Irradiated Antarctica in a vacuum, please.

Penal Colony #7

So does anyone find it odd that people will freak out because of "climate change" with the avg temp going up +2 degrees in 100 years, but at the same time can't hardly contain themselves with the thought of "colonizing" a planet with a much deadlier and unpredictable climate?

I dunno. I just find the irony in people, and it's hilarious at times.

Who knows, perhaps it's one of those cases where "the more the merrier"

It's one thing to fantasize about engineering the climate of an entirely sterile world (what's the worst that can happen? That it becomes "more sterile"?).
It's quite another to see a rapid and uncontrolled shift in the only ecosphere that mankind currently has. Even small mistakes here will be way more costly, and could potentially be absolutely devastating.

Absolute devastation may not be as likely as some people make it sound like. But a small risk is still much worse than no risk. It seems like we're at a point where we have to choose between alternatives that will all be costly and risky. It may be the price that we have to pay for industrialization and the unique opportunity to lift the entirety of mankind from the stagnant mirth of an agricultural society. But make no mistake, one way or the other it's going to be costly.

i agree

A big thing is exactly what anyone means when using the word "colonization" in terms of Mars.

Are we talking about just establishing a permanent, uninterrupted human presence - regardless of how low the numbers are? With some degree of independence but still needing support from Earth?

I think that is completely technically possible - it's just a matter of throwing enough money at the challenge. I won't dive into whether or not it makes SENSE in economic/scientific terms, etc.

But if we're talking "making Mars our second home", let alone a REPLACEMENT home - well you may as well start sending bacteria, spores, etc in massive quantity and variety right now and hope that maybe a living ecosystem of some sort takes hold over a period of many, many years, decades, centuries, or more. That's the only way you're going to have a shot at "terraforming" the place.

I mean as a source of power for things that can't be powered by the nuclear facilities we should be putting there. The exhaust could be allowed to collect inside domes creating natural rainy climates in certain areas.


The soil toxicity of Mars I don't know much about, but utilizing certain plants it is possible to leech toxins out of the topsoil, harvest the plants then burn them off and either store or process the waste ashes. The same plants can be grown again, this time without toxins being sucked up into the plants, then cut down which combined with introduced microbes would result in the beginning of a microbial ecosystem, a chain reaction of natural soil generation.

The problem with just sending random microbes over to Mars and hoping some of them take hold is that the things most likely to survive there right now are the kind that will be very unfavorable for us in the future. We would need to be careful to control the conditions the microbes thrive in so that we don't get microbes which evolve into something that eats and defecates toxins.

If we select soil microbes that eat toxins and through their digestion, destroy the toxin, we should fill a test area with them and let them do their thing.

Hey, what happened to the massive internet buzz and news media hype over this "huge" event? It IS water on Mars after all so it must be massively important!

Overshadowed by FISA, DACA, DOJ, FBI, SJW, LGBT and other various acronyms. Especially CNN.