If we could, should we terraform Mars?

[NickB79]

I was just watching CNN, and they were interviewing a scientist who was talking about how the search for water on Mars by the two rovers there is so important to determine if Mars ever could have, or still may, support life. The discussion progressed to the possibility of one day terraforming Mars, thickening the atmosphere with greenhouse gases to warm the planet and eventually allow life to live on its surface. Obviously, we will not live to see this occur (unless they find a way to halt aging and allow us to live for centuries). But, the scientist did bring up the fact that there are serious moral and ethical questions to consider before purposely altering the surface of an entire planet.

I for one would love to see Mars terraformed some day. I seriously doubt we will ever be able to thicken the atmosphere to the point that humans could walk unaided on the planet's surface, but it is concievable that the atmosphere could be changed enough to support various less advanced lifeforms. Numerous bacteria, protists, fungi, invertebrates such as worms and insects, cold and drought-hardy plants and lichens, possibly even some vertebrates like fish if sustainable lakes and oceans formed. Genetic engineering would allow even more flexibility and survivability, and allow for the creation of entirely new species by taking the best features from different species to build organisms expressly designed for a Martian climate.

The one thing that would cause me to abandon my desire to see Mars terraformed is if there is native Martian life still alive on Mars. Even just one isolated population of bacteria on Mars would trump any advances terraforming would yield.

So, what does everyone else think? Or am I letting my sci-fi nerdiness show too much? :-)

[La_Serpiente]

1. How would we terraform Mars?

Would we have to melt the polar ice caps to create an atmosphere (that is if Mars does have Polar Ice Caps)?

[Heyo]

2. It does have ice caps...

alot of them are frozen CO2 though (dry ice)

The amount of gas, oxygen in particular that would have to be generated is astronomical.. defenitely a long process if it's even posible...

The atmospheric pressure on the surface of Mars is about equal to what it is about 100,000 feet on Earth. (about 18 miles)

We would suffocate in a jetliner at 30,000 feet if it wasn't pressurized.

I doubt we will live to see that, but does make for some neat science.

Heyo

[NickB79]

5. I've read of several possibilities

Such as:

-releasing bacteria genetically engineered to survive the current Martian atmosphere to eat away at carbon reserves in the soil and release CO2. There are already several different bacterial species already identified that are capable of surviving in extremely cold, dry, and otherwise inhospitable environments. Genetic engineering could combine all these traits into one hybrid bacterial species capable of surviving on the Martian surface.

-set up automated mining facilities on Mars to recover pure carbon and deposit it over the polar ice caps. The pure black carbon would absorb sunlight, heat the poles and release massive amounts of water vapor and CO2 (the Martian poles are largely composed of frozen CO2).

-set up automated mining facilities and chemical factories to pump out greenhouse gases far more efficient than CO2 (CFC's, for example, act as extremely powerful greenhouse gases as well as destroying ozone).

-place in orbit large solar mirrors that would focus sunlight on the polar ice caps and melt them (possibly could be used in conjunction with the carbon idea above).

-nudging meteorites or comets out of orbit and crashing them into Mars. Impact them into the ice caps to vaporize the caps.

-alternately, you could aerobrake icy meteorites or comets in the Martian atmosphere and vaporize them instead of impacting them into the surface, releasing their stores of water vapor, CO2 and methane (impacting them anywhere but the ice caps would throw up excessive amounts of dust that would cause global cooling instead of global warming). Admittedly, this method would require many, many meteorites and comets, and many, many decades to find the bodies, get to them from the inner solar system, nudge them off-course, and wait for them to reach Mars from the Oort Cloud and Kuiper Belt.

Once the atmosphere has warmed to the point that plant life could survive on a sufficient part of the planet, oxygen production through photosythesis would begin to play a significant role in altering the atmosphere. The flip side is that, as plant life spreads, it will lower the CO2 levels in the atmosphere, possibly lowering the temperatures and putting the whole effort back to square one. And, all this doesn't even begin to consider truly futuristic technology, such as nanotechnology. Microscopic, self-replicating machines, burrowing through the soil, breaking down carbon-rich rock deposits for energy and releasing CO2, not hampered by cold temperatures or dry conditions as biological terraforming would be. That would be something to see.

But like I said, we will all be long dead and buried by the time any of these methods are feasible to implement.

[Blayde Starrfyre]

3. How about

How about instead, we work on not f-ing this planet up any more?

[NickB79]

6. Totally agree with you there

If we don't learn how to live here without destroying this planet, we won't survive as a species long enough to have the opportunity to terraform Mars. I'm being optimistic and hoping that we can learn to live sustainably here, and then spread outward into the rest of the solar system.

[RapidCreek]

7. Gee we wouldn't be doing our jobs then...

RC

[ouija_board]

9. I'm very interested in space travel

but I totally agree with you there. We were already given a world, filled with everything we could ever need. Literally everything. Every kind of mineral or resource, the right combination of gases, the perfect ecological balance. After fucking it up so royally, we really need to focus all our energy on preserving what we have left and making sure that there is still an Earth to come home to, if we ever make it to another planet.

It was a great achievement getting to the moon, just as it would be if we could cultivate some form of life on Mars. But at the end of the day, those are just singular achievements, not sustainable plans for the future, which is where our focus needs to be.

I'll stick to watching Star Trek for my space travel fix, thanks.

[Gore1FL]

4. It would take hundred of years

but I don't have an ethical issue with it -- unlss they actually find life (Life -- not the residue of life long ago), which I sort of doubt they will.

[Dogmudgeon]

8. Why not Terraform the Moon?

It's a lot closer and would be a lot more interesting to look at.

All we'd have to do is give it a layer of some kind of heavy gas over 5km above the surface, and we could start working on a breathable atmosphere.

As for water, the icy-asteroid (or comet) method would work fine. With the right low-angle approach, we could also impart rotation with, say, 200-1000 chunks of space-ice. A 100-hour-long "day" would be fine. It would get tropical during the daytime, and it would snow at night.

We could probably get this going within 100 years ... provided we haven't lapsed back into barbarism, which looks increasingly probable.

--bkl

[Muddleoftheroad]

10. I'd be afraid to mess with the moon

Messing with it could mess with us. It impacts our weather and tides.

But I have no qualms about terraforming Mars. Yes, it might take 100 years, but if we could figure out some ways to do it, I'm all for it.

[FireHeart]

11. A hundred years?

Thousands more likely. Terra forming is *way* beyond any technical capacity we have today--and likely to remain that way for many centuries to come. The anti-science crowd is growing stronger every day...how can we develop such technologies when states are now trying to *require* students to be taught creationism?

Ah...never mind. I understand now. Faith based Terra Forming. The solution!

:S

[Dogmudgeon]

12. No need to worry

It would take much more than Terraforming and a few hundred well-placed (or even poorly-placed) ice chunks to change the Moon's revolution around the Earth by more than an inch or two.

The biosphere of any planet planet is unlikely to "weigh" more than a few one-thousandths of a percent of the planet's mass. On a terraformed Moon, without its own oceans, that would be several orders of magnitude less.

But actually, I would prefer to see free-space habitats before any terrforming is attempted. The Biosphere 2 experiment showed us very clearly that for all our theories about creating sealed habitations, we're still at the very beginning of understanding ecology as an experimental (as opposed to an observational) science. So we have quite a bit of time to learn.

--bkl

[Muddleoftheroad]

13. Habitats

I think both should move forward. Terraforming is great in theory. But it could take tons of time and still fail. We should still move forward with inhabiting the moon and then Mars.