Terraforming Mars

[Scootaloo]

1. Neat video, but there's a few problems with the idea...

First... fixing our own planet should be top priority. No use having a spare if you don't know how to handle the original.

Second.. .theres' a reason Mars' atmosphere is so thin. Unlike earth, it does not have an active iron core; it thus has a weak magnetosphere. its atmosphere is thus under constant, unprotected assault from the sun, which degenerates and erodes it. The trick is finding a way to make and preserve an atmosphere.

Third... Where is all that water coming from? Yes, there's water on Mars, but it's pretty evident that it's far less water than earth. At just a few degrees lower global average, earth is basically a white ball; covered in ice (it's happened in the past; the so-called "Ice Ages" of the Pleistocene were balmy days, by comparison). mars is far below that temperature, and so far all we know of is substrate ice. THis ties back to the problem above; Water is an integral part of our atmosphere. Water is also very volatile. Most of Mars' water has been steady been beaten offworld into space these last few billion years.

Fourth... ecology. Okay, say we learned how to keep a planet running, we've managed to build and protect the atmosphere, and thanks to harnessed asteroid resources, Mars has water comparable to earth. Okay. What lives in that water? It's going to be at least a few centuries before all that toxic goop that washed off the surface into the new canals, canyons, and inland seas settles down, bonds, decays, or what have you. Until then, the waters of Mars are basically going to be the silty runoff from a smelter's parking lot. You could probably stock that with bacteria but, unless you know how to build a world that runs off sulfur dioxide, it might not be that helpful. Even if we surmount that (and not being a species famed for patience, I wouldn't bet on it) then we still have to figure out how to build entire ecosystems from scratch. it's not "plant a tree here and put some bunnies nearby," it's full-out recreating a system that has taken five billion years to develop and tune itself to Earth, and trying to shoehorn it into a foreign world in a matter of centuries or, god help us, decades. Depending on how degraded Earth is by that time (since every speck of life will likely have to be imported) this may actually be completely impossible.

Conceptually, it works great. In practice, operated by primates with large genitals who tend to top out at eighty years of age? It just won't happen.