by the time we could teraform the mars planet we would also be able to clean up earth and so it wont be nescessary to export to mars,

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yes piersdad parateraforming of mars is much essential, but for this time there is a need of some robots rehabilitation on mars is possible, the robots are the quite suitable species of the advance technology to live better on mars in the current scinario.

sunil

No, absolutely not. We are making such a mess of things here that the idea of us surviving for long enough to do something like inhabit another planet should be left for Arthur C Clarke and his readers.

We will never be able to clean up the Earth. Thankfully nature will take care of this long after we've died out. Mankind is not the be all and end all of life on Earth. The Earth was around for a huge amount of time before us and will be after we've gone.

We won't terraform Mars. I hope we don't anyway as we've set a terrible example of how to run a planet already!

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hummmm, jake is quite correct, but for the seck we must search the possibilities on mars as a prospective planet for a life system, the alternate life station for earth, rest will come later.

Hi

I am not sure it is technically possible.

Think a planet is so big and ecology so full of retroactions.

Som examples i thought about :

If mars actually warm up all the water in the dirt will melt and you will get a sea of mud with giant slides ! It will take centuries before things stabilize.

Carbon dioxide will react with water and the soil to give carbonates. Say bye bye to your greenhouse effect.

If mars become hot enough for plants to grow , you will not also get oxygen but organic matter like peat. Just waiting for a fire to put back the carbon dioxide int he atmosphere and take back all the oxygen. So you have to bury the organic matter to prevent this. May be creating some coal for future martians people !

If they are animals to eat and control the plants you willnot produce oxygen.

I read terraforming will use fluorocarbon molecules . where do this fluor come ? when the molecules break down what do you get ? Fluoric acid rain ?

In my opinion man is at the beginning of a long trip and has only primitive tools.Better to have realistics expectations .The stairway to heaven must be climb strp by step.

If people are going to live on Mars, I think there are only two options in any foreseeable future:

1. It will progress in small stages with bio-habitats, mostly underground (much like the ideas for bases on the moon); and/ or

2. It will be colonised by genetically engineered people, who would find living on Earth poisonous and impossible... and what that would do to their psyches? Who knows... War of the Worlds?

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Hello CRAN

Your solution N° 1 is the good one. it will be a slow process but a cumulative one. And you are right the experience acquired on the moon will be usefull.

May be at the beginning people will stay only for one or two years. Because life will be very difficult in these burrows.I know they is a severe psychological screening for people willing to go to antartica. On mars you willneed very special people !

About genetically modified humans i think you cant hope for miracle , because we are the best nature have done with billions years of selection. I remember a sf novel by jack Williamson i believe , where people where adapted to strange environnement . But it is just SF.

Hi galacsi,

true... but how much of our current technology - the stuff we take for granted every day, and the stuff we don't - was only SF in your grandparents' day?

cloned animals, gm crops, mobile phones and digital cameras and more satellites than ever, the internet, the ISS, space shuttles, supersonic jets, stratoliners, movies and music on little plastic optical discs, computerised homes, plasma television screens that are up to 2 metres wide, and 2 centimetres thick, automated factories full of robotic machines... that was the stuff of science fiction when I was a boy - and I'm a few years shy of 50 yet!

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Ha ha CRAN i am just under 56 so the older and so the wiser ! (May be)

Seriously i think not everything change so fast. The electronic industry is the exception not the norm. Think about how things were a century ago ; they already have cars , explosion engine , disesel engine , steam turbines , telephone , railways ,tramways, big boats , first planes , roads, bridges, tunels , life was not so différent from now.

Many things make a quick start at the end of the 19th century then stalled .My mother have seen the triumph of the oil and she can glimpse the end of this era.

Supersonic got nowhere. Nuclear energy seams a dead end (Not enough uranium for everybody) . For fusion energy we are said to wait another 50 years to see actual working reactor ! Cancer is still a major problem etc .. genetics is just an acceleration of the classical way of improving plants . Stem cells can be a real progress but clones are a nuisance.

I remember when i was a child an american Herman Kahn predicted than in the 2000 , cancer and all sickness should be cured . People will live 150 years , and everybody will fly their aircar between big skyscrapers.

Well of course it was pure bull**** from the cold war . And i stop there because i dont want to be political .

To go back to mars , the main problem is how to replace the chemical rocket. Because we need a better mean of transport for all the harware needed to build even a small base on Mars. It is a quantum leap not something like a new fancier mobile phone . And as sister Anne i don't see anything comming .

cheers

thanks galacsi for your reply, there are multiple barriers in looking the dream planning to live with mars, there are big questions in the today's context, but let we dream for a chance to see the mirror image of ours life on mars and defenetly it will take a very long years to "dream become true".


sunil

galacsi, I had a similar conversation with jhwegener, touching on many of the points - by "Supersonic got nowhere", I assume you mean the poor old Concorde - over-priced toy for the super-rich, that crashed once and frightened away the customers...? I was also including the thousands or tens of thousands of fighter aircraft - not all progress has been peaceful, more's the pity.

And the twentieth century was indeed full of overly ambitious predictions... <_<

As you say, back to Mars...
I think anything more than 'first landings', are certainly going to require a lot more infrastructure in space than we already have. The ISS is barely a beginning; larger rotating stations at L4 and L5 would be great 'proving stations' for potential crews and transport equipment trials... permanently staffed habitats on the Moon (Luna) likewise would be sensible to trial surface equipment and train 'ground personnel'.

I know other propulsions systems are being trialled now, but I suspect simple chemical engines will remain important components, if only because there is water 'out there' - but double- or triple- hybrids are not silly (I never like having all my eggs in one basket, especially if I thought my life depended on it!) - so, solar sail or ion drives or even some form of nuclear propulsion - fusion drive is probably more the go, again because water is available.

I think that once bases/habitats are established, transport and personnel movements will be something like the Antarctic bases are now - 12 to 14 months on the ground, because the transport and supply ships have only a 2 - 3 month 'window' to get in close to the continent ... I cannot see anything like the regular New York - London commuter...

Also similar to Antarctica, I think the bulk of personnel for Luna and Mars habitats will be astro- and geo-scientists, and associated engineers, medical and administrative and security - families might have to wait a few generations, if only because of the added infrastructure that would be required to service and support families...

A Mars-orbit transfer station will also be a reasonable step - the bulk carrier shuttle (Earth orbit - Luna orbit - Mars orbit) will be much easier to design and operate if it can stay permanently in space.

All structures and equipment will likely be designed in modular or kit form, if only because all of it will be constructed here on Earth to begin with and will then have to be lifted to at least the first transfer station...

Securing water supplies will be the priority for any long term habitats (space or surface) B)

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