Should We Remodel Mars to Replace Earth?

February 08, 2008

If the fact that acceleration of global warming might be making Earth lopsided isn’t bad enough, Google News reports that the deforestation of the Amazon rain forest is now proceeding at a sharply faster pace, so that each day, about 18 square miles of it is vanishing. It’s one more sign that we’re messing up this planet to the point that it soon may be impossible to fix the damage, if we haven’t reached that point already. Unless you’re a member of the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, you’re probably worried about the potential for environmental apocalypse. If we eventually render the planet uninhabitable or unable to support the ever-increasing number of humans, what will we do then?

Some visionaries have an answer, albeit a bizarre one. What if we create a new home for humans — a second, artificial version of Earth — somewhere else in the solar system? It's easy to know what you’re thinking, that creating a new planet from scratch would probably be beyond human abilities, and that even if it weren’t, we don’t have the usual requisite several billion years to get the job done. Instead, advocates of terraforming would simply modify an existing planet or moon to make it more hospitable for human colonists.

Back in 1993, former NASA engineer Robert Zubrin and NASA planetary scientist Christopher P. McKay published a paper, “Technological Requirements for Terraforming Mars,” that looked at the feasibility of various schemes for converting the Red Planet from a dry, dusty, nearly airless and apparently lifeless husk of a world into a reasonable facsimile of our own.

Ironically, Zubrin and McKay would do this by causing the same sort of global warming that is wreaking havoc on Earth. Though Mars lost most of its once-thick atmosphere billions of years ago, there’s still enough carbon dioxide on the planet, absorbed into soil and frozen in ice, to form a new one, if only it could be liberated. Earthlings could cause that to happen, by using aluminum mined from asteroids to create gigantic orbital mirrors, which would focus sunlight on the Martian south polar ice cap and gradually vaporize it. Alternatively, we could set up a massive manufacturing operation on the Martian surface to create carbon dioxide from carbon sequestered in rocks, or simply hook some nuclear thermal rocket engines to big asteroids and set them on a collision course with the Red Planet to release a massive amount of energy. Zubrin and McKay calculate that four 10 billion-ton hunks of space rock would be enough to do the trick.

After we warmed up Mars and thickened the atmosphere — a process that might take 50 years — the real planet-modifying work would begin. With atmospheric pressures raised, human colonists equipped with breathing apparatus could build large inflatable dwellings on the Martian surface. They also would scatter the seeds of plants genetically altered to tolerate Martian soil and perform photosynthesis at high efficiency, which would begin adding oxygen to the atmosphere so that humans and animals eventually could breathe freely. The oxygenation process could be speeded up even more with yet-to-be invented technological advances. As Zubrin and McKay write:

…The desire to speed the terraforming of Mars will be a driver for developing such technologies, which in turn will define a leap in human power over nature as dramatic as that which accompanied the creation of post-Renaissance industrial civilization.

Terraforming enthusiasts don’t put a price tag on the Martian project, but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that it would be almost unfathomably expensive and difficult. On the other hand, unless we do something about our planet’s burgeoning environmental woes in a hurry, we may not have any alternative but to find someplace else to go. What do you think? Should we start planning the terraforming of Mars, or should we leave that idea to sci-fi thrillers? Express your opinion below.

Comments

[Caffeine Driven Stress Magnet]

At first, I took this for just another wacky idea. But the more I think about it, we may have to do something crazy like this, in order for the humans to survive. We're
screwing up this planet at a startling rate, and at this point there's no way that we're going to be able to fix the damage. It'll be horribly sad, though, when the first groups of Mars colonists depart from Earth, because that's when we'll know that it's the beginning of the end for everything we've come to know.

[Mothra]

It's an extraordinarily depressing idea that we would mess stuff up enough here to need to move to Mars. But eventually it'll probably have to happen.

[Neil]

This crazy idea of terraforming Mars is predicated upon the dubious notion that the Earth is being destroyed by manmade climate change.

Climate science reveals that the world has warmed about 1 degree C during the past century, with half of that warming occurring before human emissions could have been responsible. Even if human activity is responsible for 100 percent of the warming since 1940, it is only about 0.5 degrees C., an amount so small it is within the error range of the instruments used to measure global temperatures.

There is no consensus about the causes, effects, or future rate of global warming. Most climate scientists doubt the reliability of computer models and the accuracy of land-based temperature records Reports by the IPCC are unreliable due to political editing and rewriting of the reports’ conclusions. Some of the key evidence cited in past IPCC reports has been shown to be fraudulent.

If you want the truth about what is actually happening, go to the Heartland Institute's web site http://www.heartland.org/

[Phoebe]

It's interesting to note who has underwritten the Heartland Institute's campaign to dispute the scientific consensus on global warming. Check out
http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=41

and http://www.motherjones.com/blue_marble_blog/archives/2007/10/5978_from_gmail_to_g.html

[I love Huckabee]

I am against the idea of terraforming Mars or any other planet. It would cost an enormous amount of money and consume a lot of scientific and technological resources, and we would be better off using all that to clean up the Earth's environment.

"The most important thing about global warming is this: whether humans are responsible for the bulk of climate change is going to be left to the scientists, but it is all of our responsibilities to leave this planet in better shape for future generations than we found it. It's the old Boy Scout rule of the campsite: You leave the campsite in better shape than you found it. I believe that even our responsibility to God means that we have to be good stewards of this Earth, be good caretakers of the natural resources that don't belong to us, we just get to use them. We have no right to abuse them."

--Mike Huckabee, May 3, 2007, at a debate between Republican presidential candidates

[Futurist]

Why not embrace the future, rather than fearing it? It's a natural, evolutionary progression for humans to colonize other planets. And when we start shifting our population and industries off-world, that's going to relieve the pressure on Earth's ecosystem.

[Futurist]

The spam filter wouldn't let me complete my post, so here's the rest of it...

My big concern is that when we colonize space, we do it in an egalitarian way that creates opportunity for all. I think the potential is there to create almost unimaginably vast fortunes in space, whether it's from peddling Martian real estate or creating perfect crystals in low-gravity environments or extracting mineral wealth from asteroids. We have to be careful not to have that exacerbate the gulf between the wealthy few and the impoverished masses. We have to make sure that benefit is spread around. Otherwise, there's definitely a danger that we could create an off-world techno-fascist oligarchy.

[8 yearsold]

I think it's a good idea because people could live on Mars. I'd like to live on Mars and I wouldn't mind being in a spaceship for a couple of years to get there. I would walk around the planet and try to jump over things. I would collect rocks and throw them. I would take my dog in a space suit.

[Andrea Williams]

Is terraforming Mars really even possible? It would be an engineering project that would be a million times more massive than anything humans have ever contemplated. Besides, even by the most optimistic timetables, it would be a project that would take a century or more. I don't know that we have that much time, given the rate that we are destroying this planet.

Why not start smaller, with underground bases on the moon? A lunar colony could serve as a laboratory for developing technologies that could help humans live on other planets. At the same time, we should put most of our energy and resources into fighting climate change.

[Barry]

If we develop the technological means to terraform another planet, why couldn't we do the same to Earth? Instead of altering the Martian atmosphere, we could alter Earth's atmosphere to decrease the greenhouse effect. I remember there was an earlier entry in this blog about big fixes for global warming. Maybe that's what we should do.

[Hillary Has More Experience]

Mars colonization is way off in the future. In the shorter term, if you're in favor of space exploration, remember that Obama has already said that he would cut back the Constellation program, which would replace the aging space shuttle.
http://www.spacepolitics.com/2007/11/20/obama-cut-constellation-to-pay-for-education/

[Neil]

What does it matter who funds the Heartland Institute? What matters is that what they're saying is correct. Nobody asks where Al Gore gets the money to go travelling around the world, showing his slideshow.

http://www.theglobalwarminghoax.com/

[Angela K.]

Fortunately, Neil, you're part of a shrinking segment of global warming deniers. In this year's presidential race, for example, even the leading conservative Republican candidate is worried about climate change.

[Warlock]

LETS DO IT!!!!!!I WANT THAT JOB OF SMASHIN ASTEROIDS INTO MARS!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Tim Stevens]

I don't think this idea is even remotely practical. Thickening the martian atmosphere and enriching it with oxygen is only one part of the challenge. How, for example, would martian colonists survive the incredibly violent dust storms on Mars, which are so enormous that they can cover the entire surface of the planet at once? (There's more about this at http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2001/ast16jul_1.htm )

[Science geek (insider)]

true true....deep stuff... just like the previous comment once the first group of colonist go to mars our planet is in some deep debt....personally im afraid...

[Astroboy]

You naysayers just aren't thinking big enough. Some years ago, the astronomer Eric Chaisson wrote a book, "Cosmic Dawn," in which he theorized that planetary and even universe-altering projects were an inevitable stage of the evolution of intelligent life. If we don't figure out how to do this, ultimately we're not going to survive, and some intelligent extraterrestrial species will do it instead.

As for the problem of the Martian dust storms, I would argue that this can be solved. There's a new theory that posits that the martian dust storms are stirred up by electrical energy that discharges from the Martian ionosphere directly to the planet's surface, rather than leaking via storm clouds, as it does on Earth. That's why the dust rises straight up in funnels, rather than just spreading horizontally. (http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2005/arch05/051109dustmars.htm)

I think that if we thicken the Martian atmosphere sufficiently and alter its composition so that clouds of water vapor form, that will dissipate some of the storms' violence. And if we're getting seriously into the business of remodelling Mars, we're going to have to create an artificial magnetic field to protect the planet against the atmopshere-stripping ravages of the solar wind. That, in turn, will regulate the accumulation of solar energy in the Martian ionosphere and control the process by which the massive storms now are created.

[Jimmy Hada]

i think its possible. but i think that if more people stop wasting money on stuff like usless junk we colud have the money to colonize mars and i mean if the planets about to run out of resourses and were gunna die whats the point of money we should try to colonize mars while at the same time trying to save earth so if something serious happens we can all just eveacuate to mars so we should at least try and if it is possible theres one question. If we dont do it soon and something comes up then what?

[Dennis]

By setting a goal of journeying to Mars and eventually terraforming it we are pushing ourselves ahead. Many people felt that we would be at the level of Clarke's "2001" by 2001. It is almost a shame how little we have progressed in the last 30 years.

These visions and goals are what gets the next genarations of scientists and engineers dreaming as kids. If the space race had not happened we would probably not have the toys we do now.

Even if we fixed the environment an asteroid could wipe us out the next day. For our species to survive we can't be all located in one place.

[Josh Harris]

Is this mission going to be safe for the astronauts? Will the astronauts make it back alive? There are many questions and problems we have to think about in this situation. This mission is going to be huge. It just needs to be thought out before any thing happens, im sure it has and im sure it will continue to be. Great progress, and good luck to the people leaving for this mission.

[Alec Chilton]

Wouldn't it be easier to just save our own planet than to terraform a new one?

[Patrick Kiger]

Alex Chilton the singer? "My baby, she wrote me a letter!"

[ken]

What are we waiting for. I'm most certain if we wait for the effects of this earths environment to become definently uninhabital, we would probably not leave any time to do anything about it. The conditions would probably begin to change more rapidly as things get worse. an effect that could devistate us with our gaurd down.
I'ts about the future generations as I wont likely be around, (or will I?) Also if we dont wait we can save this planet by moving half the population possibly and letting this planet recover more naturally. What other reasoning is there for NOT having another planet. anything can occur in the blink of an eye. I say: Are you done yet?

[Alejandro Flores]

How do you make laptops?

[Matt]

Don't get me wrong, I think that Terraforming Mars should happen! It's one one the most inspiring things I can think of for humanity to turn a (probably) lifeless rock into a second earth.

But for the effort and money spent we could probably significantly repair the damage done to our current home. Perhaps we should focus on becoming good stewards of our current home before expanding.

Also Mars lacks a magnetic field to shield the planet from solar radiation. No way around that yet.