Happy Accident
December 12th, 2007 - 11:13 am
Exciting news from the Mars Spirit rover. — it seems that Mars really was once a lot more Earth-like:
The right front wheel of Spirit stopped turning in March 2006. Since then, the rover has been driving backwards, dragging the lame wheel along. This May, scientists noticed a bright spot in the trail of overturned dirt.
They turned Spirit around for a closer look, finding high levels of silica, the main ingredient of window glass. They then aimed the rover at a nearby rock, wanting to break it apart to determine if the silica was just a surface coating, or if the rock was silica all the way through.
The target rock survived Spirit
How soon can we begin terraforming? Years and years later than if we found that there’s no chance that Mars ever had any life. If there’s any chance that terraforming could wipe out remaining Martian biomass, it’s going to be much more controversial.
TO: Stephen Green, et al.
RE: Terraforming Mars
First!
We need to slam a HUGE iron-rich asteroid into it. So big that it causes the entire planet to melt and then cool down, slowly, so that Mars has a molten iron-rich core in it like Earth enjoys…courtesy of the collision with Orpheus eons ago. [Note: Before that collision, Earth was about the same size as Mars.]
It would probably be very nice if that asteroid could be accomplanied by several major comets, in order to get more water there.
Without the metallic core there will be no magnetic field to shield the inhabitants from lethal solar radiation. Without that shield, there would be about as much life on Earth today as there is on Mars.
Rare Earth, indeed….
Regards,
Chuck(le)
P.S. If we get the asteroid to impact at the proper angle, we could get Mars to have a serious Moon that will help stabilize it for the ‘long run’.
TO: Eric
RE: Martian Biomass
Let’s wait until the Federation enacts the Prime Directive, eh?
Regards,
Chuck(le)
P.S. My approach eliminates the need for concern about existing Martians.
Sort of like Niven’s novel Protector did.