Ice bodies in the asteroid belt would be easier. Ceres looks like it has a lot of ice.

Mars has ice caps that could be melted by orbital mirrors.

Isn’t the issue more that Mars does not have a tectonically active core, such that it does not have a protective magnetic field like earth. Any water we put on it will eventually get blown off by solar wind just like most of its it’s original atmosphere .

>lugging huge chunks of ice with multiple rockets would be "easier" than from other celestial bodies in our solar system.

Escaping Enceladus' feeble gravity isn't the issue. Dragging that mass out of Saturn's gravity well is. Enceladus is deep down that well, orbiting Saturn considerably closer than the Moon orbits the Earth.

Enceladus is fairly deep in Saturn's gravity well, hence the tidal heating that drives its activity. There's numerous icy moons that would be easier to get ice from, even moons of Saturn.

> On the other hand, would it be easier to collect millions of tiny bodies in the asteroid belt of even mine ice from Ceres due to vicinity to Mars when aligned?

The Belt asteroids would be a relatively expensive place to get ice, in part because they're closer. It takes a substantial delta-v to reshape their orbits to hit Mars.

Kuiper belt objects could be sent in towards Mars for less than a km/s of delta-v, if you're willing to wait a few decades for them to arrive. Note that getting out there to send them back is also going to take a long time.

Eventually, yes, over multi-million year time scales.

Yeeaaah, but what a damn view.

Why would you go all the way to Saturn for ice to terraform Mars when Ceres also largely of ice is in the Asteroid belt? Or at least use Europa another ice ball world orbiting Jupiter?

I thought about the Saturn gravity well issue, but wasn't sure how deep in Enceladus was. So I guess any mission to Enceladus would be a one-way trip, at least for the near future. Which ice moons would be easier to get ice from?

>The Belt asteroids would be a relatively expensive place to get ice, in part because they're closer. It takes a substantial delta-v to reshape their orbits to hit Mars.

What about reshaping their orbits into Mars' orbit so that Mars hits them?

As I mentioned in my post, it was strictly a gravitational consideration as Enceladus is much smaller than those and I thought it would be easier to get ice and water with the cost of time. Other commenters, however, have pointed out that although Enceladus' gravity is miniscule, it is deep in Saturn's gravity well which would be an extreme challenge to escape. Would that be a similar case with Europa and Jupiter? I guess Ceres would be the best choice then.

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Yeah, Enceladus is only 800 million miles away. Piece of cake.

The scale of the solar system is crazy. You’re talking about a body that’s usually further from Mars than the Sun. If I’m writing a sci-fi story I’m using comets. They get closer regularly enough on the time scale that makes sense.

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Crash ten thousand asteroids into Mars and you: 1) slightly increase it's gravity closer to 1 g, 2) launch particulate matter into the atmosphere to make it thicker and potentially warmer, 3) bring in other minerals and water, 4) reshape the landscape clumsily but selectively, 5) potentially collapse tunnel systems, 6) reveal some but erase much geologic data, and 7) reduce the overall mass of the asteroid belt.

But do the same with Enceladus and you lose a unique moon that could be used for something else entirely.

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Might be easier to develop technology to move a body of that size, and just make the whole thing leave Saturn's orbit with a collision course for Mars.

Satun is a huge gravity well - moving a moon is one thing, but it is still under the influence of saturn's gravity, and lifting it out would be a task.

Crashing asteroid belt objects into mars would be far easier.

Ceres is a great object to colonize by itself - crashing it into mars seems wasteful.

but they are also so small and not gonna refill any lost oceans

Enceladus - too deep in the gravity well to not make a trip one way.

Asteroid belt objects - they are likely space building material for future space travers - would be a shame to drop them into a gravity well, even mars, which will never get a protective atmosphere anyway.

Colonising mars is such a short term small minded objective that will not really buy anything than a training camp for a future real goal

Very true, very true! I've always envisioned the belt as the first real shipping yard, interplanetary dock, and shipbuilding facility for our solar system. Keeping it free floating to create ships entirely in space, that's the real benefit. Have you read the Artemis by Andy weir?

An atmosphere will take millions of years to be stripped away by the sun's radiation.

Actually, NASA have figured that that placing a sufficiently powerful magnet in orbit at the mars L1 Lagrange point would be enough to act as an artificial magnetosphere and protect mars from the effects of solar winds

source

It's the same thing, just a difference of timing. I suspect that having them hit Mars has a higher chance of success though, because I think Mars would be moving sideways slower than they'd be accelerating towards the inner solar system. Think trying to time walking fowards into a perpendicularly thrown ball, rather than having the thrower lead it and bean you in the side.

Energetically, hoisting half of Enceladus out of the second largest planetary gravity well in the solar system is an extremely bad idea.

Pelting Mars with comets is a much easier way of doing it.

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I wasn’t suggesting that. Far easier to use a mass driver to send a stream of ice meteors from Ceres to Mars.