Terraform Humans First, Then Mars?

An anonymous reader writes "Related to the future of Mars, NASA released the transcript of an expert panel which debated terraforming the red planet. Planetary scientists including NASA's Planetary Protection Officer, John Rummel, and science fiction writers (Kim Robinson, Arthur C. Clarke, and Greg Bear) chimed in. When asked if Mars should be transformed to a place where humans could walk without life support suits ("naked"), Sir Clarke responded, "Perhaps we should ask the Martians first." Can it be done quickly-- or at all? Is terraforming ethical? If humans colonize, are the colonists on a one-way trip akin to exile?" Read on for a bit more.

"A consensus seemed to be that like waking a sleeping giant, planet building seems possible if oxygen is not a requirement and some microbial life is dormant underground. But the question of making a planet suitable for plants alone seems to span tens of thousands of years. The remaining science fiction notion was terraforming humans, instead of planets, and making us survive on what is now a very alien world."

Comments

ET, is that you?

[rsrsharma]

Is it really a good idea to think about terraforming a planet before we're sure that there isn't any life on it?

Re:ET, is that you?

[miope]

Yeah, and in five hundred years people will be ashamed of the "barbarians pre-space humans who exterminated bacterial diversity on Mars". I'm talking seriously, we should try to avoid repeting errors... in Colon's time, nobody knew that European's diseases could be fatal for indians... and that *was* understandable given the lack of scientific knowledge of the era. Nowadays we know the scientific, historic social, and ethical value of life and diversity, so, we should be more careful with our actions. And remember that this bacteria could give us lot of insight about the beginings of life and evolution in general. P.S. English is not my primary language... I'm doing my best effort ;-)

Re:ET, is that you?

[Artifakt]

Of course the early Spanish and such knew that European diseases could be fatal to the "Indians". But, they didn't have a germ theory of disease or other modern explanations, and they didn't know about immunity mechanisms at all. They were genuinely surprised to see diseases that had a relatively small mortality rate in Europe, or that generally took months to kill, spread so fast among the indiginous peoples, and often kill within a day or two. This is confirmed by the many letters and messages they wrote relating how remarkable it was. Most of these were sent by Roman Catholic monks, who it appears often genuinely tried to help, but by gathering Native Americans into crowded conditions usually made things worse.
The Bio-warfare attacks with smallpox laden blankets and such generally happened in the 1700's to 1750's, not the 1500's. Those people's ethics probably weren't any better than the Conquistadores, but they understood a bit more about the technical end of handleing Smallpox and other diseases. One of the most notable of these was Lord Amherst's decision to distribute blankets known to be full of smallpox, an attack which he justified in his letters and memoirs on Biblical grounds, although the second most well documented use of smallpox was at the order of a mercenary garrison commander near what is now Chicago ILL, who was a freethinker and justified it on the grounds of European racial superiority. While these two attacks are the only ones with extensive documentation made at the time by the chief perpetrators, it seems probably that there were more, ranging from a low estimate of about 10 to more than 100 depending on the historian's best guess.

Suggestion...

[telstar]

If we're going to make it a place where people walk around naked, we're going to need two new websites. One where we can vote who to send to Mars ... and a second with up-to-the-minute webcams from the red planet.

Re:science

[Chuckaluphagus]

While I will agree with you in some part, a number of the most famous science fiction authors have been serious scientists in their own right; Sir Arthur Clarke is a co-inventor of the orbital satellite, and Asimov had multiple degrees in chemistry and biology.

Science fiction authors also think about this sort of matter on a regular basis, and not as a mere idle notion. Combine that with significant knowledge of the subject matter, and it isn't unreasonable for the government to be asking them what their views on terraforming are.

the toughest bit

[kylemonger]

The toughest bit would be getting Mars to have a magnetic field around it again, to keep the solar wind from peeling away the atmosphere (again) and to keep out most of the ionizing radiation. Without that protective field, all terraforming efforts are a waste of time.

How terraforming mars will work

[Barryke]

How Stuff Works: How Terraforming Mars Will Work

Re:Oxygen requirements = yes, Pressure = no.

[WhiteBandit]

Not really knowing anything about the subject, I'm wondering - if you can pressurize a person for deep sea diving then why can't you de-pressurize them for mars walking?

Nope. The pressures are extremely different. The pressure on Mars is about 10 millibars, or about 1 percent of the equivalent atmospheric pressure on Earth.

At this pressure, water immediately turns to vapor. So in effect, your blood would end up boiling. Anyeurisms and things as blood vessels in your brain explode.

Deep sea diving is different in that we're piling on a lot more pressure on our bodies. It's fairly easy for our bodies to cope with more pressure. Depending on how deep you dive, the equivalent atmospheric pressure would be about 15 times greater. I'm not sure how much our bodies could sustain (just doing some simple googling on this), but that is probably near the limit.

But based on the sole fact of low pressure and lowering the boiling point of water, I'd say no.

Re:science

[sam_handelman]

Of course, you could argue that it's because they imagine something and then scientists see their ideas and say "Lets do that", but I think there's at least one other factor involved.

Or, you could argue that science fiction writers predict everything (cities on the moon, flying cars, hyperdrive), and SOME of it turns out to be possible.

Those writers who predict something possible are "prophetic", but it is largely a question of chance and selective memory.

However, I am a biologist - and I have the minimal ethical training required by my Institutions' NIH training grant.

Personally, I think it is ethical to terraform a planet which is not presently inhabited (by life of any kind.) Harm is, even in the most general sense, something you do to living things, so bringing life to a dead planet is harmless by definition.

Given the risk to the experimental subjects, I do not think it is ethical to "terraform" (or otherwise genetically engineer) human beings.

However, the more relevant question is not "should we do it?" because - we will. Ethical or not, sooner or later, some people will do it. This applies both to human genetic engineering and to planetary terraforming.

The pressing question, therefore, is how should those who choose to do these things (whatever you think about the ethics) go about doing it? Acknowledging that a thing should not be done at all, and then stepping back from that and considering how to minimize the negative imapct when it is inevitably done, can be a difficult feat of mental gynmastics, but in the coming centuries I think it it something peopole of conscience are absolutely going to have to do - in parallel with efforts to stop the more monstrous excesses from being perpetrated at all.

P.S. - Terraforming Mars will be fairly difficult. In a billion years or so, when the photodensity on Mars (and on Earth) has risen (because the Sun is getting bigger), Mars may look very attractive.

At that point, the big problem with Mars is the lack of a strong magnetic field, which makes it difficult to retain water vapor in the martian atmopshere. This is a problem now but it gets worse as the level of solar radiation striking Mars goes up.

This doesn't mean nothing can live on Mars - we can make micro-organisms that could live on Mars with a, frankly, fairly modest budget and present day technology. There are some things down in the Antarctic that might be able to survive as-is somewhere on Mars (although I doubt it.)

The atmosphere is also very thin, and the level of sunlight so small, that it is highly unlikely that we will be able to warm the place up enough for us to wander outside "naked" merely by changing the components of the atmosphere (which could be done with the afforementioned genetically engineered microbes).

Covering the large stretches of the planet in insulated greenhouses (built by self replicating solar powered robots) is probably the best solution if you want a vaguely earthlike environment. This can be done well in advance of the billion year timeframe, of course, and allows you to retain water vapor and a very high temperature.

Re:It works both ways...

[Artifakt]

There's plenty of places we can practice. What happens if we pump desalinated seawater into Death Valley USA? How could we establish a timetable for re-shaping Mars when we don't really know much time it would take the Brazilian rain forest to reclaim the land at its current fringes if it started being protected now?
If we're betting we can establish new species on Mars, wouldn't it make sense to first restablish some more Earthly species in ranges we have wiped them from right here? A hundred or so years ago, we failed in attempts to reestablish the Passenger Pigeon to the wild or keep it alive in zoos. We've just now gotten pretty good with the American Buffalo, and results on the Eastern Red Wolf and the Giant Panda are still mixed at best. Looking at the endangered species list, I'd say until things come off of it (in a positive direction only) at least as fast as they go on, we are not ready for Mars.

We are helping the earth reproduce!

[TheNarrator]

Don't these guys know that we are the reproductive system of the earth? I'm SERIOUS here, think about it! We are how the whole earth's eco system gets transported to other planets. Why did we evolve to where we are today anyway? You think Humans showing up on the earth was some kind of horrible evolutionary accident? NO.. It just part of the natural process of planets developing intelligent life forms and then those lifeforms reproducing the planet's eco-system on other worlds. We are like the seeds of the earth flower getting blown out into outer space via space ships with the DNA and specimens of earth life forms. If we Terraform mars we will see the first real example of a planet re-producing itself!

Re:Earth's ICBMs at PEAK could kill 10%

[stwrtpj]

Most ICBMs were NOT designed to destory cities (contrary to left wing propoganda) but to hit limited military targets, primarily the other side's ICBM silos

And I'm sure those same missiles were designed not to give off the least little tiny bit of radiation and fallout afterward? That they somehow will not allow prevailing winds to carry the fallout into cities, rivers, and farms? You make these things sound so wonderful and neat and clean. Bullshit. You're purposely ignoring all the secondary effects of a widespread series of groundburst or near-groundburst nuclear explosions. No matter how low yield or how "clean" these things are, in a full scale nuclear war like you're suggesting, you'll have enough going off to send an appreciable amount of fallout into the air. And considering that most of our silos are in the midwest right alongside farmland (what fucking moron conceived that one??), that does not make for a very rosy scenario after the war. Whether or not the secondary effects are intentional is a moot point; the effects are real and are not possible to suppress. You have a fission reaction, you are going to have radioactive materials left over.

The Tomahawk Cruise Missile was designed to deliver a nuclear warhead within 7 feet of its target... That would allow you to hit each silo with ONE missile, instead of TWO

Oh, that makes me feel SO much better.

The end of cold war weapons were finally reaching the goal of winning a nuclear exchange.

That's extremely scary thinking. I sincerely hope this thinking was limited to people like you who are not looking at all the facts and not our government. To think that someone could win -- or would want to win -- a nuclear war is sickening.

Taking out downtown Manhattan would take 8-12 nuclear missiles

This boggles the mind. Where the hell are you getting your facts? Though this does sync with your other false statement that these weapons were not designed to take out cities. Each side has different classes of weapons. While it is true that the bulk of each side's arsenals are counterforce weapons -- i.e. aimed at each others weapons -- each side also has many countervalue weapons -- i.e. aimed at cities. These are indeed specifically designed to level cities, taking industry and economic centers with them, and they are not so inefficiently designed to require "8-12" missiles. These missiles typically have yields in the megaton range, and it takes a far smaller number, either delivered via two or three single-warhead missiles, or one MIRV'ed warhead missile.

not "wiping out the world 10 times over" or whatever propoganda we grew up with.

The exact figure of "10 times over" is subject to debate and is not the point. The main point in this possible hyperbole is that while the pure, physical destructive force of all the world's warheads is not capable of wiping out the entire world in the actual fireballs, shock waves, etc, this does not take into account all the secondary effects, such as radiation, fallout, and possible climatalogical effects of burning materials throwing thousands of tons of soot and other debris into the atmosphere. And yes, I know there is still substantial debate about the "nuclear winter" scenario. But do me a favor and find some other planet to test the theory on, thank you.