Everything you know about mars?

Question

+Possible advantages of colonizing and/or terraforming Mars or Venus.

Answer 1

It is quite a long way away (so is venus).
Both are very expensive to get to at the moment. My best guess is that Mars would be easier to terraform (but still very, very difficult).

If you did terraform one or both then it would be great. People could live on another planet , lots of earth plants and animals could live there with them. It would be much more difficult for people living on one planet to bully the people on the other planet than it is to bully people living on the same planet so you would tend to have at least a bit of cultural diversity.

Answer 2

It would take a very long time to make it 'habbitable' yes.

That is, to make it so we can walk and move around Mars like it was earth. To build a breathable atmosphere, ect.

However, the planet would not need to be fully terraformed for people to simply live on it. They would need to be in some sort of pressurized, enclosed habitat. However, some of it's characterists can be put to use. For example, the great majority of Mars's atmosphere is Carbon Dioxide, which is used by plants in photosynthisis.

Now, this does not address the problem of Nitrates and ariable land, but the recent discovery of the possability of liquid water on Mars could also be helpful. So it's not entirely an uphill battle and some aspects of terraforming will pay off sooner than others.

Unless the Human race befalls some global catastrophy that would seriously hinder our collective ability to take on such a project, terraformation of Mars will happen and the first steps may be taken within our lifetimes.

Answer 3

Terraforming Mars would take tens of thousands of years for it to be habitable by humans.