This article is more about where is more convenient to make a first off world base than terraform. It’s very hard to make a base on mars and the moon but a moon base is much easier.
Terraforming is a whole another beast though. You’ll need to be able to create industry on Mars with local resources to begin terraforming, notably harvesting solar energy. Wind energy is going to be absolute ass to begin with since the air pressure on the moon in 1% of earth’s so we’d need to do a stupid amount of climate change just to make it as livable as Mount Everest Basecamp. Probably we’d need to electrolyze all of the surface rust for oxygen and then we’d still need to deal with radiation issues because of it’s still missing the molten core.
More realistically we’d need a Dyson sphere around Mars, a shaft that goes all the way to the core and blast it with the power of the sun for centuries to kickstart the core again. Not sure about the calculations on that one. Could off by many factors of 10. Once done it can be sealed and the insulation will keep it going for a longer than we’d have to worry about.
I personally think a floating city on Venus a lot nicer. At 50-60km elevation the air in breathable for humans so we’d just have to make massive blimps.
This article is more about where is more convenient to make a first off world base than terraform. It’s very hard to make a base on mars and the moon but a moon base is much easier.
Terraforming is a whole another beast though. You’ll need to be able to create industry on Mars with local resources to begin terraforming, notably harvesting solar energy. Wind energy is going to be absolute ass to begin with since the air pressure on the moon in 1% of earth’s so we’d need to do a stupid amount of climate change just to make it as livable as Mount Everest Basecamp. Probably we’d need to electrolyze all of the surface rust for oxygen and then we’d still need to deal with radiation issues because of it’s still missing the molten core.
More realistically we’d need a Dyson sphere around Mars, a shaft that goes all the way to the core and blast it with the power of the sun for centuries to kickstart the core again. Not sure about the calculations on that one. Could off by many factors of 10. Once done it can be sealed and the insulation will keep it going for a longer than we’d have to worry about.
I personally think a floating city on Venus a lot nicer. At 50-60km elevation the air in breathable for humans so we’d just have to make massive blimps.
Jesus Christ when one of them went down it’d make the Hindenburg look like a birthday party. I’m here for this story.