[tominous]

> "I have spent so much time now looking at the satellite images, and I really love this ice shelf, it would be such a tragic thing to see this thing go."

Reminds me of Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy. We humans can fall in love with large chunks of ice just by looking at them long enough. How will we ever bring ourselves to terraform another planet?

[milcron]

Bringing ourselves to terraform another planet will be very easy -- the one who pushes the button will be one who hasn't looked at the planet long enough to be attached to it.

[treve]

Sounds a bit like the death penalty.

[intended]

Isn't it already common knowledge that Mars cant be terraformed? No magnetosphere, cold core too iirc (and thats related to the moons being tidally locked.

[nl]

Oh my! I'd say that judgement is a bit premature.

We are talking about a planet-scale engineering project; something that is millions of times the scale of anything that has been attempted.

We have only d 13 landing on it, and only something 70 space craft have travelled to Mars or beyond[1].

We have only just found traces of water there, and who knows what else is available (or not).

We have never even attempted to terraform anything, and the closest we've come has been maybe things like desert control programs.

And yet it is supposed to be common knowledge that "it can't be done"? Sure, that is likely to be true, but the idea that we already know the specific things that will stop us seems unlikely.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Solar_System_probes

[intended]

Don't mistake me.

I love the idea of terraforming Mars, to the point of spending a lot of time understanding the challenges to achieving success.

Conceptually there is always tech which we are yet to discover, but that just pushes the conversation into hand wavy territory, and discussing the details is always more fun.

The simplest plans are to start a runaway green house effect, in order to warm the planet up.

That alone requires signficant but potentially achievable feats of engineering.

But as I remember, the unsolved issue remains in maintaining a stable atmosphere, one which isnt sheared away by solar wind.

This is why the tidal locking issue is the problem. The core is solid on Mars, and the idea of spinning up a planet to rotate puts us beyond space elevator tech and nearing solar engineering levels of ambition.

As someone else suggested, there's the idea of having a super conducting magnet on the equator to create the field.

That's still below solar engineering, but a feat of such magnitude that underground habs win out as an option for the foreseeable future.

[BurningFrog]

> But as I remember, the unsolved issue remains in maintaining a stable atmosphere, one which isnt sheared away by solar wind.

Yeah, any atmosphere you give Mars will evaporate over some millions of years.

The obvious workaround is to regenerate it at the same rate. Much like a tire you need to reinflate it now and then.

Humanity will also probably figure out some better tech during the next million years, but even if not, this should work.

[snewk]

> The simplest plans are to start a runaway green house effect, in order to warm the planet up.

Hey, something we are already good at!

To add some substance to this comment, why wouldnt we just try to terraform earth first?

[hawski]

It was speculated that it is possible to create magnetosphere, by creating giant magnet :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraforming_of_Mars#Protectin...

[intended]

I am chagrined by the impoverishment of my imagination.

Thanks, in more ways than one.

[zamalek]

Hear-say: although the magnetosphere is a problem, it's supposedly possible to out-pace it because the original atmosphere loss occurred over millions/billions of years.

[jfoutz]

Let's see how terraforming this one works out before we go off terraforming another.

[BurningFrog]

You don't experiment on your production planet.

Mars could be a decent staging planet!

[markatkinson]

We will probably end up pushing changes to Prod then when everything goes wrong realise we were not testing apples with apples, and then it's too late cause nobody took a backup because we were so sure there would be no issues.

[bryanrasmussen]

it's ok, we're doing agile terraforming!

[antisthenes]

In software, the testing environment usually isn't more expensive by several orders of magnitude.

[MaulingMonkey]

Testing in the emulator is way slower, as is testing with all my conditional breakpoints in place, as is testing with all debug assertions enabled. Devkits are often more expensive than retail kits by a significant margin.

[stcredzero]

Terra-deforming?

[foota]

Might be better to terraform an already messed up planet before our own. (which is arguably somewhat messed up, but not Mars-level. Yet)

[snowwrestler]

I think the parent's point is that we are already currently terraforming our planet, whether or not we would like to admit it.

[whyenot]

Why is it so important that we terraform other planets? Is it really a desirable thing to spread across the solar system and beyond like mold on stale bread?

[evincarofautumn]

Well, it’s important to the mold.

[Mchl]

Gasp!

Could we be... just a means for mold to spread across the universe?

[fnord123]

It is important because we have the power to wipe out all life on this planet. We need to spread further than our destructive power or face the end of our species.

If you are happy for the end of the species, then that's fine.

[zamalek]

If we can terraform Mars, maybe we can revert the terraforming that we have been doing on Earth (without risking the species on our first attempt at corrective terraforming).

[igf]

Well, it's too damn crowded on this planet.

[vocatus_gate]

I'm currently in Antarctica, the giant cold dead place, and I can assure you that being crowded is one thing we do not suffer from.

[aboodman]

I really loved that plotline and the thought experiment around the ethics of changing a place, even a place without life.

[arethuza]

Arguably the entire Mars trilogy is a romance between the original Green, Sax Russel, and the original Red, Ann Clayborne.

[r00fus]

I doubt it's a passing fascination with featureless ice, but more of a dread of the things to come...

[tominous]

The article specifically distinguishes it from the concern about sea level. I think it's about the attachment to something you've studied and the desire to preserve it.

[NoGravitas]

It also reminded me of the Mars trilogy, but because the separation of a major Antarctic ice shelf and the resulting mass flooding on Earth was the trigger for the second revolt on Mars.

[flukus]

The article reminds me of the part in the trilogy where a huge chunk of Antarctica breaks off and sea levels rise by meters in weeks.

[latj]

"Its its got to be us or them, its going to be them." --The Humans

[wildmusings]

The Mars environmentalists will be one of the stupidest interest groups in human history. And they will certainly exist.