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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.""
These guys obviously haven't seen Total Recall.
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actually, it'd probably start out with photosynthetic bacteria, or plants that not need to be "planted", so much as just allow their seeds sit on the soil for a while.
Still, the article is written by a physicist, I'd rather see a biologists perspective on this one, involving life and all.
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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.
I always wondered if terraforming could just be done my massive planting of hardy fauna. A ton of trees (like a rainforest), should drastically change even weather patterns...I always thought that it would be an interesting experiment for a lander to plant - and tend - some cacti or something and see what would happen over time.
I do think that the time span is a bit idealistic, and doesn't account for the Law of Unintended Consequences, but the idea is sound.
Mars doesn't have a carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere. Mars doesn't have an anything-rich atmosphere. Yes, what atmosphere Mars has is mostly CO2, but what atmosphere Mars has is actually a pretty decent approximation of vacuum; the thickest parts of it are barely 1% of typical atmospheric pressure on earth.
The whole article doesn't actually include any specifics, it's just handwaving of the "and then a miracle occurs" sort:
Right. We'll get right on that. We only have 93 years to go, according to this article.
This is an interesting question for property rights theorists. Many people adhere to some sort of Lockean view that by modifying this untouched land, the terraforming organization then owns all of Mars. But then some would say it's a sort of "common heritage" that can't be so privatized. It's also extremely difficult to just terraform "one part" of Mars. (Imagine keeping one part at 1 atm and the rest at Mars's regular atmospheric pressure.)
Regardless, anyone who goes through the expense of terraforming Mars, even a government, is going to want some assurance that the rest of humanity won't leech off their work.
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First, Mars does not have a magnetosphere. This helps fend off the worst of the cosmic radiation here on Earth. What does he propose to replace it? The article is light on the details. Second, isn't the understanding still that Mars has insufficient gravity to preserve its atmosphere and so the solar wind strips the atoms and molecules right off the top, thus explaining the low pressure we see today? How do you counter that?
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
If that's so easy, then I expect they'll be applying the same principles on Earth. No need to worry about global warming at home then?
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!
Why Mars? Why not Antarctic glaciers, Gobi desert, Kazakh wastelands, Belarus swamps and Alaskan tundra? Hey, the good old Earth has places that model the conditions of pretty much every planet you can imagine [hazardous included], except perhaps gas giants. Now, where do I go to have the illusion of being on the ancient Foth of Avalars...
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Why don't we "terraform" the Sahara desert, the Gobi desert, Antarctica, and the various dust bowls around the world before trying to tackle Mars.
Right now, we can't even keep existing, fertile land from turning into desert right here on earth, with plenty of water and air around.
Mars will NEVER be habitable.
We'd have to find a way to get its dead core molten and spinning again. Otherwise solar radiation will just flay off any atmosphere we try to put there.
Maybe we could live on Mars in domes or sealed caves but I doubt we'll ever be walking about in the open on its surface.
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
trace the evolution of the hudson bay company into modern canada: i don't see the mass of canadian citizens as serfs of a corporation. the colonizaiton of mars under corporate provenance would probably have a similar uncontroversial and mundane development arc. in fact, any such corporate colonization of mars under government oversight would probably consult a historical study of the hudson bay company directly as a model for potential pitfalls to avoid
i'm sorry, but in reailty, the balance between individual rights and corporate provenance isn't so difficult or immobile. there is no massive conflicts, and the hudson bay company still exists today: what was once the corporate master of much of north america is now simply a department store. but of course, you read most science fiction, or talk to a paranoid schizophrenic, or even consult certain lowest common denominator youth subcultures, and you get the impression that corporations are these unstoppable sociopathic vampires out to turn you into an unthinking slave. hardly. reality is just not that interesting, sorry
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Terraforming Mars is neither necessary nor desirable. Within perhaps 50 years we could easily have human-level AI and advanced robotics. Such robots could be designed for the Martian environment as it exists now. It will prove much easier to adapt our descendants -- our mind children -- to Mars (and many other environments that are hostile to humans) than it would ever be to adapt Mars to us.
In fact, the more optimistic transhumanists would tend to assume that people alive today may see a time when they can upload or upgrade into an advanced robotic form themselves -- so it wouldn't even necessarily be our remote sort-of-descendants who colonize Mars, it could be us, suitably transformed.
Conventional wisdom is that Mars will be explored by robots, then colonized by humans. I turn that idea on it's head. Humans will explore Mars -- today's robotic probes are too crude and limited, so that a single manned expedition could do scientific work that would take decades, maybe centuries, with robots. The other side of that coin is that 50-100 years from now humans will become obsolete for space travel and colonization. The people who actually live on Mars and build a society there will be synthetic people, not homo sapiens.
Are you guys kidding me? You talk about terraforming as if it's just another trick we have in our arsenal, which it isn't. But, the technology aside, there are other issues that will trump that. For example, what about the militant lobby of folks who will undoubtedly make this into 'the evil humans rushing out to screw up another planet after they can't even keep a grip on their own?' You think Eco Terrorism is bad now, wait until someone starts moralizing on the idea of just commandeering a whole planet for experimental purposes. I personally think that it's as good of a laboratory as any, but I really think this would make the alarmist triply so. Think about it, what about property rights, mineral rights, and political philosophy, the interaction of religious idiots, and the mass media distortion... It's all just a huge cluster fsck waiting to happen, which is why I think it will never happen. I'd hope it does, but I don't see anything able to surmount those socio-political issues any time in the next couple of centuries, let alone the next 93 years.
Speak for yourself.
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... by Lowell Wood, a noted physicist and recent retiree of the
This is the point at which I stopped reading TFA.
A physicist talking about chemistry and biology, and a retiree talking about how easy/cheap/fast/simple it would be for you young people to do, if you only had the kind of vision we had back in the day.
Sorry, I've known too many physicists. (and too many retirees...)
The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them. - Mark Twain
I believe the real problem isn't the climate, or the high carbon dioxide atmosphere; the real problem is that Mars's atmosphere is very low density. The air pressure in Mars (less than 1% of that on Earth according to Wikipedia) won't be sufficient for us earthlings to breathe comfortably if at all.
Stupidity is an equal opportunity striker.
Fellow slashdotter Bill Dog
Water vapor is much better at trapping infrared than CO2 is.
Don't tell the folks making hydrogen fuel cells.
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