Scientist Calls Mars a Terraforming Target

Raver32 writes "Mars will be transformed into a shirt-sleeve, habitable world for humanity before century's end, made livable by thawing out the coldish climes of the red planet and altering its now carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere. How best to carry out a fast-paced, decade by decade planetary face lift of Mars — a technique called "terraforming" — has been outlined by Lowell Wood, a noted physicist and recent retiree of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and a long-time Visiting Fellow of the Hoover Institution. Lowell presented his eye-opening Mars manifesto at Flight School, held here June 20-22 at the Aspen Institute, laying out a scientific plan to "experiment on a planet we're not living on.""

Comments

Go to Mars Quaid...

[teknopurge]

These guys obviously haven't seen Total Recall.

Re:Go to Mars Quaid...

[jollyreaper]

These guys obviously haven't seen Total Recall. Would that I could say the same.

Gee, Wally

[brian0918]

Jeepers, what is this foreign concept called "terraforming" [that's been discussed for at least 50 years] - I'll try looking for information on this new resource called the Inter-Net and report my findings as soon as possible.

Wish me luck.

Re:Gee, Wally

[jollyreaper]

Jeepers, what is this foreign concept called "terraforming [wikipedia.org]" [that's been discussed for at least 50 years] - I'll try looking for information on this new resource called the Inter-Net and report my findings as soon as possible.

Wish me luck. Step away from the computer, Mr. President. Here, I have a nice shiny thing for you.

Global Warming

[Anonymous Coward]

So we are hesitant to raise the temperature of our own planet, but its the first thing we want to do to the new one!

Re:A warning to early terraformers...

[jollyreaper]

If you see any egg shaped pods, run away. Yeah, not sure if I could stomach any more seasons of Mork and Mindy either.

Re:Two problems I'm not seeing addressed here

[R2.0]

You are thinking way to small. We need to move Mars and Venus to the trailing Lagrange points in Earth's orbit. That will put them both in the water zone. Then, send a stream of comets from the Oort cloud to crash into Mars - just need to be careful not to miss. Venus just gets the good old fashioned algae/plants method of atmospheric reduction.

By the time we use up Earth, Mars will be ready for wholesale migration, and by the time Mars is used up, Venus will be done simmering. By that time we will be assembling new planets from scratch with asteroids, Mercury, Pluto, Sedna, and whatever other junk we can find.

Re:Terraforming...

[Minwee]

Well, obviously you need to lower the temperature in your closet to about 63 degrees below zero and then pump out 99% of the air, simulating the ideal growth environment found on Mars.

After that, just stick some seeds in and watch them grow.