Nerds' Wet Dream

The Science Channel is Awesome


How could you not wanna watch?

For instance, nothing lasts forever - not even our planet (especially given our rate of self-destruction) - so why not look into a replacement? After all, earth can't sustain our rate of population growth for too much longer and extra-terrestrial colonization is a valid solution to deal with the crisis. Either way, if we as a species manage to survive another billion or so years, our planet will no longer be able to support life, so we'd need a good alternative.

That's why many scientists are looking at our neighbor, Mars, with hope and excitement. Terraforming advocates propose we transform Mars into an earth-like planet for human colonization. The first step is recreating a thick, hospitable atmosphere of CO2, either by directing a lot of huge mirrors at the planet, including its ice caps; by slamming 40 billion tons of asteroid into it; or by building lots of smokey factories to emit the same greenhouse gases that are shortening earth's lifespan.

After we warmed up Mars and thickened the atmosphere — a process that might take 50 years — the real planet-modifying work would begin. With atmospheric pressures raised, human colonists equipped with breathing apparatus could build large inflatable dwellings on the Martian surface. They also would scatter the seeds of plants genetically altered to tolerate Martian soil and perform photosynthesis at high efficiency, which would begin adding oxygen to the atmosphere so that humans and animals eventually could breathe freely. The oxygenation process could be speeded up even more with yet-to-be invented technological advances.

Although it all seems very science fiction and far off down the line, NASA plans a return to the moon in 2020, the first step in establishing a permanent moon base (several other countries, including China, India, Russia and Japan are on their way to the moon in the next decade as well.) NASA scientists are already working on producing fuel, water, and oxygen from moon rocks, potentially turning the moon into one big reservoir.
In 2030 NASA will send a 2 year manned mission to Mars, the first of its kind, and likely to yield some radical new data and a revival in colonization efforts. All in all, there could be a full scale human colonization of Mars by around the year 2100.

It probably won't look like this

Stay tuned...