Terraforming the Solar System

[combatmedic]

Originally Posted by Johnny1A.2

That really isn't relevant to whether or not other planets will be colonized.

Yes, it is. We can't live on other planets. There's no air for us to breathe. Most have no water for us to drink. Often the gravity is all wrong, and the atmosphere is either too thin or actually toxic. There are all sorts of other problems, There's no life anyplace in the whole universe but Earth, so far as we know (although I do imagine, given how big and old the universe is, that life exists someplace else even if our species will likely never contact it).


Terraforming could fix all those things, in theory. Of course, with anything less than 'sufficiently advanced technology', the costs would be astronomical. A much smaller expenditure of resources could vastly improve conditions here on Earth, or accomplish all sorts of other useful things. You are going to need a powerful force to compel people to ignore this basic economic reality.

It seems very unlikely that a small private group of ideologues or religious fanatics would have the resources to transform Mars into an Earthlike environment, if that is even really doable. Don't you think state action would be needed? Are you suggesting that a cabal of eccentric billionaire Libertarians would do it, or something? That's an interesting SF story idea, but it doesn't sound all that likely in the real world. Terraforming, if it's possible, would likely take tens of thousands of years to work. Even wildly optimistic estimates suggest centuries. It's difficulty to imagine a non-state project of such incredible magnitude, carried out for millenia, with very little economic incentive behind it.

Most of the successful colonial ventures in the Early Modern Era were state sponsored, BTW. And those were on a planet where you can breathe the air and drink the water in most places, and grow food out of the ground. Mars and Venus are NOT equivalents to North America in the 17th Century, no matter how cool 'space pilgrims' sounds. :)