Posted on 06/02/2005 6:41:11 AM PDT by RockinRight
Finding life on Mars has proved an elusive dream for decades. But scientists now believe they may be able to do it for themselves - by turning the Red Planet into a blue world with streams, green fields and fresh breezes and filling it with Earthly creatures.
The idea - known as terraforming - sounds like science fiction. But turning Mars into an Earthly paradise is being taken seriously by increasing numbers of researchers. They believe that, billions of years after its last seas and rivers dried up, Mars could be restored to its ancient glory thanks to human ingenuity. Its craters would become lakes and its red, parched hillsides would be covered with forests, ultimately providing mankind's teeming ranks with a new home.
This startling concept will be the focus of a major international debate, to be hosted this week by America's space agency, Nasa, which is preparing a multi-billion-dollar Mars research programme at the request of President Bush. Leading researchers as well as science fiction writers, including Arthur C. Clarke and Greg Bear, will attend.
'Terraforming has long been a fictional topic,' said Dr Michael Meyer, Nasa's senior scientist for astrobiology. 'Now, with real scientists exploring the reality, we can ask what are the real possibilities, as well as the potential ramifications, of transforming Mars.'
Most astronomers agree that Mars could be turned into a little Earth, though it would take decades to achieve this goal and would require massive expenditure. But many scientists are horrified by the concept.
'The idea of terraforming Mars is extreme, but it is not cranky - that is the truly horrible thing about it,' said Paul Murdin, of the Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge. 'If it was just a silly science-fiction notion, you could laugh it off. But the idea is terribly real. That is why it is dreadful. We are mucking up this world at an incredible pace at the same time that we are talking about screwing up another planet.'
Over the past months, astronomers have become increasingly confident they will find Martian lifeforms after decades of disappointment. Europe's Mars Express and America's two robot rovers, Spirit and Opportunity - which are all investigating the planet at present - have detected strong evidence that water, mixed with soil, exists in large amounts on Mars.
In addition, two different groups of scientists yesterday revealed they had found traces of methane in the Martian atmosphere. The gas is a waste product of living creatures and could be a byproduct of Martian microbes living in the Red Planet's soil.
It is the risk that terraforming poses to these sorts of organisms that outrages scientists, such as Dr Lisa Pratt, a Nasa astrobiologist based at Indiana University.
'It is very depressing. Before we have even discovered if there is life on Mars - which I am increasingly confident we will find - we are talking about undertaking massive projects that would wipe out all these indigenous lifeforms, all the strange microbes that we hope to find buried in the Martian soil. It is simply ethically wrong.'
To terraform Mars, engineers would have to find a way of thickening its atmosphere, whose pressure is a hundredth of that on Earth. In addition, ways will have to be found to heat up the planet. At present its surface temperature can plunge to minus 60C and below.
However, both goals - heating and thickening - could be achieved together, say researchers. One idea is to build a large mirror, many miles in diameter, and place it orbit above Mars. This would then be used to focus the Sun's rays onto a polar icecap, melting it and releasing its frozen carbon dioxide contents. The carbon dioxide would then trigger greenhouse heating.
The alternative would be to construct plants for generating super-greenhouse gases - made of complex combinations of carbon, chlorine and fluorine, and which are thousands of times more effective than carbon dioxide at trapping heat. These would be built at strategic sites across the planet and should also trigger global temperature rises. Thickening the Martian atmosphere would also protect its surface from the ultra-violet radiation that bombards its surface and which would otherwise kill off most Earth-like lifeforms on the planet.
According to Dr Chris McKay - based at Nasa's Ames Research Centre in California and a participant in this week's terraforming debate - either method could provide the terraforming project with a crucial kick-start. With a thicker, warmer atmosphere, ice trapped in the Martian soil would melt and could be used to sustain agriculture. With plants and trees imported from Earth growing and producing oxygen, the atmosphere would become slowly more Earth-like. 'We should get serious about sending life to Mars,' McKay said.
Other scientists remain cautious. 'We now know Mars used to have an atmosphere, but it disappeared for reasons that are still unclear,' said Monica Grady, a planetary scientist at the Natural History Museum, London. 'If we restore Mars's atmosphere, we could easily find it disappeared again. We would have done some devastating things to the planet for a temporary effect. That is certainly not ethical.'
The point is backed by Pratt. 'If we find life on Mars, the philosophical implications will be profound,' she said. 'If it is unlike Earthly life and has a different genetic code, this will show that living beings evolved separately on two neighbouring worlds. Life is therefore likely to be ubiquitous throughout the galaxy.
'If it has the same genetic code, however, it will indicate that one planet must have contaminated the other - probably by rocks being blasted across the solar system following meteorite impacts. We may really be Martian in origin.
'Given the importance of these issues, we simply cannot risk starting a global experiment that would wipe out the precious sensitive evidence we are seeking,' she added. 'This is just not on.'
Quite a number of recent studies, fromt he MArtin-Marietta "Mars Direct" studies from the early '90's to numerous studies since. No massive technology development programs are needed for Mars, just infrastructure. Using Transhab technology developed by NASA and taken over by Bigelow, married to Shuttle derived launch systems, you're pretty much already there (from the bulk infrastructure standpoint).
The NASA "90 Day Study" from the Bush I admonistration said 30 years and a trillion+ dollars. But that only showed how *badly* a program can be designed. It was akin to a contractor tellign you that doign the drywall in your basement will take six months and cost $40,000. Just because you get one horrible estimate doesn't mean that's where the true numbers lie.
> Increasing CO2 isn't going to have the "global warming effect they think..
Yes it will, if you increase it from it's current 7 millibar to something approximating 1 bar.
> And you need all those "other" gasses too.. Otherwise, you don't have a breathable atmosphere..
Who cares? The difference between 7 millibar of CO2 and, say, 0.8 bar of CO2 is the difference between requiring a space suit and requiring a breathing mask.
> Ice asteroids or water of some sort would still have to be "imported" from somewhere in space..
That's merely an engineering excercise and is likely to be a primary component of terraforming the planet anyway.
> it will take a Minimum of 300, 400 years to make Mars even marginally habitable..
So?
> Fifth, the aforementioned technology..
We don't have it..
Yes, we do. We just need more of it.
..both shuttles lost because of winter launch,..
.. what's the f'in' hurry, wait for a warmer day?
Dejah Thoris of Mars
Sounds like a good idea to me, as long as we can leave the Muslims and Neaderthals behind.
Hearty guffaws! They can't even get a rover unstuck from a sand dune!
Just started reading Robinson's RED-GREEN-BLUE MARS again.
Great trilogy that covers it all: How to get there, how to terraform, automated machines & constructins, the in-fighting & squabbles [the "Reds" want to leave Mars alone], the influences of the mega-corps on Earth, the pressures to get it done and relieve over-population on Earth, the amazing transformation from dusty, cold, lifeless planet to domed cities and eventually open-air societies, so much more...
I abhor abortion too, but that's not the topic of this thread. One has nothing to do with the other.
Send in the engineers!
A fresh spectroscopic study shows olivine is present at the surface of Mars in greater quantity than previously thought. Olivine decomposes in the presence of water.
OK.. Where you gonna get several quadrillion tons of CO2?
Difference between a space suit and a breathing mask..
How about the difference between breathing and not breathing?
No thanks.. I prefer a breathable atmosphere if we're gonna do it.
Ice asteroids or water... merely an engineering excercise and is likely to be a primary component of terraforming the planet anyway.
More than "merely" an engineering exercise..
It would be the greatest engineering exercise ever attempted by humanity..
Rather than a primary component, let's say Major Component..
Dropping asteroids on a planet is not going to be a pinpoint exercise, and that means no colonies, no research stations of any kind on the planet until all such activity is completed..
As an aside, you Do Know that Phobos is in a degraded orbit and is eventually going to spiral into the planet don't you??
Better to do it sooner than later.. ( that will add some mass to the planet..
Might as well do Deimos as well, and find something larger to orbit at a more stable altitude / attitude..
Why do I say that?
Because you NEED a moon to stabilize the planet's rotation.. otherwise, you get a planet that "rotates" randomly, over the course of time..
That means no stability in weather patterns, no "circadian rythyms" for plants and animals.. 300 - 400 years.. So?
We haven't been able to maintain a stable space program for 40 years, how do we get congress or any government on earth to commit to a project that won't pay off for 400?
And will cost, cost, cost, money...
Money that could be spent on getting re-elected.. here on earth..
And we're not even getting into the politics...
Once Mars is actually terrformed, and has a viable environment, Earth is going to expect to be "payed back"...
Mars will "owe us"...
That sort of attitude could result in let's say, WAR..
Luckily,(or unluckily) I (probably) won't be around to see it..
It would be "interesting times" though..
Do you want to tell them about the space station or should I?
I was about to post the same comment. The fact that they don't want us to "screw up another planet" that is totally devoid of life tells you everything you need to know about the environmental wacko movement. Humans are at the bottom of the food chain to these characters. We are even below rocks. And I don't mean "Pet Rocks". I mean just good old fashioned Red Planet Rocks.
> Where you gonna get several quadrillion tons of CO2?
Much of it is already there, trapped in the soil.
> How about the difference between breathing and not breathing?
Non sequitur.
> It would be the greatest engineering exercise ever attempted by humanity..
Not when compared the the size of the economy. Plowing asteroids and comets into Mars is somethign we could start doign in a decade or so within NASA's current budget.
> Dropping asteroids on a planet is not going to be a pinpoint exercise
You're liekly mistaken. Given that asteroids will have "blast zones" measuring at most a hundred km or so in radius, there is a LOT of area on Mars upon which to put bases in the mean time.
> you NEED a moon to stabilize the planet's rotation.. otherwise, you get a planet that "rotates" randomly, over the course of time..
If you're worried about a billion years down the line, I'm sure our tech at that point - so long as we haven't listened to the "it can't/shouldn't be done" luddites, will be more than equal to the task.
> how do we get congress or any government on earth to commit to a project that won't pay off for 400?
The people living there will finish it. The Dutch didn't build the Brooklyn Bridge, the Empire State Building and the WTC, did they?
> Earth is going to expect to be "payed back"...
They will be, just in the process of doing the job.
I used to have a sign in my office: "There comes a time in the history of every project where it becomes necessary to shoot the engineers and start production."
There is that, too. The lathe operator has to interpret what the engineer wanted. Remember the cartoon of the swingset as envisioned by various departments and as it was actually built?
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