Terraforming the Solar System

Visual Novel Community Off Topic
#1

What the Moon terraformed would look like:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eV2W6etd1HY

The black with glowing craters (they’d be lakes and oceans then) would occur when cities are built on it, and the crescent phases still happen.

Rather freaky if you asked me. Seeing this actually made go hunting for more info on the topic, and a small ethical question popped up. Assuming humanity achieves the technology and resources to terraform something like the Moon (or Mars)… should we actually do it? For millions of years, humanity has seen and adored the same white and grey dull moon. To terraform it would mean altering it to forever be a green and blue mirror of Earth. We’d gain another place to live… but lose what it always was. Same goes for red planet Mars or gas covered Venus.

But then, if the laws of physics about the speed of light being unbreakable remains true tens of thousands of years in the future, terraforming our solar system might be the only way for mankind to have more worlds to live on. :expressionless:

On a neat side, I don’t think there are many sci-fi series that actually have Earth, the Moon, Mars, and Venus all terraformed and inhabited.

EDIT
Titan and Europa might have native simple lifeforms on them. One thing that always bothered me about reports on Titan… why do scientists keep saying “lakes and oceans of hydrocarbon” when describing it. The common person has no damn idea what that means. Just call them lakes and oceans of crude oil (or petroleum). That’s something people can imagine… and also gas companies to droll over. :stuck_out_tongue:

Why no space organization hasn’t bothered to just drop a probe on Titan to find life annoys me. They’d rather go take pictures of dead Pluto. :roll: It should be simple (relatively speaking) for them to do. Send a satellite with a drop pod, and have it drop said device on Titan. As it falls, it records data on the atmosphere on life conditions, and then when it plops in an ocean, send what it finds on that. If the satellite could carry two drop pods, even better. A second site would help determine if the first pod was just (un)lucky or sending bad data. Before doing the drop, the satellite could map Titan’s surface first, that way it doesn’t drop the pods on a mountain or something… Thanks to our very in-depth research on dropping bombs from orbit on surface targets with pinpoint accuracy, shouldn’t be too hard aiming for the hydrocarbon liquids.

#2

There actually has been a planned probe for Titan called Titan Mare Explorer (TIME), Check this article:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/vi … Scientists

The main reason it’s in the planning stages only is because NASA hasn’t exactly been getting the best funding these days

#3

I don’t see that as being an ethical implication as much as it is an aesthetic implication. I mean, may as well ask whether the interstate highway system should have been built.

A much more interesting ethical question is, if there is life there, should we terraform the planet anyway? Does it depend what kind of life? How can we be sure we really know the answer to ‘is there life there’, anyway? I mean, look at how long it took us to find all the extremophiles that exist here on Earth.

#4

Well, I don’t know much about much recent SF, but back in the Thirties and Forties, you know, Mars and Venus (as well as some of the moons of Jupiter) were routinely depicted as habitable and inhabited planets. We know now (and, actually, they knew then) that that isn’t possible, but it made for some good stories: Venus was always a hellish jungle and Mars was a dying world full of danger and intrigue. Leigh Brackett even wrote stories about this Tarzan-like hero who was raised by primitive aliens in Mercury’s twilight zone (to find out what that was, find a very old book on astronomy). And I remember this one story where she had this ocean of gas that was so dense you could swim it and even breathe normally.

The idea of terraforming the planets appeals to me, but it smacks more of some grandscale Nineteenth Century project, like canal building, than it does of anything this Third Millenium ( where we’ve learned to think small) is likely to accomplish. There’s no use debating the ethics of it either, because if terraforming ever does become fact,it’ll be carried out by people who see things a whole lot differently than we do.

#5

I’m sure money, power, greed, and self interest will always be a factor… it’s always been one for humans in one form or another. From going to the , to inventing the , to attaining … all of them have a root connection to them. Be it he propelling force, the obstructing opposition, or required funding to make it happen.

I don’t subscribe to the Star Trek Federation fantasy that all want and desire can be eradicated for the greater good of seeking human perfection.

#6

So does that mean Gundam is the likelier scenario? Wel at least we’ll have giant robots :lol:

#7