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Hi I'm the author of this post at Science20.com
Trouble with Terraforming Mars
It goes into various things that could go wrong when terraforming Mars. The main message for discussion is that Mars is quite a bit different from Earth, as many posts here address, and we are nowhere near the level of knowledge we need to predict what will happen.
So, we need to learn a whole lot more before we make any decisions about whether or not to terraform Mars and how to do it. Depending on what we find out, we or our children might want to
* Leave it as it is (if ancient Mars deposits turn out to be of extraordinary interest for evolution such that we want to spend centuries studying Mars in its pristine state before we do anything)
* Paraterraform it with greenhouses but keep humans and higher organisms well away in the early stages
* Terraform using ecopoesis, and to terraforn quickly, keep aerobes and the other microbes that hitch a lift with humans and higher organisms well away in the earlier stages.
* Paraterraform or terraform with humans on the surface from the get go.
* Make it a better habitat for native life (if found) - especially if it has unique and unusual biology e.g. not based on DNA - Chris McKay's "Mars forming" (as I call it) - could give us an exoplanet with alternative life in our own solar system
* Attempt to turn back the clock to early Mars, recreate the atmosphere and early oceans - and just let it evolve - at least for long enough to get an idea of how such a planet works, what the cycles are, what primitive life forms do in practise, how evolution works at whatever stage Mars has reached and so on.
The last two options and pristine Mars are especially interesting if evolution hasn't yet reached the stage of the first cells on Mars, or if it is some kind of pre-cursor life less complicated than Earth microbes or based on different XNA.
Imagine what it will be like if we find that Mars is an exoplanet like that in our solar system - at a different stage of evolution from Earth or life with a different basis? We might learn things that would otherwise require voyages of many light years to exoplanets around other stars in our solar system to discover.
See How Valuable is Pristine Mars for Humanity - Opinion Piece?
We need to explore with an open mind and leave our options open in my view.
Meanwhile we shouldn't do anything irreversible to Mars - as with our current levels of knowledge, that could easily put it into a state that is worse for terraforming than present day Mars.
Introducing life to Mars I think is especially problematical because it is surely impossible to remove micro-organisms from Mars after they are introduced, so is an irreversible step, and could easily interfere with terraforming in many ways. And I think human colonists to the surface would bring greatly elevated risks of doing that.
Luckily
1. There is no hurry at all. Terraforming would probably take millennia. For the first few centuries then Earth will remain far more habitable than Mars even immediately after a giant asteroid impact.
2. Humans in orbit around Mars can explore it just as effectively, indeed more effectively than from the surface. Spacesuits are vastly overrated for a planetary surface exploration in my view with the clumsy gloves and so long to put on and off and with reusability maintenance issues, at least with present technology.
For the same cost as a surface mission you could send astronauts to orbit around Mars and replace the bulky and heavy human rated rovers on the surface with numerous smaller lighter telerobotic avatars controlled from orbit.
Telerobotics is a rapidly evolving and mature technology already used for surgery (including landmark case of a surgeon in the US who operated on a patient in France using telerobotics), exploration of ocean depths, and in many situations. Already just with current technology space hardened, we could certainly do much useful science from orbit in this way, handle samples with humanoid hands, with haptic feedback so you can feel what you are doing, do experiments, drive the telerobots rapidly around on the surface, and in many ways as good as being there, and fueled just in the same way you would fuel a human mission but with no need to move humans or their life support systems around on the surface.
Later you can also use techniques developed for computer games such as lightweight portable ommidirectional platforms that let you run and walk and your avatar does exactly the same in a computer game - this could be a basis for controlling humanoid (and other) telerobotic avatars in real time in the near future, walking over surface of mars in real time like walking in a computer virtual world, could be at the forefront of developing improved ways of doing this.
It is safer for your astronauts, not going to die from a spacesuit tear or serious fall - and more interesting too, far more interesting to explore using avatars that can fly etc than to use clumsy spacesuits. The whole mission costs far less, has less by way of unproven new technologies, and you get to explore Mars more thoroughly also.
You can supply materials and habitats from Earth to Mars orbit much more easily than to the surface. Easiest is the Molniya orbit suggested for the HERRO mission - elongated orbit near sun synchronous and close to Mars capture in Delta V, as easy to get to in Delta V as lunar surface - and approaches sunny side of Mars twice every day so you can control telerobots on surface with minimal latency on both hemispheres every day.
You can use materials from the Martian moons for resource utilization, especially radiation shielding which is the main bulk of a habitat by weight whether on the surface or in orbit.
It is a win win situation, seems to me.
Anyway as I'm posting in the terraforming section - particularly want to know what you all think about what I say there about terraforming and the need for caution and to avoid doing anything irreversible in the near term.
Longer term I don't know whether Mars can be terraformed. I'm sure it could be paraterraformed if that is desirable. It could be safely paraterraformed right away actually so long as you sterilize the seeds and use the microbe free versions of hydroponics or aeroponics so that you don't introduce any microbes to the surface - and control the whole process from orbit using telerobots on the surface.
I don't think it is needed long term for colonization, because as you'll see in another of my articles, this is a calculation that O'Niel did in the 1970s, there are enough materials in the asteroid belt for trillions of colonists, enough for the land area of a thousand Earths. That's why they were so into Stanford toruses, space colonies etc.
Asteroid resources could create space habs for trillions, with land area of a thousand Earths
So, I think we can easily afford to be relaxed about colonizing Mars, take out time, and if it turns out that it is better not to colonize or terraform Mars, or not to do it for the next century or so, it is not a big deal or a major blow for space colonization. Instead that would mean that Mars is a fascinating place that we can learn much from, and a motivation for building space colonies in orbit around Mars, and to explore it using avatars instead. And space colonies may be made using the asteroids, and in future centuries use of planetary surfaces for colonization may seem an archaic early space age vision.
Last edited by robertwalker (2014-01-05 18:21:36)
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