. This N2 has to come from somewhere, you can't just snap your fingers and it is there. Now, we also have several issues not brought up at all at any level. Mars has an atmospheric pressure of 600 pascals [7] this same pressure at 90 km (about 55 miles) above ground [8]. Such little pressure that no meaningful life could breath. My opponent does nothing to remedy this atmosphere issue. Now, before he does, he needs to address the magnetic field issue, since without the protective magnetic field, and the solar wind will blow away (over time) any atmosphere that we try to form. Of course, this is another un-addressed problem, the core of Mars. This moon is too small to have any kind of significant effect on the spinning of the planet due to the conservation of angular momentum. The moon works for Venus because the planet is spinning so slowly that the moon cranks up the spin of the planet AND the core, but Mars is already spinning. So what will you do for the core so that you can hold an atmosphere? Another issue that was never addressed was the temperature. Mars is far too cold for liquid water to exist anywhere on the planet (and of course, the low pressure doesn't help either). My opponent offers no solutions to remedy this serious issue. Mars is colder than the Arctic in the midst of the coldest winter. As my opponent has said, Mars averages -90 C, while the coldest temp on Earth ever recorded is -89.2 C [9]. So as we can see, there are a number of issues that are left either unresolved, or not properly/completely resolved. Now my opponent should address my shortcomings in his R3 and answer these short comings in his R4. Now, my opponent brings up exploitable resources, though this is technically not part of the debate since this falls under economics. but since I have extra space, I will entertain these arguments, not for debate points but just to set the record straight. My opponent says that Venus is focused on the chemical of the atmosphere, but this is not true at all. Because of Venus' atmosphere, we cannot even see the ground to know what treasures it holds. However based on the formation of solar system, heavy elements (just like in a centrifuge on earth) form on planets closer to the center, while the lighter ones form in the outer system [10]. So it is more than likely that Venus (and Mercury, now the moon of Venus) will have large amounts of metals and other heavy elements. In an era of space travel these elements will be extremely valuable as there are three primary types of elements needed, metals for manufacturing, extremely heavy elements for fission (Uranium, Plutonium, etc), and extremely light elements for fusion (Hydrogen and Helium). Two of these will likely be able to be mined from the planets, and H and He come from the solar wind. [1] http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov... [2] http://www.sciencedaily.com... [3] http://media4.obspm.fr... [4] http://www.universetoday.com... [5] http://www.esa.int... [6] http://onorbit.com... [7] http://en.wikipedia.org... [8] http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com... [9] http://en.wikipedia.org... [10] http://astronomyonline.org...