ASPEN, Colorado – Mars will be transformed into a shirt-sleeve, habitable
world for humanity before century's end, made livable by thawing out the
coldish climes of the red planet and altering its now carbon dioxide-rich
atmosphere.
How
best to carry out a fast-paced, decade by decade planetary facelift of Mars – a
technique called "terraforming" – has been outlined by Lowell Wood, a noted
physicist and recent retiree of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and
a long-time Visiting Fellow of the Hoover Institution.
Lowell presented his eye-opening Mars manifesto at Flight School, held here June
20-22 at the Aspen Institute, laying out a scientific plan to "experiment on a
planet we're not living on."
Humans:
a terraforming species
"I
suggest that the near-term outlook is that Mars will be terraformed," Wood
said, and seriously underway by the middle of this century and essentially
complete by the end of the 21st century.
Wood
defined terraforming as "the purposeful alteration of the physical environment
to increase its habitability for humans." He noted that we homo sapiens are a terraforming
species, pointing to our own planet's alteration over time.
"We're
currently in the tenth millennium of the terraforming era," Wood said.
Similarly, Mars will be terraformed...as will every other piece of the solar
system that we can get to...if-and-as humanity becomes truly space-faring, he
explained.
"The terraforming
impulse in humankind will be quenched only by massive adverse selective
pressure," Wood reported. Terraforming nay-sayers seem to ignore the
fundamentals of population genetics, sociobiology and human history, he argued.
Mars
is far easier to terraform than the Moon, Wood advised. "It's kids' stuff as
far as rendering it [Mars] into something that's human habitable quickly and
easily. The Moon is a good bit tougher."
Thermal
depression
Wood
said that Mars currently is "stuck" in a semi-permanent "thermal depression."
But there is a multiplicity of design solutions, he foresees, such as engineering
an artificial greenhouse effect at the planet that warms the world and makes it
"a more preferred planet."
Overall,
Wood said that a workable plan can be scripted to raise the average temperature
of Mars, rid the world of excess carbon dioxide, as well as generate soil to
support agriculture.
After
roughly one to three decades of such warming, Wood continued, the "Great Spring"
literally erupts all over Mars. It's all a matter of trimming-and-tailoring a
thawed Mars to the "biospheric optimum," he concluded.
Responded
Esther Dyson, Chairman of EDventure and host of the Flight School: "This is not a
project that would fit the time horizon of any venture capitalist."
But
Wood said that the effort is doable, but with a caveat.
"I
believe it's roughly a 50/50 chance that young children now alive will walk on martian
meadows...will swim in martian lakes," Wood said. It is not technology, nor
money, he said, the pacing ingredient is marshaled will.
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