TORONTO, Canada -- Mars needs a planetary make over TORONTO, Canada -- Mars needs a planetary makeover. A little ozone here, a touch of genetic engineering there, stir in some oxygen, and you've got the makings of a planet you can write home about.
The
terraforming of Mars -- making the planet hospitable to human life by manipulating its atmosphere and surface -- could give humanity a new, comfortable home beyond Earth. But that vision has sparked an ethical debate among those attending the Mars Society's
third international convention, being held here at Ryerson Polytechnic University, August 10-13. Gods out of geeks
"Why do you want to change a planet to look like Earth? If you want Earth, you should stay on Earth and make sure that Earth remains the way you think Earth should look like," said Geneva Athena Andreadis, a neuro-molecular biologist at Harvard Medical School.
Why do people favor terraforming other worlds in the first place?
"It is macho. It makes gods out of geeks," she told the gathering. She advised convention goers that much more consideration be given about whether we can, or should, establish settlements on Mars.
Gullies on Mars, thought to be etched by water
Author of the book, To Seek Out New Life: The Biology of Star Trek, Andreadis said humans that stay put on Mars will face radically different local conditions. That will promote rapid speciation, even without tinkering, she said.
"For the first time since the days of the Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons, this will bring us face to face with aliens...with people who are almost, but not quite, siblings, and who may be unable to share either biological or cultural kinship," Andreadis said.
It's better to be partners with a planet, Andreadis told SPACE.com. "Terraforming is a hammer," she said.
"If you wind up with some kind of runaway effect, that's the end of story. You've lost the planet or you have to leave it alone for it to recuperate, like leaving the fields fallow," she said.
Bugaboo on Mars
"I see a greening within the Mars Society. This is more like a Sierra Club meeting than a National Rifle Association gathering," said
Chris McKay, noted Mars expert from NASA's Ames Research Center, located near San Francisco.McKay said that finding life on Mars that represents a "true second genesis," should give pause to how best to plan future Mars exploration and settlement.
"In that case it is in within our best interest, scientifically, to allow that life to follow a maximum, biologically successful, trajectory of its own," McKay said. "If there is life on Mars it is not doing very well," he said.
While the odds are slim, McKay said that viable Martian organisms might be found frozen in permafrost --
frozen water below the surface -- on Mars. Those organisms could be brought back to life if Mars is warmed up, he said.Furthermore, using genetic reconstruction, even dead Martian organisms could be rescued, McKay said. "We can patch them up and bring them back to life."
McKay said that the search for life on Mars is a compelling goal.
Furthermore, the scientific approach to addressing the question of life beyond Earth is to gather more data points.
"And we know that to collect more data we have to leave the Earth," McKay said.
Space ethics 101
Terraforming Mars to suit Earthlings is a radical human action, said the Reverend James Heiser of the Salem Lutheran Church in Malone, Texas.
"It's one thing to simply talk about going to explore a place. But when you start talking about fundamentally changing the character of an entire world, that should be controversial," Heiser said.
"That's not to say that the action in of itself would be bad or wrong. But it is something that is worthy of careful, ethical and scientific discussion before we would ever even dream of such an undertaking," Heiser said.
Heiser said that having this type of ethical discussion about altering Mars is healthy. "Developing cloning technologies are [a] perfect example of doing things in the wrong order, in my opinion," he said.
"We're probably two or three generations away [from] where terraforming Mars becomes a possibility. If we start the debate and discussion now, we can come to some guiding protocols even before we set foot on Mars," he said.
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