(Kinda like someone once did with attempting to terraform Pluto, and they just made it the same size as Earth. Otherwise, when I increased it's mass, it's size would increase, too.Īnd while I could easily terraform the Moon by making it become an Earth-like planet, that would defeat the purpose of the experiment. Well, the thing is, I wanted to lock it's size. Rather, you have to take into account these facts. Originally posted by BlueMarble:Locking the size is NEVER what you'd want to do when terraforming the moon. Select auto orbit and afterwards everything should be completely fine. Keep it around 4.49 - 5.89 moons of mass, and have its orbit around 25.9 days. Solution to #3 = Do NOT make the moon extremely massive. Whenever I want to keep the moon in orbit around earth, and have it terraformed, I increase mass, and the earth tends to want to go binary with the moon. Removing atmospheric pressure does trap in less heat, but it does decrease ESI and Life Likelihood. Whenever I terraform one of my objects I tend to try to find the median between low albedo and high albedo, to get the perfect temperature. If your terraformed moon ever tends to get to hot, try increasing albedo, and if it gets too cold, decrease. Solution to #2 = Increasing/Decreasing Albedo, or removing atmospheric pressure. The moon has varying temperatures for day/night cycles, ranging from 150 *C to -200 *C, which can lead to some problems in your terraforming. The lowest mass you can have before water evaporates is 4 - 4.49 Moons, so around Mercury's mass.Ģ. The Moon can hold onto an earth-atmosphere INGAME, but any water you add will evaporate, as the moon's gravity is just too small to hold onto any water. Rather, you have to take into account these facts.ġ. Locking the size is NEVER what you'd want to do when terraforming the moon. I'm also still not sure why the temperature kept going up, despite being the same distance from the Sun as Earth is. I would have though if the Moon's gravity was about the same as Earth's, it would hold an atmosphere. I'm sure there's scientific explanations for this I'm overlooking, but I'm not sure what's wrong here. If I reduce the mass to reduce the gravity, it won't hold an atmosphere anymore. Once I got that dealt with, I noticed that the surface gravity was much higher than Earth's (9 m/s versus 33 m/s). (I guess we can technobabble it away by saying it was infused with dark matter, or something)īut, when I added atmosphere (and magnetosphere), I eventually had to raise the mass to roughly 1 Earth before it could hold an atmosphere.īut for some odd reason, the surface temperature was staying at 160F, forcing me to have to move it's orbit around the sun further out to try and compensate (about where Mars's orbit would be). Mostly, I went with locking it's size, but raising it's mass to try and increase it's gravity (as I know it's normal gravity is too weak to hold an atmosphere) (I obviously moved it out of Earth's orbit, to prevent any gravity messups) For laughs, I tried to terraform the Moon into a habitable body.