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Posted by Saboc on :

Why is Mars still red in the 24th century? As I understand it, NASA scientists plan to begin their teraforming procedure not long from now: beginning with a bunch of C02 producers; then micropes, bacteria, than plants. NASA predicts in 150 years, the red planet will be no longer red but blue.
With all the techologies the Fed has, would it hurt them to make the darn planet a bit Earthlike?

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Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :

Perhaps they have holo-emitters that project an image into space to make it look red, for nostalgia's sake. :-)

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Posted by Saboc on :

That could be a possibility. But...I don't see the reason or logic behind that. Why would anyone want to mask a rather insignficant planet? There is no treasure, just a huge gigantic shipyard.

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Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :

More importantly, in a galaxy full of M-class worlds, why waste the resources terraforming Mars when there's a great little duplex three systems over?

At any rate, terraforming, even with 24th century technology, takes time. (Unless you've got Genesis, I suppose.)

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Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :

Also, if Mars has life, even primitive life, I would imagine that would render it as an unacceptable choice for terraforming, at least on a global scale.

Posted by Masao (Member # 232) on :

Then again, if Mars had primitive life, mostly likely the first ever ET life discovered by humans, you might not want to turn the whole planet into a giant shipyard. Even if Mars were terraformed, it might not be completely terraformed (perhaps only the lowest elevations are habitable) and enough deserts would remain to make the planet look red from orbit.

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Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :

As far as I know (and I could be wrong), no amount of Terraforming is going to bring Mars any closer to the sun. And Mars is simply not habitable as far away from the sun as it is. Earth is habitable because it has none of the ptifalls that would make it uninhabitable: rotation, distance problems etc.

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Posted by Harry (Member # 265) on :

I thought Mars was close enough to the sun to support a Class M environment, *that's* why they want to terraform it.

I guess the micro-lifeforms ruin the terraform idea for the UFP

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Posted by First of Two (Member # 16) on :

Yes. Mars could be Terraformed. Will it be? Dunno.
Yes, we'd NEED to start soon, to have a decent atmosphere by the 24th century, at best.

Things it would take to Terraform Mars include
Heat -- generatable through several proceses, inclusing the introduction of greenhouse gases, the 'salting' of the icecaps, and mega-large light/heat reflectors.
Water -- found in abundance in comets. Could steer a few into Hellas basin, assuming that there isn't quite enough left underground on Mars.
A denser Atmosphere -- the hardest to create and maintain, given Mars's smaller mass. however, use of specialized terraforming equipment, coupled with the feedback loops generated by the first two elements and the addition of Mars-survivable forms of simple life (algae, plants, microbes) to create oxygen and ozone, would probably speed this up a bit.

Oh.. and theoretically, it IS possible to move Mars closer to the Sun... say into a trojan orbit with Earth... but I wouldn't advise it with anything less than a Class II Civilization.

Why isn't the Trek Mars terraformed? I agree that it's probably either because the Trek Universe has a superfluity of colonizable. M-Class worlds, or because they discovered primitive life on Mars and decided to leave most of the surface untouched, as a preserve. (The "Sagan" Directive.)

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Posted by Masao (Member # 232) on :

Distance is not the main determinant of whether terraforming might be successful. Remember that our moon is as close to the sun as the Earth, but it's never likely to be terraformed, despite what may or may not be implied by "First Contact."

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Posted by First of Two (Member # 16) on :

Distance is only relevant where solar thermal output is concerned. If the greenhouse effect could be controlled, Venus would be habitable, albeit quite a bit warmer, and it's closer to the Sun than Earth. Likewise, if Mars could be warmed and given a thicker atmosphere (two events which would likely feedback upon themselves) it would be perfect grounds for Terraforming, although we'd most likely end up with coniferous forests at the warmest spots.

Tropical Venus, Temperate Earth, Coniferous Mars.

Indeed, if the Moon were the size of Mars or Ganymede, we might be in a double-planet system, looking at blue waters overhead. Wouldn't THAT be a sight?

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[This message has been edited by First of Two (edited May 12, 2000).]

Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :

In theory, the moon could be terraformed too. It would lose the atmosphere in a geological blink of an eye, but that still leaves us with millions of years of nice Lunar weather. (Actually, considering the two week long lunar day, the weather might not be all that nice, but my point is that you can terraform quite a few different kinds of worlds if you aren't expecting them to have an Earth-like stability.)

I thought I had brought up a point earlier, but apparently I only imagined it. So I'll do it now. It is possible to terraform portions of a world's surface instead of the whole thing. In fact, it's a great deal easier. Just build a largish dome over your chosen area. A nicely sized impact crater might be a nice spot. I'm betting this is what's happened in Trek. (Doesn't that cadet from DS9's "Valiant" mention watching the sunrise from outside a dome?)

Finally, terraforming suggests a certain sort of view of the universe. Namely, a very sedentary one. Spending large amounts of resources converting dead worlds into living ones suggests an unwillingness to go out and seek new ones. The Federation, on the other hand, seems to be geared in the opposite direction.

Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :

Okay, back to the original question... Why hasn't Mars been terraformed in Trek, when NASA is thinking about it now? Because the Trek timeline diverges from ours as early as the '60s. By the year 2000 in the Trek timeline, they already had functional cryogenic ships and satellites. Plus, being four years out of the Eugenics Wars, science may have been focussed on other things. Then, sixty years later, warp drive comes along... Probably they just didn't get around to it early on, and, by the time they could have done it, it just wasn't that interesting anymore, so they didn't.

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Posted by warbird5 on :

It would be more suitable to terraform venus

Posted by Shik (Member # 343) on :

Ever stop to think that maybe Mars SHOULDN'T be terraformed? Not only is it the site of humanity's first colony on another planet (no, Luna is NOT a planet), but it's also renowned for its redness. Those events alone should place the planet on the Federation Register of Historical Places.

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Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :

Easier to terraform Venus? Since when?

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Posted by spyone on :

1) Terraforming Luna gets a lot easier with artificial gravity.

2) The real reason Mars is still red in Star Trek is that, for the shot of the Utopia Planetia Shipyards, the CGI house used real photos of Utopia Planetia.

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Posted by Nim (Member # 205) on :

Mars should be spared because of it's "redness"? That's so funny I'll go write it down.

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Posted by Shik (Member # 343) on :

Some people have no sense of planetary aesthetics...

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Posted by First of Two (Member # 16) on :

Amalthea is redder than Mars.

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Posted by Masao (Member # 232) on :

Have any of you read Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy (Red Mars, Green Mars, and Blue Mars)? It's about the terraforming of Mars. Anyways, there's a group of persons in these novels who are against terraforming because they believe it's wrong for us to mess up Mars' original environment. Simply stated, they are against terraforming because Mars would no longer be red.

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Posted by Alpha Centauri (Member # 338) on :

And not to forget religious and ethical aspects. Even if there is no life present on Mars, no matter how primitive, some people's ethics challenge Martian terraforming, because 'Mars was always like that, so why change it'? I'm really pissed off because of some people's poor ethics, occasionaly. The same for religious argument. Look, I'm not religious, and I'm totally disturbed if someone rejects things like genetic engineering, because 'God created it, and why would we modify it?'. The same might be for Mars terraforming, with Earth's population being majorly religious, they might question the whole idea by giving the argument 'God created Mars, it was what he wanted, and as creatures fabricated by His powers, we are not allowed to do anything about it'.

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Posted by Harry (Member # 265) on :

I don't think there was any time to terraform Mars.
They started flying to Mars in the late 20th century in DY-ships. Then there probably wasn't spaceflight during WW3, and there was definately no budget for terraforming during Eugenics Wars, interbellum and WW3 (there was only budget to build a friggin' Millenium Tower

).
Then, in 2063, Cochrane invented a warp ship on a sunny afternoon in his backyard. Earth all of a sudden had Vulcans and acces to other Class M worlds. There was no need and no budget to do a terraform project on Mars.
When the UFP was formed and there was a budget, it became unlogical to terraform Mars. There where already people living on Mars, and BTW, they had their own Constitution, so they probably wouldn't even want no terraforming.

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Posted by Shik (Member # 343) on :

Having virtually terraformed Mars in the past while playing SimEarth, I can tell you that--from a starship construction standpoint--it wouldn't be a good idea.

Why? Because terraforming adds things like oceans. And Utopia Planitia would become one. Yes, I KNOW it's primarily orbital yards, but there IS a ground facility as seen in "Parallels"...

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"Do you know how much YOU'RE worth??.....2.5 million Woolongs. THAT'S your bounty. I SAID you were small fry..." --Spike Spiegel

Posted by Masao (Member # 232) on :

The amount of money you put into terraforming is postively correlated with speed: the more you spend, the faster you can get finished. (At some point, I suppose, the terraforming becomes self-sustaining, sort of like the greenhouse effect. Shik, is this true?) So once the planet is colonized, it might be relatively painless to invest a small percentage of your money in terraforming, which can be done with a wide variety of strategies in a variety of price ranges: bacterial seeding, orbital mirrors, crashing ice asteroids, lasering the permafrost, changing albedo, manufacturing gases, etc. Aside from drowning all your low-lying areas, terraforming should make life easier by cutting down on solar radiation; raising atmospheric pressures, temperatures, and humidity; and cutting down on that damned dust. Of course, you don't have to terraform the planet to the level of oceans; perhaps enough to make the lower elevations (like low-lying planitia) more pleasant.

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Posted by Shik (Member # 343) on :

Yeah, there's various ways of doing it in Simearth. They give you little O2, CO2, & N2 generators you can place around the planet...you can fiddle with albedo & all the other atmospheric stuff like heat retention. Y'need to crash ice meteors into the planet for water, though.

It does self-sustain, but you can overlook the oddest things; I had a fulling thriving planet complete with human populations (well, mammal populations--there's no species differential)...but while checking the air sample at one point, I noticed that the pressure was at about 480 atmospheres. Oops. Yet the little buggers never complained or died off or nothin'.

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"Do you know how much YOU'RE worth??.....2.5 million Woolongs. THAT'S your bounty. I SAID you were small fry..." --Spike Spiegel

Posted by First of Two (Member # 16) on :

Yeah, Sim Earth has its' problems.

Ever terraform Mars, add nanotech cities, then Nuke them?

I did, once, and the place started producing living, evolving robots. But once they reached the "sentient" stage, the program crashed.

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Posted by Shik (Member # 343) on :

Yup! I made robots! Even made them sentient. The problem with robots, though, is that they're like a plague; they literally spread everywhere & the only way t'get rid of the bastards is to nuke/volcano/meteor the entire planetary surface. Nice was to start over, though.

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"Do you know how much YOU'RE worth??.....2.5 million Woolongs. THAT'S your bounty. I SAID you were small fry..." --Spike Spiegel

Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :

Masao! Yes I've read the KSR Trilogy! Wow - they are the most AMAZING books... Have you read the follow up short story/anthology called "The Martians".

Andrew

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Posted by Masao (Member # 232) on :

I bought "The Martians" a few months ago but haven't gotten around to reading it yet. I'm afraid that I'll have forgotten any events referred to in the first or second book, since I read them quite a few years ago.

To all you others, I wholeheartedly and unreservedly recommend Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy!!!

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Posted by Enterprise (Member # 48) on :

SimEarth? The game sounds cool, but I can't find it anywhere. Where did you guys get it?

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Posted by First of Two (Member # 16) on :

My local computer game store.
Several years ago.
Sadly, it seems as though the game may be 'out-of-print' now.

I keep hearing rumors of a "Sim System" or "SimVerse" game which will be an expansion of this game of an order of magnitude or more, letting you build an entire solar system from scratch using the latest knowledge of planetary formation, ('hot Jupiters', eccentric orbits, co-orbital planets, etc) and then seeding life on various planets (a la the Preservers?) and seeing how it evolves. Carbon based life, Silicon based life, Helium based life on cold planets, "jovian" life on gas giants... etc.

Me, I'd love to build a system with two co-orbital M-Class worlds, put intelligent life on one of them, and see how they take to spaceflight.

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"Nobody knows this, but I'm scared all the time... of what I might do, if I ever let go." -- Michael Garibaldi

Posted by Shik (Member # 343) on :

Brandon: a guy on the "Bouncin' Billy Bates" gave me a cracked copy of the game a few years ago (there'sa major copy protection on it), but I gotta go dig it out. As I remember it was small enough to fit on 1 or 2 disks. If I can unearth it from the Well of Souls that all my disks seem to slip away to, I'll post a note here for takers.

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"Do you know how much YOU'RE worth??.....2.5 million Woolongs. THAT'S your bounty. I SAID you were small fry..." --Spike Spiegel

Posted by Alpha Centauri (Member # 338) on :

A game in which you can make your own solar system? I have only one tiny word for it to describe it:

COOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLLL!

I'd like to create five M-class planets in a trojan orbit, and see them warring each other! Or a class-M world in orbit of a 'super-Jupiter' (those planets from M_jup>2 which they discover regularly), that would also be nice, I think.
And now I think of it: a class-M in an '8'-shaped orbit around a binary star.

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Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :

Masao... I felt exactly the same way about reading "The Martians" but once I slipped into it, It all comes flooding back like Coyote's memory...

There's some good stuff in there... Do you think Hiroko is still alive??

Andrew

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Posted by Masao (Member # 232) on :

Of course she is. She's probably dug in deep somewhere.

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Posted by Matrix (Member # 376) on :

Just to let you know:

Zephram Cochrane-Don't you have moon in your time?

Riker-yes, but you can see Lake Armstrong from here.

Ok this might not be the real dialogue but there is a Lake on the Moon. Might be the only one on the other hand it might be one of hundreds (if the Moon is big enough) 24th century did in fact terraform a little bit of the Moon so it is possible.

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Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :

Under domes, sure. The best way to do things on the moon, really.

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