What is the BEST scenario to TERRAFORM a planet?

Question

...for example Mars here?
Anyway, is there any other candidate besides Mars to terraform here? Planet, satellites, whatever here? (No need to be in our own solar system, though!)

How about the new planet, Gliese 581 c there?

Answer 1

I recommend that you read two books. Both are fiction, but they are about communities living on planets that are being terraformed. One is Red Planet, about a colony on Mars, and the other is Farmer in the Sky, about a colony on one of Jupiter's moons. Both are by Robert Heinlein.

Mars is actually an interesting planet, because it has everything we need to survive--except maybe water, and that is right around the corner--but not in the right places.

We need an atmosphere with oxygen and carbon dioxide and nitrogen. Mars has oxygen bound in the soil; the redness is iron oxide. We could heat the soil to release the oxygen and let some of it free as 02 and mix some with carbon for CO2. The nitrogen is already present.

There is still some question as to whether we will find sufficient water on Mars. There is water in the ice caps, but not enough to terraform, although it's a start. There is evidence of liquid flowing after an impact, suggesting that something slammed into Mars and the heat caused water trapped or bound in the soil to be released. Maybe we can find some, but if not, the next thing out from Mars is the asteroid belt, which is full of ice asteroids. Another Heinlein story, Misfit, deals with a group of construction workers doing just that: mounting a rocket on an asteroid to move it.

The first step to terraforming Mars is to heat the ice caps. This could be done by seeding them with lichens that we find in our own arctic and antarctic regions. The lichens might need some genetic engineering help to be able to survive Mars' low pressure or cold more than they are used to, but if we could get them growing on the ice caps, they would change the albedo, the amount of light reflected, and by absorbing more sunlight, heat the ice and melt it.

Additional atmosphere would help this. An atmosphere provides an insulating blanket around a planet, and would help hold in the heat, further melting the ice.

Answer 2

Earth's oxygen originally came from blue green algae. That is actually where most of our free oxygen continues to come from today. Trees are the significant contributors here on earth, followed by grass, but these are largely latecomers to the game. Marine photosynthesis was occurring half a billion years before the first trees ever took root. Trees also cannot grow in unfertile soil, whereas simple self replicating eukaryotic organisms are the easiest seed for terraforming alien worlds. Pump up the oxygen first, and everything else gets quite a bit easier.

As for how long it would take to get there, space shuttle velocity is not particularly useful. First off, we would send a much smaller ship which we could accelerate faster. (No life expensive human life support payload required). Second, we would probably use an ion drive, so it could accelerate for a number of years. Braking and reentry would be the really tricky part, for which fully autonomous systems would be required.

A really entertaining read touching on terraforming is Larry Niven's "A World Out of Time."

Answer 3

How about Earth? Some people are all worried about global warming changing the temperature by 5 degrees. If we could REALLY change a whole planet from uninhabitable to habitable, then we could we lower the temperature of Earth by a mere 5 degrees. People get the idea that Mars is just sitting there waiting to be changed. In reality, it is an entire natural system with forces keeping the climate the way it is. And we do not understand those forces well at all. The idea that we could let a few pounds of bacteria loose to make the climate change totally is ludicrous! The natural forces keeping Mars' cold and dry would work against that bacteria, killing it or simply overwhelming any effect it had. If we could find something that would really change Mars, then we could find something to get rid of the extra CO2 on Earth and just let it loose.
In conclusion, terraforming is impossible.

Answer 4

We don't even know if 581C has an atmosphere or is covered with sulfuric acid. Plus at shuttle speeds, it would take 800,000 years to get there. Mars is not a candidate for terraforming and get real; are we going to transport our whole atmosphere there only to have it leak into space ?

Answer 5

Step One on learning how to terraform a planet, is to reverse the damage we have done to THIS planet. Without doing that, we have no business messing around with another planet!

Answer 6

Your state of affairs is mistaken. over the years sessions of thousands and thousands of years finished species seem, flourish and flow to extinction. Over billions of years even the fossil record disappears. no longer something even remotely human would be around whilst the sunlight starts off to critically improve. seem at technologies. The progression over the final hundred years has very much exceeded that over the previous century. the fee of progression will proceed to advance up. Already we are able to manufacture the construction blocks of living organisms. we are able to control the genetic code, and are close to to springing up synthetic intelligence. whilst all that technologies and greater is totally exploited, humanity as all of us be attentive to it at present will evolve into types that we are able to scarcely think of at present. The beings, automata, or know-how, or regardless of you want to call our distant descendants, could have long left the earth in the previous the sunlight engulfs it. i can not wager at their style or their holiday spot. regardless of their skill of delivery, that's basically no longer "area return and forth" as all of us be attentive to it at present. Cheers!

Answer 7

For Venus - pump blue-green algae into the atmosphere to extract the carbon dioxide and release oxygen.

Answer 8

face it... the only planet we need to terraform is earth. if we can't heal the world... we can't do anything for another worlds we must put all our efforts to revert the global warming because now we are in global warning

Answer 9

pump CFC's into the environment until the heat begins to rise to a level high enough to support the growth of trees. then plant trees and let them produce oxygen for about 50 years. that's it in a nut shell

Answer 10

We can't even keep the environment on earth running right. So far, we still exist in spite of ourselves - but I don't think that's gonna last too much longer.