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Mars Terraforming Debate
blackhelicopter writes "This Guardian article describes the implications of terraforming Mars - the subject of NASA's forthcoming debate. Quote from Dr Lisa Pratt, a Nasa astrobiologist, concerning life probably already on Mars: 'We simply cannot risk starting a global experiment that would wipe out the precious sensitive evidence we are seeking'."
Any life we haven't found *yet*. Granted, chances are slim, but because we can't see it, doesn't mean it's not there.
Be very, very careful what you put into that head, because you will never, ever get it out. -Thomas Cardinal Wolsey
I find it incredible that terraforming of Mars is considered an alternative today. Expect an enviromental discussion that will exceed that of the Kyoto protocol many times over.
Are we really "viruses", as agent Smith puts it ?
The Raven
It's interesting to me that now that all of Earth now is claimed by some group or another that we would begin moving to other planets. I find it hard to believe that we would form any type of terraforming operation without some political agenda. I'd imagine that being the country to pioneer such an operation (ie: USA) would be the biggest stick policy of them all.
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ultimately providing mankind's teeming ranks with a new home. and That is why it is dreadful. We are mucking up this world at an incredible pace at the same time that we are talking about screwing up another planet.
I agree. Unless humans learn to take care of what they have, we should not even begin to consider "jumping planets" just 'cause we don't want to fix up Earth. It sort of puts us in the position that the aliens from Independence Day held -- we just move from planet to planet raping it for any of its resources and then moving on.
Absolutely and completely scary.
I say terraform it as soon as we can.
Human survival, wellbeing, and expansion should trump all other concerns. We are the measure of all things.
Second, a species with only one planet is necessarily at greater risk than a species with two planets. We need the insurance policy.
I love science. But the value of another planet to our species is greater than the cost of losing the odd microbe or two that might be found on Mars.
I say, "Let's Go!"
Man, this post made me think of "Total Recall".
It'll never happen. Why? Terraforming is a multigenerational undertaking. So far the only human creation to span many generations has been religions and the wars they involve.
Mammoth tasks like terraforming a planet simply cannot be done given the current state of human psychological development. Who here would work on a project that would only be fulfilled hundreds of years after your death?
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How to terraform a planet:
Step 1: Devise a reliable method of getting vehicles to the planet.
Step 2: Terraform the planet.
I think we should work on step 1 before worrying about step 2.
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Edward Everett (1794 - 1865)
Until now, the mankind was unable to do any sort of "terraforming" of our planet. So I would say that currently we are doing the opposite thing - the percentage of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere is growing every year! Soon, Earth will look like Mars.
When we will proof that we can do any controlled changes at macro scale in our atmosphere, then probably terraforming would be a solution... for our planet first.
Don't try to use the force. Do or do not, there is no try.
I think what is interesting is that if the earlier article regarding methane emissions being discovered on mars. If it does turn out that it is coming from some lifeform , no matter how advanced or primitive. Is it ethically right to go marching in there and changing the whole ecosystem?
Where does one draw the line?
On earth humans have caused extinctions many times over. It is only in recent years that we try to preserve waning species. If we go to another planet we should take these philosophies with us wherever we call our home; if we do decide to colonize or terraform another planet it should be done in away that doesnt destroy any life that already exists there.
I do have another opinion though; Mankind is life, a very successful form of life. It seems to me that our aging planet is not going to last forever; Man has always looked up into the stars in awe and wonder, I beleive that it is our destiny to be up their in the heavens, that is the ultimate challenge life has to face. Just because we call Earth "Home" , why should it not be the case that the universe is our "Home" ?
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I say we shouldn't attempt to terraform Mars during the first 50 years of human habitation of the planet, during which time we can scour the planet for evidence of life or past life as well as recording the entire planet's condition with the cameras attached to our spacesuits' helmets. Well, I guess most of the exploring would be better accomplished by wheeled robots.
Phillip
You could terraform a planet without touching a vehicle on the surface. One idea that has been around for a while is steering gas-rich comets and asteroids into mars. Another "easy" way would be to crash a bunch of carbon blocks into the surface.
The technology is there to at least try some of this stuff, the application just hasn't been tried yet. Since it would take decades, maybe centuries, of doing this to get Mars livable it wouldn't stop advanced efforts when their requisite technology arrives.
Long-term, humans will have to leave this planet at one time or another. While I agree we could be using this one more efficiently, and that terraforming is a bit too far off to worry about just now, debating the morality of terraforming is just silly. Survival of the fittest!
So the question is, how can it be done in the least destructive way? That's what they should be asking. I'm guessing that the best thing would be to do as much exobiology research on it as possible before anyone starts thinking about terraforming. We may not be able to stop terraforming but at least we could learn as much as possible before the Mars environment is thoroughly corrupted with Earth biology.
Also, terraforming may be a long and slow process. Earth and Mars organisms could coexist for a long time during this process. In fact, if Mars organisms are related to Earth organisms, they might play a role in terraforming.
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Long ago scientists knew that the planet has a cold core. How much lower would our oceans be if we had a cold core allowing water to seep under ground. Mars may have had less water and other starting materials becuase earth and venus got most of them.
Jupiter in the same manner sucked up more gasses and is larger than Neptune or Uranus.
It's possible that mars when it's core was warm enough had some shallow seas but then again it also had a thin aphmosphere from the beginning without enough gasses emitted from the time the crust cooled and volcanoes adding to the mix before plate tectonics on the planet shut down which it did so long ago there's no mention of any existance of faults on the surface of mars.
It's my belief that mars by the time it became tectonically stable and then dead not enough gasses were emitted into the aphmosphere to keep things thick enough for water vapor to exist on the surface in large amounts and much of it possibly has been blown into space. The rest is liquid deep below and frozen into the surface.
For any useful terraforming on the planet once we were able to pollute the aphmosphere to thaw things out a bit we'd still be faced with bringing water to the planet. One way would to have robots digest asteroids and free hydrogen to build giant ice blocks and hurl them to the planets surface or bring ice from europa and send it down to the surface of mars.
But first even the thought of terraforming another planet to live on would involve a huge change in the econmic forces driving the world economy. So I doubt it'll even begin during my lifetime.
Wow...the amount of anti-human hate going on in this discussion is mind-bending.
First of all, it's not as if we're about to start terraforming tomorrow. Even the most zealous of the Mars exploration types (i.e. Robert Zubrin of The Mars Society) don't think it should be done until the planet has been explored in depth.
Secondly, keep in mind that we'd really be *fixing* a planet that nature has let die here. All of our new data shows that Mars was once a very life-friendly planet, with oceans, etc.; now it's a cold, nasty place that's only getting more inhospitable as time goes on. Doesn't it make sense to reverse that process and expand the realm where life is viable?
Third, it's not like doing this would necessarily kill any life forms on Mars anyway. The process would be extremely gradual -- we're talking hundreds of years or more here -- giving microbes, etc. plenty of time to adapt. Heck, we might be giving a boost to what life there might be on Mars.
Fourth, it's not as if we've even ruined Earth anyway. People tend to forget that one solid volcanic eruption puts out more CFCs than all of human industry ever has. Environmentalists greatly overstate humanity's impact on the planet in their effort to take down industrialized society. We're not doing that poorly here, and what we've learned on Earth would certainly be applied to terraforming of Mars. Heck, the Red Planet might end up being less polluted/more natural than Earth!
So just calm down a bit and take a moment to consider some of the positives that might come with terraforming Mars. It could be a Really Good Thing.
How To Get Humans To Mars
Though the scientific potential of finding alien life is staggering, and one should do everything first to detect it, when push comes to shove, it's a matter of balancing things.
This implies that, when reasonable efforts are done to detect it, and none are found, I think one should go through with human colonisation. Anything else would amount to a moratorium: you are NEVER completely sure that there is no niche somewhere on a planet where life (as we know it or not, jim!) exists. Infact, those planets that have the most potential to sustain (alien) life, will often be those that have the most potential to be fterraformed.
And, while some may dispute it, human life (or at least intelligent life) comes first, period. We can see that in the reality on earth as well. While I'm all for procedures and inventions that reduce the medical experimenting on animals, for example, I do not subscribe to the idea of the ultra-greens that evrything in this regard should be forbidden and abolished. It's doubtfull that animal experiments can be totally abolished, and I have no problem with the necessary experiments, to ensure medicines are as safe as possible for human use. I think most would agree. This established one thing clearly: ultimately, humans come first (at least over non-sentient other beings).
In practical terms, what does this imply? Well, science certainly must have it's shot, and the discovery of alien life would be wonderfull and potentially very important, even in our daily lives. But, if, say, in 20 years of searching, nothing is found, and one can be reasonably sure that there is no life (or it's in such remote niches that it will not rapidely be contaminated anyway), I think one should start terraforming the planet, so that humans (and the earth ecology to sustain them) may thrive on another planet, thereby augmenting our survival (and that of the earth ecology).
If life IS found, however, things become more difficult. Certainly the timeframe in which to colonise/terraform would be much longer (if ever), depending on the level of alien ecological presence on the planet (small niches or not). Certainly, one could not let that alien life die, so, even if one did decide to terraform, then only after an artificial, viable surroundings is developped (sort of closed zoo, thus), where the alien ecology may be sustained indefinately.
I'm not going into safety-concerns here, since that's another topic.
But let's face it: when/if there are other alternatives in keeping alien (non-sentient) life in existence, then one should do that and go on with what is of most use to the human race anyway.
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well, I think she might be right. but I wonder, when was the last time that ethics ever made a difference?? they'll do it anyway...
I hope I didn't brain my damage.
Basically the only way to ensure the long time survival of the Human Race (or some mutated form thereof) is to get onto a few other planets.
If the sole bastion of humanity is Earth then we will get wiped out sooner or later.
Absolutely. We have already made that decision, billions of times. We do it every single day, every time you put a piece of meat in your mouth you make that decision.
Where do you draw the line? You draw the line with the greatest force. If they have the greater force you die and they live.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
No, it is decades-premature-story about a decision that can't be taken without information that will be learned these coming decades.
Seriously, no one will start changing Mars without decades of research first. That is just too stupid -- it's a straw man.
And, if they do terraform Mars sometime in the future, the decision will be based on information we will have learned between now and then.
It would be better to discuss how to lower the price of getting hardware into orbit. Before that happens, anything else are just pipe dreams and a very few tons of exploratory robots.
Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
This is yet another case where debate now will lead to frameworks that can be used to address the question once the necessary information is there. This is important, because the earlier we start thinking about something, the less likely it is we'll mess it up once we can do it. If only they started this kind of debate sooner for other technologies... nuclear weapons/energy, for example...
What Future?
There is one major problem with Terraforming Mars. Mars has a virtually non-existant magnetoshere. the Magnetosphere deflects the solar wind arround earth. This means prevents large ammounts of hard radiation from reaching the surface (which would kill basically all life as we know it) as well as preventing the solar wind from blowing away the atmosphere. This is the leading theory about why Mars atmoshpere no longer exists to the degree it once did.
One day we will all move to mars, and use Earth as a big garbage dump...
Except for the 'move to Mars' bit, we are already at that point...
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-- Ryan Stiles
The Kyoto protocol was controversial because it was attempting to balance man's need to survive financially with man's need to survive ecologically. Nobody wants to destroy the planet, but everybody needs to eat. Plus it came to symbolize a much larger conflict between the Bush administration's self-interested unilateral actions and much of the rest of the world's eglatarian compromising.
Terraforming Mars has none of the risk of the Kyoto protocol. Whether or not we terraform Mars is basically irrelevant to the ecology of Earth. Likewise, as there isn't a strong industrial base on Mars it is pretty financially irrelevant in the short term. Essentially, the two groups debating this will be hardcore scifi geeks (like me) who want to colonize the universe and hardcore environment geeks who feel that everything is better untouched by human hands.
Personally, I feel that terraforming Mars will give Earth agencies experience in the vital area of fixing ecological nightmares. As for "screwing up" Mars, people generally point to Earth turning into Mars if we mess up this planet sufficiently. Mars is just about the worst-case scenario. Personally I'd rather have the fallback position that if global thermonuclear war were to wipe out our planet, at least life from Earth would continue somewhere. That, and the ample room such a planet would provide plus the enduring environmental investment sounds quite worthy of the loss of pristine, untouched land berift of much beyond sterilized soil and historical rocks. Much of the research into that could take place LONG before we are in a position to actually terraform the planet. After all, two out of three landers agree that the planet is a pain to get to, with one abstention.
Now, where the heavy debate is going to lie years down the road is whether or not terraforming a planet gives ownership rights to that planet, and if, for example, the people living on that planet have the right to cede from an offworld government that made life on that planet possible. That's going to be a huge, sticky debate mixing fundamental beliefs about freedom and democracy with entrenched and represented commercial interests and unspoken debts to powerful entities.
The ______ Agenda
Terraforming other planets is fun, but first we really need to terraform Earth. Between desertification, global warming, overfishing, pollution, habitat destruction, slash&burn traditional farming, chemically-enhanced modern farming, genetic engineering of plants, moving species between ecological niches, sooting up the polar regions in ways that reduce the planet's albedo, and a lot of other things those pesky primates have been up to, this planet is becoming significantly less Earth-like. It's time to look at changing that. There have been a range of proposals to do things about it, from the Kyoto politics to Giant solar reflector shields in space to Bruce Sterling's Viridian Manifesto.
Bill Stewart
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Personally, I'd like to see us gain the ability to create human-friendly environments away from Earth. But discussing the issue seems to me to be a pointless exercise, best left to university classrooms and NASA cafeterias during lunch hour.
Why? Because we're not even remotely capable of actually doing any terraforming, for several reasons:
1: We don't have the technological ability. We have some marginal sense of what might work, and lots of good ideas, but we're decades away from having the technological means to terraform.
2: We don't have the economic ability to terraform. This is the real kicker. Assume that even a modest, trial attempt to terraform would cost $100 billion dollars; since we don't have even $1 billion to spend on it, we're at least a hundred orders of magnitude away from having the financial means to engage in even the most limited terraforming.
3: We lack the political & social drive to engage in terraforming. Assuming (1) and (2) from above were no longer problems, there would need to be a strong, global, urgent demand that we engage in terraforming. There are many ways we might conceive of this happening, but none of them are apparently in the works, as of yet. This may change, but if it did, then we could spend time then debating the ethics of terraforming Mars, which, by then, will have been investigated to a much greater degree than it currently is.
I figure we ought to be spending our money, time, and effort doing that investigation, rather than getting worked up over ethical debates that, ultimately, don't matter one whit.
No gods, no demons, and no masters. Secular Humanism!
Yes, terraforming Mars is clearly the solution to all our problems.
After all, if you have exceeded the credit limit on one credit card, it's not that your spending habits are out of line with your income, it's that you need another one, right?
Folks, if we can't live well and sustainably on a planet as nice as Earth, adding Mars into the mix won't help.
I hear a lot of people saying we should fix up this planet first, but even if this planet was in perfect condition our population would eventually grow to numbers the Earth can't support.
We are intelligent beings who (in my opinion) should be able to expand into space. I'm not saying we recklessly terraform planets and suck up all of the resources. We need to realize what we've done to Earth and not do it again.
On top of our species very survival, Mars can also be used as a pad for further space exploration in our never ending quest to find extraterrestrial life, specifically intelligent beings like ourselves.
and we're going to go bring a dead planet back to life?
Damn, we're destroying Earth at a faster pace than it can repair itself and we won't accept responsiblity to care for it, how the hell are we going to take care of TWO planets?
Not to mention, what if there is some dormant life there? Do we destroy it to replace it with life as we see fit?
And what about the soil? Are there nutrients there to support growing plant life? I doubt it. How will we fertilize the soil? Who will pay for all this pie in the sky BS..
We better take care of what we have here first.
Fix Earth first. Once it's gone, it's gone.
Extinction is forever..
I think too many people read too much science fiction. Science fiction is escapism from reality.
How very StarTrek of you. Unfortunately you assume that other build blocks for life were tried and abandoned on earth. Most biologists do not believe that.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I fail to see how a round of navel-gazing before any actual information was available would have done anything to alleviate the irrational paranoia surrounding nuclear power. If anything, it would have just made things worse, drawing conclusions before there was any real data to work with.
No need to go inflicting our half-assed terraforming technologies on poor lil' Mars for a few millennia yet. As well as the immense amount of time it'd take (can't just go steering hunks of Saturnian rings into the Arean deserts and throw some seeds after them - or put a hand into a slot in a big alien machine and have instant atmosphere - yes, even if you are Arnie), the amount of useable surface area that resulted wouldn't be that spectacular anyway.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
New worlds are not opened and settled by ethicists, moralists, or other contemplative types.
Columbus, Pizzaro, Cortez, and others were interested in wealth, property and prestige.
And they weren't worried about who or what was destroyed while they were acquiring those things.
Exactly like those planning sessions, what you said here sounds eminently reasonable but it isn't.
The earlier you start thinking about something, the less data you have to work with, the more likely you are to paint yourself into a bizarre political corner long before real information surfaces. Once trapped there, it can be surprisingly difficult to reaim things in the light of reality as it arrives.
I vote for writing more scifi stories about it. That way the people that matter can read them and think, "Wow, what an imagination this dude has... hmm..." and start thinking about it without making any formal political commitment to a particular approach, and without establishing the foundations for a sea of red tape like that hobbling NASA and the US public space effort as you read this.
Think about Arthur Clarke or better yet Robert Forward. I can't see us running into a RocheWorld or Dragon's Egg anytime soon, but Forward's laid out some "harmless" thought experiments well in advance, realistic in that they don't posit any serendipitous breakthroughs in physics (barrinjg catastrophe, we could probably build his whacking great frequency multiplier a decade or to from now), and we seem to be surprisingly close to having his "Christmas Tree" avatars in real life.
When real data rolls up, untenable positions can be quickly and quietly dropped, and public positions can be established and worked from which bear at least a passing resemblance to Real Life(tm).
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
this is beyond premature.... I doubt we even have the technology for this. besides, we can barely terraform the earth. Let alone mars. (most deserts are still expanding lil by lil every yearr. How about we do something about that, among hundrerds of earthly projects instead of worrying about Mars. Well teraforming mars anyway)