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Space Science

Terraforming - Human Destiny or Hubris? 263

Posted by Zonk from the leaving-your-mark-on-reality dept.
jangobongo writes "Space.com has a thought-provoking article written by Dave Brody for Ad Astra Magazine about the practical and ethical aspects of terraforming other planets. Mars is currently the focus of most terraforming debates, but the author's conclusion is: 'What works is what takes the least work: [terraform] asteroid/comet resources in near Earth orbits... Humanity would get lots and lots of cheap, free-floating, scalable, designer settlements in interesting, useful orbits.' These would then become stepping stones to other planets in our solar system and beyond."
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Terraforming - Human Destiny or Hubris? More

Terraforming - Human Destiny or Hubris?

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  • Asteroids/Comets - Terraforming (Score:5, Interesting)

    by l810c ( 551591 ) * on Friday June 17, 2005 @07:36PM (#12847701)
    I don't really see how you can truly Terraform [wikipedia.org] Asteroids and Comets.

    You could build some sort of settlement, but it would always have to be enclosed. The resources and conditions are just not right for atmospheres.

    • Re:Asteroids/Comets - Terraforming (Score:4, Interesting)

      by The Briguy ( 612887 ) on Friday June 17, 2005 @07:38PM (#12847719) Journal
      You hollow out the asteroid, re-enforce the walls, fill it with air and spin it.
      It will only really work with the tougher Iron asteroids, though, the weaker "rubble piles" won't work.

      • Re:Asteroids/Comets - Terraforming (Score:5, Interesting)

        by js7a ( 579872 ) <james AT bovik DOT org> on Friday June 17, 2005 @07:46PM (#12847763) Homepage Journal
        Actually, you need to hollow out the walls, and then place an insulated airtight container inside (a thermos) so that the heat stays away from the asteroid.

        And plenty of reading material and lots of things to do.

        • Re:Asteroids/Comets - Terraforming (Score:4, Interesting)

          by Glock27 ( 446276 ) on Saturday June 18, 2005 @10:01AM (#12850619)
          Actually, you need to hollow out the walls, and then place an insulated airtight container inside (a thermos) so that the heat stays away from the asteroid.

          The shell must be made airtight (not a big problem), but the asteroid is already a thermos, being surrounded by vacuum. The skin should be designed so a) it is largely photoelectric for electricity generation and b) has a mechanism for varying the energy radiated from the shaded side. If the photoelectric coating is high enough efficiency, that will cut the amount of heat that's absorbed by the object. A reflective outer coating may also be used. Also, the orbit can be chosen so that it spends as much time as needed, up to 50%, in the Earth's shadow to ameliorate heating issues (note that in a polar orbit, such habitats could be sunlit 100% of the time). In all, heat control isn't that difficult of an issue.

          In fact, thinking a bit more, one could envision the following setup: a panel on the sunward side, which is essentially a large solar collector, coupled mechanically to the habitat by two beams which connect to bearings at the poles of the habitat spin axis. The beams extend back beyond the habitat to where the heat exchanger sits. The power panel would not only provide power for the habitat, but would power gyroscopes to keep things oriented properly. The power panel could be oriented dynamically to allow more insolation of the habitat to occur if needed, keeping the interior temperature at desired levels.

          And plenty of reading material and lots of things to do.

          World of Warcraft II (and siblings) should take care of that issue... ;-)

      • You hollow out the asteroid, re-enforce the walls, fill it with air and spin it.
        It will only really work with the tougher Iron asteroids, though, the weaker "rubble piles" won't work.

        There's too much solar radiation for that scheme to work :-/
      • It will only really work with the tougher Iron asteroids, though, the weaker "rubble piles" won't work.

        And big ones, too. Smaller ones will have far too much Coriolis force and too much of a vertical gravity gradient for people not to get nauseous, especially if you want tall buildings. Tens of kilometers is probably the minimum.

        And, of course, the bigger you get, the bigger a job hollowing it out is.
      • of course.. by the time you've hollowed out the asteroid, you no longer have a reason to inhabit it.
      • Why would you want to live on an asteroid? For all the work of hollowing out cubic mile after cubic mile of iron asteroid, you could build a proper space station. The advantage of this is that then you could put the space station somewhere people want to live, rather than in an asteroid belt in the middle of nowhere.

    • Re:Asteroids/Comets - Terraforming (Score:5, Informative)

      by Rei ( 128717 ) on Friday June 17, 2005 @08:11PM (#12847921) Homepage
      Besides, it's a lot easier to picture living on Mars [spacedaily.com]. The landscape has such an Earthlike feel to it. It's easy to picture a city off in the distance haze, sagebrush growing scattered across the landscape, etc.

      Even if you can't get an O2 atmosphere, just increasing the atmospheric density to a sizable portion of our own would be a huge benefit. You wouldn't need pressure suits (only rebreathers and, depending on temperature and atmospheric composition, possibly unpressurized skin-protecting layers). The atmosphere would do a good job shielding you from radiation, the climate would be more moderate, and if you had to protect crops from the atmosphere still, the greenhouses would be much lighter if you didn't have to have them pressurized.
      • mmmm I would love to live on Mars 40 years from now =)

        Personally I think the coolest thing is that if you built large domes with atmospheres similiar to our earths, you could possibly put on a pair of wings and just fly like a bird on the moon or mars =) Would be amazing imo. Especially on Mars with a clear dome.
        • Our moon is easier to get to, and has a lower gravity. So it's easier to "fly" on the moon. Also, since the moon has no atmosphere, there wouldn't be any wind loads on the structure. It would need a blanket of dirt to protect against very small meteorites, but then again, the dirt wouldn't impose much of a load.

      • The atmosphere would do a good job shielding you from radiation, the climate would be more moderate, and if you had to protect crops from the atmosphere still, the greenhouses would be much lighter if you didn't have to have them pressurized.

        This may sound easy to you [cough], but it's not so easy as you think! Unlike Earth, Mars has no organized magnetic field [nasa.gov]. The magnetic field on Earth prevents much of the solar wind from destroying the ozone layer in our atmosphere, which as I'm sure you know,

        • which as I'm sure you know, is the layer of our atmosphere that is the most important in blocking ultraviolet radiation.

          If you're capable of increasing the atmospheric density by a factor of a thousand, you're capable of reseeding the upper layers of the atmosphere continually.

          Mars also has the nice benefit that ultraviolet radiation is already down by a factor of 3. If you want to be super clever, you could follow Kim Stanley Robinson's suggestion and drop an orbiting mirror to increase the solar insola
        • Space is a *lot* worse than just UV. The high energy protons and electrons are the serious problem in space, and those are blocked by the atmosphere (even with no ozone layer, some UV will be destroyed)

          Radiation is what creates our ozone layer, not destroys it. The solar wind does, however, slowly erode the atmosphere. This occurs in geological time scales, so isn't really a problem.
      • Even if you can't get an O2 atmosphere, just increasing the atmospheric density to a sizable portion of our own would be a huge benefit

        This is the idea I think we should do.

        We could kill two birds with one stone and suck the CO2 out of the Venus atmosphere, and drop it into the Martian atmosphere. Voila! Thin out Venus, and thicken Mars. Two planets for the price of one.

        • We could kill two birds with one stone and suck the CO2 out of the Venus atmosphere, and drop it into the Martian atmosphere. Voila! Thin out Venus, and thicken Mars. Two planets for the price of one.

          Or we could just follow the Solar System's first example, and move Venus out to Mars's orbit, and crash Mars into it.

          OK, OK, it'd take a few million years, but hell, no work needed afterwards. Nice way to eke a few more billion years out of our Sun after the increasing solar luminosity starts boiling away th
        • Big problem: Venus's atmosphere is almost a hundred times too dense. That wouldn't even scratch the surface, unfortunately.

      • Easy. Nuke Mars. (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Cyno01 ( 573917 ) <Cyno01@hotmail.com> on Saturday June 18, 2005 @03:41AM (#12849816) Homepage
        Seriously. Ton of nukes at the martian poles. Heats up the planet, vaporizes the CO2 and water in the poles, thickening the atmosphere, and maybe putting enough of both out there to sustain plantlife and start making some o2.
    • It seems that they'd be better as an accessible source of raw materials. Metallic asteroids of iron & nickel, ready made stainless steel. Rocky asteroids provide soil, probably water & other organic materials. The comets would be an amazingly rich source of organics & water. Accessible because you don't have to drag them out of a deep gravity well. Launch from earth, with just enough materials & people to make it to an asteroid. Use that as a bootstrap, use the asteroid's material to make
    • If your settlement is big enogth, like many thousands of kylometers wide, and taller than earth's atmosphere, and if light comes from above, you may not see the diference.

  • There comes a time.. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ProfaneBaby ( 821276 ) on Friday June 17, 2005 @07:37PM (#12847716)
    I think there comes a time when a society or civilization must stand up and ask "What is important to us?"

    As there's no current signs of anything we consider 'meaningful' life, it appears that the nearest planet shall be our manifest destiny. If, however, there was ANY reasonably meaningful life detected (or evidence of past life), I think this would be a much more significant debate.

    • Re:There comes a time.. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by WolfWithoutAClause ( 162946 ) on Friday June 17, 2005 @07:48PM (#12847780) Homepage
      That strikes me as a bit hasty. I mean, so it's the closest planet. And? I mean how do you know that's the best place to live? Wouldn't an asteroid where you have easy access to other asteroids, lots of solar power, lots of volatiles for rocket fuel and lots of materials you can smelt be better?

      Or a moon of Jupiter? Or for that matter Phobos or Deimos? (Which incidentally give access to Mars surface if you really want to.)

      I mean, the surface pressure of Mars is 0.6% of an earth atmosphere. By any normal standards it's really practically a vacuum; the living accomodations need to be basically the same as a space vehicle. There's nothing known to be special about Mars, no energy sources (although you can certainly take nuclear power with you), and it's difficult to trade stuff with Earth or other places because of its moderately high gravity. So people there are likely to be fairly poor in the very long term IMHO. It seems a very expensive place to live.

      But I'm personally not opposed to it, it just seems to be a purely emotional thing about it being nearby.

      • Worse than the near-vacuum are the fines (smaller than dust) that cover nearly the entire surface of the planet, which will get into absolutely everything brought along by settlers. Dealing with those will probably be the hardest thing.

      • Re:There comes a time.. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by susano_otter ( 123650 ) on Friday June 17, 2005 @08:02PM (#12847865) Homepage
        Here's what I want to know: How do you work with raw rock, when there's no gravity?

        You can't use conveyor belts. You can't brace your heavy equipment against the ground for stability and leverage.

        Your rubble doesn't settle into neat piles near your work area, for easy disposal or use in some other project.

        Every time you act on the work surface, your tools are pushed back into the outer darkness.

        And thanks to the vacuum, you can't even use suction or other airflow techniques to manage your rubble.

        Space industry, at the very least, will require huge amounts of reaction mass; also sturdier, bulkier, more complex machinery (think lids for all your power-shovel buckets, and enclosures for all your three-dimensional conveyor gears)--machinery that must first be manufactured on Earth, and then lifted into space.

        Forget about terraforming! I want to know how we're supposed to work the asteroids!

        ==========
        Actually, I have an idea: nanotechnology. Say, a canister of tiny Von Neumann machines, which "disassemble" the asteroid, lock away its valuable raw materials in the body-structures of their newborn brothers, and when they're done, combine into one big ball and launch themselves at some orbital factory. At the factory, they could march happily into the new structures the asteroid was mined to build.

        • Re:There comes a time.. (Score:4, Insightful)

          by WolfWithoutAClause ( 162946 ) on Friday June 17, 2005 @08:17PM (#12847958) Homepage
          You can't use conveyor belts.

          No, I think you can. Make it like a spiral. A spiral has outward acceleration at all points. There's probably other ways to do it too.

          You can't brace your heavy equipment against the ground for stability and leverage.

          Why not? Just stick a bunch of crampons into the rock. What's the big deal?

          Your rubble doesn't settle into neat piles near your work area, for easy disposal or use in some other project.

          Stick it in a bag. Again, big deal. Bags are reusable, and lightweight in large sizes (cube/square law).

          machinery that must first be manufactured on Earth, and then lifted into space.

          Nah. Just lift a milling machine, and smelt your own raw materials up there.

          • There actually is a point here though. If you are mining the surface, you are going to create a lot of small debris that's going to float out and about. That could become a problem, don't you think?
            • It could be, but most asteroids spin, so no, probably fairly trivial to deal with. Just set up a tent around the area and the stuff will tend to collect itself away from the spin axis.

              And if you just toss the rubble over the side of the asteroid, it comes back 1/2 an orbit later due to orbital mechanics. That's quite a few months or even years. And it comes back at the same speed that you launched it at, so you don't want to launch it too fast.

          1. Get yourself a huge quantity of plastic
          2. Form the plastic into a huge ziploc bag
          3. Find a smallish comet
          4. Slip the bag over the comet and seal it
          5. Let the sun melt/boil the comet while you collect the outgassing
          6. Vent off some of the gas to steer the bag-o-gas into a good orbit
          7. ???
          8. Profit

          As far as asteroids, you could anchor the equipment down using some sort of piton gun, or by just strapping it to the asteroid with some long rope.

    • Yikes Manifest Destiny? How 19th century.
      In reality the reason for life is life. Odds are pretty good the first settlers from earth are on Mars and are already trying to set up a home if they have not already done so. And they are working on changing Mars right now. Will they succeed? Who knows. Some day we will have to leave this rock or everything that we have done will mean nothing.
    • If, however, there was ANY reasonably meaningful life detected (or evidence of past life), I think this would be a much more significant debate

      Well, interesting perhaps in the academic sense... where we want to be sure that we don't poison ourselves, or disrupt a fascinating field of study (at least, not too early).

      But I just spent the last week terraforming my back yard. I did give some thought, as was digging, about the worms I was disturbing, and about which way the water was going to flow. But by

  • Space Settlement Rather Than Terraforming (Score:5, Informative)

    by Baldrson ( 78598 ) * on Friday June 17, 2005 @07:39PM (#12847727) Homepage Journal
    Reading about a debate between terraformers and "don't touch that" Luddites is sort of like watching "Democrats" and "Republicans" on CSPAN: They're setting the range of opinion to exclude the founders of their institution.

    Ad Astra was originally a space settlement magazine when the L5 Society merged with the National Space Society on condition that the emphasis on space settlement remain its ultimate priority.

    What is the difference between a space settlement and a terraformed planet, you might ask?

    The fact that you need to ask is evidence that the foundation of the National Space Society was long ago abrogated for more "fashionable" pursuits, such as those promoted by hucksters like Zubrin.

    One of the better answers to that question is in Mike Combs' Space Settlement FAQ [aol.com]

    Since the Ad Astrans have had the unmitigated chutzpah to quote the originator of the space settlement idea without talking about actual space settlement -- pretending the idea simply doesn't exist, I'm going to provide an appropriate rebuttal: The entirety of Mr. Combs' FAQ.

    What is space settlement?

    Space settlement is the concept of colonizing space by using extraterrestrial resources to construct artificial, closed-ecology habitats in orbit.

    What is a space habitat?

    A space habitat would be a pressurized sphere, cylinder, or torus (donut shape), rotating on its axis so that centrifugal force serves as an artificial gravity. The interior is landscaped with soil, water, and vegetation. Sunlight would be gathered by mirrors and reflected into the interior of the habitat through windows. The goal is to create as Earth-like an environment as possible.

    How is space settlement different from any of the other space colonization proposals?

    Most thinking regarding human expansion into space has focused on the settling of the surfaces of other planets, sometimes after modifying their environments to make them more Earth-like (called terraforming). The space settlement concept maintains that planets are not the most ideal location for human colonies beyond the Earth.

    Aren't we going to terraform Mars or Venus?

    Terraforming is a long-term project requiring technology significantly advanced over what we have today. Even terraforming advocates admit it would take a minimum of 200 years to modify Mars to the stage where even simple anaerobic microorganisms and algae can survive. [Ref: Terraforming: Engineering Planetary Environments, Martyn J. Fogg, SAE Press 1995.] Space habitats, on the other hand, can be built with today's technology, and would be homes in space which people initiating the program could move into within their lifetimes.

    Interstellar travel may someday become possible, but we have no guarantee that Earth-like planets will be as plentiful in the Milky Way galaxy as they have been in Hollywood, CA.

    What advantages would orbital settlements have over a colony built on another planet?

    1. Access to 24-hour-a-day sunlight. This makes solar power a consistent, economical energy source. Photovoltaic panels can convert sunlight into electrical current, and solar mirrors can concentrate it for process heat in industrial operations (such as the smelting of ore). A space-based solar concentrator the size of a football field (which could still weigh less than a car) could provide process heat equivalent to the burning of 1 million barrels of oil over 30 years.

      Sunlight also drives the life-support system of the habitat, so the day/night cycle can be set to whatever is convenient. Compare this to the moon, where there is 14 days of continuous daylight, and then a 14-day-long night. Here, some alternate energy source would probably have to be used half the time.
    2. Access to zero gravity. Th
    • Well I noticed that Dave Brody stuck mention of space habitats at the end of the article after a whole lot of worthless back and forth so I suppose I owe him something of an apology -- but really -- doesn't he know how far out to lunch the debate has gotten since Zubrin hit the public relations mill? Why bury the ultimate solution when it is already so buried?

  • But first... (Score:5, Funny)

    by DroopyStonx ( 683090 ) on Friday June 17, 2005 @07:41PM (#12847736)
    Let's work on immortality.

    I'd hate to move to an asteroid outside of earth's orbit and die from this stupid cellular aging when I could've been floating above Uranus staring at that big red spot.

    Wait a minute...

  • How do you define terraforming? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by raider_red ( 156642 ) on Friday June 17, 2005 @07:43PM (#12847743) Journal
    Technically, haven't we terraformed Earth by cutting down forests, building cities where heat builds up in localized areas, and by raising the temperature of the globe? We definitely have the potential for it, but we need to work on applying it positively.

    • Technically, haven't we terraformed Earth by cutting down forests, building cities where heat builds up in localized areas, and by raising the temperature of the globe? We definitely have the potential for it, but we need to work on applying it positively.

      Supposedly we've been doing this for the past 10,000 years which is why we aren't undergoing an ice age right now. Aborting an ice age sounds positive to me.
    • "Technically, haven't we terraformed Earth by cutting down forests, building cities where heat builds up in localized areas, and by raising the temperature of the globe? We definitely have the potential for it, but we need to work on applying it positively."

      Technically, no. But nice try with that greenpeace environmental spin thing going on there. Everybodies favorite source [wikipedia.org] defines Terraforming as: ...the process of modifying a planet, moon or other body to a more habitable atmosphere, temperature or eco
  • We already have terraforming on a massive scale right here on Earth. Massive walls. Massive dams. Massive strip mining. Flattening mountains. Canals. The irrigation of deserts. Hell, even something as simple as bulldozing a swamp for yet another Wal-Mart is terraforming. It's here. It's been here. And to answer the question... I think it's hubris, and when not done properly, you get what you have in the US... lots and lots and lots and lots of flat, paved parking lots that all look the same. We

    • Actually, no we don't.. (Score:2, Interesting)

      by bwcbwc ( 601780 )
      To successfully terraform, OR to create a space settlement you need to establish a self-sustaining ecosystem. Well, theoretically you could support a colony with massive (literally) transfers of resources from Earth, but that would increase the costs of a colonization project at least 10 fold.

      The only attempt that's been made to establish a self-sustaining ecology is the well-known Biodome project, which should've been promoted as an engineering prototype project, rather than being slurred as a badly-desig
    • Terraforming means creating an Earthlike/human habitable environment. What we are doing is moving the Earth's environment away from the human habitable zone. One could make the argument that, after some centuries of learning our trade, via space habitats and Martian terraforming, we will some day come back and 'terraform' the Earth.

    • Am I the only one who thinks we should nuke the hell out for the martian ice caps? 10-20 large H-Bombs should get things sturred up, and move chemicals into the atmosphere. Yeah... I'd say we already have terraforming. Silos and silos of it just waiting to go.

      Hopefully by the time the radiation settles down, things should be ready to support life. And if not? It would make great TV.

      Rememebr the US fallback plan if they didn't get to the moon and back? They were going to hit it with a big enough n

      • Although a few well placed H-bombs would do a good job at sturring up the thin veneer of industrial society, I don't think the entire US arsenal would liberate enough heat to make more than a superficial mess at the Martian poles. The effects of 40 years of testing on Earth have been exceedingly minor, if the potential for mutating DNA and radiation sickness are discounted.

        To build up the kind of heat you'd need requires redirecting lots of solar energy. Keeping human energy inputs to a minimum would probab

    • That's just weak. Don't worry, oh hater of Man. The planet will have its day.

      If the parking lots and interstate highways no longer serve a purpose, and the evil Man leaves Earth for good, the descendants of a single dandelion could re-prairitize the land they occupy in the blink of a geological eye.

      But to me, planets are expendable. Other species are expendable. Though each individual human is more valuable than the entirety of another species or a galaxy of planets, individuals are expendable.

      Only t

  • I always felt... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by cmowire ( 254489 ) on Friday June 17, 2005 @07:47PM (#12847770) Homepage
    ... that the whole mars terraforming thing was mostly a way for scientists to get people to pay for missions to mars, to answer basic questions about the universe, because it's easier for people to grasp.

    Much the same way "doing research in space to cure cancer" was a great way to pay for a space station, at least until it became something to keep the Russians busy with so they wouldn't make ICBMs for North Korea or something.

  • Forget Terraforming... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by __aaclcg7560 ( 824291 ) on Friday June 17, 2005 @07:50PM (#12847791)
    What we need to have is giant solar panels in orbit around Venus to beam back all that solar energy as useable energy. With the supply of most fossil fuels disappearing over the next 50 years, we need a new alternative energy source. Assuming, of course, that the ozone doesn't disappear first and we all die from radiation exposure. Maybe we need to build underground cities first. Hmmm...

  • Like it or not (Score:3, Insightful)

    by hobotron ( 891379 ) on Friday June 17, 2005 @07:56PM (#12847831)


    This is where we are going, right now all our eggs are in one basket, and this basket has proved itself to have major shake ups in the past, I dont think there could be a geological event that could kill ALL humans, but it would definately set us back thousands of years.

    Terraforming is the one skill that will define Humanitys' ability to spread, and consequently SURVIVE, And its not about terraforming asteroids, sure its a step, but not a viable habitat should all technology fail, thats what terraforming is all about. Its a "save point", set up another system, such as a planet, where should all modern technology fail, humans could have the time and resources to rebuild to an albeit different but self sustaining civilization. And keep the process going for how ever long we have viable resources.

    On the ethics of terraforming, I guess im a bit too darwinian to bring any ethics into this, for me and many others its simply a SURVIVAL issue, if there were life on a planet that we wanted to make in our image, should we kill them to support us? I am confident we can handle that question when It arises, and not piss ourselves thinking about it now, we are already developing the technology, and its only a matter of time.

    You can liken terraforming with the modern industrialazation. Yes, a lot of people and places died to make it happen, and there were lots of areas we pretty much destroyed in the name of progress, but we are better off from it, we still have national parks, and most of our natural beauty on earth. But we have moved forward. There is no doubt my kids generation or later will have to deal with "Planet huggers" and what not, but generations later they will have the ability to complain, because of the work we will do for our survival.

  • Two words for the same thing!

  • Terraforming is a quaint relic of a bygone age when Nature was humanity's plaything, the same era that dreamt of weather control and reclaiming the Sahara. These dreams came before we truly understood complexity and chaotic systems, showing just how difficult it would be to get them right.

    I have to agree with the notion that if terraforming was so easy, maybe we could try to get the Earth back to its pre-industrial state before worrying about other worlds.

    In the end, I believe that our descendants are m

    • I have to agree with the notion that if terraforming was so easy, maybe we could try to get the Earth back to its pre-industrial state before worrying about other worlds.

      Hey, if you like filth, ignorance, disease, and poverty you're in the distinct minority. I much prefer soap and shampoo to filth, knowledge of the world at my fingertips in preference to ignorance, high-tech medicines in preference to early death, and having available all the technology in a local Best Buy and the resources of a Wal-Mart

  • We should exile life-imprisoned convicts to Mars, with the job of terraforming it. And monitor them for any development of any weapons which could reach back to Earth - and destroy it whenever they get it. Then, once terraformed, we should invade and take it over.

  • Humans are damned expensive, aren't they? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by stonedonkey ( 416096 ) on Friday June 17, 2005 @08:16PM (#12847954)
    Up until recently, I thought terraforming was a neat idea and great fodder for science fiction. Then it made me realize how fragile the human body is, that we would have to orchestrate a Great Pyramid-caliber exercise to make a planet livable for our delicate bodies.

    I'd much sooner see this R&D money go towards solving the geopolitical and socioeconomic problems that plague us already--rather than towards bluesky research that may be aborted by nuclear or bio-weapon cataclysm.

    Am I just a party pooper?

  • Eros-ward Ho! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rufusdufus ( 450462 ) on Friday June 17, 2005 @08:23PM (#12848022)
    I've always been a fan of boring out a station in the asteroid Eros [nasa.gov], and spinning it up like the picture shows to create 1g artificial gravity at the ends of the asteroid.
    Seems like the only way to get a large colony in space is to use materials already there.
    Eros is attractive because we have already landed a craft on it.
    • I've always been a fan of boring out a station in the asteroid Eros

      We can't silly, that's where IF Command is located. It was the buggers' advanced post in the first invasion. It cost the marines a thousand lives to clear them out.

      Of course, you don't have the clearance to know this, so undoubtedly you'll be assigned to permanent duty there.

  • Saganites, von Braunians, and O'Neillians (Score:5, Interesting)

    by FleaPlus ( 6935 ) on Friday June 17, 2005 @08:28PM (#12848056) Journal
    This debate me of something I saw over on SciScoop [sciscoop.com] some time ago:

    (pasted below)

    I recently heard Rick Tumlinson of the Space Frontier Foundation [space-frontier.org] speak on a couple of related issues, and he gave us a very interesting perspective on all this - to paraphrase as best as I can remember:

    "There are three distinct philosophies on doing things in space, which we can identify with three individuals: Carl Sagan, Wernher von Braun, and Gerard O'Neill. To the Sagans of the world, space is wondrous, grand, amazing, spectacular, and we should be learning all we can about it - but 'don't touch'! To the von Brauns, space is a proving ground for national grandeur, a place where we show how our engineers are the best, where we build the biggest rockets, the best space stations, and parade our astronaut heros to the world. To the O'Neills, however, space is the new American West: a place of hope and economic opportunity for all people."

    Both the Sagans and the von Brauns have strong and traditional representations at NASA - the scientific and robotic missions follow that Sagan philosophy of "explore, but don't touch". Apollo was of course the quintessential von Braunian project, and the manned programs at NASA have attempted to follow in that mode ever since. But the O'Neill vision of space as a place for all people, as a location with resources bringing economic opportunity for the world, has had very little say in NASA up to this point.

    Back to the current discussion, on the topic of terraforming Saganites seem to be against it quite often, as they're afraid of humans disturbing the sanctity of space. There's also bioconservatives who tend to see humanity as a virus which they want to keep quarantined to Earth, if not eradicated completely.

    Many von Braunians are in favor of terraforming, while O'Neillians are very much in favor of both terraforming and orbital settlements. I personally think of myself as a Saganite that's recently "converted" to being an O'Neillian. There are few things I want to see more than see humanity become a multi-planet, spacefaring species.

  • Paraterraforming (Score:4, Interesting)

    by FleaPlus ( 6935 ) on Friday June 17, 2005 @08:34PM (#12848103) Journal
    I recently found out about paraterraforming, which seems like an ideal way to do things. Basically, instead of terraforming an entire planet at once over a period of centuries, you construct a habitat which expands over time. From Wikipedia:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraforming#Paraterr aforming [wikipedia.org]

    Also known as the "worldhouse" concept, paraterraforming involves the construction of a habitable enclosure on a planet which eventually grows to encompass most of the planet's usable area. The enclosure would consist of a transparent roof held one or more kilometers above the surface, pressurized with a breathable atmosphere, and anchored with tension towers and cables at regular intervals. A worldhouse can be constructed with technology known since the 1960s.

    Paraterraforming has several advantages over the traditional approach to terraforming. For example, it provides an immediate payback to investors; the worldhouse starts out small in area (a domed city for example), but those areas provide habitable space from the start. The paraterraforming approach also allows for a modular approach that can be tailored to the needs of the planet's population, growing only as fast and only in those areas where it is required. Finally, paraterraforming greatly reduces the amount of atmosphere that one would need to add to planets like Mars in order to provide Earthlike atmospheric pressures. By using a solid envelope in this manner, even bodies which would otherwise be unable to retain an atmosphere at all (such as asteroids) could be given a habitable environment. The environment under an artificial worldhouse roof would also likely be more amenable to artificial manipulation.

    It has the disadvantage of requiring a great deal of construction and maintenance activity, the cost of which could be ameliorated to some degree through the use of automated manufacturing and repair mechanisms. A worldhouse could also be more susceptible to catastrophic failure in the event of a major breach, though this risk can likely be reduced by compartmentalization and other active safety precautions. Meteor strikes are a particular concern in the absence of any external atmosphere in which they would burn up before reaching the surface.

    Small Worldhouses are often referred to as "Domes".
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Terraforming. How quaint. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Saeger ( 456549 ) <farrellj@nosPAM.gmail.com> on Friday June 17, 2005 @08:48PM (#12848205) Homepage
    Terraforming a planet only makes sense if you still think that technology is advancing linearly along traditional SF lines, instead of exponentially [kurzweilai.net], and only if you assume that us humans will still choose to be stuck in our inefficient, fragile biological form for a period longer than the centuries it takes to terraform a planet in the first place.

    So, no, IMNSHO, I think we're much more likely to end up ripping the planets apart [aeiveos.com] (oh the humanity! how unromantic!) to make better use of the matter, than wasting space & energy by living on the limited surface area of a gravity well.

    • Re:Terraforming. How quaint. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by ansible ( 9585 ) on Friday June 17, 2005 @09:49PM (#12848584) Journal

      Indeed. It is this discussion of topics like terraforming that disapoint me most about people's ability to think about the future, and understand trends in technology.

      Why do we talk about terraforming? To provide a room-temperature environment (air, pressure, water, gravity) to accommodate us meat bags.

      But what if we were made of tougher materials? So we don't need to breath O2 at STP. So we don't need gravity to walk around on surfaces. So we are resistant to radiation. So that outer space becomes our natural environment.

      Is it easier to change a planet so that it supports Earth-based meat bags? Or change ourselves to accommodate the environment?

      I've seen the future, and it isn't Star Trek.

  • Third option:
    Breasts!
  • Admittedly, I haven't read much on terraforming another planet/body, but something that's always gets stuck in my mind is the issue of timescales. What sort of timescales are we talking about when we talk of terraforming Mars? And once we have terraformed it how long do we wait to make sure the environment has stabilized?

  • After all the killer asteroid movies, wouldn't increasing Mars' mass with asteroids be worrisome to the inhabitants? Which is to say, after the tech is available to get to Mars regularly, will the world really agree to wait a few hundred years to round up asteroids and bulk the planet up? Always seemed to me like it would be inhabited long before that.

    Maybe there are some other feasible modifications like the solar lens Robinson wrote about?
  • Our solar system has enough energy/mineral resources to support trillions of humans, at a standard of living that current Americans could never dream of attaining.

    Please don't fall for the argument of simplistic environmentalsts who insist that the "pristine" celestial bodies must be preserved at all costs. Eliminating poverty and overcrowding is much more important.

    Yes, we should attempt to preserve any alien species we might encounter (and completely sequence their DNA, in case we screw up in that rega
  • We have as much right to terraform another planet as we do to plant gardens and tend farms here on this planet.

    If there is a rule that says it is unethical to change another planet, then it must be equally unethical to change anything on this planet. Nothing could be farther from the truth. We have every right and every reason to exploit, manage and protect whatever planet we live on to our own advantage. That doesn't mean destroying a planet, but management requires making decisions. Our survival and our
  • Humans kill each other all the time, either in a warlike or prenatal state, life on other planets will not be a true consideration.

  • Why terraform? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rimu guy ( 665008 ) * on Friday June 17, 2005 @09:10PM (#12848366) Homepage

    Why terraform?

    Even the most advanced terraforming techniques would not produce an environment as pleasant (for the most part) as Earth's. e.g. You'll have issues of different planet mass resulting in different gravities.

    Over the next few decades our understanding and mastery of genetic engeneering will make it possible to modify plants animals and humans to make them better suit the native environment.

    e.g. a higher gravity planet could be accompanied by stockier and stronger genetic stock. e.g. different atmospheric compositions could be accompanied by modified respitory systems.

    With a xenomorphing approach you could save on shipping out all the heavy terraforming equipment. Instead you can ship out a few kilograms of genetic material and assembly equipment. And grow the passengers on the other end. The lighter mass and simpler nature of the payload would mean it would be require less fuel to power the flight and higher accelerations would be possible meaning that more trips can be made for less cost in less time. That would beat having to ship out humans for multi-generational voyages.

  • One of the ideas that deep ecologists put forward is the "Gaia Hypothesis" which says that the whole earth is an organism. I decided to use this as the basis for my argument which is: don't all living things have to sooner or later reproduce? How does the earth reproduce? How does all the DNA of its lifeforms get spread to other planets? The reproductive system of the earth is us! The evolution of the human species was not a gigantic horrible accident as some deep ecologists seem to imply but the natu
  • We are capable of absolutely transforming environments. The place you lie, sit, or stand reading this was probably altogether different a hundred years ago, not to mention two thousand years ago; and almost all of those changes were brought about by human beings. We have completely remade our world in the past few centuries, changing life for almost every kind of plant and animal, ourselves most of all. It only remains for us to experiment with executing (or, for that matter, not executing) these changes in
  • I would say that the first step to terra forming is to get the hang of not reverse terra forming our own planet.

    Terra forming does not have to be left to the high powered scientist of the distant future.

    We can do it here, now on Earth. Trade in the SUV for a hybrid or a smaller car. Use green technologies. At least stop littering.
  • "Humanity would get lots and lots of cheap, free-floating, scalable, designer settlements in interesting, useful orbits."

    Yeah, that would work really well assuming that one doesn't mind dying a few years later when the body can barely function due to the aprophy muscles undergo in extremely low gravity. Even if it turns out that humans can survive extreme periods of zero gravity, they would never be able to leave the low gravity environment. Sounds pretty crappy to me.

    Terraforming is one of those cool ide
  • Terraforming a planet like Mars would be a brutally long, slow, expensive process -- and a pointless one. Mars can be colonized by AI robots.

    Humans need to explore Mars, because robots capable of doing the job properly may still be 50 years away. But when it comes to colonization and settlement in the longer term, robots will do it. Simply put, we can adapt ourselves -- or our descendants -- to Mars much quicker and easier than we can adapt Mars to us.
  • Those organisms that fail to reproduce (either as a species or as an ecosystem) become extinct. We have a duty to spread earth's essence to the universe before something irreversable happens to it and us.

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