Wouldn't terraforming take much, much longer than that? Assuming it were possible(which doesn't seem possible due to lack of a magnetic field, as another commenter pointed out)
1000 years or a million - it's irrelevant I think.
After 1000 years of evolution and progress, we may have very different ideas about everything we understand.
We might possibly abandon Mars 'terraforming' for going to 'ready to go' planets that we can access further away.
Humans are not very good at planning at that horizon.
The only group that does that is the Catholic Church.
The big Cathedral in Cologne, Germany took 700 years to build. Imagine being born, raised, trained, and then working on a project that started 300 years ago and won't be done until 300 years after you are dead? Imagine being the guy in charge of that looking for investment 'for the next phase'? There are always more pressing costs.
It takes a commitment beyond that which our 'GDP' numbers capture.
Admittedly, 'space colonization' shares some of that impetus.
But the reality of it is, most people put their $ into Kardashian news.
Until then - my crazy but most actually realistic bet is that Wynne Hotels and Vegas-like entities, maybe Sandals resorts are the first people to make Mars accessible after NASA makes a few landings.
There will be a Casino on mars before most other things.
Admittedly, you're right, it was not fully planned in that manner, but it would have taken a consistent vision over 100's of years, much like the colonization of another planet.
Atmosphere stripping due to solar wind is a natural process that takes millions of years. Atmospheric production is a deliberate process limited only by available energy and raw materials. And, of course, the economics. But the point remains: you absolutely can densify Mars' atmosphere, and you won't have to worry much about it until you get to the point where you start running out of raw material to replace the very slow loss.
My favorite idea to re-liquify the Martian core is to move Ceres into orbit around Mars. It'd take a very long time to do it, but you've got millions of years. But the point is, in the meantime, having a dense enough Martian atmosphere to walk around with just a gas mask is certainly attainable in a lifetime, so long as you have enough energy production to do it.
It might not take that long given the right tech. You'd need a legit fusion reactor, and enough material to build an long mass ejector and start shooting 0.01c ice pellets into the outer solar system, driving the rest of Ceres toward Mars.
The same mass ejectors could be tuned to bombard Mars with ice at a much lower speed later, if needed for terraforming.
Sounds reasonable to me. Consider where we were in year 1016 vs now, and the rate of change is increasing. If current trends continue, 1000 years seems long if anything.
Even without terraforming, large enough domes would probably be good enough.
Don't need to terraform the whole planet just to have nice spaces to go for a walk in 'the forest'. I'd imagine a football stadium sized space could fit that purpose pretty well, at least for starters.
After 1000 years of evolution and progress, we may have very different ideas about everything we understand.
We might possibly abandon Mars 'terraforming' for going to 'ready to go' planets that we can access further away.
Humans are not very good at planning at that horizon.
The only group that does that is the Catholic Church.
The big Cathedral in Cologne, Germany took 700 years to build. Imagine being born, raised, trained, and then working on a project that started 300 years ago and won't be done until 300 years after you are dead? Imagine being the guy in charge of that looking for investment 'for the next phase'? There are always more pressing costs.
It takes a commitment beyond that which our 'GDP' numbers capture.
Admittedly, 'space colonization' shares some of that impetus.
But the reality of it is, most people put their $ into Kardashian news.
Until then - my crazy but most actually realistic bet is that Wynne Hotels and Vegas-like entities, maybe Sandals resorts are the first people to make Mars accessible after NASA makes a few landings.
There will be a Casino on mars before most other things.