Slashdot Mirror
DARPA Is Already Working On Designer Organisms To Terraform Mars
MarkWhittington writes: Space visionaries dream of a time when human beings will not only settle Mars, but will terraform the Red Planet into something more Earth-like, with a breathable atmosphere, running water, and a functioning biosphere. Evidence exists that Mars was more or less Earth-like billions of years ago before the atmosphere leached away into space and the water became frozen under the ground and at the poles. Terraforming Mars is decades away from the beginning and probably centuries away from the end. But DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, is already genetically engineering organisms that will help turn the Red Planet blue, according to a story in Motherboard.
I thought so too. I was under the impression that Mars has no spinning iron core anymore, so terraforming is all but impossible since there isn't a strong enough magnetic field to prevent the solar winds from stripping away any potential atmosphere beyond what is currently there. What am I missing here?
You'll be happy to hear that is part of the plan:
"DARPA’s Biological Technologies Office is working on designer organisms that will not only help to terraform Mars, but will clean up environmentally ravaged areas on Earth. Such organisms would be used to clean up toxic waste and oil spills, for example. Hardy organisms could be tailored to make the deserts bloom. Other organisms could remove carbon dioxide, considered by many to be a greenhouse gas, from the atmosphere more quickly"
Without magnetic fields to prevent them from hitting the surface they would continue to be a threat to us an our electronics
In Kim Stanley Robinson's books they solved this by living underground until they could get shielded buildings built aboveground. Their vehicles were also shielded. Presumably one would use hardened electronics.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
As I understand it, while there's oxygen aplenty bound up in the soil, and some carbon dioxide just lying there frozen on the ground, and even water if you look under the surface, there's a serious nitrogen deficiency. 78% of our atmosphere is nitrogen, and it's one of the building blocks of life, not to mention it's what makes it thick enough to breathe, but Mars's atmosphere only has about 2% nitrogen, and that's pretty much a vacuum by earth standards anyway. There's some fossilized fixed nitrogen in the soil, but most of it blew away in the solar wind long ago, and its not coming back unless someone finds a comet of frozen N2 and crashes it into the red planet. WIthout it, you're just not getting a viable biosphere.
What ever dooms us on Earth would likely also doom us on Mars. For example, if a mad invader wanted to take over everything, he/she would come to take Mars also. If run-away AI takes over, it will also likely infect Mars colonies.
I suppose certain mistakes like LHC producing run-away black-holes, or one-off suicidal acts are less likely to spread to Mars, but Mars is so close that most human-created maladies would also put it at risk.
An interstellar or extra-solar colony or ship would have a better chance. Just don't tell The Borg where you are going because they'll probably be able to move faster than us.
Table-ized A.I.