Thank you for all the information, especially Frank for
http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=210
which I found fascinating.

I’m now going to wax Ferengi, and ask: where is the profit?

 

As for the whole bit about the cosmic oven mits, I felt like i was reading the lyrics to a Frank Zappa song. Good times, indeed...

 

...or, smoke em if ya got em.

 

On our own planet the earliest microbial species have long since retreated to places deep inside earth's crust where there is no oxygen, which is toxic to them. (Yes, some of earth's earliest microbes are still beneath us but we can't expose them without killing them because there was no oxygen in the atmosphere of early earth). On mars we may not be able to find any such hidden life (or even evidence that it once existed there) until we actually warm up that planet and see what surfaces along with the melted permafrost. Of course by then the damage may already be done and we could either wipe clean any evidence of such life or revive it just before we kill it with whatever process we use to warm up Mars.

 

This moral dilemma has been addressed in many science fiction stories and several non-fiction articles and books. Click here:

 

 

The author Mark Lupisella, in 1997, wrote in an issue of Space Policy, "Could we forgive ourselves if we caused the extinction of the first extraterrestrial species we came into contact with?".

https://aerospacescholars.jsc.nasa.gov/HAS/cirr/em/10/10.cfm

Robert Zubrin, surprisingly, comes off as pretty harsh on any possible LGMs in this interview:

http://www.spacedaily.com/news/mars-terraform-04h.html

I could post dozens more links but you get the idea...

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Managing Editor

Mars' magnetic field is very weak. The easiest answer to this is that Mars' core is mostly cold, if not completely so. Mars was more geologocally active in it's distant past, made obvious by the numerous (and very large) volcanos that dot its face. A few of these vocanos still occasionally sigh very thin clouds of gas. Clearly there is some latent heat trapped beneath the Martian surface, but probably not enough heat to truely revive any of the volcanos so far observed. As far as we can tell right now there are no plate techtonics happening on Mars either, signifying a geologically dead planet.

 

That means the solar wind is eroding what little is left of Mars' atmosphere, making long term habitation there impractical for life as we know it. But don't take my word for it. Click the links below:

 

 

 

 

 

These are all brief articles and I found all of them helpful.

 

 

 

As far as I know, the idea of detonating nukes under the surface is a) to melt the regolith and thicken the atmosphere and b) to help warm the planet through radioactive heat.

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Jordan Lapp

Managing Editor

Managing Editor

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Read me soon in The Return of the Sword!
Blog: http://bitterhermit.wordpress.com
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Does anybody know of a case where two celestial masses share an orbit?
It seems to me that, as planets and moons are prone to change slightly in mass, they must eventually collide.

 

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Alec Anaconda, author of “Slaves of Janice”, “After Janice”  and “Toxic Retribution”.

-   Really-really big kitchen mitts.

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Adventure-History-Fantasy-Folklore

www.geocities.com/robmancebo/ 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I hate to ask, but how does one move a planet?

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Alec Anaconda, author of “Slaves of Janice”, “After Janice”  and “Toxic Retribution”.

Thanks for the ideas.

The suggestion “Red, Green and Blue Mars” was most helpful, leading to many informative sites.
I’m fascinated that nobody questioned whether mankind has the right to terraform Mars, before we have proven that nothing is already living there.
Perhaps we should start transforming our moon first.