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Space Science

Planning For The Colonization Of Mars 136

Posted by Hemos from the where-to-go-next dept.
Tiburana writes: "NASA recently held a conference called "The Physics and Biology of Making Mars Habitable". The current line of inquiry is to introduce microbes to recreate the greenhouse effect that is wreaking havoc on our environemnt to raise the temperature of the Martian surface to accomodate the types of life with which we are familiar. " The submittor also expressed some concerns about how humans handling of the Earth - and whether we'll repeat the same problems on other planets.
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Planning For The Colonization of Mars More

Planning For The Colonization of Mars

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  • Re:Food for thought... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The url http://www.vrg.org/nutrition/b12.htm#reliable [vrg.org] is filled with suggestions for how earth-bound vegans can add vit-B12 to their diets.
  • It looks like some dinosaurs managed to survive...
  • The current line of inquiry is to introduce microbes to recreate the greenhouse effect that is wreaking havoc on our environemnt...

    The greeehouse effect keeps our planet from being about 60 degrees F colder than it is and makes life possible. The greenhouse effect is GOOD. Greenhouse warming (also called the enhanced greenhouse effect) is what has people concerned.
  • While building up the Martian atmosphere to 'normal' pressures and such is nice, what about the gravity over there? I believe part of the reason Mars' atmosphere isn't as thick as Earth's has to do with the inability to hold on to the atmosphere. The solar 'wind' will strip the air right off the planet.

    If I'm wrong, fine, but tell me why.
  • 4.5 billion years to form the Earth as we know it, and your quibling over 30 years? Or 3 million years for us to go from rock axes to rocket ships. A little perspective please.

  • About 2 hours ago, I learned that you should never chew on a cigarette lighter.

    Normal people wouldn't have to learn this lesson the hard way, but I'm not normal. Among other neuroses, I'm orally fixated and always have to be chewing on something. It's not my fault though - it's because I was never properly weaned.

    Anyway, I was writing some code and idly chewing on a disposable cigarette lighter when I spotted a bug. A stupid bug. A "=" instead of "==" bug. This annoyed me a little bit, and caused me to clench my teeth.

    Big mistake.

    For those of you majoring in English or Journalism - butane (the fluid inside a cigarette lighter) is a gas at room temperature. It stays in liquid form inside the lighter because it is under pressure. By cracking the case of the lighter, I cause the contents to evaporate almost instantly. Since vaporization is endothermic, this dropped the temperature of one of my teeth somewhere close to 32 degrees farenheit. This, in turn dropped me to the floor where I began whimpering in pain.

    But that's not all. I also got a lungful of the stuff. Not good. To quote from the MSDS for butane: "Inhalation causes headaches, dizziness, drowsiness, and nausea, and may lead to unconsciousness. Liquid can cause burns similar to frostbite." That's no lie. I've vomited twice and am feeling quite faint.

    So let this be a lesson to those of you wishing to colonize mars: don't chew cigarette lighters on the trip over.

    --Shoeboy
  • Hey, isn't there an international treaty that prevents the introduction of earth-based life to other planets and the moon? Someone at JPL told me this, but it was a long time ago and maybe it doesn't apply any more.
  • Reminds me of the old joke:

    Nasa guy: "Our next expedition will be to land a man on the sun"

    Reporter: "How can you do that?!? It's too hot!"

    Nasa guy: "Oh, don't worry; he'll land at night."

  • But what happens when they find the downed alien spacecraft full of head-grabbers that plant embryos deep into your body? Sure, things will be fine for 2-3 days or so but then you'll have this big pain in your chest and an alien will pop out.

    Where's the fun in that?

  • Wow. A thread about terraforming Mars, and nobody has managed to mention Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars [strangewords.com] / Green Mars / Blue Mars series? A lot of the discussions in this tread are remarkably similar to the "Red" and "Green" politics that sprouted up in the books.

    The Greens were in favor of terraforming Mars. Anything that raised the oxygen level and ambient temperature was favored. Seed the atmosphere and surface with plants to increase oxygen. Set up nuclear reactors and let them meltdown to generate heat (and free up water from deep under the soil as they did the China Syndrome bit).

    The Reds wanted to preserve Mars in its natural state, and tried to sabotage the efforts of the Greens.

    Personally, I lean towards the Greens. Sure there are some features that would be worth preserving (in the sense of "don't bulldoze it just to put up a McMarsBurger joint"), just as we have national parks to preserve beautiful areas here on Earth. But I think we can be reasonably sure now that there is no life on Mars above the microbe level (darn it). So let's feel free to use it as a laboratory.


    --
    Ernest MacDougal Campbell III / NIC Handle: EMC3
  • For those that don't know, Kim Stanley Robsinson wrote an excellent series on the colonization of Mars. It delved deeply into social, political, and scientific possibilities. Run, do not walk, to your nearest bookstore (online ordering means waiting) and get Red Mars, Green Mars, and Blue Mars.


    To my knowledge, there isn't a fourth one...

  • It's only a political problem if you intend to force other people to do it. Otherwise go buy as much land as you want in Egypt and start planting. Keep following the winds [uiuc.edu] westward...
  • We already have two cheap designs to reach space: Reusable hydrogen-oxygen rockets, or Orion drive ships.

    We don't yet have practical inertial-confinement fusion, so for Orion drives we'd have to use somewhat dirty fission bombs. So we won't be using them unless there's an emergency when we have to get a lot of mass out of our gravity well. (No, there's only a shortage of nuclear fuel down here. The Moon is probably coated with tritium and every metallic asteroid has some fissionables.)

    We used liquid oxygen and hydrogen in the Saturn V, and the Shuttle ascent engines. We could create fully reusable H+O designs -- several were considered for the Shuttle. The easiest to create probably would be the piggyback -- a large aircraft which takes the orbiter partway up and gives it the initial acceleration. Most of the fuel would return to Earth as water. But now NASA thinks it can do surface-to-orbit in a single device.

    It's really a matter of someone spending enough money to build the things. Right now several commercial firms are already in the rocketry business. The more business they get, the more launch vehicles will be developed.

  • Well, that's a bit of a project. Climate experts are still trying to figure out what caused that little dry spot. If you want to fix it by planting stuff, you'll have to supply a lot of water.

    Well, if a change in Earth's tilt [eurekalert.org] triggered the change then fixing it will be an Earth-shaking project. If Himalayan erosion cooled Earth [pbs.org], the fix might be as simple as sealing the mountains in plastic.

  • That's "translucent". A "translucid" rock is one which speaks and thinks, but not clearly.
  • (1) There's plenty of space ice that can be dropped on Mars. As long as we're there we can put ice in orbit and drop small pieces.

    (2) Earth people have trouble returning after living in zero gravity, although the amount of trouble depends upon how much exercise they do. We don't know the health effects of lifetime 0.3G, and the effect of Earth gravity does not matter to someone who does not go to Earth. People are not required to come to Earth, just as they're not required to travel to the North Pole...although some do.

  • Amen (Score:1)

    by Growler ( 30721 )
    "Martian Ecosystem," my ass!
  • We are allready in the process of destroying the earth. What right Do we have to destroy another planet?

    Hardly. I don't think it's remotely in the range of current human technologies to destroy the erath or any other planet. It's a lot of work just to make a fair size scratch in the surface.

    We MIGHT be able to do something as extreme, say, as wiping out all life on the planet. Still not at all likely (life is pretty resilient stuff), but difficult to say it's actually impossible.

    We almost certainly can cause, and indeed have caused, some big impacts on the eco system. We can wipe out whole species for example, we could certainly wipe out ourselves if only we'd all cooperate in the effort :) and maybe even if we didn't, hard to say though - again life is pretty resilient stuff and people are a good example of that.

    Wiping out planets though? For the time being, leave it for the sci-fi movies. Chances are Earth and Mars will both be here long after the last human dies.

    That's not to say experiments are without risk, there MIGHT be some form of life on mars and it'd be a tragedy to just wipe it out. Even withotu any life there, there is almost certainly much that we ould want to study without first changing the environment so drastically. Also, any mistakes in early attempts might make eventual success in terraforming harder or impossible but that would be no reason to put off trying forever.
  • You assume too much about "aliens". Waaaaay too much. What if the only species that make it out into the big, bad Universe are those with serious drives to expand, procreate and dominate? Eh?

    To put it mildly: You arrogantly assume that your leftward philosophical viewpoint is the norm amongst all space faring species (should they exist [which is a guess]).

  • 1) seems likely. Especially if the colony is doing "better" (in whatever political measure of the time) than the homeworld.

    2)Bunk.

    3)Don't we own the planet? Ownership can only be claimed by sentient, sapient beings. It is, in fact, a very human concept. So if we don't own our own planet, then who does? If we don't own Mars, then who does? "Later generations"? They aren't here yet.

  • Not a chance. Unless our society grows up, accepts responsibility for its actions and sets our priorities straight there is little chance we'll 'do this to Mars.' Our present culture is very capable of making the trip to Mars - but we dont care enough to do it. By the same token, we will never make the attempt to TerraForm Mars unless we've wisened up about the way we treat Terra. One (our growth) will come before any attempt to TerraForm Mars.

    I agree that we don't currently care enough as a culture to do it now. I also very much doubt that a majority of American culture will EVER want to do it. However, once the technology drops in cost so that a sufficiently large private group can do it, it'll happen.

    Plymouth rock, anyone?
    Just like every other colonization wave in history, a small group breaks off and leaves, leaving the majority behind. It seems to be how our species spreads.

  • Seem to remeber an artical about how Mars has little or no magnetic field which protects our atmosphere. Otherwise the solar winds would strip away the gases we need to live. At what rate this stripping of gases happens was not communicated but it seems that it would be a factor to terraforming Mars. And kick starting the core of Mars seems quite a waste of energy and living under a dome doesn't sound like real great strides in quality of life if you believe we'd be doing the same on Earth after we've fskd the environment. Sounds like a lot of hot air and grant filling is going on and little honest science. Something that has tickled the imagination of Q-public so the NASA boys grab hold. Whatever, they have kids to feed, and I'd rather see my taxes go there than DU ammo for tank killers or other such civilization advancing tech we blow stupid amounts of money on.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Yes, the Geological and meterological history of Mars is intereting and importent to studdy, but it's just plain moronic to suggest that Mars' geology and weather is an ecosystem.. there is no life on Mars (yet). Specifically, you are claiming that Mars' geology and weather are more intereting then Earth's geology, weather, life, and Human history *combined*. This is total bullshit.

    Also, teraforming is unlikely to really transform the Geology beyond recognishion, i.e. we will still have many human lifetimes to studdy it. the only thing we will really damage is the weather, but I think it's safe to say that the "preperations" for teraforming will do considerable studdy of the weather and the changes will be quite intersting themselves.

    Regardless, adding life to a lifeless enviroment can only be a good thing.
  • why dump our waste on a planet? Just shoot it towards the sun and let our cosmic vacuum cleaner do its job.
    --
  • Kim Stanley Robinson would be proud of this debate. Reds versus Greens in a nascent form.
  • The submittor also expressed some concerns about how humans handling of the Earth - and whether we'll repeat the same problems on other planets.

    Duh!
  • From what I understand, the Sahara was caused by (of course) human activity, and (not so of course) goat activity. The people who inhabited these areas ere so many years ago, kept goats. The land was green and fertile, with lots of grass. Since the number of goats (or other domestic herbivores) was a sign of status, people aimed to have a *lot* of them. And they ate the good grass. As the grass was cropped away, it exposed the soil beneath, which would get blown away in the wind, turning to scrubland, and eventually desert.

    So slowly over the years, the desert has spread across a flippin' great wodge of Northern Africa.

    If you follow my line of reasoning, the only way to make sure that the newly-reterraformed Sahara is to kill the goats/cows/ox/camels of all the local tribes, taking away one of their prime sources of food/money.

    Face it - humans have truly fscked up this planet. If we go to Mars, we'll only fsck it up as well.

    (Oh, and as an argument against releasing microbes and stuff to create a greenhouse environment and all that crap, what happened to the search for Martian life? Scientists could come across something, and never be 100% certain that it wasn't just some evolved Terran lifeform that some irresponsible types sent over years previously. Read Stanley Kim Robinson's Mars series (Red/Green/Blue Mars) - really gives good perspectives on both sides of the argument)
  • Actually, China's Space program is getting really big. They're planning to go to Mars, and I think they see it as an important thing to achieve before the US does, to confirm their status as superpower.

    check here [cnn.com]

    Don't count on the US dominating completely.
  • It is vital that the newly-created conditions on Mars be tested -- vote now!
    1) CmdrTaco
    2) Hemos
    3) CowboyNeal
    But question: what happens if the microbes evolve into something that may be harmful?
    And will these microbes create enough rainforests for us to cut down? Or will we just cut down CowboyNeal instead?
  • I wonder if anyone has attempted to accurately simulate the Mars environment here on earth? If, so, wouldn't it be a interesting testbed for this teory?
  • Marketing people get on first. Please.

  • Where's the fun in that?

    You can make a really cool documentary about it... Alien V?
  • It doesnt make sense to move to another planet, if we cant live in this planet that has all the elements we need to live, it will be a lot worse in mars. Why not spend all that money to cur cancer or aids or all those rare deseases that are killing us.
  • There are several real advantages to colonizing the ocean first, but primary among them is this: if anything goes wrong, the colonists can be evacuated quickly (unless, of course, it's a really huge disaster). Assuming that ocean colonists could get to relative safety, it would be fairly easy (as these things go) to dispatch an underwater rescue mission.

    When that Russian sub went down, for example, if the Russians hadn't been such idiots about it, the sailors probably could have been rescued. Or am I remembering incorrectly?

    Moon colonists would be completely screwed. Unless things have completely changed, you can't scramble for a shuttle launch the way you can scramble a sub.

    But I've said it before and I'll say it again: we should be on the moon *now*, dammit. We should be celebrating the 20th (if not the 25th!) anniversary of the Lunar colonies, we should be reading articles in Time magazine about the first generation of children born on the moon, we should be hearing about how the moon was used as a staging area for the launch of our Mars expedition, "now in its tenth year and still making incredible discoveries every day". We are so far behind where we should be...what the hell happened?

  • Obviously incorrect. Two children per couple would only stabilize the population if you also add that everyone is forced to be part of one couple (including avoiding dying prior to coupling of course), at present this is clearly not the case. Depending on how you count the couples, two children per couple would either increase or decrease the population.

    "Two children per couple" means two children born for every two human beings in the world, on a space-time average. It's an average figure, I'm not saying that every "couple" should have two kids.

    --

  • Unless people suddenly stop reproducing (...) we will run out of resources here on Earth.

    No need for that. Two children per couple and the population will stabilize, less than that and our number will lower.

    --

  • Two children per two people is the same as one child per person. And even if they don't die off "to a neat little schedule", on the average the population will stay constant -- but the number of human beings, will, eventually, fluctuate.

    --

  • Two children per two people is indeed the same as one child per person, but I think most people would take 'per couple' to imply some sort of relationship between the people involved. The number of 'couples' as normally understood is clearly different to half the number of individuals.

    Yes, I think you're right...

    --

  • Because cancer and aids are not a threat to humanity i.e. they are killing individual people, but are not killing *us*. If we cure all diseases and live really long, we will eventually have to colonize other planets because Earth will not be enough. Better start early than scramble later on.

  • Wow, you have the spirit of a true experimentalist. Have you considered going into applied physics? I know I have.

  • You brought up a good point. It would definitely benefit more if we spend the money on Earth to improve things - cleaning up the environment, improving or replacing existing infrastructures, finding better ways to grow food w/o damaging the environment, population control, and so on... Countries like India needs to keep their populations in check, the population explosions existing there only worsens the problems they already have... poverty, food shortage, diseases, environmental damage, etc. What is the purpose of colonizing Mars? So that we can pollute it like what we're doing to this planet now?

    Terraforming Mars is a gigantic endeaver... biggest ever by the human race if it ever takes place. I don't think such a large project can take place without the cooperation of all the nations in the world. And we haven't even solved that one yet. IMO, the world is not ready, even if the technology is there.
  • Sounds like a science fiction movie with an alien torturing poor humans with an anal probe.
    Back on planet Earth: were we talking about a submitter ?
  • Although it is obviously the US that is closest (if anyone actually is close at all) to colonising Mars, does that necessarily mean that they're free to work on a new habitat that could then become an exclusive extension of that country? It would be ironic to have to aquire a green card to go to Mars in a couple of hundred years :-) It seems that there's plenty of space on earth that has not been properly colonised. The most dense urban areas needs to be reconstructed in more environmentally friendly ways, and third-world countries desparately needs infrastructure. Perhaps we should deal with some of these problems before we wreak havoc on another planet.
  • These are some of the concerns I expressed when submitting the article. My top three pet peeves re: the terraformation and colonization are these:

    1)Interplanetary colonization will ultimately result in the same crises as international colonization has in our global history: class exploitation, the introduction of new species into ecosystems with disastrous results (in this case even ecosystems we propose to create) and international conflict.

    2)We as a species are under the misapprehension that the land, water, air, plants and animals with which we share this planet are 'resources' at our disposal. We have not yet learned how to responsibly interact with our environment with regards to other organisms and future generations. We cannot be trusted with another biosphere.

    3)Even if one and two were not true, as geologically ephemeral inhabitants of the earth we do not own this planet, much less the rest of the solar system, galaxy or universe in which we live.

  • The problem with the agreement is that even if the U.S. does not have 'exclusive' rights to Mars it is highly likely that it will have de facto control of the economy. It's all well and good to say that anyone can go but the fact is that we are one of two nations that can actually get there.
  • Exactly.

    I would also add that we can only see what we are looking for. Our inability to find lifeforms on Mars may in fact be limited to what our conception of a lifeform is.

  • You're right - I should have made myself more clear.

    What concerns me about stimulating a greenhouse effect on Mars is that it is not something we can just turn on and off. There is no 'bake for 100 years and then allow to cool for 10' type recipe with which we could micromanage (haha) the temperature of the surface reliably - if it were appropriate in the first place.

  • It actually won't take a mass extermination or international conflict to get the world's population in check. Small differences in the number of children each woman has have dramatic changes rapidly. Check out this [theatlantic.com] Atlantic Monthly article.

  • Hmm... I think the reason that the solar wind strips the atmosphere off of mars is due to the fact that Mars lacks a magnetic field to deflect the charged particles that comprise it.
  • I think what he may be talking about is the idea of swarming a planet with cheap, uneducated and potentially modified/augmented 'drones' for want of a better word. They'd do the leg work, get mechanical adaptations and be taught how to obey and perform specific tasks. They'd soak up much of the dangers, statisically speaking, reducing the losses of any trained, natural born humans. There would be a core of natural born scientists and stuff to give orders.
    Come on, people. This is the mainstay of science fiction stuff... it may never happen 8(, but it doesn't make his remarks crypic - then again, maybe you're not geeky enough to have read as much sci-fi as I have 8). The book that sticks in my mind as an introduction to the concept is "Forty Thousand in Gehanna"...I forget who it's by.

    8)
  • How can they even think of environmental problems on another planet when we have not even left our own. NASA should try and do some work instead of crashing spacecraft and wasting federal funds.
  • I think it depends on weather the driving force in the colony(ies) is commercial or some sort of government conglomerate. Even today where we know for sure we have a problem, commercial concerns keep us from adjusting fast enough; commerce cares about the bottom line and little else it seems, and I can't see it taking care with another planet if it doesn't with its own. What a government would do is of course uncertain, but I think they would try to at least make everyone believe they were not making the same mistakes as on Earth - what the reality would be is anyone's guess.
  • Before we start tampering with Mars to make it livable for us humans, we should first do a highly thorough (sp?) geological and biological review. Especially if there is or has been life there. There are many, many mysteries on Mars, and just terraforming the planet before we study these mysteries will most likely destroy them.
    I would hold off terraforming for at least five years after first landing, to give time for the hands-on research of the planet. Otherwise, it will be like when the Spaniards came to North and Central America, destroying cultures before understanding them.
    Heed my warning, people! There are things we should know about Mars before we change it to whatever we want.
  • Hehehe! The sun? Somebody give him a point for Funny!
    But seriously, you're right, save for meteor and the sun. IMHO, colonization of a meteor would never work. This belief I shall hold until you can tell me, where shall we place it? What use would it be? Etc.
    And colonization of the sun is completely unfeasible. It's so boilingly hot!
    But yes, start with the oceans, then the moon (it's time someone goes back there... are you listening NASA?), and then Mars. But not before understanding Mars and it's mysteries (See the post just above this one).
    And after Mars, that opens us up to the asteroid belt, which supposedly is very mineral-rich. Mining operations, defense of the inner planets (in case we aren't alone), etc.

  • What happened was the Russians gave up the moon, so the Americans decided, "aw, fsck it. Let's just sit on our asses like the lazy NASA dumbasses we are."

    Of course, I haven't seen anything to prevent non-government organizations putting people into space, save costs. So if we didn't have money, we'd prolly have people on the moon, and Mars, etc.

  • Mars ain't no kind of place to raise a kid
    In fact it's cold as hell
    And there's no one there to raise them
    If you did
    The sci-fi romanticists insist we should be doing this. I can't see a single reason to do it.
  • There's another biosphere that's pretty much alien to us that we really haven't taken advantage of yet, the deep sea. Land covers only a third or so of the earth. I think that many of the same challenges we face in deep space, we would also face in the oceans. If we can survive the oceans, we will have much of the knowledge needed to survive on other planets.

    While I'm just as anxious as any other person to get into space, there are alternatives.

    -Kef
  • He may also be talking about the potential for cloning of individual organs to greatly extend one's life expectancy. It won't get you to Mars any faster, but it might keep you alive long enough to do it the slow way.
  • I think your definition should be modified slightly, if it is to coincide with the usual use of the word "own." If A owns X, A should be the one who gets to decide what to do with X.

    The big question here is one of morality and "right." When somebody starts explaining their opinion about what we should or shouldn't do to a planet in terms of ownership, things get messy. Statements like "We don't own Earth" or "We do own Earth" tend to presume that there is someone or something else which could claim ownership of an entire planet. I think that a discussion of morality should not be camouflaged as a discussion of ownership.

    IMHO, humans are doing pretty well at fucking up Earth, and don't need another planet to mess with. Most of the reasons people think we shouldn't go to Mars stem from the fact that the large-scale society of Earth (international politics and macroeconomics) resembles a room full of screaming 6-year-olds trying to decide who gets to play with which toys. If human society ever begins to resemble something more rational and mature, maybe then we can be trusted not to completely fuck up some other planet.

  • The space elevator is completely feasible, as soon as you find a material strong enough to build it with. IIRC, the tensile strength per unit mass required is about 10^2 or 10^3 greater than any material we've ever managed to produce in quantity.

    Rockets of one form or another are the only things we currently know how to build that actually get into orbit. It takes a lot of energy to get out of this gravity well. As long as you have to carry chemical propellants with you, you're gonna need a hell of a lot of fuel.

    Yes, space flight is in its infancy. Quite a few people are working on designing more efficient means of achieving orbit. Some are simply trying to perfect the current systems, like that Venture Star thing. (OT question: anybody know if/when that thing is supposed to fly?) Others are trying to develop completely new techniques (plasma-burst propulsion powered by ground-based lasers, for example). Some more are trying to combine novel technology with more conventional methods (replacing the first stage of the space shuttle with a long stretch of maglev track).
    &lt gratuitous 2001 reference &gt
    One big problem will be the development of a toilet that's easy to use in microgravity.
    &lt /gratuitous 2001 reference &gt

    I think this is enough off-topic-ness, so I'll quit now.

  • then maybe sometime in my lifetime (Allbeit not natural) ill be able to live on mars! this is all great and stuff, but what about me, now, i wanna live on mars! hurry it up!

    "Who is General Failure and why is he reading my hard disk ?"

  • Although colonizing Mars sounds a lot cooler, perhaps, humans should start with Antarctida?

    There is an entire continent with, what, a few dozen people living on it. I suspect, the living conditions are a LOT better there than on Mars (it is cool, but not nearly as cool as Mars), and it is SO much closer and easier to get to...

  • Did you ever stop to think how well a Donner Party vegan would eat? :)
  • YOu are completly correct. even if there is any kind of enviroment, it is a minimal one, and I mean MINIMAL. I mean we're talking about a few microbes, ya whatever I say squish em' flat. I feel that when inter-solar travel becomes more cost effective we should select a "dead planet", like mercury, and start dumping our crap and radioactive/toxic wastes on it. I mean who all is really going to care ??? I sure won't and I doubt that the rest of the planet would concidering that no one would be forced to live with the stuff any longer.
  • Mars is much smaller and hostile to life than earth and thus has less competition among genes.

    I would suspect that our microbes would easily kill off any martian ones, and martian microbes wouldn't stand a chance on earth.

  • The problem with modifying humans is this:

    1. We don't like the idea of constructing a race superior to ours (or even different).

    2. It is our human tradition to adapt the environment to us, instead of adpating to the environment. Why? Because it's a faster and less complicated change. Humans are vegetarians by nature. The only reason we eat meat is because we cook it! Instead of making our teeth stronger, we made the meat softer! I think that is the human way of doing things, and it is brilliant. It has allowed us to do so many things. Why wait until we have changed the genes of a few, when we can find a way of adapting the environment to suit many!

  • First of all, what I really meant was that terraforming the Sahara would be a lot cheaper than terraforming a whole planet, not that it would be cheaper than sending a spacecraft to Mars. Secondly, you might be right about my suggestion being extremely hard. However, I remember reading somewhere, that by simply planting the right kind of trees along the edges of the desert, you can hold the desert off without the need of extensive irrigation.

    The trees would have to be fast-growing and have very deep roots that could reach sub-terranean water canals. They would bind the soil to the ground and create a wind-shield from sand storms. This also creates a shade and a more temperate (and stable!) climate on ground level, that can host a radically different eco-system than the one in the open desert. The soil itself would gradually turn into more fertile soil because of the decomposing biomass and create a larger area for which to plant even more of these (presumably bio-engineered) trees.

    Voilá, a few years later you have a vast forest and can even start farming parts of it.

    My point is, if we are talking about terraforming a whole planet in less than a 100 years, then why would it be impossible to get rid of a desert in say, 25 years? As I pointed out in my previous post, I think the biggest hurdles (as always) are political, not technical or economical.

  • This is a fun doomsday scenario, but I don't think it's all that likely. First, it has to be agreed that Mars doesn't have much life, if it in fact has any at all. That means that whatever evolutionary "arms race" is occuring on Mars is happening relatively slowly. There just wouldn't be as much of the complex interaction needed to come up with the many clever tricks that Earth's evolutionary process has. This also means that the tricks that Martian life would have come up with would be primarily focused on defending itself against its environment.

    "Note that Mars is THEIR environment, so they already have an advantage here. So Mars may become a very unfriendly planet to live."
    To a point, you're correct. But that point ends where my spacesuit begins. Once these bugs get into my spacesuit/mouth/digestive tract, they're back on my turf.

    Your point about Earth-based "oxygenophobes" may also be beside the mark. Certainly, there are bugs in our body that thrive in low O2 environments. But as far as I know, they all use nitrogen gas to survive. So in that way, it's like comparing apples to PalmPilots. OTOH, N2 is nearly as unreactive as the noble gases, so its doubtful that Martian life would find it poisonous.

    It is possible that there is life on Mars that's just waiting to take advantage of the new environment we could provide. But it's highly unlikely, since evolution would have done everything to prepare Martian life for a Martian environment, and nothing to prepare it for ours. A more likely scenario would be one where the life we try to seed on Mars starts evolving rapidly and becomes dangerous to both humans and other imported life.

    I've made several grand pronouncements on evolutionary theory. They're based on nothing more substantial than a few Stephen Jay Gould books I read a few years back. So if anyone out there knows better, I humbly request that you make me look stupid.

  • What would be quicker - spend a few hundred kabillion dollars modify an entire planets weather system, and wait a thousand or so years for it to green out, or spend a few billions of dollars on genetic research engineering and just make bodies better suited to that atmosphere and climate?

    I mean, for as long as we're being sci-fi about all this, don't forget that the hothouse project isn't the only proposal on the table ...
  • Greed motivated the colonization of Latin America (plus the desperation of poor soldiers and low-end nobility in Spain and Portugal), but North America was colonized also by religious refugees and debtors.

    If you want to take a look at an unusual bit of the history of Colonial North America, check out the history of Acadia/Nova Scotia, in which the British essentially attack French settlers for the audacity of having "gone native" and befriending the aboriginal people.

  • You know? NASA is an amazing organisation:

    It blows up Viking biology missions,
    it "forgets" to proceed the biological searches for more than 25 years,
    it blows up several exobiology experiments,
    it ignores tons of evidence on late presence of water in Mars,
    it makes a silly sub-scientific showdown about Life in Mars and blows up the whole thing,
    it blows up several Mars missions, experiments and projects.

    And now talks about the "colonisation" of Mars? By Earth biota? So we are back to 1964 and some jerks at JPL, who, on the base of a few photos from Mariner 4, cried over the world that Mars is dead and our duty is to colonise that damn piece of dirt over there. Very scientific from the part of NASA. We still don't know if there is or was Life in Mars. However we are ready, right now, to blow up the whole planet with another stupid experiment even before we get sure of this. More than 35 years passed and NASA is still in the same level of intelligence.

    Hope that intelligent aliens are really quite far away from us and don't see these "adventures". This disregarding and selfish view of other worlds would surely give them a good opinion about our culture...
  • Basically there has to be a better way of escaping the Earths atmosphere surely. A lot of people think that the only reason that NASA persists with shuttles and rockets is because it is good for the american aerospace industry and the american airforce.

    What about giant elevator like you see in sci-fi films. Let's face it, anything that doesn't involve sitting on top of several tons of rocket fuel would do.

    The problem is that chemical rockets are the only practical option we have for getting into space at all, for the next several decades at the *very* least.

    The reason: Thrust. We have other drives in production, finally, but none of them are *anywhere* close to being able to produce thrust above one gravity, and they aren't going to any time soon - they're high efficiency drives designed for long-haul propulsion of craft that are already in space.

    What other options do we have? The NERVA drive? Only if we want to spray radioactive exhaust everywhere. Fusion? Not for another few decades, and almost certainly not at one gravity (plasma pressure won't be high enough in any magnetic field we can produce, and inertial schemes aren't very practical as thrusters). Ion drives and so forth are low-thrust drives - completely useless for ground-to-orbit, however useful they may be out in space.

    Laser launching? You can only use the atmosphere as reaction mass for the first few tens of kilometres. This gives accelerations that are far too high for human passengers, even if the craft and ground-station could handle the required laser intensity. Carry your own reaction mass? You can't heat it much hotter than conventional rocket fuel without destroying your rocket nozzles, which means your cargo to ship weight ratio will be similar to that of chemical rockets.

    As a cargo lifter, this *might* be practical.

    A railgun? Again, unless it's a cargo lifter, it'll have to be hundreds or thousands of kilometres long, and the projectile will vapourize on contact with the atmosphere (rockets don't get up to orbital velocity until they're out of most of the atmosphere).

    A space elevator? Maybe in a few decades when we have the required materials, but certainly not any time soon. Nothing we're even close to producing in quantity will cut it, though we have glimmers of interesting materials in the lab.

    In short, chemical rockets persist because they're simply the best tool we have for the job.

    As far as bringing water to mars is concerned, it would cost *far* less to transport it from the asteroid belt. Earth's gravity well is *very* deep, and we have to use inefficient high-thrust rockets to get out of it. Ocean level problems can be solved by paying more attention to the composition of our atmosphere (tailoring greenhouse effect and cloud-forming to suit our needs).
  • well, since today (according to the learning kingdom) is the anniversary of the "Outer Space treaty" let me quote them: Nearly a decade after the USSR launched the first Sputnik into orbit around the earth and just two and a half years before the US landed the first men on the moon, the Outer Space Treaty was signed. Modeled on the Antarctic Treaty, it sought to set the terms for the exploration and exploitation of a newly opened territory. In addition to outlawing any exclusive national claims to extraterrestrial regions, it limited the use of the moon and other celestial bodies to peaceful purposes. It prohibited placing nuclear or other mass-destruction weapons in orbit, on the moon or other celestial body, or on any sort of space station. The treaty also outlawed using the outer space environment for any form of weapons testing. Signed by the U.S., USSR, and Great Britain (which at that time still planned a space program), the Outer Space Treaty was a major step in arms control. After the treaty came into effect, the U.S. and the USSR began to collaborate in space enterprises, including jointly manned missions. History and full text of the Outer Space Treaty: link [state.gov]
  • 1 and 2 are reasonable points, but I don't think they're much to worry about. There's no way a project like this can get started before there has been people on Mars for decades. The planet will be well explored before we start, and if there's life or any other things worth preserving, that can be figured out in good time.

    Point 3 is nonsense. There is no connection between the two, other than cheap rhetoric. It's like saying I shouldn't see that movie until I've lost 5 pounds.

    And you don't seem to consider the good in making a hellhole into a possibly very nice home for billions of people and other life forms. Does that mean nothing to you?
  • A lot of people are confused by the word "own". If A owns X, it really just means that A is the one who gets to decide what to do with X.

    Keeping this in mind, statements like "we don't own this planet" turn out to be meaningless rhetoric.
  • It's been nearly 32 years since the first man walked on the moon, yet we havn't been back yet. Colonizing the moon is, IMHO, a necessary first step to reaching other planets. It's a hell of a lot closer than Mars, and would give us an excellent labrotory to refine the techniques for working & living on a planet with no atmosphere.

    The moon would also make an excellent forward base for further colonization & exploration missions. With 1/6 earth gravity, ships launched from the moon (or lunar orbit) would be able to devote FAR more of their mass to payload and less on fuel.

  • Arg, why are people always thinking too fast? We should first colonize the deep ocean, then a meteor, then the moon, then Mars, then the sun. We can then send off intergalactic units to conquer the universe!
  • I've read through the articles, and their associated links, and there is one topic that the authors seem to be avoiding. There was no mention at all of the preparations NASA will have to make to fight the martian colonies in order to set up our own.

    Why is this not mentioned? Do the authors want to cloud the public's mind with talk of "ecosystems" and "terraforming," just so we won't ask about the brave men and women who will fight and die on Mars to secure territory for us to colonize?

    If anyone from NASA is reading this, you have to realize that the public is not stupid. We know what is entailed in colonizing a new planet. You need to start thinking about something closer to full disclosure, please.

  • The submittor also expressed some concerns about how humans handling of the Earth - and whether we'll repeat the same problems on other planets

    Not a chance. Unless our society grows up, accepts responsibility for its actions and sets our priorities straight there is little chance we'll 'do this to Mars.'

    Our present culture is very capable of making the trip to Mars - but we dont care enough to do it. By the same token, we will never make the attempt to TerraForm Mars unless we've wisened up about the way we treat Terra. One (our growth) will come before any attempt to TerraForm Mars.

  • . Or have we already become that extreme of a disposible society that we can throw away an entire planet

    That is a very telling and terrible prospect - I had visions of humanity evolving into a 'culture of aliens who move from planet to planet sucking up its life and leaving it for dead' that we've all read in various stories... ouch what a terrible thought.

  • Consider this, the best people suited for traveling to Mars are vegetarians and vegans. They are the most conditioned to not eating (craving) meat and if they eat properly and exercise are in excellent physical condition.

    Why does not eating meat come into play? Logistically, when NASA does send the first groups of people to colonize Mars, without new innovations in space travel, sending livestock to Mars is too expensive and plain goofy. And the huge supply of frozen hamburgers will run out without constant supplies sent from Earth. ;-)

    The cheapest and most effective solution is to simply grow the food there. Live off the land. Water seems to be available and nearly everything necessary for the human body can be gotten from plants. Except vitamin B12. But vitamin suppliments will take care of that. =)

    Hey NASA, i'm ready for Mars!

  • This touches somewhat on my topic here [slashdot.org], but I still don't agree with you. There is a big difference between colonizing Mars and colonizing Africa, and it's a bit sad if we would let the mistakes of one prevent the other.

    The difference?
    There are no humans on mars.

    That means no presumable victims and no previous owners of the land. Nonetheless I think an international effort would be much more positive than the colonization of Mars by one single nation. If we don't go in there together now, we will have serious fights over the land later on.

  • Terraform the Sahara desert..

    I realize it's a somewhat different problem. But if we can introduce forests in the Sahara we will not only improve the life conditions of millions, perhaps even the whole African continent, we will also learn a great deal on how to do the same things on Mars.

    I bet planting vegetation in the Sahara would be a lot cheaper than sending space-ships to Mars, but not as glorious and 'american'.

  • Why don't you sell your computer and donate the cash (or at least your savings on electricity) to research efforts to cure cancer or AIDS?

    Your computer expands your personal capabilities; a Mars colony will expand humanity's capabilities.
  • Except that corporations are creatures of national laws. And the Outer Space Treaty treats all launches from the territory of any party to the treaty as if they were launched by the party.

    And no company is sufficiently wealthy or powerful enough to be autonomous from its shareholders and its creditors and the U.S. government and the EU to pull it off, even if you had an AOL-Boeing-Exxon-GE-GM-Microsoft-Mobil-Nissan-Time Warner running around.
  • Helium-3 and gravity.

    A Martian agricultural colony could support both lunar and gas giant mining of Helium-3 with food for a lower marginal cost than any other option (except maybe O'Neil colonies). And helium-3 fusion is power without radioactive waste, without greehouse gasses and/or particulate matter, without the land use issues of Earth-based solar and wind and hydroelectric...

    Sure, such a colony would first be closed greehouses and habitats. But if their role in the energy trade made them wealthy enough, they'd probably themselves start work on terraforming Mars.
  • I know that it would be theoretically possible to colonize Mars and turn it into a Earth-like planet. The problem is not techonology but one if time and money. The biggest backers of this so called project would be the big international Space communities like the US, Russia, England, etc.. I do not think that coutries will be willing to spend trillions (guess) to colonize another planet when they can spend that money here to improve things.

    Time will be another factor, It would take a long time for Mars to even start showing signs that our efforts are working. It would be even longer before people would be able to live there and even then not many (
    Ok Enough bad talking. I REALLY do hope this happens and I hope that the people who ever is in charge of this project once it gets under way really think about how they will do this, the last thing we need is to have a Standard/Metric calculation mismatch and turn Mars into Waterworld!

    Later

    Lord Arathres
  • Ok, this is getting off topic, but... Of course you fail to consider the climatological effects of terraforming a large area of the earth. It could be a recipie for disaster. What if: 1. More vegetation=decreased surface albedo. Earth heats up more. Area absorbs more heat, increased global warming. 2. Area flourishes for a while, then everything dies and dries up becase we dont understand why it's a dessert in the first place. Dried fores burns. Massive smoke. Neuclear winter. Mars at least has the benifit that we arent living on it, and catastrophic changes to Mars are probably not going to kill us.

  • The meaning of words (Score:3)

    by Nicolas MONNET ( 4727 ) <nicoaltiva@gm a i l.com> on Saturday January 27, 2001 @06:15AM (#477830) Journal

    as geologically ephemeral inhabitants of the earth we do not own this planet,

    Define 'own'.

    I'm not nitpicking here, I'm pointing a very common flaw in reasoning. This flaw is very similar to the one which leads some people to believe in the existance of gods.

    Let me explain. 'property' and 'meaning' are human symbols, which have a signification, in a communication between human beings. It is a built-in thought process for us, communicating beings, to look for 'meanings' in things. A word has a meaning. Pictures have meaning, such as an arrow. An open or a closed door have a meaning ... because someone wrote / drew / opened / closed them.

    Primitives found meanings in volcanic eruptions, eclipses, and various natural events. This is part of what is called 'animism', attributing meanings and intent in natural intent. Religiosity is an extrapolation of this tendency to attribute meanings to everything in the world.

    When you look at things this way, your usage of the word 'owning' in this context, where there is no human being, no human communication involved, is inappropriate. Which is why it seems to have a negative connotation. Of course, nobody 'own' this planet, or another, or the sun or the moon, because 'owning' at this scale does'nt mean anything ... 'property' exists only as long as enough people believe it and act accordingly.

    The church used to own most of the land in my country two centuries ago. Suddenly, the people decided it that they did'nt. So they didn't anymore.

    (This might sound offtopic, but I hope people will get my point).


    --

  • There's no "environment" on Mars. (Score:3)

    by XNormal ( 8617 ) on Saturday January 27, 2001 @05:37AM (#477831) Homepage
    Yes, the title of this post is intentionally inflammatory. Sure there is an environment on Mars, but as far as we know there's no biosphere and we will know for sure long before these methods become feasible. And even if there are some microbes lurking in underground hot springs - why exactly should I care? I care about people and the continued existence of the human race. Ok, so I'm a homo sapiens chauvinist. Don't expect me to apologize for that.

    Unless people suddenly stop reproducing and/or decide it's OK to kill billions of people we will run out of resources here on Earth. The first option doesn't seem likely and the other... well, it's all too likely but I don't WANT it to happen.
    The only other course for sustaining this exponential growth is to use the resources of outer space and do it quickly and without too much sentiments. We need do be very careful before doing anything to Mars, but not because we need to preserve it in it's current state - just because we won't have a second chance. It's the best candidate for settlement and we don't want to screw up.

    ----

  • Re:Greenhouse effect vs. global warming (Score:3)

    by SEWilco ( 27983 ) on Saturday January 27, 2001 @06:31AM (#477832) Journal
    Oddly, the article is talking about using microorganisms to convert "rock" to "soil". Soil has to have a lot of organic material, which is rich in carbon. The article is about removing carbon from the atmosphere, not increasing it. The submitter's emotions saturated his/her writing.

    Actually, to increase the greenhouse effect on Mars would require a lot of water. On Earth, water vapor is the major greenhouse gas [prestel.co.uk] and the same would probably be true on a terraformed Mars. The obvious method is to crash icy asteroids/comets into Mars. Probably have to scatter several carbon-rich asteroids around to increase the available carbon, also. That will be messy and noisy, as with most biology. Fortunately most of that can be done at the start of the process, and maintenance doesn't have to be so dramatic (ie, put ice in orbit and drop small pieces of it -- overly time consuming for huge quantity needed to start the process).

  • another source is (Score:3)

    by nomadic ( 141991 ) <`nomadicworld' `at' `gmail.com'> on Saturday January 27, 2001 @04:36AM (#477833) Homepage
    Here. [sciam.com]

    It's a shame we're almost no closer to colonizing extraterrestrial bodies than we were 30 years ago. The far-future plans NASA periodically comes up with are a lot more interesting than the actual missions they like to carry out...
    --

  • Text on Pictures! Yahhh! (Score:3)

    by imadork ( 226897 ) on Saturday January 27, 2001 @04:36AM (#477834) Homepage
    I hate web pages with text over a tiled picture in the background... My eyes hurt reading that first link!

    Anyway, I have legitimate concerns as well over whether this is a Good Thing. I have no doubt that NASA scientists could do it if given enough time, but then what?
    Will it be International territory like Antarctica, or will the U.S. just annex the whole damn thing? Nothing escapes Politics, and if the US ends up funding most of it you can bet the US Polititians will behave like they own the place.

    One things for sure - once they find something deep witin Mars that worth mining or drilling for, they'll forget all the environmental concerns and implement a Scorched Earth (Scorched Mars?) Strategy sooner than you can say "Martian Oilman".

    We gave Mars that nice environment, and we can take it away...

  • Re:hmm... (Score:4)

    by Ektanoor ( 9949 ) on Saturday January 27, 2001 @05:51AM (#477835) Journal
    The statement is not correct. One should say "translucid" instead of "transparent". The fact is that light may reach deeps up to a few millimeters in many rocks. On a desert this is quite important for survival of microorganisms. On Antarctica dry valleys, the most Mars-like environment on Earth, several organisms manage to fight cold, dryness and the higher level of UV radiation of these places, by living at these deeps inside rocks. It is exactly this point that puts into question the idea of a "sterile Mars". Yes, Antarctica is much more benign than Mars but if liquens, algae and bacteria manage to survive this way, then it is theoretically possible that the same could happen in Mars.

    In Viking mission times, based on these facts, a group of scientists, one of them Carl Sagan, simulated in lab the Mars environment and discovered a few bacteria that can survive much the same way we see in Antarctica. So the question of very little green Martians cannot be put away until now. Some may counterweight this fact with Viking experiments. But we know now that part of them were flawed or suspect of being so.

    Many people talk about the fact that Viking showed no organics in Mars. Curiously the Vikings suggested that Mars possess less organics than the Moon. And this is a nonsense somehow. Mars is much closer to the Asteroid Belt and Jupiter than us. So, in its History it should have suffered more impacts than us. Not only from asteroids but also from comets. How can Mars be more "inorganic" than the Moon? Moon surface receives a lot more radiation and still we got minimal traces of organic compounds. So there is some reason to rise a few serious questions about the reliability of Viking experiments.

    So before talking about "colonosations" think: have we exhausted all chances to find Life in Mars?

  • Re:There's no "environment" on Mars. (Score:4)

    by Ektanoor ( 9949 ) on Saturday January 27, 2001 @07:14AM (#477836) Journal
    You should care. Really care. The possible existence of a biotype in Mars will surely rise two questions:

    How "martians" may react to concurrence with Earth organisms?

    How we, earthlings, may react to concurrence with Martian organism?

    Your chauvinism may ignore the first question. However you cannot ignore the second. No matter the level of development and the complexities of parallel evolution in different environments, if we meet then these two questions will arise. You may think that having 2000 times more grey matter than martians may give you some superiority. However, this does not make you a winner in advance. Earth has tons of examples on huge and disastrous epidemics. Mankind has suffered already three huge disasters, two purely due to epidemics. A small carelessness and it may suffer the fourth and most deadly of all.

    Well, Martians may not attack humans, but they may attack the biota humans depend on. Note that Mars is THEIR environment, so they already have an advantage here. So Mars may become a very unfriendly planet to live.

    But the problem does not end here. Martians, I'm talking about possible ones, may find Earth a very friendly place to live in. So their introduction, even accidental, may produce serious havoc in our world. Don't think about this as a remote chance. If they exist, they may find our atmosphere too deadly to live. But we know that even our earthly "oxygenophobes" manage to live inside our own bodies and even kill us. How many bacteria exists on Earth that managed to survive 4 billion years in oxygen rich Earth? Tons of them. And a lot of them are poisonous to us or even can "eat" us. However they are bound to the harsh concurrence that occurred during this time. This limits somehow their threat.

    Now think about an organism that comes here, finds this as its Hawaii and we have no defense against it...

  • Re:Just what we need. (Score:4)

    by Urban Existentialist ( 307726 ) on Saturday January 27, 2001 @05:16AM (#477837) Homepage
    Every point you make is irrelevent. Mars is just a big rock - there is nothing there to be preserved. The only difference between Mars and a stone on the beach is one of scale. We should be able to do whatever the hell we want with Mars. There is no 'environment' there to be preserved.

    Make no mistake - we can influx it with Nuclear waste, chemicals, pollutants of all stripes and build whatever the hell we want to there. It doesn't make a whit of difference to anyone. No life = No environment = Nothing we need to worry about preserving.

    As for point 3, I think you are jumping to conclusions somewhat. Nobody is suggesting that we throw away the Earth - the simple fact is that the Earth we be the home to the vast, vast majority of Mankind for a long time. Just consider Mars a backup. If anything goes wrong here, then our species will live onward somewhere else. It greatly increases our species chances of survival in the long term to occupy two planets, and not just one. The dinosaurs could have done with a similar backup, but they didn't have one, and look what happened to them.

    You know exactly what to do-
    Your kiss, your fingers on my thigh-

  • hmm... (Score:5)

    by Shoeboy ( 16224 ) on Saturday January 27, 2001 @05:04AM (#477838) Homepage
    From the second link: (the "introducing microbes" one)

    Above: In many desert environments, Chroococcidiopsis grows on the undersides of transparent rocks, just below the surface.

    I've driven through desert areas several times, and I haven't seen any "transparent rocks."
    Oh...
    Wait...
    Never mind.

    --Shoeboy

  • Just what we need. (Score:5)

    by aidoneus ( 74503 ) on Saturday January 27, 2001 @04:36AM (#477839) Journal
    We have scarcely had the chance to properly explore the Martian environment and we're already talking about wreaking havoc on an unexplored ecosystem. Before we unleash the greenhouse effect on a planet we should do a few things first.

    1) Understand just what we're doing. We can't even agree if the greenhouse effect is really happening, let alone what factors are significantly contributing to it. We need to know the effects of our actions before we stumbly blindly forwardwith this plan.

    2) Properly explore the planet before erasing vast parts or its geological history. I'm reminded of the Aswan High Dam in Egypt, which when built in the early 1960s led to flooding that buried countless archeological sites. The 3 Gorges Dam in China is another example. If there is any fossil evidence of life on Mars we may be losing it forever by terraforming the planet.

    3) Finally, try fixing our own planet before we undertake the extremely expensive task of relocating to another planet. Now I'm an advocate of the space program, but rather than screw up another planet ecologically, we should fix our own planet first. Or have we already become that extreme of a disposible society that we can throw away an entire planet?

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