Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

zimirken t1_iy4dx7i wrote

It was just some random comment on reddit. I did find a discussion of the concept here though: https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=45398.0

They estimated 10GW, which is a couple nuclear powerplants. By the time you're running transmartian cables, you'll have the infrastructure to make big nuke plants. The magnetic field needs to be big, not necessarily strong.

1

Flowchart83 t1_iy4e83l wrote

It wasn't the concept of using a giant electromagnet that seemed off to me, it was the wattage. 10GW I can believe, 100kW I would find hard to. Also, since mars is smaller than earth and further from the sun it wouldn't need quite as powerful a field as we have.

1