Life on Mars? -

jdsawyer Idle Musings / Science / Unsavory Excursions September 1, 2010 September 1, 2010

Much as I liked the show, this is about the actual planet. As someone who writes about Mars, I’ve got kind of a vested interest–then again, as a resident of Earth I’ve got kind of a vested interest anyway. Assuming we don’t manage to wipe ourselves out (a prospect which, though it will always remain a possibility, seems increasingly unlikely) humans are eventually going to have to go to Mars.

Going to Mars presents a number of problems for us, both in transit and in the ways Mars is inhospitable (Mary Roach, author of Stiff, has a great new book on the subject). Mars, for example, has weather which will make some of the lessons we learn from a Lunar colony hard to cross-apply. But it does have soil, which Luna doesn’t. Either way, if we’re gonna live there a long time, it’s gonna have to get an oxygen atmosphere and an ecosystem.

Terraforming–big word for a big operation. How would we even begin to do it?

Turns out, Charles Darwin was at the back of the world’s first experiment in terraforming. With the help of the Royal Navy, he created an artificial ecosystem. New Scientist has a great article on it.

jdsawyer

After a childhood in academia, J. Daniel Sawyer declared his independence by dropping out of high school and setting off on a series of adventures in the bowels of the film industry, the venture capital culture of silicon valley, surfing safaris, bohemians, burners, historians, theologians, adventurers, climbers, drug dealers, gangbangers, and inventors before his past finally caught up to him. Trapped in a world bookended by one wall falling in Berlin and other walls going up around suburbia and along national borders throughout the world, he rediscovered his deep love of history and, with it, and obsession with predicting the future as it grew aggressively out of the past. To date, this obsession has yielded over thirty books and innumerable short stories, the occasional short film, nearly a dozen podcasts stretching over a decade and a half, and a career creating novels and audiobooks exploring the world through the lens of his own peculiar madness, in the depths of his own private forest in a rural exile, where he uses the quiet to write, walk on the beach, and manage a production company that brings innovative stories to the ears of audiences across the world. For news and free stories, sign up for his occasional newsletter. Or find his contact info, podcasts, and more on his home page at http://www.jdsawyer.net

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2 Comments

The Mars Society has been looking at this sort of question for some time now.

There’s more information about their 13th annual conference here:

http://www.marssociety.org/portal/c/Conventions/2010-annual-convention/

-Ben.

Ben.

September 1, 2010 at 2:11 pm 14 years ago
Dan,
I’m not as sure as you are that we are in any way past the threat of rogue nuclear powers (and even mainstream ones).
Since the breakup of the USSR, thousands of existing nuclear weapons are either sitting around unguarded, some even ‘lost’. With groups that possibly have access to these, as well as those that have built their own, (many showing very little interest in their own well-being,) I beleive we are, so far, just plain lucky that at least one nuclear weapon has not been utilized.
The threat to the world because of this, and because we really just don’t know who has WMA capabilities for sure anymore, is still a very real thing.
God save us from human error and just plain crazy people!
For this reason, I believe it is even more important that we pursue the kind of terraforming technology that you’re talking about, among others that will establish human colonies off of earth. The survival of the human race depends upon our ability to eventually colonize other worlds.
Star Trek had it right with the genesis project!

Mary Laura

September 6, 2010 at 8:09 am 14 years ago

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