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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'."
Given our experiences with Biosphere 2 and my own attempts at gardening, I think Mars is safe for a while.
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
Oh no! We'll destroy the non-existant yet vibrant ecosytem!
Is this political flamebait story day?
I don't see a problem in *creating* the life ourselves. Terraform the planet, destroy the existing life, and put some new junk there.
... that way people can have a guarantee that they'll go to heaven when they die.
That will also solve the problem of who "god" is (at least for the newly created martians). And it would make earth a sort of heaven from their perspective.
One day we will all move to mars, and use Earth as a big garbage dump...
I'll start a company that sends the remains of the dead back to Earth for burial
I would be the new Saviour...
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.
Hey, if we really are in one, I get first dibs on the free jetpacks.
Seriously, these guys seem to be using this as a ploy to get more funding. I.e., if the planet earth gets screwed up, we have a backup planet we can egress to..
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!"
Expect to see many more re-runs of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn in the near future.
1) Hire Hollywood strongman 2) Hire anorexic woman 3) makeup crappy plot 4) press wierd alien button in movie and release steam 5) ??? 6) profit?
Next thing you know those crazy Reds are taking down the space elevator and Mars is one moon short!
I stole this Sig
i think we should focus on cleaning this planet up before we decide to punt and basically make a new one.
I think we should make a backup before we start applying patches.
I'm not very concerned with messing the precious barren desert they have going there...not as much as I am about our lush diverse ecosystem anyways.
And if there is life there, well its sure to be better suited to its native environment than what we bring along. At worst we get our first scientific data about how our bacteria interact with xenobacteria.
You can't take the sky from me...
I get first dibs on the free jetpacks.
Not so fast there, Buck Rogers -- first you've got to fight (and defeat) bug-eyed monsters!
-kgj
-kgj
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?
------- "From bored to fanboy in 3.8 asian girls" ----------
I must have missed the terraforming in Bush's Mars promises. I think we have some time before the crews are ready to roll in which to look for life. However, in case any Martians object, we'd put the plans on display. (I suggest Grover's Mill, New Jersey, where they're sure to see it.)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
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.
Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.
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.
The issue of terraforming has been argued extensively in science fiction for years. The most notable books on the topic are by Kim Stanley Robinson, author of Red Mars, Blue Mars, and Green Mars (a hard-sci-fi trilogy on the terraforming of Mars and its consequences).
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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Kim Stanley Robinson wrote the book on this, literally, with his "Red Mars", "Green Mars", "Blue Mars" series several years back. The "Reds" believed the planet, and whatever life was on it, should be preserved. The "Greens" held humans could and should do what was in their best interests as a species. We even have Halliburton, Bechtel, or whatever corporations have bought the White House at the time represented :-/
The man who never alters his opinion is like the stagnant water and breeds Reptiles of the Mind -- William Blake
I'm pretty attached to my testicles. But if it is for the good of humanity, i guess i could stand a little seperation from them.
Do we call that recursively? Step 2 calls the whole thing once again, so, in our quest to terraform Mars, we'll just end up with a lot of ways to get stuff to the planet according to your plan.
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
Well what if WE [Earth] are the successful terraformation of life that once debated this same concept on Mars?
The reason they are not predominant to day is...
Their wildly inaccurate predictions of how long it would take for them to be able to convert our atmosphere. We are claiming decades but the realization was probably billions of years. And life on Mars slowly gave way before their world collapsed. Perhaps by a cataclysmic event or by way of nature [entropy].
austintsmith.com
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.
I believe that man will colonize space unless he's destroyed (globalwar, asteroid etc) prior to the required state of technology for interplantary colonization.
It's in our nature to expand, and the passion for travel and exploration is, in many ways, just expressions of our genetical make up (you can further complicate the issue by drawing social-cultural development into the argument, but I'll keep it simple).
It's a question of seeking out living space, and life's logic seems to will that organisms seek out living space that can accomodate them.
We will seek to populate areas that are more attractive than the alternatives; eg. mars being the obvious choice, if we can terraform it.
Will we learn to respect the indeginous life, when considering future homeworlds? I hope so.
Perhaps, when the required resources of terraforming a dead world seem a little more than those required to terraform a "near-compatible" world (mars) - we will allow ideals to influence such a choice. Saying that, I hope we'll distance ourselves from our history of colonization on earth; the enslaving and extermination of cultures and species.
..but will a few microbes stand in our way during the next 200 years? I doubt it. Lets try to find a few of them, before we do the "eden-thing"
Irony: We all die of some near-future disease.
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This will not work. The reason Mars has no atmosphere is it lost its magnetic field. That was one of the reasons. With no magnetic field the solar winds are able to slowly strip away the atmosphere. Also with out a magnetic feild to to delect the solar winds the surface is also bombarded by solar radiation wich the magnetic feild normaly delects. Earth would become like mars if are magnetic feid every entirely shut down.
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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!
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Kim Stanley Robinson has written an excellent science fiction trilogy on just this subject that I highly recommend. See this link for description and reviews: Red Mars
Isn't this just a tad premature? I mean, we haven't managed to get people to Mars yet. We're probably not going to find life there until we do, and since we've landed craft there already, there's a good chance that any life that is there has been infected already by terrestrial strains of whatever. Let's revisit this debate in about ten years when we've got some evidence and when we have some sort of space capacity that will allow us to get people back and forth to Mars. Until then, this and other articles like it are more than useless wanking that reminds me of the homegrown human-apologist "earth first" eco-wackos.
--
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In the latest issue of New Scientist:
"Schuerger says that of all the space probes sent to Mars, only the two Viking craft in 1976 were adequately heat sterilized. The procedures used for all missions since then, including NASA's two rovers and Europe's Beagele 2, would have left some microbes aboard. After studying whether terrestrial organisms can survive the procedures used to sterilize a spacecraft, he reckons there is a good chance some made it to Mars and might still be living there."
Life will find a way
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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Ah yes, we should not do anything until we (scientists) can conclude whether or not there is life on mars and it is unethical because it may destroy life.
Scientific knowledge is not an absolute for withholding developmental progress. The need for human life on Mars may (or may not) outweigh the needs for research on new life. There is no way to determine if humanity will need to live on Mars (nuclear war anyone?)
Also consider it will take decades if not hundreds of years for it to be technologically feasible to even consider terraforming Mars, not including the process of actually doing so. I certainly don't want to limit the future from considering it because someone says, "don't destroy the habitat of Mars man!"
It just maybe a ball of giant red dirt, noone really knows for sure and for someone to say that nothing should be done to terraform it is being just as selfish as someone saying we should terraform it what ever the costs.
Not to mention [a]ny life we haven't found *yet*.
I may be "jumping to conclusions" on this one, but do you possibly thing that's what she meant by 'We simply cannot risk starting a global experiment that would wipe out the precious sensitive evidence we are seeking'
Not only was that in the article, it was in the freakin' post. Anyone who modded you insightful should have the backs of their hands tapped hard with a spoon.
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Aren't we going to terraform Mars or Venus?
Terraforming is a long-term project requiring technology significantly advanced over what we have today. Even terraforming advocates admit it would take a minimum of 200 years to modify Mars to the stage where even simple anaerobic microorganisms and algae can survive. [Ref: Terraforming: Engineering Planetary Environments, Martyn J. Fogg, SAE Press 1995.] Space habitats, on the other hand, can be built with today's technology, and would be homes in space which people initiating the program could move into within their lifetimes.
Interstellar travel may someday become possible, but we have no guarantee that Earth-like planets will be as plentiful in the Milky Way galaxy as they have been in Hollywood, CA.
What advantages would orbital settlements have over a colony built on another planet?
Sunlight also drives the life-support system of the habitat, so the day/night cycle can be set to whatever is convenient. Compare this to the moon, where there is 14 days of continuous daylight, and then a 14-day-long night. Here, some alternate energy source would probably have to be used half the time.
Zero G would be a liability if there were no alternative to it. Astronauts experience loss of bone mass and muscle tone after prolonged exposure to weightlessness. But most of a space habitat would be under Earth-normal gravity, although there would be easy access to regions of reduced gravity and zero G (perhaps for personal flight). With planets, on the other hand, you have to take the gravity that's there, and it's often the wrong kind of gravity to keep us healthy. Lunarians or Martians would probably not be able to visit the Earth (nor accelerate at 1 G).
Seastead this.
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.
The human race will happily commit genocide in order that one set of genes will survive and another die out.
We are right here and right now wiping out species that compete in the food chain. Directly and through modification of their environment. Xenocide is a natural extension of this.
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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
Wired article
"Maybe there are spores in the Atacama after all.
That doesn't mean that we'll find them on Mars. But it sure does suggest that we might want to look. "
This debate is very funny...
:)
To terraform mars would be invested a trilion dolars and take 100 years, and nobody can or want pay to do it now.
To discover life there are various scientists working hard.
I believe we will have the answer to life question in 10-20 years at last.
After that, terraform discussion can start. Or maybe we will discuting a earth-mars elevator..
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.
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
Then, of course, there will be all those mars patents to file.
I'm allready getting ready to a couple. The first relates to the use of circular device mounted on a central pivot to ease the problem of transport over the martian surface, whilst the second one is all about the application of temperature elevated hydrogen hydoxide in space colonization.
And if you thought that was boring you obviously havn't read my Journal ;-)
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.
yes yes, very insightful comment..
-ashot
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.
So, keep your balls and eat more pizza!
And if you thought that was boring you obviously havn't read my Journal ;-)
That's not a risk i'm willing to take.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
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.
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I remember hearing a while back about a completely different approach to terraforming Mars. The idea was based on the observation that there are some deposits of very dark sand/dust relatively near the poles, so what we should do is strategically place a few nuclear bombs at those dunes, wait til the Martian winds are blowing toward the poles, and set off the nukes.
This would cover the poles with layers of dark material, which would then increase the absorption of solar energy, resulting in the melting/sublimation of the icecaps. The radiation factor would be insignificant in the scheme of things.
Does this sound completely nutty?
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"We simply cannot risk starting a global experiment that would wipe out the precious sensitive evidence we are seeking'."
Ladies and gentlemen, get used to this statement and others like it, because you'll never here the end of it. There are just some people who will never be satisfied that the sensitive evidence they're seaking will be found, or that mars must preserved at all costs, etc, etc, etc. You think it's bad here with actual life to preserve? Let's "destroy" an entire planet!!!
It may sound incredibly callous, but if they happen to find some microbe on mars, record it, preserve it and move on with the terraforming. We've done it with dams and hydroelectric power (benefits vs. environmental preservation), so lets just nuke the icecaps and get it over with.
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Not with masses of plant and equipment. The costs of getting them there are pretty trivial, we already have plenty of probes on the planet. They just have to be able to carry an aerosol canister to disperse them. The hard part is designing microbes which will thrive and multiply in the environment.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
If mars has life and that life has the same genetic makeup as what we have here on Earth, it does not necessarily mean that one has contaminated the other (that is a possible conclusion, even a probable one, but not the only option). Another conclusion that could be reached is that the genetic makeup we have here happens to be a particularly successful one (evolutionarily speaking), so most living organisms anywhere in the galaxy are likely to be similar to the ones we have here for that reason.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
So what happens if we find some small microbes living on Mars? Should we then forego any plans that might disrupt their environment? Even if it might save our species in the long run?
I interpreted it as "wiping out the evidence of past life", and I was addding "or life that's alerady there".
Be very, very careful what you put into that head, because you will never, ever get it out. -Thomas Cardinal Wolsey
The first thing we should do is transport some seeds, soil, a lot of water, and a big tank of oxygen to Mars. You don't have to terraform the entire planet. Just send an unmanned machine that will build a garden about 5 feet by 5 feet square. Some grass, a few plants, that's all. Put them there, release a little bit of water on the plants each day, and a little bit of oxygen. See if they grow. If it works, send another one with some trees and stuff. If that works, send a big fleet containing an entire rainforest worth of stuff, and plant that, too. A little 5x5 patch of garden in the middle of the entire red planet won't harm any "evidence" that might be there.
None of that stubborn "life" stuff to muck up the debate, gravity already similar to Earth's; use a giant plasma lens to diffract away enough of the sun's radiation to start the thick atmosphere precipitating, haul in a bunch of icy comets if the water vapor in the atmosphere isn't ebough...
Only think I can't figure out is how to make it spin faster so its oven-like days aren't 180 days long.
I'd say so.
And if we can terraform an entire planet to save our species, I'd imagine we could save ourselves on our own planet without having to jump to another.
Be very, very careful what you put into that head, because you will never, ever get it out. -Thomas Cardinal Wolsey
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.
Nothing is more disappointing than reading something like this.. then snapping back into reality and realizing that we'll never see it take place in our lifetime. We probably won't even see the beginning stages of it considering it would take decades to even map out actually following through with something of this magnitude.
It's not like you can build a car-sized machine that transforms CO2 -> O2, just toss it up there, and then expect to get a habitable planet after a few years.
Think about it. You're talking about taking an entire PLANET and transforming the atmosphere into something that can support life. We can't even fix the ozone, let alone find cures for our most deadly diseases.. and you think we have the technology and the know how to do this? Hah.
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After all, look at the terrible job we've done on managing Earth.
Life on Earth anyway seems to be that sort of thing that just takes over and we can't control. We accidentically move microbes all over the place, and now North America has to worry about West Nile Virus for instance.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
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.
Say we were to terraform Mars and we had people living there. What would those people do for an internet connection? Would they have a high latency link to Earth via Satellites, or is there a better solution that would enable lower latencies (maybe using light somehow)?
hey!
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.
That's the real problem. There's just too danged many of us gobbling up Earth's limited resources.
Look folks, we either expand outwards or the "Malthusian solution" kicks in eventually. All the good "Green" things we may do, just put that day off. Not that I've not done my share of teeming with 5 kids, 7 grandkids, another on the way and counting... I'd like to think that perhaps some of their children will be pioneers off Earth.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
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.
Can any one group stop any other group from commencing a Mars Terraforming Project? The scientists who want to preserve Mars as is for research, versus the expansionists who want Mars to be an off-site back-up for Earth's lifeforms.
Who has jurisdiction over Mars? The USA? The EU? The UN? What if some privately funded group said "Sod Earth, we're starting a new colony off-planet" and begun their own Martian Colonisation project? Would those actually living there (inside protected domes to start with) have more say than earth-based administrators/legislators? Could there be, in future, a war of independance between the martian settlers and the earth-based administrators/legislators?
Could a privately funded Mars Colony be stopped by scientists wanting to preserve Mars for research? If an injunction was filed against such a group in a US court, would a European Mars Colony Project be bound by that? If an injunctions was filed in an international court, could the group claim that the earth court's jurisdiction does not include Mars? Has anyone else thought of these issues?
You make the mistake of thinking you can educate the fundamental stupidity out of people. You can't.
I have had this idea since long, was a bit reluctant to share it, but hey, it's doubtfull I'll get a patent on it anyway (?):
;-).
"However, both goals - heating and thickening - could be achieved together, say researchers. One idea is to build a large mirror, many miles in diameter, and place it orbit above Mars...."
"The alternative would be to construct plants for generating super-greenhouse gases - made of complex combinations of carbon, chlorine and fluorine, and which are thousands of times more effective than carbon dioxide at trapping heat."
Giant mirrors? Plants? I'm amazed at the lack of reality that those scientists have with comming up ways to terraform. Am I the only one to see this? Apart from the question if and when one should terraform (see other post), it is ludicrous to propose these sorts of things. A giant mirror would take ages to build, and years untill accomplishement...plants would take centuries to have any real impact.
There is a MUCH more efficient and cheap way of terraforming, wich, strangely enough, never seems to come to the mind of those terraforming-experts: use gentically modified bacteria.
On earth, we already have bacteria who produce methane. We also have extremophiles which can endure extremely harsh conditions (as are found on Mars). Combine the two points in a gentically modified bacteria, which thrives in the martian atmosphere, and produce methane.
Since no predators, nor food shortage (at least untill the atmosphere is satured) would be present, the amount of bacteria (and thus, the producing of methane) would grow in an exponetial rate. Within 15 years, the atmosphere would contain enough methane to augment the average temperature with 3-4 degrees, enough to melt the dry-ice of the polarcaps in a permanent way.
This in turn, would augment the pressure of the atmosphere, and, combined with steadely augmenting temperature, would lead to running surface water within 50 years. (At which time, one should note, an additional large amount of gases would be released, through the reaction of the surface water (and possible rain) with the elements of the corrosive ground of Mars. The chemical reaction would lead, once again, to a considerable extra input of gases, which in turn would make the atmosphere even more thicker.
Instead of billions and hundreds of years, with this sheme, one would only need millions and decennia at most.
The additional terraforming to make it habital for open *human* life would take more time, but even here are possible shortcuts with genetically modified bacteria (for instance, if one could establish a simple biological balance between oxygen-producing bacteria and co2-producing ones in the same amount as on Earth). In any case, the use of genetically modified bacteria, that have the survival-characteristics of extremophiles, could fasten the terraforming a thousandfold, with minimal costs, compared to any other sheme I have ever seen from the so-called scientific experts.
I hereby take a patent on it
Seriously though; the concept of terraforming being extremely expensive and long-term is only true when limiting oneself to giant mirrors, putting black dust on the poles, creating massive co2-producing factory-plants on Mars and a lot of other totally unrealistic stuff that I have seen mentionned as possible ways for terraforming.
My way would be vastly cheaper and vastly more effcient/rapid.
I found this site http://www.marssociety.org/ which has plenty of links. These guys are obviously keen to explore the options for getting to Mars and figuring out feasibility issues viz accomodation, environment, making use of the availble materials etc.,
I feel that it would benefit us to engage in further autonomous exploration. Whilst it is true that we ought to look after our own planet, it is also true that on Earth there is a tendency to make excuses for not taking part in technological progress.
Sadly, not content to stiffle any chance for choice and progress in the future, mankind actively engages in regression. If this is what the people want, there may be nobody left to cash in the betts on how long it takes for us to become extinct through ignorance.
Where is Harri Seldon when we need him?
My hyperlinks aren't worth the paper they're printed on.
How comes my nickname isn't attached to my post above?
:-/
I submitted it with 'N3wsbyt3', but it didn't show up?
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
(sorry, reposting this because my nick wasn't attached to my former post, and I would like to see eventual reactions)
;-).
I have had this idea since long, was a bit reluctant to share it, but hey, it's doubtfull I'll get a patent on it anyway (?):
"However, both goals - heating and thickening - could be achieved together, say researchers. One idea is to build a large mirror, many miles in diameter, and place it orbit above Mars...."
"The alternative would be to construct plants for generating super-greenhouse gases - made of complex combinations of carbon, chlorine and fluorine, and which are thousands of times more effective than carbon dioxide at trapping heat."
Giant mirrors? Plants? I'm amazed at the lack of reality that those scientists have with comming up ways to terraform. Am I the only one to see this? Apart from the question if and when one should terraform (see other post), it is ludicrous to propose these sorts of things. A giant mirror would take ages to build, and years untill accomplishement...plants would take centuries to have any real impact.
There is a MUCH more efficient and cheap way of terraforming, wich, strangely enough, never seems to come to the mind of those terraforming-experts: use gentically modified bacteria.
On earth, we already have bacteria who produce methane. We also have extremophiles which can endure extremely harsh conditions (as are found on Mars). Combine the two points in a gentically modified bacteria, which thrives in the martian atmosphere, and produce methane.
Since no predators, nor food shortage (at least untill the atmosphere is satured) would be present, the amount of bacteria (and thus, the producing of methane) would grow in an exponetial rate. Within 15 years, the atmosphere would contain enough methane to augment the average temperature with 3-4 degrees, enough to melt the dry-ice of the polarcaps in a permanent way.
This in turn, would augment the pressure of the atmosphere, and, combined with steadely augmenting temperature, would lead to running surface water within 50 years. (At which time, one should note, an additional large amount of gases would be released, through the reaction of the surface water (and possible rain) with the elements of the corrosive ground of Mars. The chemical reaction would lead, once again, to a considerable extra input of gases, which in turn would make the atmosphere even more thicker.
Instead of billions and hundreds of years, with this sheme, one would only need millions and decennia at most.
The additional terraforming to make it habital for open *human* life would take more time, but even here are possible shortcuts with genetically modified bacteria (for instance, if one could establish a simple biological balance between oxygen-producing bacteria and co2-producing ones in the same amount as on Earth). In any case, the use of genetically modified bacteria, that have the survival-characteristics of extremophiles, could fasten the terraforming a thousandfold, with minimal costs, compared to any other sheme I have ever seen from the so-called scientific experts.
I hereby take a patent on it
Seriously though; the concept of terraforming being extremely expensive and long-term is only true when limiting oneself to giant mirrors, putting black dust on the poles, creating massive co2-producing factory-plants on Mars and a lot of other totally unrealistic stuff that I have seen mentionned as possible ways for terraforming.
My way would be vastly cheaper and vastly more effcient/rapid.
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
Redundant?!
You bastards! I was actually pretty early with this comment (I thought).
Ugh. Sometimes Slashdot make me want to blow my brains out.
BANG!
eleven plus two / twelve plus one
As more and more data is showing, it appears Mars once had a much denser atmosphere that probably supported liquid water. There is also evidence that Mars once had an Earth-like dipole magnetic field and magnetosphere which protected the ancient Martian atmosphere from the radiation of the solar winds. Many researches now believe that without a magnetic field the Martian atmosphere was simply eroded away by the solar wind.
1 .htm n etic.html /
I am merely a layman on this subject, but it seems to me that without somehow restarting the Martian dynamo to generate a global magnetic field, the idea of terraforming Mars will always remain science fiction.
With this information, it seems to me that the idea of terraforming Mars is a joke. Am I missing something?
References:
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2001/ast31jan_
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/3016_mag
http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0012/17marsmagnet
Negative, I am a meat popsicle.
Sometimes it's easier to build something than to fix something. There's also this little thing called the population explosion which really hasn't stopped.
I'm very environmentalist. I'm also extremely pro-terraforming, pro-colonization of space, and in favor of pushing out the boundaries of humanity both spatially and structurally (I'm a lefty green post-humanist). It hasn't come to this yet, but I do see a day in which the people willing to leave the planet as well as pursue self-enhancement and eschew mortality are simply going to leave the rest of the species behind, like someone going to the city and leaving the old folks on the farm. It's not a matter of if Mars is going to be colonized and settled, it's a question of who does it, in whose interest, and how. Those who balk are welcome to stay behind.
And if we can terraform an entire planet to save our species, I'd imagine we could save ourselves on our own planet without having to jump to another.
Most all of the money we dump into this crap is a waste. And I'm not trying to be a troll. But seriously, we want to make Mars inhabitable. Why not start a little smaller there pancho. Like Africa.
The problem with this.. besides it being probably completely impossible, is that before we ever started reaping any potential benefits of this experiment, we will immediately start taking this planet for granted. I don't know, that probably sounds like hippy stuff, but I think it's true.
if we find microbes on the planet--i say we still do it.
to those who say "why even talk about it now, we're generations away from having the ability to do so" i will say that it will take not just generations, but probably eons to complete such a process. the bulk of the time will be spent just waiting for some home grown genetically altered microbes to do their work.
thinking long term, we have nowhere to go but space; and, unless we get some impressive propulsion technology soon, we will NEED the ability to teraform planets (versus just roaming from galaxy to galaxy hoping to find a prime planet that will happen to support our species). Generally speaking, we will probably need someplace to try it out on before we want to even attempt test it on another solar system.
Troll, Troll, go away and flame again some other day
Being that I am not a physicist nor a cosmologist I am sure there has already been answer for this question. However, if I am correct in my understanding, standard theory tells us that gravity defines orbit, correct? So if we changed the gravity of a planet by importing materials, hence making it heavier, would this not affect the orbit? Perhaps the amount of material is non-consequential at this time, however if future projects take hold, this may have a dramatic effect on the planets wieght. Does anyone have a text book answer to this question?
If we don't make light of everything, we are just stumbling in the dark - Blank
The terraforming of Mars seems to be, in my opinion, unfortunately quite unavoidable, to say the very least, and that is because of all of us who are "marsaforming" Earth so well that soon we sadly will be unable to live here any more. That's very sad. It might not be a problem for us, but for our children or grandchildren.
I am sure one day someone will remember the timeless implications of our today's Slashdot discussion looking at the Mars University and will say: "Very impressive. Back in the 20th century we had no idea there was a university on Mars," to which his professor will answer: "Well in those days Mars was just a dreary uninhabitable wasteland... much like Utah. But unlike Utah, it was eventually made livable, when the university was founded in 2636." That will be a great day in our history.
I am very excited. I dream of being able to ski on Mars one day. That would be amazing. We definitely have to bring some water there and lower the temperature somehow to freeze it (we could use the process of so caled desublimacion to change the steam---a product of hydrogen and oxygen synthesis---directly into snow). That would be great. I am so excited. I haven't read such an exciting article for a long time.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
the weaker gravity of mars (compared to earths) and its consecuences are just the tip of the iceberg but are enough to make one reconsider seriously the colonizing of other planets by humans, neverthless ideas like those are what fuels the advancement of our species and our evolution, and we cannot dismay for litle thigs like that, however venus looks like a more promising target for terraforming and is guaranted that it will end more terra like that mars in almost any scenario it has almost the same gravity mass size and other features, its only problem is its venomous, hot corrosive and heavy atmosfere but is a easier task than terraforming mars, because mars lacks almost all the thigs in enough quantities needed to sustain earth life forms on the other hand we can obtain almost all that we need in venus from venus itself.
And I have prayed unto You, O Lord U**X in the time of the Will of Linux.
It seems to me that dropping some water ice bodies on the polar caps would be much easier than the mirror or "Total Recall" atomosphere plant approach. Dropping snowballs simply repeats the previous experiences shown by the abundant cratering arlready present. There should be no enviromental impact (pun intended) statement required as we are not introducing any foreign processes to the Martian eco-systems. The cost of dropping a number of 100 meter snowballs should be substantially less than building mirrors or extraction plants. If we are not in too much of a hurry we could just start nudging asteriods in the direction of Mars. The asteriod impacts will heat the atmosphere and deliver additional violatiles. By choosing a shallow angle of entry we can avoid spraying too much rock into the air. Since the snowballs have violatiles we can use the snowballs for fuel. The cost of raising the termperature, increasing the atomspheric density and creating a water cycle will be reduced to the cost of a few rocket motors. We can get two for one missions. An asteriod explorer that doubles as a Mars Terraforming project component. We have the technology to start this today. We do I sign up for the asteriod pilot job?
When I was young, I had to rub sticks together to compute.
I would think that building a few underground bases there should be a priority, because topside settlements would require a good amount of protection against solar radiation.
If we could find massive cave systems around volcanic areas, it would be even easier to build a huge contained ecosystem, since:
a) there is very little tectonic activity on Mars, if at all; and
b) whatever geothermal activity left on that planet could be used as a power source, on top of solar panels installed on the surface.
Add some nuclear power plants to the mix and you've got yourself a permanent settlement.
See you, space cowboy...
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
I'm sorry, but you are totally wrong. the US is the world hegemon, had that hegemon been france britian or germany, or any other country, guess what? they lesser nations would be ruled with an iron fist. the US spent amazing resources to rebuild former enemies. our pure interests would have encourages plunder or at least leaving in ruin. we were generous, unlike any other hegemon in history. its easy to hate america, its trendy and cool. but the truth is, americans did go out to help other people when their own interests were completely unaffected. can you tell me how the yugoslavia liberation from lilosevic helped the US? can you tell me how sending food to russia and north korea helps us? perhaps you can find some twisted justificcation, but it basically boils down to us not wanted to rule the world, but merely allow for a peacful world that works better if we help out.
The UN has never been democratic. And there is no such thing as international law. You argument is simply a personal attack that my mind isnt on. Germany and France are powerful countries that interfere with US policy, and so obviously your idea that they are our puppets is laughable, which pretty much proves my point. They are liberal free societies only becuase we spent a great deal of effort, over a decade of afterwar blood in germany, to create a nice place for people who had tried to kill everyone. Why gain a new market when you can simply take everything they have? We ruled them as a police state while we rebuilt them, we could have done to West Germany or South Korea what the Soviets did to their counterparts. Look for yourself! My mind works just fine. As an Iranian, I have plenty of incentive to resent the US's many mistakes starting with Mossedeqh, instead, I take the hard route and see that, in spite of its mistakes, the American goverment, at least as openly represented, wants the rest of the world to be healthy and well rather than servants. That is a choice that is totally opposite to the rest of world hegemon history. Morals and international law are only human inventions, and concepts that only exists thanks to the US not being a france of germany or rome or byzantium. 'mindless follower'? heh. i'm not going to accuse you of being ironic there, but maybe you should take a few history classes and think about the world today if the US had acted like any other country in her position.
Also, think about how you respond to people who think differently than you. You don't try to understand them or learn or even teach. You simply attack their brain size. Sounds like the kind of typical 'Bush Bashing' that has set back important civil rights progress (ie gay rights) as simply mud slinging. You should be tolerant of other ideas, it's the american way.
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
The Earth doesn't make any elements. Some of the people on it have created simple fusion techniques to turn hydrogen into helium, maybe, but that's as far as element creation goes here. Every element up to iron is made in the fusion of a sun, the rest are created in supernovae.
Learn something new.
Why gain a new market when you can simply take everything they have?
Because they didn't have anything.
We ruled them as a police state while we rebuilt them, we could have done to West Germany or South Korea what the Soviets did to their counterparts. Look for yourself!
There's a difference between ruling your own people with an iron fist and ruling a foreign country. You don't really think that Germany would let you rule them for an extended period of time, do you? If you're so knowledgeable of history, as you claim, you should know that this never worked. Even with a puppet government, as the Russians did, it never really worked and they didn't gain much from it. The US carrot-and-stick tactics pay off much better.
Morals and international law are only human inventions, and concepts that only exists thanks to the US not being a france of germany or rome or byzantium.
International law is nil if you don't follow it. And since you don't...
heh. i'm not going to accuse you of being ironic there, but maybe you should take a few history classes
History can be interpreted. Therefore, taking history classes is no substitute for thinking.
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.
Have to paint the Shuttle yellow, maybe. Mind you, it ain't exactly "paradise" as it stands.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
part of the reason the earth is still active is due to volcanic forces...
only way to terraform a planet and to keep it running is to have a stable atmosphere and magnetic field.. mars lacks both of these, why? no volcanic activity, the core is probably a dead weight.
if there was any water or life, it was long ago.
We're around because earth still has the elements that make the inside of it hot, and the core is still spinning, thus creating a magnetic field. thus less cosmic radiation, thus making a stable atmosphere. etc
the terraforming would only work for a while.. but unless they can jump start the volcanic activity on mars, no magnetic field equals a desert planet.
By the time we have Mars terraformed, I'm sure we'll have a bomb that can at least wipe out our entire solar system, if not our galaxy =P
Arrgh! If only you could edit your slashdot comments!
Once we have experience in major works of industrial engineering built in space, this issue might be worth discussing.
This stuff is just a way to get SF writers to endorse Bush and the readers to hopefully, follow along. Greg Bear and Clarke really ought to know better than to lend their names to this.
At this point, this is a bad idea even if Robert Heinlein personally returns from the grave to endorse it. I say fund studies to the extent of a megabuck or two and don't bug us about it until the people who get the money know enough to discuss the subject intelligently. Our knowledge of how to move multimegaton payloads is theoretical. After experience with building space industrial facilities like powersats and factories, we'll have some practice to build on.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Gives a whole new meaning to the term "vaporware", doesn't it?
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
People point to Venus, not Mars, as an example of extreme global warming. Venus is closest of all planets to the size of earth, though much hotter because it is closer to the sun and has a thick layer of greenhouse gasses.
r es /lec06.html
Mars is the way it is because the planet doesn't have suffficent gravity to hold an atmosphere.
Granted, outside of destroying a planetful of valuable scientific information, there isn't a lot of stuff on mars that we could 'screw up.' Mars may have bacteria somwhere, but I don't expect too much more than that.
http://astron.berkeley.edu/~basri/astro10/lectu
Mars is the planet with the most Earth-like environment. Although 1.5 AU from the Sun, the temperature can rise to livable ranges, though it is mostly very cold. The interior of Mars likely has a core and mantle, and there used to be substantial volcanic activity. The lack of tectonic plates meant that volcanic hot spots stayed put, giving rise to the Solar Systems largest volcano (Olympus Mons). Early on Mars had a much thicker atmosphere, and there is good evidence that there was running and standing water on its surface for a while (less than a billion years). This includes what look like ancient river beds and outflow channels. There is still some frozen water in the Martian polar caps, and likely below the surface. Because of its smaller mass, Mars could not hang onto the atmosphere very well, and the current surface pressure is only 0.007 that of Earth. Like Venus, what is left of the atmosphere is mostly carbon dioxide.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
Algae and bacteria would get out, by slipping through cracks, burrowing under walls, blowing out through airlocks, adhering to colonists' boots, etc.
Not that I think this is harm.
Why bother wasting time with science stuff? The decision will be made by this administration based on whether it is supported by Scripture.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Inside "Total Recall" Arnold Schwarzenegger is taking a space journey to Mars, where the Martians are a people living under repression, maybe somewhat like the Palestines today.
Arnold, "Douglas Quaid" inside the movie, is actually a former martian who was also a spy on earth. However he got busted and certain parts of his memory was erased. Coming back to Mars Quaid starts to remember things.
The best part of that movie is the last 5 minutes, where Quaid suddenly remembers how to free the Martian people living in closed controlled environments, also with suers underground. He remembers there is a thousands of years old installation underground, which needs to be activated, Quaid also remembers suddenly how that is done, and what we see happen is actually Terraforming performed in a couple of minutes! A semi gas-explosion-release is activated and the atmosphere fills up, and a blue sky and clouds are formed.
Robert
Heck, if I had a rocket I'd shoot a bunch of cold-extremophile cyanobacteria over there just to forclose the debate. To heck with the damn-hippies. Mars doesn't have an environment.
These guys can debate themselves until they've counted how many microfossils can dance on the head of a pin, but the moment Ordinary Joe can get up out of the gravity well in a privately owned craft, Mars is going to seem a lot less like an academic excercise, and a lot more like real estate.
...people want others to make the sacrifices.
Send some poor suckers with starry eyes off to get killed on Mars to make it habitable for "us", and then "we" (meaning the richest 1% or less) move to Mars when the Earth passes the Pollution Event Horizon. Good plan - for the 1%, maybe. We always make laws to stop everyone else from doing things, not us.
Douglas Adams put it well in one of the HHGTTG books, when he spoke of nobody complaining about some massive elitist project, or at least nobody who mattered.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Uhh... hate to break this to you, but there is insufficient pressure at the Earth's core to cause fusion. If everything else remained the same, in the future the only change of elements within the Earth would be due to radioactive decay, which is in a way "reverse fusion".
I'm also not sure what 64 codon triplets have to do with 64 bit computing.
We may be made obsolete and become extinct. Or we may evolve and continue to exist at a different level. There is no way to be certain, since we are notoriously bad at prognostication.
Only wish I had written it as well. They deserve a 5 more than I did.
Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
The earth is not over crowwed, so why would he have to landscape Mars?3 7.asp).
A few years ago some sci. people made a bio shpere that had so many bugs... How good are we going to be at Mars? And who is going to pay for all of this?
Documents I have read, show that the poplutation of the earth is increasing, however the amount of over corwding is decreasing(http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/5
Bring back the Martian Oceans and all the air and warmth that went with them!
Hasn't anyone seen that movie "Ghosts of Mars"? We don't wanna piss those guys off!
What I want to know is why it is suggested that earths excess billions would be placed there at who knows how many millions of dollars per person to keep living when right now they aren't given a dollar a day to keep living?
We won't be turning it into another Earth, we would be making the air breathable with a sufficient amount of pressure.
Pls read the Mars books by Kim Stanley Robinson...the were so good that the Mars Society based their Mars Flag upon the books!
ttyl
Farrell
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
We're going to need sandals with a really high R-factor...
Also pressing: debate the morality of travelling back in time to impregnate your own grandma, the environmental consequences of switching on the immortality gene, and the ethical issues of putting "off" switches on machines running God-like Artifical Intelligences.
Talk quickly, people. If these developments happen before they are rigorously discussed on Slashdot the future of the planet is in peril.
'It is very depressing. Before we have even discovered if there is life on Mars - which I am increasingly confident we will find - we are talking about undertaking massive projects that would wipe out all these indigenous lifeforms, all the strange microbes that we hope to find buried in the Martian soil. It is simply ethically wrong.'
OK.... but pumping your kids full of antibiotics and blasting the kitchen counter with bleach is A-OK... RIGHT?
So, let's look at this: some subzero Martian Microbes are worth much more than some random sample of salmonella from the blue fuzzy biology experiment in the fridge that used to be a pizza a few months ago, correct?
OK. so some Martian people should get all the money and good education and fun toys. And the Earthlings? Send 'em off to extermination camps.
People:microbes - we have more in common with flatworm parasites than we do with viruses, so it's OK to kill viruses, but not flatworms?
My opinion: get over it.
1. by the time we're in ANY position to terraform Mars, we'll probably have been there several times with live human-type people and Bog knows how many R2D2 units scouring the planet for every bit of info we can get. We'll be well informed of what is actually (if anything) there.
2. Terraforming Mars is going to take centuries, and it will take trillions of dollars over that time. In the mean time here on the little green planet of clocks, we will likely be in the middle of our depopulation cycle (through war, disease, environmetal degradation, or some terrorist asshats develolping an airbourne version of HIV or who knows what...) and as the population shrinks, so will the tax base for space exploration. This will only serve to delay the terraforming further.
3. Assuming we gradually depopulate, and we don't have a glaciation in the process, (i.e. all things being roughly the same, but improving) Terraforming Mars will not be a central activity of the species, and we wll be able to monitor the progress of its development closely.
4. There is another possibility: that by terraforming mars we kick off an accelerated evolution of (whatever life there might be) on Mars. Perhaps Martian life will help in the terraforming process.
In anycase, the person who spoke the quoted line needs to get their tinfoil hat loosened. And think a bit more about what they dump on their kitchen counter.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
I'm not so concerned about whether we'll terraform mars. Mars has less gravity than earth and has trouble holding on to lighter gasses.
e re.htm l
the below is taken from
http://zebu.uoregon.edu/~soper/Mars/atmosph
There's a chart that goes with it, but the lameness filter made me delete it
Here is a comparison of the atmospheric composition of Earth and Venus and Mars. I list the number of molecules per m2 of surface area of the planet in each planet's atmosphere relative to the total number of molecules per m2 in Earth's atmosphere.
The question is; considering earth has a lot more microbes living on it, and under more diverse conditions, it seems likely that bacteria here will have had more chance to have evolved than any martian organisms, which are likely to be fairly homogenous as most extremophiles are. (small mutations cause death in the organism before they can drift to be somthing more beneficial).
I don't think we can terraform Mars without increasing it's mass, but one of mars's moons (Phoebos) is very close. If it were chipped off peice by peice, maybe we could increase martian gravity to the point where it could hold an atmosphere. Not a viable solution for our lifetimes, or for overpopulation at any time considering the material costs of a trip to Mars.
But the more humans existing in relative prosperity, the more research that can be done and the faster technology will advance. If there's one thing Mars could export to the Earth, it would be information.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
Read the Red Mars/Blue Mars/Green Mars trilogy (by Kim Stanley Robinson I think).
In his story the distribute all over mars small loaf-of-bread-sized windmills which power a small heater unit. In the heater unit is algae that converts the atmosphere. As the algae mutates to become more adapted to the temperature it spreads further from the windmill heater unit, until there are large endless mats of adapted algae spreading across the surface.
--Rob
The debate heightens when the UN goes beyond its original purpose. The veto powers were designed to prevent the UN from becoming a world government. It was also to give the superpowers, the primary targets of the UN's purpose, a reason to participate. Being a superpower inherently means you don't have to participate, and thus likely to leave the UN as soon as you disagreed with something it was determined to do. Veto power prevents the super powers from leaving the UN.
The backlash the UN has had in the US is due to those that have tried to turn the UN into more than its original purpose.
Passing out condoms in Africa is an example of an issue that turned some in the US against the UN. Whether or not you agree with the concept, it's hard to debate that it has nothing to do with peace and preventing another world war.
If you want superpowers like the US to continue to participate in the UN, then quit trying to turn it into something it wasn't created to be. Find another institution to accomplish those goals. Otherwise, you are inviting WW III.
Open Standards Portal
I heard one friend say after living in Europe for 6 years, "France is the conscious of the world." The perspective from America is that if France is the conscious, then the world is a God hating devil worshipper. France regularly opposes the fundamental values that American's have. So, hearing France get self-righteous in International forums tends to turn a lot of stomachs.
Your post reaffirms American perception of France, leading them to embolden their stereotypes of the French.
Open Standards Portal
The French get their reputation of being rude from american tourists in France who boast of how 'great' (sic) usa is and expect the entire world to speak their mutilated american english, or how the "49ers" are the 'greatest' (sic) football team, etc. ad nauseum. Forget that most monocultural americans have never even been anywhere else to compare it to (yes, even when you count their "fishbowl" tours looking out a tourbus window). Forget that american pussy "football" has nothing 'foot' about it - they move it with their hands, stop playing every 10 seconds (presumably to catch their breath), only kick it for a measly extra point or when their team is getting it's ass kicked, and wear enough protective equipment to survive a military assault. What everyone else in the world calls football, they call soccer. Give me real football over american "football" any day. Give me France over America any day. How can americans hold it against the French for becoming a little nationalistic in the face of such insults? How can you hold anything against a country whose citizens prefer to make love with their faces :) - I hear in France they now refer to american cheese as "idiot" cheese - Bravo! //French"
***
"Be a dick to everyone you ever meet
--
The French are the nicest, most hospitable people I've met (In fact, I've found all Europeans generally far "nicer" people than the average american counterpart)- example: where here it's "5 bux on #2"+"Thanks"(If you're lucky... Let's not get into the u.s. cashier's inability to even comprehend more than the simplest of transactions), in France it's more akin to "Good Day, how are you?"+"Fine, thank you. May I please purchase 40 litres of Premium?"+"Why Certainly; Thank you very much! Have a good day!"
*******
"Yes, America has so much to learn from France, like how to surrender as quickly as Poland. "
--
OR, how americans need to learn to count to 24. They can only comprehend dual time, and even become upset (presumably at their own inability to add twelve). OR, how americans need to learn the difference between real & dual time. americans refer to real time as "military" time, when the military simply uses the time format of the rest of the world - americans don't even get it when explained to them.
OR, how americans need to learn to manufacture buildings, so they won't be inclined to spend taxpayer dollars transforming a decrepit 100 year old house into a "place of historical interest" - when in Europe you can easily find sturdy 3-400 year old houses.
OR, how americans need to learn to socialize medicine instead of dumping unnecessary billions into the military industrial complex.
OR, how americans need to learn to follow it's own basic tenets with regard to the will of the (world's) people instead of considering themselves sovereignly immune from anyone's interests other than their own.
*******
Shef (AKA probably "Flamebait" to the tunnel-visioned americans)
I'm assuming that this is an attempt at a (not so) quick fix to our current problems here on earth, Its like a disk failure, you take a backup of your 'base' system, and place it on a new HD, and hope to god it boots.
Turning Mars into a 'New Earth' may be plausable, but it just gives people an excuse to run away from our current problems. Which really doesnt help, Earth will become Mars, and Mars will become earth, when we can afford to transfer the entire population of Earth. We are dying here, and killing the place we live. Attempting a (Not So) 'Quick Fix' isnt gonna stop us from destroying Mars like we did earth. And what happens our new Mars Atmosphere collapses? then we are extinct. Its as simple as that. We may have originated from Mars, but we, well at least me, are happy with this planet, The money put into this project would probably just about fix up all earths problems.
GO BUY YOUR LAND ON MARS! BEFORE ITS TOO LATE!
**** u:how the yugoslavia liberation from lilosevic helped the US? -- me:I heard we only got into this 1000 year old war after nuclear material was found in the hills. **** u:can you tell me how sending food to russia and north korea helps us? -- me:I suppose if we didn't send them food, they may find other ways to feed themselves, such as selling their military technology to 3rd world countries. Clearly no american interests here! LOL Shef
Put a permanent colony on Mars while terraform Mars. Life exists now definitely existss on Mars (see colony). Life on Mars debate resolved with life existing on Mars.
Ah yes, I can definitely say with 100% certanty that my child is indeed a Martian.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
First we take Afganistan, second we take Iraq, third Mars. When are we gonna be finished with #1 and 2? And do they have oil on #3?, er, sorry, I mean we have to stop those damn Martians from using their weapons of mass destruction.
-Turnip Onion --- Neither micro nor $oft. Linux is a fine tool.
I'm not to sure about the need for population controls. The most recent predictions is that the global population will peak out at about 9.x billion people around 2050 and then begin a long (slow?) decline. What has changed is that even in underdeveloped countries the rate of population growth has been declining (reason?).
Of course in the developed countries (which hopefully the whole world will become) population growth has been dropping like a stone. While everyone knows about how fast Japan is becoming a nation of elders I believe Italy has the lowest growth rate (1.4 per couple?). Predictions are for 3 Italians left in 500 years, let's hope they're not all the same sex!. What's ironic is that this is the Pope's country with abortion illegal and contraception mandatory. The U.S. would be at a negative growth rate if it weren't for immigration.
I don't have any kids but just watching my friends try to raise theirs gives me some idea of why this is happening. On the other hand if our use of resources continues to rise (2 SUV's in every garage) we WILL need another planet! (Did you know that the size of the average american home has like doubled in one lifetime?).
Not to troll...but we can't spare that 100 billion because then we wouldn't have so many cool shinny things that go boom. ;-)
Seems to me that Mars is much more valuable as a source of scientific data (in its pristine state) and potentially mineral resources. I'm with the scientists that are outraged at the idea of terraforming Mars. All "ethical" arguements asside, it seems like a big waste of time.
-Matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
No matter how hard we try, Mars is not capable of retaining an atmosphere breathable by humans for one simple reason, SIZE. No matter what we try to do the atmosphere will slip away over time. Albeit, a long period of time, but aren't we dealing with long periods of time when terraforming? Just my thought on the subject.
If we try to screw around with earth and screw up we're all dead. You've got billions of lives at stake over things that you assume are bad. I don't see how one can believe in evolution and object to a changing world.
"this planet is becoming significantly less Earth-like"
Earth changes. According to evolution it used to be a big giant block of ice. Earth has alledgedly been through a lot worse than anything man has managed to throw at it.
On the other hand, if Mars is dead, there's no harm in trying to liven it up a bit. Worst case we just make it more difficult on ourselves to make it livable. And we can learn from our mistakes so if we decide to go mucking around with Earth we aren't taking uneducated guesses about what might do what.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
If Mars is Terraformed, I demand we institue Captain Murphy's Martian Law...
"I dub thee Sir Phobos, knight of Mars, beater of ass.
But really, who wouldn't rather be a Knight of Mars, beater of ass?
Murphy: Under Martian law, doctors and other wizards are forbidden!"
"There is no time, sir, at which ties do not matter," Jeeves, (Jeeves and the Impending Doom)
Actually, in France the stores have many american items (presumably because they sell well). Many teenagers wear USA this, USA that, etc. The French (as told to me in France) simply don't care for the general american "Holier than thou" attitudes they see from americans in France. Just as in america, one is expected to learn at least enough of the language to get around - French people expect others to at least TRY in French. The French seem disappointed in america for attempting to shove american values down other countries' throats. The French are just as nationalistic as u.s. citizens, very proud to be French. They have no desire to emigrate to america, "where it is better". In fact, I think the French standard of living is higher than in the u.s. - well, ok, the French QUALITY of living is higher than in the u.s. Housing is much less expensive. Yes, petrol is about double the price of gas in america, but the immense availability of public transportation makes this a virtual non-issue. Power is far cheaper, seems like there's a nuclear facility on every corner - (three mile island did away with the great promise of cheap power in America). The roads in France are exceptionally well maintained (far better than united states). No one has to suffer because they can't afford medical care, 35 hour work week, 5 weeks per year standard holiday. European vehicles in general are built better than in u.s., & much more powerful. The speed limits are much higher, undoubtedly because they drive so much better than americans. In their elections, there are candidates of every flavor, green, communist, socialist, as well as a number of levels of left & right wing candidates. I have no vote percentages for each type of candidate to share with for France, but in United States 80% or better is for only two political parties - yes this is because voters still don't fathom "another way" and will stick like glue to their party of choice no matter how many blowjobs their candidate gets from his employees or no matter how many countries their candidate unjustly invades. Not that the voter's votes necessarily count for anything in america, with the electoral college system. There IS no technological or logical reason why a popular vote system could not be implemented in america before the 2k8 election. But, I digress. America looks great on paper, but I wouldn't want to live there. I'm sorry my post is not able to "prove your point" or "reaffirm American perception of France", for I AM an american; therefore this IS an american perception of France. I am simply one who has actually lived and spent time elsewhere, and have found better places than the u.s. (Not just France). And yes I was born and live in the u.s., for the time being. Substantively, I believe the truth of the general perception in America toward France. I see it daily, almost inevitably from those who have experienced nowhere else. Unfortunately, it seems to stem from misplaced patriotic pridefulness and a general lack of multicultural knowledge. Shef
- The perception created by France in International politics.
- The perceptions Americans have, who generally read the headlines about French views in International politics, and are also influenced by posts like the original post that started the whole thread.
As for individual French people, or France as a place to live, I don't believe any one stereo type covers it all. I have had plenty of friends that were born in France that don't fit the stereo type, and don't like the social system there because of they way it is punitive on the young, stifles economics and buys votes making reform nearly impossible.
On the other hand, I've met other French people that believe that France is always right, and American's are just a bunch of uncultured pigs, which more or less was the tone of the original poster.
However, when it comes to issues such as economics, I tend to view any country with an unemployment rate above 10% as having no place to tell another country, such as the USA, what they are doing wrong, and hypocritical if they do.
Open Standards Portal
Mars, cannot hold an atmosphere capable of supporting humans.
Believe it or not, you need GRAVITY for ATMOSPHERIC PRESSURE. So sci-fi people, give it up. Mars can't even hold water vapor in the atmosphere at the cold temperature it is at now. Warm it up, and it gets even harder.
Sorry to bust everyone's bubble.
Folks have touted the possibility of self assembling nano technology...
Why wait for nanotech to arrive? Here is the perfect opportunity to send robotic machinery, capable of building more robotic machinery. Machines whch can mine mars for raw materials. Then take those raw materials and build new robots, build human habitats, build greenhouses, build fuel manufacturing facilities, and build structure for concentrating precious commodities like water and methanol.
Because this can be done with only a couple moderately large payloads, it has tremendous feasibility advantages over trying to send spaceship after spaceship full of human operated equipment. We've already seen self assmebling robotic prototypes here on slashdot. Designing modular machines that can move/excavate/mine soil, smelt, produce glass and silicon products, and make bricks or concretes (using liquid CO2 for the liquid for the slurry), would make possible, the building of a fully operational base on Mars before we ever arrive.
This is exactly the kind of technology that could make living spaces on the moon and near earth asteroids possible. This is the best, and most economic means to begin harvesting the wealth available to us in the inner solar system.
Marie
Yeah, I can't think of a reason either. Which is why I as an environmentalist don't want to destroy industrialized society. I only want to sacrifice a little economic efficiency for the sake of long-term viability. And it's why I don't go making up evils as my dissenter's motivations when there are other, more rational explanations.
Freedom isn't free; its price is the well-being of others.
Very true. Just look at a map like this. Just Sahara alone is a sandbox (larger than Europe?) for terraforming experiments that could eventually provide space for a population like 500M - and still have room to spare for reservations, where desert specific wildlife could be preserved. After that, the desert in southern Africa, Arabia and Asia could be terraformed.
Of course it could be argued that these areas, being terrestrial, by definition already _are_ terraformed. So i'd suggest we find a more precise term that would indicate the _real_ intent: making land capable of sustaining life for a certain population density, without a significant import of food.
This means we have to study the causes of desertification, and hopefully find out a way to reverse the process.
I'd much rather see the USA put the money in such a project (together with the other rich parts of the world, of course) than see the money sent of on what can in reality only be considered an expensive, exclusive, and thorughly extravagant tourist trip to Mars. Sure, we may learn something from that trip. But the _relevance_ of what is learned is questionable, I'd say.
-Lasse
There is already water on mars... just look at this picture.
i think that we will be heavily populating mars long before any terraforming attempts will be made,.
our problem on earth will be mainly overpopulation.,
so the cheapest solution to this will be to colonialize other planets., not nessesarily terraforming.,
once a sufficient economic force will have been built up on mars (with workers, medics,etc, you know, the stuff of societies) people will start thinking about actually terraforming the place.,
no sooner imho.,
I agree. This would indeed be preferable and VERY much more beneficial to mankind.
However, the discussion is about NASA and they can't very well justify a high budget by saying they'll be doing a project in Africa to make the desert livable etc. Because if they did, it wouldn't be a NASA project at all. And since Africa is not in the US... Ofcourse they do have quite a bit of desert in the US, too, last I checked. And they could start doing it there. But it still wouldn't be a NASA project and it still wouldn't get NASA a justification to get more of the taxpayers' money. And that, I believe, is what this whole thing is about.
Maybe I'm just cynical.
Sigs for Nerds. Sigs that Matter.
Let's go for Venus instead. Lots of raw materials to play with, and it'll be fun to design micro-organisms that have a lifecycle floating in the clouds. The bacteria from terrestrial black smokers will be really surprised to find themselves in their new location....
The fundamental problem with 'terraforming' Mars is that the planet doesn't have enough of a magnetic field to deflect the solar wind, which is why it doesn't have an athmosphere now: it simply gets shaved off by the Sun. So before we try to create an athmosphere we ought to provide a sustainable magnetic field the size of a planet.
Apart from that - what extraordinary hubris is this? We can hardly manage to lift our arses off the ground or cooperate with our fellow human beings, but now we want to dream about something this size?
"There's also this little thing called the population explosion which really hasn't stopped."
The world population growth rate has actually been decreasing over the last decade. The population is still growing in absolute terms, but it is slowing down.
OLPC Australia
Step 1: Devise a reliable method of getting vehicles to the planet.
Step 2: Underpants.
Step 3: Terraform the planet.
Gnomes.
But seriously, we want to make Mars inhabitable. Why not start a little smaller there pancho. Like Africa.
The absolute worst, most inhospitable Saharan desert is enormously more inhabitable than any part of Mars. Vast areas of Africa are positively lush paradises. Relatively speaking, much of Africa is, in fact.
Why do you have a problem with taking Mars for granted? In fact, what does that even mean? If *we* make it inhabitable, I'd say we have every right to use and abuse it to whatever extent we wish. It isn't as if it's teeming with native life. Frankly I couldn't give a damn if a few random spores or bacteria or whatever gets whacked in the process. Given the alternative, which is mass extinction from a meteor strike -- which the geological record shows WILL happen -- I'm all for kickstarting the terraforming of Mars ASAP.
Finally, I don't think you have a firm grasp of the concept. You can't "terraform Africa", or even more ridiculously confine it to "the desert in southern Africa" as the other guy states. The process is one of GLOBAL atmospheric change. It would take a long time because it's a MASSIVE change, and it would be a fairly cataclysmic process on a world-wide scale. You'll have to look to some other pie-in-the-sky technology for greening the deserts. Terraforming isn't at all related to what you're proposing.
Slashdot quality declines as the number of hot grits posts decreases. - Provolt's Law, Apr-09-2005
http://www.sagradafamilia.org/
Not sure if they'll ever finish.
Mal-2
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
Then, of course, there will be all those mars patents to file.
I'm allready getting ready to a couple. The first relates to the use of circular device mounted on a central pivot to ease the problem of transport over the martian surface,
I'm sorry, I've already patented all "round objects in space exploration." Perhaps we can come to a licensing agreement, though.
whilst the second one is all about the application of temperature elevated hydrogen hydoxide in space colonization.
Do you mean dihydrogen monoxide? Sorry, too much prior art.
The low gravity of Mars is a major cause of its thin atmosphere. The high velocity end of the molecular speed distribution of the atmospheric gases can exceed the escape velocity, so the atmosphere "evaporates" into space. Heating the atmosphere makes the problem far worse. Temperature is a measure of specific energy in a gas which is a funtion of molecular velocity. I wonder if this problem defeats the whole notion of terraforming.
"Until we meet a species with bigger guns, we own the place."
Who needs a species with bigger weapons to challenge us; we are doing a pretty good job of fucking our own selves up without needing help from space aliens with ray-guns.
If you can't manage the planet you are given in a healthy fashion, then you have no right to go around screwing up other ones.
Phsstpok the Pak does some impromptu terraforming in Protector (built Kobold and tricked attacking Protectors into hitting another planet) but the ultimate has to be ringworlds (of Larry Niven fame) and (Freeman) Dyson spheres. There's also the black obelisks in 2010, Terry Pratchett's Spindle Kings and their human successors, and MiB's worlds-within-worlds idea to consider. And heaps else that I missed. Brontomek! The Magratheans (and, after their fashion, Vogons) from THHGTTG. Ad infinitum.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Is this planet so broken it needs to be abandoned? What is so radically wrong with it that we can't continue to live here?
And as far as this population explsion goes, where are you seeing it, and why is it a matter of concern to you? There are huge empty and sparcely populated areas on the planet. Food production is more efficient.
And the rest of your post, about leaving people behind, like those moving to the city to leave the 'old folks' on the farm makes me think your problem is that there are too many horribly poor, starving people here for your comfort. That's really a different issue than overpopulation.
Given the alternative, which is mass extinction from a meteor strike -- which the geological record shows WILL happen -- I'm all for kickstarting the terraforming of Mars ASAP.
Out of curiousity, are you concerned with being killed by a meteor, or our species being wiped out? I can understand the self preservation, but not really the worries about the species.
Do you think there would be enough knowledge of when it would happen to evacuate everyone who would want (ie could afford) to go?
If we had a big population on Mars, how long would it be before we went to war with them?
One reason to not use strategic nukes on earth is that we all breath the same air and share the same climate. Nuking someone else thus causes you long term issues, even if they don't retaliate.
This concern goes away if we have interplanetary war.
Maybe THAT'S a reason not to terraform Mars: We shouldn't put ourselves in a position where we're more likely to nuke half of humanity's population.
rotflamo.
"Verbing weirds language." -- Calvin
And if there is life there, well its sure to be better suited to its native environment than what we bring along.
Not necessarily. You're making a huge assumption, there, with no empirical evidence for it.
At worst we get our first scientific data about how our bacteria interact with xenobacteria.
No. At worst we erase evidence of how life works universally rather than just here on our planet. I would imagine there are lots of great discoveries there waiting for us. It would suck to wipe it out before we get a chance to study it.
- Hail to our fearless misleader! Fool speed ahead!
Well, it's obvious that we should terraform Mars cause like a billion years ago, it was the then present Martians that terraformed Earth. The least we could do is return the favour and continue the cycle. Its well known fact that the Martians nuked themselves in one of their many World Wars and the legacy of life continues on in us. Maybe they some sent small rover here and attached was a bacteria hidden in the airbag somewhere and it was the actual start of life on this planet.
Whoops, my tinfoil hat fell off... let me get that before anything happens...
---- The geek shall inherit the Earth.
The species, of course.
Not that I'm in any great rush to die myself, of course, but I have no illusions that I would be chosen to survive. I also doubt I'd "accept" that fate so meekly. Nor I have any insight about how the survivors should be chosen. In fact, it would be a long, hard road to get to the point where the species could survive off-world without the support of Earth, so there is plenty of time to work out those details.
I further suppose that if we had the kind of advance-warning and technology that would be required to allow us to seriously consider saving "everyone" (or any significant portion), we'd probably also have plenty of time to consider and implement ways to destroy the threat (which is not the case with present technology, as I understand it.)
It should also be said that I don't see this as a response to a threat. I would prefer we have people living in all sorts of places off-Earth in self-sufficient ways when that big rock finally lines up with our patch of dirt. Survival comes as a side effect of advancement. The desire for survival makes a pretty great motivator, though.
Slashdot quality declines as the number of hot grits posts decreases. - Provolt's Law, Apr-09-2005
One idea is to build a large mirror, many miles in diameter, and place it orbit above Mars. This would then be used to focus the Sun's rays onto a polar icecap,
... uh the moon! yeah that's it.
i think the earth has one of these already. it may not be as powerful of a mirror - but it does other cool stuff, like swinging the oceans around the planet causing tides. *sometimes* it even blocks out the sun - that looks really cool. what do they call it... luna, luner... uh
Isnt the biggest problem on mars its lack of sufficient gravity?
The only way we will ever be able to terraform mars, is if we are able to somehow increae the Mass of mars without increasing it's volume very much, making its surface gravity get closer and closer to earth's. how do we do this, well ram lots and lots of asteroids into mars over the course of several centuries, perhaps even thousands of years.
They must be small enough to not cause a ton of debri to be flung from mars but big enough to start making a difference, and they must come from the right direction to no ruin mars' orbit.
Now unless we get some seriously more powerful explosives, moving asteroids/comets is going to be hard. So you will have to slowly alter their orbits (thou as fast as possible using explosives and/or space tugs which ever is best)around the sun until they form a collision course.
Then, once you have enough gravity to sustain an atmosphere and so our bones dont go to shit when we live there, that is when we can begin to turn mars into earth 2.
Mars is actually a pan-dimensional Bag of Holding. All the sentient species that survived the Billion Years War have been hiding inside it.
Freedom to fear. Freedom from thought. Freedom to kill.
I guess the War on Terror really is about freedom!
It doesn't need to be abandoned, any more than my parents' house needed to be abandoned. But if I stayed there, and my kids stayed there, it would get way too crowded.
I'm seeing the population explosion everywhere. Even if the rate of population growth is declining and stabilizes, the environmental effects - just from the habitat perspective - are obvious to anyone who has flown over Brazil, the US, or other countries. (I've lived all around the world, and my family is from Latin America - I suspect I know a lot more about "poor, starving people" than you do, but that's an aside) - frankly, I'd rather move some people off planet to preserve the increasingly few empty spaces we have.
And I don't expect to move off planet myself, and even if I did, I fully expect the problems of humanity - including poverty - to travel with me. That's not the issue. Even if I have some of the problems my parents do, I still think it's right for me to live separately from them.
To terraform mars would be invested a trilion dolars and take 100 years, and nobody can or want pay to do it now.
Regardless of the cost, we have an obligation to do it if we can do it. Who cares about the so-called "life" that exists there, hidden in the crevasses of Mars. Do you think the underground alien gnome people will even notice that we've turned the upstairs into a beautiful, productive environment?
We have a fully functioning biological system here, and if we have the ability to export it to theoretically and visibly dead worlds, we must. This especially considering the rate at which we are destorying our very much alive one.
But then again, the pessimist in me wants to say that if we start terraforming Mars, we wont have so many qualms about further raping and destroying our own planet. Ahhh the paradoxes of intelligence...
-- "Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains." Jean Jacques Rousseau
A monorail would be vastly more efficent.
OMG ZERG RUSH
Either give up anything resembling technological civilization or get off the planet. There isn't much of a choice left so far as I can see. You're image of "mother" earth nurturing us etc. is so much horseshit. We're aging adolescents eating mom and siblings out of house and home with our hot-rods and silly habits. Its time someone kicked the kid out.
Seastead this.
Ok. Somebody makes a question:
Does everybody need a DVD player too ? and an SUV ? and all the other crap people in the west spend their money on ?
I give an answer: yes.
Then I proceed to explain my answer: no industrial mass-produced goods = not enough money to produce food for everybody
It has 1 (one) point, because I posted it non-anonymously and dropped the karma bonus.
How can this be Overrated? Can anyone explain this to me?
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048