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But ahah!
We do know how to make a place slightly warmer. Which is the thing Mars needs.
we take the most effective greenhouse gases
and then we pack 'em together real tight
and then we build a huge-ass mass driver
and then we shoot it at Mars.
That'll improve.
We don't really know, so much so that there's nothing we're doing right now that would change Mars climate unless we could somehow introduce 3 billion people living in the industrial age onto the planet.
In my compromise solution, you'd be the guy who said "Fuck it, no need to look further, knife go in, eye come out, surgery done."
We are sort of learning how to change a climate, but it isn't at the level where it would mean fuck all in terraforming terms.
It's certainly true that one day we will know how, given unlimited energy, to terraform a planet. Even then, it may not be feasible.
Also it's a really terrible idea to experiment with mars to figure out how to terraform. Not sure if that's what you were implying when you said there's no way we could make mars a shittier place to live, but if it was, it was terrible.
SCIENCE DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY
We know how, roughly, we're just not able to.
Because the output of greenhouse gas from 3 billion people living in the industrial age would do jack shit to Mars.
It's not about making a tiny tiny tiny change in athmospheric composition that causes a tiny tiny tiny change in average temperature.
Like CCGs? Check my CCG's Thread in CF and help me playtest it!
Probably my favorite alternative theory for getting stuff into space.
Yes it does!
You just need to make it huge enough.
And, well, accurate enough.
Not really, given the current pattern of behavior vis a vis space and science spending.
We're likely going to go backwards on space technology for the next fifty years or so. We already got rid of reusable space ships, and we're one delete key from getting rid of Apollo era technology.
I don't have much hope for space exploration in the near future.
What that does mean is that in fifty years President A Man From Earth will be able to launch a brilliant new space program using 100 year old technology that will have been rediscovered.
"now sit in traffic for 10 years. we need to start greenhousing this place up."
No civilization yet established and you are sitting in traffic in an idling car for the good of mankind
i know an absurd number of names from feudal japan and china from playing too many Koei games as a kid
There is a good satirical scifi novel waiting to be written around this idea. I can feel it in my bones.
you could really catch up on your sudoku skills
we carve a huge ass onto it
The Earth is the only place we can ruin for ourselves. Because it's the most perfect place there is. Dead pieces of rock that could and would kill the people living there in a hundred different ways do not compare.
Getting rid of the space shuttle wasn't a step backwards. They weren't good ideas.
And in fifty years, we will have better technology. We will be better at everything. That is what we do.
That's the current running theory.
Which means it doesn't really matter how much we change the environment since people are a little allergic to cancer. Unless I'm confusing my layers of the atmosphere here.
Can I introduce you to modern western civilization?
The boomers have thrown there hands up in the air and said "welp, we had it good but somehow things are shit for everyone after us"
I would very much like that not to be the case, and I plan on doing everything I can to keep it from being the case, but current trends would say that we're entering a period of voluntary decline.
We're at a liminal period in history. We can chose Star Trek or Mad Max right now to head toward and the people in charge are going for the cheaper, more Australian one. It's just a question on whether or not the rest of us are going to stop them.
cancer schmancer.
But yes, it doesn't have a magnetosphere anymore. No real tectonic activity.
It still has a thin atmosphere, but it's lost lots of important bits of it. Water, for example.
So we need to get a shitload of asteroids and throw them at mars.
That's easy to fix! Just bundle up all the magnets in the world, put a drill on top, build a giant mass driver, aim it at Mars and bingo. new magnetosphere, right?
Like CCGs? Check my CCG's Thread in CF and help me playtest it!
Mankind has already changed the Earth but in a clumsy, dangerous manner. Moving forward we'll probably have to go onwards and upwards using science and engineering to try to alleviate our earlier unintentional mucking about.
If we can use it as practice for Real Space Colonization I'm not sure what the problem is. It's not like if we do nothing Mars is an option to live on right now.
let's just get some hash browns going then, [chat]
That made me giggle far to much for a 23 year old male.
It still has an atmosphere it's just very tenuous. Hell, the moon technically has an atmosphere.
I think that this is basically what we're going to have to do. Either that or nuke China and India, but I don't think that's necessarily a good idea.
Modern american civilization, is what you are talking about. You are talking about small irrelevant political eddies in one nation, here.
And what trends. What trends are saying science in america is dying? That progress will halt? It doesn't! It never does!
The world is generally and on balance, a better place to live this year than it was last year.
Your pessimism is stupid.
Right, cause Europe is so much better right now at that whole "lost generation thing"
And certainly the nerfing of the space program in the richest and most space programy country doesn't matter.
Your optimism is stupid.