Terraforming the Solar System

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by combatmedic

Yes, it is. We can't live on other planets.

Of course we can. The only question is the motivation to apply the necessary engineering skills, which are only just slightly beyond the current state of the art. Now, living well is another issue at current and near-future tech levels, granted.

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?

Nope. It's meaningless to project concepts like 'libertarian', 'private', 'public', etc into the distant future, economics and politics and religion change with time too much for that. The world we live in today is radically improbable, almost unimaginable, by the economic, cultural, and religious parameters of even 1600.

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. :)

Right now, yes. Past the next few decades, though, such estimations become meaningless. We literally can say nothing useful about what would be economically plausible and not even 100 years ahead. Societies, priorities, and economies change too much for that.

All we can usefully speculate about past the medium-term future, within the limits of our knowledge, is the science, and even that must always be done with on eye on 'as far as we know'. We can't even make useful estimates about what is 'plausible' and 'implausible' from an engineering POV past the medium-term.