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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.
Thought the whole atmosphere issue was due to Mars not having a functioning magnetic field anymore?
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"
Start with caves and bunkers. Terraform and generate anthropogenic atmosphere. See what happens: if we don't get off this orb, we are destined for extinction.
28,000 workers died to bring you the Panama Canal. What is an acceptable human sacrifice for a whole frigging planet?
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
It seems to me that it would be far easier to adapt ourselves to Mars by modifying our genetics than to change the characteristics of an entire planet.
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.
The surface gravity on Mars is 38% of that on Earth. The lower gravity of Mars requires 2.6 times Earth’s column airmass to obtain 100 kPa pressure at the surface. Mars also lacks a magnetosphere, which poses challenges for mitigating solar radiation and retaining atmosphere. The lack of a magnetosphere is thought to be one reason for Mars's thin atmosphere. Solar-wind-induced ejection of Martian atmospheric atoms has been detected by Mars-orbiting probes. Earth abounds with water because its ionosphere is permeated with a magnetosphere. The hydrogen ions present in its ionosphere move very fast due to their small mass, but they cannot escape to outer space because their trajectories are deflected by the magnetic field. Venus has a dense atmosphere, but only traces of water vapor (20 ppm) because it has no magnetic field. The Martian atmosphere also loses water to space. Earth's ozone layer provides additional protection. Ultraviolet light is blocked before it can dissociate water into hydrogen and oxygen. Because little water vapor rises above the troposphere and the ozone layer is in the upper stratosphere, little water is dissociated into hydrogen and oxygen
Today's vices may be tomorrow's virtues.
Mars presents untold challenges because it's so bloody cold, it's atmosphere is so thin and it's magnetic field is non-existent. We should be FAR more interested in Venus. I'd love to see what would happen if we dumped a canister of extremeophile bacteria into Venus. They could remove the sulfur from the atmosphere in time and actually allow the heat that makes Venus a hell to escape into space. And it would be FAR easier to manipulate Venus into loosing atmosphere than it would be to gain atmosphere on Mars. Venus also has a strong magnetic field like the earth. We'd also have the advantage on Venus of being able to live in the clouds. Normal earth air and earth pressures would float in the Venusian atmosphere. Not only that but if we can learn to slow the runaway greenhouse effect on Venus it would only help us on earth.
We like mars because we can land on it without problems but it's devoid of life for a reason. Venus is far more interesting in my opinion. We have microbes on earth right now that could easily survive on Venus. This isn't true with mars because the UV on mars will kill even microbial life.
That's an interesting point, but it's not necessarily true. We can take bigger risks on a dead world, or even perform actions that poison in one way and improve it in another, and worry about cleaning up the poisoning later. The current world must not go through an intermediate "dead world" state.
The risks can even help us prove concepts for the earth.
Also, the timescale for terraforming Mars is surely much longer than the timescale for improving Earth. It's an interesting idea at least.