How would you terraform Mars?

Question

Terraform...Make earth like, as terraform an inhospitable place to an earth like oasis.
Other than using autotrophic(extreme area) bacteria to produce oxygen, along with lichens and mosses along the equatorial areas that already get above freezing in the Martian summertime, where would would you begin? Would you do it remotely, with robots similar to the Mars landers, or would you send someone there to "seed" the planet with what we think would be helpful organisms to cause global warming through a greenhouse gas buildup similar to earth's?

Answer 1

Gravity on mars is only .6 of earth and so will only allow an atmosphere .6 the density of ours. That would make it really hard to get a breathable atmosphere.

There is also the problem caused by Mars' absent electro-magnetic envelope. Earth is protected from the solar wind by its em field otherwise we wouldn't be here. To counter this you would have to live inside some type of radiation shielding.

Once you had a radiation shield up anyway, you could use that to contain your atmosphere. You could then bring in ice either from the planet or off. Solar power could be used to break the ice into its component parts, and the shield would fill up with the gasses. Add plants and soon you would have a habitable place.

The gravity would still be light but we'd probably get used to it.

Answer 2

Well, the sand on the Red Planet contains a lot of iron oxide, so I'd genetically engineer bacteria to use energy from photosynthesis to reduce the iron oxide to Fe and O2. Methane is a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2, so I'd genetically engineer another bacterium to use the energy of sunlight to make CH4 out of the CO2 in Mars'atmosphere and the H2O on the surface. Then I'd plant a whole lot of plants, lichens and fungi.

Answer 3

I'd start by tossing a large ice comet on mars then after things settled down I'd send people to drive cars around until the co2 built up enough to heat it up! (not really I'd try using large co2 generators to help things along)and genetically engineered plants
Think what types of organisms produce the most co2 (time to populate mars i say)

Answer 4

There's another issue beside the atmosphere for Mars. Mars does not have a molten core nor a magnetic field. No magnetic means no protection from solar storms and radiation.