Terraform Humans First, Then Mars? 480
An anonymous reader writes "Related to the future of Mars, NASA released the transcript of an expert panel which debated terraforming the red planet. Planetary scientists including NASA's Planetary Protection Officer, John Rummel, and science fiction writers (Kim Robinson, Arthur C. Clarke, and Greg Bear) chimed in. When asked if Mars should be transformed to a place where humans could walk without life support suits ("naked"), Sir Clarke responded, "Perhaps we should ask the Martians first." Can it be done quickly-- or at all? Is terraforming ethical? If humans colonize, are the colonists on a one-way trip akin to exile?" Read on for a bit more.
"A consensus seemed to be that like waking a sleeping giant, planet building seems possible if oxygen is not a requirement and some microbial life is dormant underground. But the question of making a planet suitable for plants alone seems to span tens of thousands of years. The remaining science fiction notion was terraforming humans, instead of planets, and making us survive on what is now a very alien world."
ET, is that you? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:ET, is that you? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:ET, is that you? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:ET, is that you? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:ET, is that you? (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, and as soon as they did, they took advantage of it by giving the Indians blankets from smallpox patients to get rid of them faster. Now, as you say, we have better ethics than the Puritans and other early American colonists. I agree that we need to make as sure as we can first that we're not harming existing life, or at least finding ways to preserve it. I really doubt that there's much there to worry about but it n
Re:ET, is that you? (Score:5, Informative)
The Bio-warfare attacks with smallpox laden blankets and such generally happened in the 1700's to 1750's, not the 1500's. Those people's ethics probably weren't any better than the Conquistadores, but they understood a bit more about the technical end of handleing Smallpox and other diseases. One of the most notable of these was Lord Amherst's decision to distribute blankets known to be full of smallpox, an attack which he justified in his letters and memoirs on Biblical grounds, although the second most well documented use of smallpox was at the order of a mercenary garrison commander near what is now Chicago ILL, who was a freethinker and justified it on the grounds of European racial superiority. While these two attacks are the only ones with extensive documentation made at the time by the chief perpetrators, it seems probably that there were more, ranging from a low estimate of about 10 to more than 100 depending on the historian's best guess.
Re:ET, is that you? (Score:4, Interesting)
Interesting. Note that bio-warefare agents getting out of control dates back quite a bt further - likely to the 1346 Siege of Caffa. This page from our government's center for disease control [cdc.gov] has interesting details.
Bet the guy who wrote it never thought it was also relevant to exploring Mars.Re:ET, is that you? (Score:5, Interesting)
Your english is fine.
I'd imagine a few problems with teraforming Mars..
First off is the point that you made. If we use some process to make the atmosphere more earth-like, we could encourage the growth of anything that may be lying dormant there, or we could kill it. We've only explored a very small part of the planet, and still don't have complete information about everything we've found. For example, what are those little balls that they found in the soil? Probably just rocks, I'd imagine, but maybe not. They have found traces of water (mostly mud-like). I'd imagine that we'd do something with the free-standing water, to get it to vaporize, making the atmosphere thicker, which would also likely start weather patterns and rain.
To make the atomsphere more earth like, we'd probably send some plants over, such as algae, and maybe grasses. As it grows, it may cover artifacts that could be interesting. I'll use my own back yard as an example. When I moved into this house, the yard was all dirt and rocks. We spent a week digging up rocks, but there are still some small rocks in the dirt. We then planted grass. The yard is now very lush and green, but it is hopeless to think you can see the little rocks that were there.
Imagine "teraforming" Giza (Egypt). Occasionally, archeologists find interesting rocks, like the Rosetta Stone, simply sticking out of the sand, because wind blew sand away from it. If someone encouraged grass to grow there, through aquaducts and irrigation, sand wouldn't blow away, and whatever is burried will remain burried until someone tries to build a strip mall on top of yet another unidentified tomb.
Personally, I'm all for teraforming Mars. For a long time, I've believed that for Humanity to survive, we *MUST* have colonies on more than just Earth. We have the technology to kill everything on this planet in minutes, and it takes a mistake by one person to start that chain of events. Maybe through our own greed and industrialization, we've already set the earth on a fatal spiral through pollution. There are also other events that can happen, which are on more of a sci-fi scale. What if the sun goes super nova? What if a giant asteroid crashes into the earth?
Sure, we don't have the technology now to colonize a planet light-years away. Just like a child, we need to learn to take baby steps, before we can run. Mars is becoming close enough for us to 'practice' on. It probably won't be perfect, but it will be an attempt. After several attempts, we'll do better at it.
If we never teraform Mars, if humanity debates it for the rest of eternity, we'll never learn to travel faster or further, and doom ourselves to eventually overpopulate the Earth and die.
Likewise, if we never populate Mars, our space travel technology will be very slow to grow. Necessity is the mother of invention. If we have a need to travel the distance between Earth and Mars faster, someone will invent something which can achieve this. It may not be a super-cool spacecraft. Our own science fiction has eluded to creative solutions, although technologically impossible at this time such as Wormholes, transporters, and 'Stargate' (good show).
Eventually, we will have the technology to go to distant galaxies, but we have to manage to at least get people to the next planet first. In the last 100 years, we've come a long way. The wright brothers flew their first powered airplane in 1903. Now we can fly all the way around the earth at several times the speed of sound. Wars do great things for technology. Jet and rocket powered craft were innovated during WWII. Slow progress has been made with other forms of aircraft. The cold war was great for pushing space technology, even if it was only for political reasons. America had to do better than the Russians, so we were each trying to out-do each other.
The first
Earth's ICBMs at PEAK could kill 10% (Score:3, Interesting)
Most ICBMs were NOT designed to destory cities (contrary to left wing propoganda) but to hit limited military targets, primarily the other side's ICBM
Re:Earth's ICBMs at PEAK could kill 10% (Score:5, Insightful)
And I'm sure those same missiles were designed not to give off the least little tiny bit of radiation and fallout afterward? That they somehow will not allow prevailing winds to carry the fallout into cities, rivers, and farms? You make these things sound so wonderful and neat and clean. Bullshit. You're purposely ignoring all the secondary effects of a widespread series of groundburst or near-groundburst nuclear explosions. No matter how low yield or how "clean" these things are, in a full scale nuclear war like you're suggesting, you'll have enough going off to send an appreciable amount of fallout into the air. And considering that most of our silos are in the midwest right alongside farmland (what fucking moron conceived that one??), that does not make for a very rosy scenario after the war. Whether or not the secondary effects are intentional is a moot point; the effects are real and are not possible to suppress. You have a fission reaction, you are going to have radioactive materials left over.
The Tomahawk Cruise Missile was designed to deliver a nuclear warhead within 7 feet of its target... That would allow you to hit each silo with ONE missile, instead of TWOOh, that makes me feel SO much better.
The end of cold war weapons were finally reaching the goal of winning a nuclear exchange.That's extremely scary thinking. I sincerely hope this thinking was limited to people like you who are not looking at all the facts and not our government. To think that someone could win -- or would want to win -- a nuclear war is sickening.
Taking out downtown Manhattan would take 8-12 nuclear missilesThis boggles the mind. Where the hell are you getting your facts? Though this does sync with your other false statement that these weapons were not designed to take out cities. Each side has different classes of weapons. While it is true that the bulk of each side's arsenals are counterforce weapons -- i.e. aimed at each others weapons -- each side also has many countervalue weapons -- i.e. aimed at cities. These are indeed specifically designed to level cities, taking industry and economic centers with them, and they are not so inefficiently designed to require "8-12" missiles. These missiles typically have yields in the megaton range, and it takes a far smaller number, either delivered via two or three single-warhead missiles, or one MIRV'ed warhead missile.
not "wiping out the world 10 times over" or whatever propoganda we grew up with.The exact figure of "10 times over" is subject to debate and is not the point. The main point in this possible hyperbole is that while the pure, physical destructive force of all the world's warheads is not capable of wiping out the entire world in the actual fireballs, shock waves, etc, this does not take into account all the secondary effects, such as radiation, fallout, and possible climatalogical effects of burning materials throwing thousands of tons of soot and other debris into the atmosphere. And yes, I know there is still substantial debate about the "nuclear winter" scenario. But do me a favor and find some other planet to test the theory on, thank you.
Re:Earth's ICBMs at PEAK could kill 10% (Score:3, Interesting)
Did you forget about the nuclear winter? Sounds to me like that one slipped your mind. It doesn't matter if nobody dropped bombs on your when the air above your country is filled with a very deep column of radioactive dust, blotting out the sun for, what was it? Twenty years?
Re:ET, is that you? (Score:4, Insightful)
It works both ways... (Score:3, Insightful)
Regardless, I vote that we terraform the Sahara Desert first... it would be good practice and actually serves a purpose NOW as well as in the future.
Re:It works both ways... (Score:5, Insightful)
If we're betting we can establish new species on Mars, wouldn't it make sense to first restablish some more Earthly species in ranges we have wiped them from right here? A hundred or so years ago, we failed in attempts to reestablish the Passenger Pigeon to the wild or keep it alive in zoos. We've just now gotten pretty good with the American Buffalo, and results on the Eastern Red Wolf and the Giant Panda are still mixed at best. Looking at the endangered species list, I'd say until things come off of it (in a positive direction only) at least as fast as they go on, we are not ready for Mars.
Re:ET, is that you? (Score:4, Insightful)
If you think of it as us taking territory from bacteria, it sounds oh-so-hypersensitive and politically uber-correct to think we should care, but if you think of it as though there must be a minimum value to any whole, complete ecology, even one made up entirely of simple life forms, it makes more sense.
If Mars even has bacteria, and it turns out there is nothing exceptional about them, we will probably terraform the planet eventually. But the first thing we should conclude on finding a bacterium not native to our own world is not that Mars has nothing but bacteria, but that it has an ecoystem, and the only other example of an ecosystem we know is a complex and marvelous thing indeed.
Prime directive for bacteria (Score:3, Insightful)
> "barbarians pre-space humans who exterminated bacterial diversity on
> Mars".
Yea, I suspect you are right. And the heart of the movement will be at Mars University. They will be weak kneed mushy headed students lead by a few ivory tower dwelling pseudo intellectuals. But the most anyone else will say is "oh well, I ain't giving it back to the germs." and get on with their comfortable martian life. Or in other words, nothing new.
Re:ET, is that you? (Score:3, Insightful)
Who said anything about .... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Who said anything about .... (Score:3, Insightful)
Currently we do have the tech to make gas flow between two curtians of flowing gas. I'm not sure this could be made into a protective dome... but without forward thinking, we're all stuck where we are.
Re:ET, is that you? (Score:3, Interesting)
Suggestion... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Suggestion... (Score:2, Insightful)
That's the problem people don't think of when they deal with interstellar travel. Most sci-fi has some FTL communication, it's only a few books that don't. I'm not sure that entanglement will ever work itself out, so it might never happen.
Re:Suggestion... (Score:2, Informative)
In addition to that, this anime is grade A production quality, and the entire thing was made by a single person in his house with his computer and other animation supplies. One guy. The original voice actors were him and his wife. It's available on DVD in the US, I highly reccomend it.
Oh yeah, as for terraforming. I ask myse
Re:Suggestion... (Score:2)
Re:Suggestion... (Score:3, Informative)
"Civilizations which are limited by lightspeed..." (Score:3, Informative)
The minimum packet size over the ethernet is limited by the fact that you have to be able to detect that someone else is trying to send on a channel DURING the duration of the packet, and the latter one is limited by 'c' and maximum distance.
Paul B.
Finally! (Score:3, Funny)
Solved. (Score:4, Funny)
I already have a large device called "Genesis" that can terraform a planet in mere days.
Re:Solved. (Score:3, Funny)
Oxygen requirements = yes, Pressure = no. (Score:5, Informative)
In short, it would be "relatively easy" to create the amount of oxygen that would be needed for us to survive. However, the atmospheric pressure is so low that we will probably never be able to walk around the surface without some sort of protective suit (or oxygen mask).
Re:Oxygen requirements = yes, Pressure = no. (Score:2)
Why? Are we sending up Limbaugh and O'Reilly to provide hot air? Drum roll. Is this thing on? And another thing, about those airline peanuts...
Re:Oxygen requirements = yes, Pressure = no. (Score:2)
As suggested in the books, the solution may be to free up whateve
Re:Pretty stupid, eh ? (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm a hard sf writer and the hardest part of
Terraforming Earth (Score:4, Interesting)
First off, he argues that the Harold Urey/Stanley Miller experiment idea of the Earth having a reducing atmosphere of hydrogen, methane, and ammonia is a crock because the asteroid bombardment from 4.5 Ga to about 4 Ga stripped the Earth of any atmosphere it had, and the initial atmosphere at the point was largely nitrogen and some CO2 and SO2 that came out of volcanoes.
Secondly, he argues that while oxygen can be created by UV splitting the water molecule, the bulk of our oxygen comes from photosynthesis over the ages, and that process also helped Earth hang on to its water because the photosynthesis oxygen acted as a getter for the hydrogen liberated by UV water splitting, preventing that process from bleeding off all the water as H2 vented into space and O2 chemically combined in the surface rocks (i.e. modern Mars).
Thirdly, he explains that photosynthesis generation of O2 is nearly balanced by respiration consumption of O2, and the only thing that causes buildup of O2 is burial of a tiny fraction of the organic matter each year to cause a small O2 surplus. If we burnt up the entire biosphere and all the known fossil fuel reserves, that would hardly put a dent in the O2 (it would do major things to CO2, which is currently a trace gas) because the amount of buried organics is huge compared to the current biosphere, and what is accessible as fossil fuels is a tiny amount of the total buried organics (most of the organics are sequestered as sandstones that are "very low grade" fossil fuels as it were).
The idea is that volcanoes pumped out all this carbon as CO2, the stuff that got converted to organics and buried reflected on the O2, some of the CO2 converted directly into carbonate rocks (limestone and dolomite) deposited as sediments. I guess volcanoes recycle some of the carbonate rocks back into CO2 output.
Now there is Thomas Gold with his oil and perhaps coal are not fossil fuels deal, and someone has recently posted on Slashdot recently how one can look at coal under a microscope and see how it is made up of plants. But even if all oil is organic, there had to be some primordeal source of carbon in the ground, which had to be the source of the CO2 puked out by volcanoes, which is the source of all of the oxygen once the CO2 got processed by plants and the organic matter got buried so that the plants were one step ahead making O2 compared to the animals and rotting vegetation (bacteria) eating O2.
Gold believes that oil comes from primordeal unoxidized carbon in the upper mantle -- kind of like the composition of carbonaceous carbon meteorites, but current thinking is the Late Heavy Bombardment (thing that formed the main Moon craters and basins and maria) not to mentioned the big smash that formed the Moon must have melted the Earth to quite a ways down.
My question is that even if Gold is wrong, what was the source of the carbon that fed CO2 to the volcanoes (the source of O2 is water?) that fed the plants over eons that gave us the oxygen atmosphere?
Re:Oxygen requirements = yes, Pressure = no. (Score:5, Informative)
Nope. The pressures are extremely different. The pressure on Mars is about 10 millibars, or about 1 percent of the equivalent atmospheric pressure on Earth.
At this pressure, water immediately turns to vapor. So in effect, your blood would end up boiling. Anyeurisms and things as blood vessels in your brain explode.
Deep sea diving is different in that we're piling on a lot more pressure on our bodies. It's fairly easy for our bodies to cope with more pressure. Depending on how deep you dive, the equivalent atmospheric pressure would be about 15 times greater. I'm not sure how much our bodies could sustain (just doing some simple googling on this), but that is probably near the limit.
But based on the sole fact of low pressure and lowering the boiling point of water, I'd say no.
Exposure to vacuum and diastolic blood pressure (Score:3, Interesting)
My blood pressure is 140/90, which used to be OK until they changed the rules about such things, so my doctor had me learn how to use a blood pressure cuff so I could take my own readings and be depressed how my exercise regimine and dietary changes were having little effect.
That lower number of 90 means 90 mm Hg, where one atmosphere is 760 mm Hg. The systolic (higher reading) is the peak of the pressure pulse of the ar
Re:Exposure to vacuum and diastolic blood pressure (Score:3, Informative)
What this means that your blood pressure is 90 mm Hg over atmosphere pressure. If it was 1/10th of atmospheric pressure, your veins wou
Re:Exposure to vacuum and diastolic blood pressure (Score:3, Interesting)
If it was at negative pressure, if you got a cut, your arteries/veins would suck air in.
If you go below 60 mmHg or so, you indeed will have the water in the blood boil; the saturated vapor pressure of water will exceed the ambient pressure. Well before then other blood gases will begin to leave solution, blocking arteries and veins (aka the bends, which is well documented in divers).
Re:Oxygen requirements = yes, Pressure = no. (Score:5, Informative)
Deep sea diving is different in that we're piling on a lot more pressure on our bodies. It's fairly easy for our bodies to cope with more pressure. Depending on how deep you dive, the equivalent atmospheric pressure would be about 15 times greater.
To amplify, because our bodies are made mostly of water and incompressible solids, increased pressure has very little direct effect on us. We have some internal air spaces that have to be equalized, but once that's done, increased pressure does little. In fact, the only way in which increased pressure does affect us is in that it alters the behavior of our body chemistry somewhat. At the pressures that divers go to (people have been to over 30 atmospheres, and we could probably take far more than that) the most significant change is the way in which gases dissolve and permeate our tissues.
Higher pressures causes more of a given gas to dissolve into our blood and tissues. For example, as high amounts of nitrogen dissolve into our tissues we experience a narcotic effect (called "nitrogen narcosis"). Oxygen is a highly volatile element and becomes toxic in large amounts. For this reason, very deep diving uses a lot of helium and very little oxygen or nitrogen. Lowering the percentage of oxygen in the breathing mixture keeps the amount of oxygen in the diver's body below toxic levels. Deep diving is done on oxygen mixtures that are so thin you'd asphyxiate if you breathed them on the surface.
And that leads directly to a major problem with trying to breathe on Mars. In the martian atmosphere, the pressure is so low that even if you were breathing 100% O2, you'd die of oxygen starvation.
To understand why, you have to understand a little about how mixed gases and dissolved gases behave under pressure. The key concept is called "partial pressure", and it's very simple. The partial pressure of a gas in a mixture is simply the ratio of that gas times the pressure of the whole gas. So, if you're breathing 20% O2 at sea level (one atmosphere), you're breathing O2 with a partial pressure of 0.2 atm. For convenience partial pressure of O2 is written "ppO2".
In direct correspondence to partial pressure, there's another concept called "partial tension". Tension is the measure of the "pressure" of gas dissolved in a solid or liquid. In your body, the amount of a non-inert gas, like O2, that participates in chemical reactions is directly proportional to the partial tension of that gas. In turn the partial tension of a gas in your body tissues is equal to the partial pressure of that same gas in the air you breathe (well, it's not always equal, it takes time to reach equilibrium, and some other factors mean that it's never *exactly* equal, but never mind all that). It's reasonable to just assume that, at equilibrium, ptO2 = ppO2.
So, in order to have enough O2 to function, your bodily tissues have to have a certain ptO2. Your tissues could equilibrate to the martian atmospheric pressure (assuming the boiling point of water doesn't become an issue), but you'd die because even at 100% O2 the ppO2 = 0.01 atm. IIRC, you need about five times that to function.
At the high end of pressure scales, your body can endure ppO2 of up to about 2 atm. Divers generally try to keep it below 1.6 atm, 1.4 atm is what the training agencies recommend. So, at 30 atm, breathing gas with only 1% O2 is perfectly adequate, even though you'd asphyxiate with so little oxygen at sea level. 1% O2 at 1 atm is a ppO2 of 0.01, just the same as 100% O2 at 0.01 atm, i.e. Mars.
Re:Oxygen requirements = yes, Pressure = no. (Score:3, Informative)
first start with a magnosphere (Score:2, Funny)
2. Atmosphere
3. h2o
4. ???
5 Profit
Nope (Score:2, Insightful)
Remember, just because Mars won't become a grassy paradise overnight doesn't mean humans can't live there in the meanwhile. Humans can live in surprisingly little space, when combined with hydroponic gardens and nuclear power. Dome cities, or underground cities, would work and support millions of inhabitants while the surface of the planet is slowly
Problems (Score:3, Interesting)
What? (Score:2, Funny)
science (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:science (Score:4, Informative)
Re:science (Score:5, Interesting)
Or, you could argue that science fiction writers predict everything (cities on the moon, flying cars, hyperdrive), and SOME of it turns out to be possible.
Those writers who predict something possible are "prophetic", but it is largely a question of chance and selective memory.
However, I am a biologist - and I have the minimal ethical training required by my Institutions' NIH training grant.
Personally, I think it is ethical to terraform a planet which is not presently inhabited (by life of any kind.) Harm is, even in the most general sense, something you do to living things, so bringing life to a dead planet is harmless by definition.
Given the risk to the experimental subjects, I do not think it is ethical to "terraform" (or otherwise genetically engineer) human beings.
However, the more relevant question is not "should we do it?" because - we will. Ethical or not, sooner or later, some people will do it. This applies both to human genetic engineering and to planetary terraforming.
The pressing question, therefore, is how should those who choose to do these things (whatever you think about the ethics) go about doing it? Acknowledging that a thing should not be done at all, and then stepping back from that and considering how to minimize the negative imapct when it is inevitably done, can be a difficult feat of mental gynmastics, but in the coming centuries I think it it something peopole of conscience are absolutely going to have to do - in parallel with efforts to stop the more monstrous excesses from being perpetrated at all.
P.S. - Terraforming Mars will be fairly difficult. In a billion years or so, when the photodensity on Mars (and on Earth) has risen (because the Sun is getting bigger), Mars may look very attractive.
At that point, the big problem with Mars is the lack of a strong magnetic field, which makes it difficult to retain water vapor in the martian atmopshere. This is a problem now but it gets worse as the level of solar radiation striking Mars goes up.
This doesn't mean nothing can live on Mars - we can make micro-organisms that could live on Mars with a, frankly, fairly modest budget and present day technology. There are some things down in the Antarctic that might be able to survive as-is somewhere on Mars (although I doubt it.)
The atmosphere is also very thin, and the level of sunlight so small, that it is highly unlikely that we will be able to warm the place up enough for us to wander outside "naked" merely by changing the components of the atmosphere (which could be done with the afforementioned genetically engineered microbes).
Covering the large stretches of the planet in insulated greenhouses (built by self replicating solar powered robots) is probably the best solution if you want a vaguely earthlike environment. This can be done well in advance of the billion year timeframe, of course, and allows you to retain water vapor and a very high temperature.
Re:science (Score:3, Insightful)
I also don't necessarily concur automatically with the "well-somebody-will-eventually-do-it-so-let's-jus t -do-it-now" line of argumentation.
Note that none of this actually indicates I'm
Re:science (Score:5, Insightful)
Science fiction authors also think about this sort of matter on a regular basis, and not as a mere idle notion. Combine that with significant knowledge of the subject matter, and it isn't unreasonable for the government to be asking them what their views on terraforming are.
Re:science (Score:3, Informative)
</pedant mode>
Re:science (Score:2)
Re:science (Score:4, Informative)
Re:science (Score:3, Insightful)
Who are they to decide on something like that? Am I not a human myself, able to make ethical decisions if asked? All people are. Granted, most people don't, because they act selfishly. But what's to stop an ethicist to get blindsided by the glory of being someone that helped instigate the colonization of Mars for humanity, to forever go down in history?
So we modify the humans rather than the planet.... (Score:2)
Its improbable, but you can grow a human in 20 or so years, terraforming a planet takes generations......
Terraforming humans? (Score:5, Insightful)
Terraforming [reference.com] isn't the right word. Terraforming is forming planets to make them more like Earth (Terra). Purposefully altering humans/human physiology does not yet have a word accosiated with it, I think.
There is a word (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Terraforming humans? (Score:2)
Re:Terraforming humans? (Score:3, Insightful)
There are hard ways and less hard ways to do that.
Natural selection would be the hard way, and I doubt we could be adapted in that way in any reasonable amount of time.
Genetic engineering would be another way
A third way might be some sort of symbiotic relationship with another biological life form or articificial organism that could metabolize CO2 at a sufficiently fast rate. You still have to deal with climate and weather issues I suppose.
You could probably call it 'Terranforming' (Score:2)
[note to the humour-impaired - the above is not entirely serious...]
Simon
Re:Terraforming humans? (Score:3, Informative)
In Kim Stanley Robinson's spectacular trilogy, Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars, the word "areoforming" was used to describe Mars' effect on humans, or more specifically, the effect of living on Mars in isolation from earth on human society.
Re:Terraforming humans? (Score:5, Insightful)
I believe the word is "Eugenics".
bioforming (Score:3, Informative)
adaptation not eugenics (Score:3, Informative)
"Eugenics" [wikipedia.org] is deliberately chosing who gets to have children in order to achieve desired characteristics (eg, Nazis who wanted a "master race"). I think "biological adaptation" [wikipedia.org] (or perhaps just "adaptation") is more accurate since for example, this includes genetic engineering of both the individual's D
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
But we're not done with Venusforming Earth.... (Score:4, Funny)
I'm sure we can figure out some capitalist-distributed scheme that Wall Street loves while changing the atmosphere of Mars as we've done here (deforestation, carbon-based energy industry, too many cow farts, etc.). Of course, the real question is how long will the Mars atmosphere be breathable by "naked" humans before it's unbreathable again thanks to the top-selling 2050 Ford Evacuate super-SUV......
Re:But we're not done with Venusforming Earth.... (Score:2)
the top-selling 2050 Ford Evacuate super-SUV......
dont forget the 2050 Hummer H6 [xs4all.nl]
Alpha Centauri (Score:3, Interesting)
Perhaps we should look at the video game Alpha Centauri, a very underrated turn-based strategy game. The game takes place on an Alien planet, and requires heavy terraforming, including removal of the natural environment, to allow your civilization to grow. A quote from the game:
"Resources exist to be consumed. And consumed they will be, if not by this generation then by some future. By what right does this forgotten future seek to deny us our birthright? None I say! Let us take what is ours, chew and eat our fill.
CEO Nwabudike Morgan
"The Ethics of Greed"
The prevalence of anoxic environments rich in organic material, combined with the presence of nitrated compounds has led to an astonishing variety of underground organisms which live in the absence of oxygen and "breathe" nitrate. Likewise, the scarcity of carbon in the environment has forced plants to economize on its use. Thus, all our efforts to return carbon to the biosphere will encourage the native life to proliferate. Conversely, the huge quantities of nitrate in the soil will be heaven to human farmers.
Lady Deirdre Skye
"The Early Years"
Re:Alpha Centauri (Score:5, Interesting)
Anything AlphaC has to say about terraforming was said better by the Mars trilogy. You have the Greens led by Hiroko who say that life will find a way and cannot be denied. You have the reds originally led (however unwillingly) by Ann who says that it is nothing less than criminal to terraform a world that you do not understand and will never understand as a result - any life which might be present on the planet will likely be destroyed and/or become indistinguishable from the life you spread upon it. You have the pure scientist (Sax) who wants to terraform Mars for his own convenience (a common theme in scientific development) and just to see if it can be done, how it can be done, et cetera. And so on, and so forth. In fact if the books have a failing it is that the characters are too transparently archetypical, but nonetheless they're books that I read eagerly, seldom stopping, and still reread periodically. The space elevator, terraforming of assorted planets, and even modification of humans for life on some of them, meeting the planets halfway. Truly amazing stuff and much more insightful and realistic than AlphaC, however good the game is - and it is.
Good Idea? (Score:2, Insightful)
the toughest bit (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:the toughest bit (Score:3, Funny)
Easy enough... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:To churn out CO2 (Score:3, Funny)
Before someone else says it.... (Score:2, Insightful)
I honestly feel that instead of spending billions fixing up Mars, instead that money should be used on Earth to fix problems that exist here, right now. Hunger, environmental problems, political strife, etc. It'll be a very long time before anything that occurs on Mars has any effect on the majority of human civilization, while investment in fixing Earth problems can have a more immediate global effect for us all.
In addition, we shouldn't view Mars as a place
Re:Before someone else says it.... (Score:2)
Re:Before someone else says it.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, the sooner we start working on Mars, the sooner we'll start learning how environments actually work, and the sooner we'll gather the expertise needed to avert major catastrophes.
The way I see it, terraforming Mars is an absolutely necessary safety measure, and no amount of money spent on problems "back home" will provide that safety. If we can turn Mars into a self-sustaining world of 20-million people or so, I don't see anything short of alien invasion or Sol going nova that could wipe us out.
How terraforming mars will work (Score:5, Interesting)
life: spread it around (Score:3, Insightful)
Obviously, if there is no life there, its not as if we would be destroying a species or habitat, but how do we prove there is no life there?
We are at a unique point in the grand scheme of things because for the first time in history, we as a species have the capability to spread life beyond the bounds of our world. Life wants to spread. With this new found cpability, is it our duty to help it spread?
Now, terraforming is a bit extreme, but I really struggle with even the basic idea of wether it is ethical to, say, introduce bacteria to other worlds and give life a chance to do what it does in other places.
If oxygen is not a requirement, (Score:3, Informative)
The interesting thing about the sulfur-based ecosystem discovered in Romania is that it was formed apparently with mutations that ocured quite fast on an evolutionary scale (thousands of years as opposed to millions).
We will obviously see a lot of mutations if we send life on an alien world. So my question is - are we gonna repeat the Australian eco-fiasco at a planetary scale ?
Australians (Score:2)
Since it'd be virtual exile -- exile Microsoft, the NSA, the RIAA, the MPAA, Congress, Pakistan, Israel...
Then check back in a few hundred years and see what we've got!
Disclaimer: Not everyone in these groups deserves to be exiled. But few Australians today would consider Australia exile.
Re:they got my respect (Score:2)
Granted, none of those references were related to actual citations, and they referneced entire newspapers rather than specific articles. And they mostly just supported the parts of concepts they liked without explaining why they didn't like the rest. But still, A for effort!
Evolution on Mars (Score:2)
Assuming the ethical question of whether to change Mars or not was resolved in the affirmative, how might life be introduced to the red planet sustainably?
Bulldozers, cows and fish are all problematic for such a distant destination.
But what about microbes... and a lot of time? What might be the result of microbes?
Fish, cows and bulldozers perhaps?
Is that what happened on Earth?
Terraform Earth First (Score:2)
I bet if someone does the math they'll figure out that anything mankind could set up on Mars to generate an atmosphere would have to run for... oh, a hundred thousand years or so (one of the articles says 40 thousand) to have any noticable effect. Which gets us bac
make a bigger pie (Score:3, Interesting)
From an environmental habitat point of view, I would argue that we are an overly successful species in terms of reproduction (mostly due to awesome public health and healthcare systems). Combine that with the fact that we are naturally pre-disposed against culling significant portions of our world population, and it's apparent that there aren't going to be any less of us in the foreseeable future.
Creating / expanding our existing habitat by a significant amount (e.g., 1 red planet's worth) would allow us to decrease our average environmental impact per area.
This might also have the side effect of easing existing social inequities in our world; we spend a lot of collective effort both trying to get 'more of the pie' and trying to 'divide up the pie equally'. I say it'd be better to just make a bigger pie.
On the issue of possibly impacting existing life, I'd argue that exploration and colonization is more important than microbes and red dust.
Maybe we should solve home planet problems first ? (Score:5, Interesting)
If all these issues are not dealt as soon as possible, then, I believe, we must prepare ourselves (or our children) about huge wars, especially over natural resources. Many knowledgable people say that the future wars will be about water.
Please excuse my ecological save-the-world rumblings that may shatter your dreaming about a space future. I do believe that humanity's future is in the stars, but unfortunately there is another step before it that must be successfully completed...and every day that passes it seems more and more impossible...
Re:Maybe we should solve home planet problems firs (Score:3, Insightful)
Terraforming and colonizing Mars should be done as soon as possible. It will mean that the human race will survive an Earth wide dis
Marsiforming humans (Score:2)
Read:
"Man Plus" (c) 1976 by Frederick Pohl
which deals specifically with the idea of modifying a man so as to enable him to live unaided on the surface of Mars.
A.
Well I for one... (Score:2)
On a serious note I could see some serious conflicts arising out of a Martian race of humans. We have a hard enough time getting along when there is a difference in gender, race, religion, and/ or politics. A new species could only lead to more conflict methinks.
Why not a practical combination of the two? (Score:2)
It isn't a given that our bodies would change so much that we wouldn't be able to come back to Earth either. By the time we have created a way of life efficient enough to survive on Mars to Terraform it, we should be able control our own evolution with more precision. We could
It is certainly ethical. Humanity comes first. (Score:2, Interesting)
We should do whatever it takes to establish and secure the survival of our own species first. So yes its ethical. Should we do it now? That's debateable.
I think it might be a good idea to start now before we destroy ourselves in nuclear war or face over population and capitalism collapses. However we should limit the amount of money we spend on this project and perhaps our great grand children will actually see this project completed.
Right now our main concern should be preventing our own self destruction
Don't hold your breath (Score:2)
Re:Don't hold your breath (Score:2)
and yet we can all still get a glass of water if need be. That seens sustainable to me.
What a great idea! (Score:3, Insightful)
Mars terraforming is unfortunately unavoidable (Score:3, Insightful)
The terraforming of Mars seems to be, in my opinion, unfortunately quite unavoidable, to say the very least, and that is because of all of us who are "marsaforming" Earth so well that soon we sadly will be unable to live here any more. That's very sad. It might not be a problem for us, but for our children or grandchildren.
I am sure one day someone will remember the timeless implications of our today's Slashdot discussion looking at the Mars University and will say: "Very impressive. Back in the 20th century we had no idea there was a university on Mars," to which his professor will answer: "Well in those days Mars was just a dreary uninhabitable wasteland... much like Utah. But unlike Utah, it was eventually made livable, when the university was founded in 2636." That will be a great day in our history.
I am very excited. I dream of being able to ski on Mars one day. That would be amazing. We definitely have to bring some water there and lower the temperature somehow to freeze it (we could use the process of so caled desublimacion to change the steam--a product of hydrogen and oxygen synthesis--directly into snow). That would be great. I am so excited. I haven't read such an exciting article for a long time.
The Slashdot headline is misleading, though. We don't need terraforming of humans, but rather marsaforming. I, for on, am already terraformed quite well, thank you. I hope Slashdot editors will correct this mistake as soon as possible. Other than that, the very idea of marsaforming humans instead of terraforming Mars is novel and extremely exciting. Great read.
Also, I find the ethical implications very interesting. After all, who gave us the right to live on Mars? The answer is sadly: no one. But does that mean we should not live there? Probably yes.
We are helping the earth reproduce! (Score:5, Funny)
All this terraforming is neat... (Score:3, Informative)
InnerWeb
We cannot teraform mars. Give it up already! (Score:4, Insightful)
Without a magnetic field to help shield it, the solar wind slowly strips away the upper atmosphere, making the atmosphere thinner and thinner and thinner.
So if we try to thicken the atmosphere as part of a teraforming process, it won't do any good... the solar wind just keeps lapping it up and sending it into space, and would eventually bring it right back down to where it is right now.
It's just not worth the effort for something that wouldn't actually last.
Engineer... engineer thy self... (Score:3, Insightful)
Add to that the magic of anthromorphic biohybrid materials, nanotechnology, advanced materials science, DNA based assembly and construction, and the utilization of interesting new synthetic metabolic cycles, and we can pretty much engineer ourselves to live in any kind of environment.
Why change Mars one wit, when we can build human beings with everything they'll need to live and thrive on Mars just the way it currently is. This does presume that we decide that Mars is such a nice place that we should have millions or billions of us there on a long term basis.
Robotics and some level of AI, make the possibility of building human habitats on Mars in the next decade or two absolutely feasible. These habitats will be able to support hundreds or thousands of human beings who will be substantially identical to the folks that walk around on earth today (save gene therapies that protect Mars inhabitants from the rigors and health threats of low G environments.)
The point is that long term endeavors to new worlds and deep space, demand some intrinsic alterations of ourselves. To preserve that which is best in human beings, we may have to sacrafice our past, and create ourselves anew.
Genda
How about we Terraform Earth first? (Score:3, Interesting)
Gravity on Earth is 1G and people have left Earth (Score:2)
On the other hand Australia was exile for British convicts. Look at what a wonderful place it is now