Saturday, May 7, 2016

Let's Talk Terraforming

If it should happen one day that our planet is in danger or if its capacity for inhabitants has been reached, then what do we do? From the early tribes to the biggest civilizations, we have always been closer to microorganisms than to animals when it came to the speed at which we colonized and occupied the Earth. And what about meteorites? One day, a rock as big as the one that is believed to have been responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs might knock at Earth's door once more. Then what? Will we have what it takes to destroy or deflect it?

Questions like these don't have clear answers. And that's why they're important. The only way we can keep having a safe population expansion is if we spread outwards. Sadly, all planets around us are not Earth-like; and the closest Earth-like planet is light-years away. But we can change that. Get ready for something straight out of a fiction novel. We have tools we can use to terraform planets to make them more habitable (like having a decent atmosphere and oxygen). Although it is imperative that we start terraforming planets as soon as we can send humans there, the process is long and costly.



So obviously Mars is a great start since it resembles our planet the most. Here is what has been proposed until now. We can start by releasing greenhouse gases (like chlorofluorocarbons) in the atmosphere. By giving Mars its own atmosphere, we allow the sun's rays to get trapped and heat up the planet. The temperature increase will release the CO2 that is trapped in the polar caps and contribute even more to the growing atmosphere. This cycle keeps going until the entire poles have released all their CO2 and the temperature will be sufficiently high to melt the ice and provide water. Finally, planting trees will provide the planet with the oxygen needed to sustain life.

So in summary: create atmosphere, raise temperature, release water, CO2 and oxygen and you got a planet where you can live on without a space suit. But this will happen over centuries and since this sort of investment doesn't bring anything in the short term, my guess is that we are far away from actually seeing such a project take place. Of course, the time taken to terraform a planet is proportional to how different that planet is from Earth. Let's consider the Moon as our next potential candidate for terraforming.

Since the moon doesn't have trapped CO2 in its poles (or an easy access to any other ingredient for life), the best way of terraforming it would be to capture comets that contain ice and other constituents and crash it on our satellite. Sadly, this is not something that's as easy as it sounds. Even if the moon is closer to us than Mars, it is also a lot smaller. It would be a good stepping stone for more ambitious missions though, and a good place to start.


Mars and the Moon would therefore be a good place to start terraforming. The moon should be used as more of a playground and experimental project in that domain, whereas Mars could be the Earth 2 in a couple of centuries. With the discovery of new technologies and with, hopefully, an increase in the funds given to NASA, we can (and probably will) begin our colonization and terraforming process of new planets and maybe even new solar systems. It is captivating what humanity can do as a whole and terraforming will be a major step in discovering not only new frontiers, but also what Man can achieve.

For a bit more drops of future, visit: