this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2023
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@hedge, you're asking if we should terraform Mars if we haven't already cleaned up this this planet. It's a good question but I don't see a problem here.
Let me borrow a quote from Isaac Arthur, youtuber and president of the National Space Society(in USA), and I'm paraphrasing him: If we have the technology to truly terraform Mars, then lot of that technology will already have been used to stabilize the climate on earth. It's by orders of magnitude easier to "fix" Earth, than make Mars habitable to humans without the need for Domes, or spacesuits to breathe outside.
So to continue the "cleanup" analogy, it's like cleaning up the worst nuclear disaster (Chernobyl ) vs cleaning a few drops of water off you kitchen floor.
Right, I didn't necessarily see it as an either/or type thing--I think we can and should do both!--however, if it does come down to one or the other, it's got to be earth first.
Yes I agree. I think it will be earth first simply due to technology. As an example, capturing carbon right out of the atmosphere is a technology we have now.
The downside is it's very power intensive, but it often happens in some countries that there are more power generation than needed from renewables. And if we figure out fusion power then we clean electricity for milennia.
So cleaning up earth will have to happen within the coming 100 years. Maybe in that timeframe we will have a permanent base in mars under a dome or underground. But true terraforming of Mars is many centuries out I believe. Just my thoughts on the matter.