Should we turn Mars into an Earthlike planet (breathable atmosphere, plants, animals) and go ahead and set up shop there?
I would have said the answer is obviously Yes given the population issues we will soon face. Then I just recently finished Kim Stanley Robinson’s Red Mars trilogy and was intrigued by the whole thing. I really reccomend those books. (spoiler)
In it the people who end up living on Mars break into factions: Reds and Greens. The reds want to leave the planet as close to it’s natural state as possible, and the greens want to terraform. This conflict eventually becomes violent.
A second question:
If your answer is Yes, does it change if there turns out to be life on Mars? Let’s say just the simplest bacteria are found to be there, not intelligent life ala Richard hoagland and his ilk. Should we wipe out the bacteria to make room for an oxygen atmosphere with that can support tons of people and the inevitable Starbucks that will come with them?
I played SimEarth enough to know that this is better left to the experts…
Honestly, cost/benefits of this would make it absolutely infeasable. I may happen someday but not most likely wouldn’t start for at least a hundred years or so.
Yes, it would definately cost a fortune right now. It would bankrupt this world if we were to try it with current technology. If it happens it will be many years from now at the rate Nasa is going. We would need better (i.e. cheaper) launch technologies like a Space Elevator or Solar powered gigawatt lasers to launch light-craft.
So my questions can be considered in the context that we have successfully reduced the cost of launching materials into space by a factor of 10,000 (or about $1 a pound).
I would like to hear a brief rundown of the cost factor. Perhaps I am oversimplifying things, but why can’t we send up a few rockets with thousands of seed capsules in them? The rockets only go one-way, don’t need expensive life support equipment, and I doubt if the seeds will mind that the rockets just crashland on the surface of the planet. Inside each seed capsule is tens of thousands of seeds of some kind of plant that can tolerate the present martian atmosphere, take root & spread like wildfire.
Kudzu comes to mind. That stuff grows like there’s no tomorrow. The major expense that I see is the genetic engineering that would be required to come up with such a plant.
The plants are going to need liquid water and some kind of organic nutrients though, aren’t they? I think you’d have to start with something simpler than green plants.
Political
There is no current political imperative to get to Mars. unless China begins a space race tomorrow, its not going to happen - and China is trying to get its missiles to reach the American mid-west, let alone Mars.
Economic
I had this argument a few years ago, in relation in mining Mars. Mars is full of minerals, I argued, and so it would surely be worthwhile estyablishing mining operations there.
My friend’s answer was that the seabeds are relatively untapped when it comes to mining, less hazardous and not as expensive to get to.
Scientific/Exploratory
This is the only reason I can think of which makes any sense - man’s innate curiosity. But our curiosity is currently fulfilled by unmanned probes.
With no real incentive to put a person on Mars, there is zero incentive to terraform Mars.
I’d love for it to happen, but it won’t, if ever, for a very long time.
It’s an interesting topic. For another thread that ran on it, see: Reds vs Greens. My view remains that terraforming will be a much longer-range project than most science fiction makes it out to be, but ultimately will be a good thing–not so much because a successful result means a new livable world, but because of how people will need to grow and learn in the process of learning how to do so.
#1: The “population issue” isn’t as dire as many think.
#2: An article in Discovery or Popular Science or something described one method of terraforming Mars: Using bacteria to change the atmosphere. Granted, the article’s description was much more in-depth (this was, like, six months ago), but that was the basic premise. Water issues and such were described, but I forgot exactly what was proposed.
#3: As has been pointed out, Mars has a fraction of the gravity that Earth does. As such, it can’t sustain an atmosphere as thick as Earth’s. You can theoretically get it so that the atmosphere is BREATHABLE, but you’d still need air compression masks to get enough air.
Dave Stewart…
The moons of Jupiter and Saturn offer just as wide a range of minerals, and theoretically, due to their smaller size (and, hence, lesser gravity), it’d be easier to get massive quantities of ore off the surface. Sure, the trip to and fro would be longer, but I imagine it’d be close to a century before this sort of operation can be implemented. Hopefully, propulsion/fuel technology will advance significantly by then.
Yeah, I argued that too, but the same response applies. Antediluvial diamonds, submarine gold and platinum is easier to get to (and even then, still damn difficult), than mineral wealth on Mars or on the moons of Saturn or the Asteroid Belt.
It applies TODAY… but, like I said, what about a century from now? There are limits to how deep in the ocean we can put a vessel… 5 miles of ocean pressure is a LOT. When it comes to the process of visiting other worlds, the big hurdle is THRUST. If we can find a way to A: get large vessels off the surface with a fraction of today’s cost, and B: get our vessel’s going many times faster when they are actually in space, then regular traffic to other celestial bodies will become worth the effort.
I think we can start terraforming mars now. I saw an article in Popular Science about putting up giant mirrors above mars polar ice caps to get them melting. That would solve the water problem.
The whole thing is much more complicated, though. I dont think the gravity is strong enough to hold a thick enough atmosphere, anyways.
But we should start closer to home. We should colonize the moon, and we can use that as a launch pad for bigger endeavors.
We CAN (theoretically), but right now, with our level of production, it wouldn’t be worth it. Giant mirrors? Do you have any idea how big they would have to be? And at that size, do you have any idea how much support we’d have to give them so that a random piece of space dust doesn’t tear the whole thing apart? Further, how do we get all that mass into space to begin with?
By the time we could terraform Mars it would probably be easier to mine it as it is than with a thick wet corrosive atmosphere like our own - unless you think hundreds of years from now mining will still be done by humans with shovels and pick-axes.
Well, Badtz, from a Very-Long-Term point of view, it makes more sense to terraform Mars, with its relatively higher gravity levels (as opposed to, say, the Moon, or the satellites of Jupiter and Saturn), and mine the crap out of the outer-planetary moons. Mars may not be able to sustain a thick enough atmosphere to be survivable, but if we can turn it to oxygen, it’ll be less hazardous if a window breaks or something.