<story><title>A Recap of the Mars Terraforming Debate</title><url>https://nautil.us/issue/100/outsiders/should-we-terraform-mars-lets-recap</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Pfhreak</author><text>There&amp;#x27;s a fantastic novel series that starts with &lt;i&gt;Red Mars&lt;/i&gt;, by Kim Stanley Robinson. It follows a series of the first colonizers of Mars, and every time it shifts perspective it dives into a new science&amp;#x2F;technology frame.&lt;p&gt;For a few chapters you are following an engineer, and it talks about the alloys and techniques she&amp;#x27;s using to build housing. A little while later you follow a geologist and the  topic shifts a bit as this geologist goes out exploring.&lt;p&gt;You follow biologists, psychologists, economists, and each time it dives into the challenges they have in how they perceive Mars and what to do with it.&lt;p&gt;Inevitably, there&amp;#x27;s a conflict between the &amp;quot;Reds&amp;quot; and the &amp;quot;Greens&amp;quot;. Given the series titles (Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars), I&amp;#x27;m sure you can figure out who wins. However, it seems to suggest a result that I find fairly likely -- it doesn&amp;#x27;t matter what you &lt;i&gt;say&lt;/i&gt; we should do with Mars, people are going to do what they want. We already don&amp;#x27;t care about externalities here on Earth, there&amp;#x27;s no way we can police them on Mars.&lt;p&gt;That said, while I used to be a huge fan of the idea of colonizing Mars, I&amp;#x27;ve swung around to the idea that colonizing asteroids is far more interesting. Mars is relatively resource poor, and asteroids are incredibly resource rich. There are some kilometers wide balls of iron, nickel, and platinum group metals out there. Not to mention water and carbon. All the materials you&amp;#x27;d need to undertake construction in space and none of the challenges of having to lift it into orbit.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Robotbeat</author><text>On the contrary, Mars has all the resources of asteroids but the advantage of a water cycle that has concentrated and reformed minerals like on Earth. The ability to process the atmosphere directly is a massive and under-rated advantage. MOXIE proves it’s not just possible but feasible to generate fuel (carbon monoxide) and oxidizer (oxygen) from the Martian atmosphere, and nitrogen and even a bit of water (hydrogen and oxygen) as well as argon are available anywhere on the planet.&lt;p&gt;The “let’s just build cylinders” (which I think we should eventually do!!) often strikes me as a knee jerk contrarian position, an attempt to avoid hard questions about environment, and a “grass is always greener in fields further in the future and with less solid understanding.”&lt;p&gt;Planetary bodies with water cycles (or a history of them) are rich. Airless bodies have massive difficulties that are often handwaved away.&lt;p&gt;And now we have powered flight (without needing propellant) demonstrated. Mars really is a much better place to establish a permanent human presence.</text></comment>
<story><title>A Recap of the Mars Terraforming Debate</title><url>https://nautil.us/issue/100/outsiders/should-we-terraform-mars-lets-recap</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Pfhreak</author><text>There&amp;#x27;s a fantastic novel series that starts with &lt;i&gt;Red Mars&lt;/i&gt;, by Kim Stanley Robinson. It follows a series of the first colonizers of Mars, and every time it shifts perspective it dives into a new science&amp;#x2F;technology frame.&lt;p&gt;For a few chapters you are following an engineer, and it talks about the alloys and techniques she&amp;#x27;s using to build housing. A little while later you follow a geologist and the  topic shifts a bit as this geologist goes out exploring.&lt;p&gt;You follow biologists, psychologists, economists, and each time it dives into the challenges they have in how they perceive Mars and what to do with it.&lt;p&gt;Inevitably, there&amp;#x27;s a conflict between the &amp;quot;Reds&amp;quot; and the &amp;quot;Greens&amp;quot;. Given the series titles (Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars), I&amp;#x27;m sure you can figure out who wins. However, it seems to suggest a result that I find fairly likely -- it doesn&amp;#x27;t matter what you &lt;i&gt;say&lt;/i&gt; we should do with Mars, people are going to do what they want. We already don&amp;#x27;t care about externalities here on Earth, there&amp;#x27;s no way we can police them on Mars.&lt;p&gt;That said, while I used to be a huge fan of the idea of colonizing Mars, I&amp;#x27;ve swung around to the idea that colonizing asteroids is far more interesting. Mars is relatively resource poor, and asteroids are incredibly resource rich. There are some kilometers wide balls of iron, nickel, and platinum group metals out there. Not to mention water and carbon. All the materials you&amp;#x27;d need to undertake construction in space and none of the challenges of having to lift it into orbit.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>BurningFrog</author><text>I wanted to like Red Mars, and the science stuff was well made, but a lot of the book is about politics, and to me, those parts were painful to read.&lt;p&gt;I found it incredibly naive and unrealistic. Clearly many others disagree :)</text></comment>