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It is classified as a terrestrial planet and is the second smallest of the Solar System 's planets with a diameter of 6,779 km (4,212 mi). In terms of orbital motion, a Martian solar day (sol) is equal to 24.5 hours, and a Martian solar year is equal to 1.88 Earth years (687 Earth days).
One challenge is the extreme cost of transporting building materials to the Martian surface, which by the 2010s was estimated to be about US$2 million per brick. [6] While the gravity on Mars is lower than that on Earth, there are stronger solar radiation and temperature cycles, and high internal forces needed for pressurized habitats to ...
The gravity of Mars is a natural phenomenon, due to the law of gravity, or gravitation, by which all things with mass around the planet Mars are brought towards it. It is weaker than Earth's gravity due to the planet's smaller mass. The average gravitational acceleration on Mars is 3.72076 m/s 2 (about 38% of the gravity of Earth) and it varies.
The surface-area-to-volume ratio has physical dimension inverse length (L −1) and is therefore expressed in units of inverse metre (m -1) or its prefixed unit multiples and submultiples. As an example, a cube with sides of length 1 cm will have a surface area of 6 cm 2 and a volume of 1 cm 3. The surface to volume ratio for this cube is thus.
Mars has a higher scale height of 11.1 km than Earth (8.5 km) because of its weaker gravity. [5] The theoretical dry adiabatic lapse rate of Mars is 4.3 °C km −1, [129] but the measured average lapse rate is about 2.5 °C km −1 because the suspended dust particles absorb solar radiation and heat the air. [2]
Musk does have a plan for making Mars an attractive destination for long-term living: Terraforming, a hypothetical scenario in which humans make Mars more Earth-like by pumping gases into the ...
The surface of Mars is rotating at 0.25 km/s at the equator and the bottom of the space elevator would be rotating around Mars at 0.77 km/s, so only 0.52 km/s (1872 km/h) of Delta-v would be needed to get to the space elevator. Phobos orbits at 2.15 km/s and the outermost part of the space elevator would rotate around Mars at 3.52 km/s. [72] [73]
This would direct the sunlight onto the surface and could increase Mars's surface temperature directly. The 125 km radius mirror could be positioned as a statite, using its effectiveness as a solar sail to orbit in a stationary position relative to Mars, near the poles, to sublimate the CO 2 ice sheet and contribute to the warming greenhouse ...