Terraforming - Human Destiny or Hubris?

jangobongo writes "Space.com has a thought-provoking article written by Dave Brody for Ad Astra Magazine about the practical and ethical aspects of terraforming other planets. Mars is currently the focus of most terraforming debates, but the author's conclusion is: 'What works is what takes the least work: [terraform] asteroid/comet resources in near Earth orbits... Humanity would get lots and lots of cheap, free-floating, scalable, designer settlements in interesting, useful orbits.' These would then become stepping stones to other planets in our solar system and beyond."

Comments

Re:There comes a time..

[WolfWithoutAClause]

That strikes me as a bit hasty. I mean, so it's the closest planet. And? I mean how do you know that's the best place to live? Wouldn't an asteroid where you have easy access to other asteroids, lots of solar power, lots of volatiles for rocket fuel and lots of materials you can smelt be better?

Or a moon of Jupiter? Or for that matter Phobos or Deimos? (Which incidentally give access to Mars surface if you really want to.)

I mean, the surface pressure of Mars is 0.6% of an earth atmosphere. By any normal standards it's really practically a vacuum; the living accomodations need to be basically the same as a space vehicle. There's nothing known to be special about Mars, no energy sources (although you can certainly take nuclear power with you), and it's difficult to trade stuff with Earth or other places because of its moderately high gravity. So people there are likely to be fairly poor in the very long term IMHO. It seems a very expensive place to live.

But I'm personally not opposed to it, it just seems to be a purely emotional thing about it being nearby.

Re:There comes a time..

[susano_otter]

Here's what I want to know: How do you work with raw rock, when there's no gravity?

You can't use conveyor belts. You can't brace your heavy equipment against the ground for stability and leverage.

Your rubble doesn't settle into neat piles near your work area, for easy disposal or use in some other project.

Every time you act on the work surface, your tools are pushed back into the outer darkness.

And thanks to the vacuum, you can't even use suction or other airflow techniques to manage your rubble.

Space industry, at the very least, will require huge amounts of reaction mass; also sturdier, bulkier, more complex machinery (think lids for all your power-shovel buckets, and enclosures for all your three-dimensional conveyor gears)--machinery that must first be manufactured on Earth, and then lifted into space.

Forget about terraforming! I want to know how we're supposed to work the asteroids!

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Actually, I have an idea: nanotechnology. Say, a canister of tiny Von Neumann machines, which "disassemble" the asteroid, lock away its valuable raw materials in the body-structures of their newborn brothers, and when they're done, combine into one big ball and launch themselves at some orbital factory. At the factory, they could march happily into the new structures the asteroid was mined to build.

Re:Humans are damned expensive, aren't they?

[Rob Riggs]

I'd much sooner see this R&D money go towards solving the geopolitical and socioeconomic problems that plague us already

Trust me -- terraforming any of the planets in our solar system is going to be cheaper than that.