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

What about the Earth?

[lbmouse]

Shouldn't we worry about fixing our own planet before worrying about another one?

Re:Planting?

[corbettw]

Mars will never be habitable for us earthlings to live comfortably. Our bone density would suffer too with a year long round trip and 6 month minimum stay, that's 18 months away from Earth's gravity. Not too good for our health but we're smart enough to figure out a solution.

I'm not a biologist or a physicist or anything, but I think it's a remarkable display of hubris to assert that the technology we have today will not be improved upon at some point in the future.

Wow, way to ignore the GP's last sentence, where he stated the exact same thing.