A Home Away From Home: Terraforming Mars

Mars today is a cold barren landscape of dust storms and sub-Antarctic temperatures. Not exactly the kind of place you would want to colonize humans. A process known as terraforming may change all that.

Terraforming, or altering an extraterrestrial environment to make it more like Earth, is one of the possible solutions for expanding a human presence into space and across the solar system. You take an inhospitable planet or moon and turn into a place that can support human life without the need of a pressurized living area; the living area is the planet. The process of terraforming involves several steps:

1. Thickening the atmosphere (it is highly desirable to have a thick atmosphere already in place.)
2. Warming the planet's surface, whether it be with the aid of gigantic orbital mirrors of greenhouse gases.
3. Releasing water on the planet if it is not already present.
4. Using microorganisms to change the chemical composition of the atmosphere to something humans can breathe (i.e. oxygen, nitrogen, etc.)
5. Eventually, cultivating plants to further purify the atmosphere and get the planetary body ready for human habitation.

Making an atmosphere that is thin and weak into one like Earth's would require huge amounts of gases to be emitted. On Mars, an enormous quantity of carbon dioxide, (which could later be converted into oxygen through photosynthesis), is available in a frozen state within the polar ice caps. Heating these ice caps with reflected sunlight from orbital mirrors liberates carbon dioxide gas that would be used to thicken the atmosphere. Although carbon dioxide exists in the ice on Mars, not enough is present to amply increase the density of the atmosphere. This is where comets come in. Comets flying through the solar system are known to contain vast quantities of water and pent up gases. Smashing one of these comets onto the surface of an uninhabited Mars would release millions of cubic meters of hydrogen and other gases, such as water vapor. No, smashing a comet into Mars would not "destroy" the planet (the mass of a comet is far too small to be of any concern to a planet). How do you get a comet to impact Mars? Simple: you divert it with an ion propulsion drive years ahead of time.

Turning the sub-Arctic temperatures of Mars into something more reminiscent of Bali or Brazil would most likely require the notorious demon of our time, global warming. Now here is a case where global warming is actually good: if Mars was covered in greater quantities of carbon dioxide, which in itself is a greenhouse gas, planetary warming would start to occur almost instantly. Soon you have increased the air temperature to a balmy 25 degrees Celsius and your thinking your next vacation should be on Mars. Warm air and sunlight favors the growth of photosynthetic microorganisms, their waste product being oxygen. So in the end, the warming makes both the humans and the microorganisms happy, a win-win situation.

Obviously, water would be a necessary component for the eventual human colonization of Mars. As mentioned earlier, comets impacting the Martian surface would release huge amounts of water vapor. Water vapor in the atmosphere eventually condenses into clouds which later rain down on the planet. The freeing of carbon dioxide from the polar ice caps would also flood Mars with trillions of gallons of water. NASA satellite imagery shows what appear to be river channels draining into lowing lying areas. Where does the water from these rivers now hide? The ice caps of course, but possibly inches beneath the soil. If the frozen water present on Mars in liberal quantities was unleashed by melting, a multi-million year drought would end.

What good is an atmosphere if you can't breathe it? Here's where those microorganisms come in. It is believed that the atmosphere of early Earth became what it is today with the help of bacteria and algae in water. In a chain reaction, promoting the growth of life on Mars would cause carbon dioxide to be used, and oxygen to be created. After many years, enough oxygen has built up in the atmosphere (along with other gases) for humans to move in.

Centuries after the first steps at terraforming Mars, human habitation would be possible without the need of complex, pressurized colonies or cities. Plants and trees grown in the Martian soil (which would have since been transformed in something more hospitable because of the breakdown of billions of microorganisms) would make the planet much more attractive and inviting. In the fine Martian climate, people would be able to explore the vastness of Olympus Mons and the depth of Valles Marineris. Terraforming is a surefire way to spread the human race across not only the solar system, but the galaxy as well.

After reading this, you still may ask: Why would we want to colonize Mars? Well, for one thing, a single cataclysmic event on Earth, such as nuclear detonation or massive plague, could completely wipe out the human race in months. I myself would prefer to have the comfort that humanity would continue even if a disaster occurred on our home planet. Another reason for colonization is economic and scientific profit. Who knows what kind of metals, medicines, and machinery could be manufactured in a third of the gravity of Earth? The real question to ask is: Why not colonize Mars?

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