Ask Ethan: Is it foolishness to dream of terraforming Mars?
The red planet is nearby, cool, sunny, and was once potentially habitable. Could it someday be that way again?
“It would be great some day to have astronauts in a rover on Mars. But just about anyone except an oil company executive would say its more important to have 50 million solar powered vehicles in the United States.”
-Brad Sherman
In all the known Universe, there’s only one planet capable of housing the complex, intelligent life we see on our home world: Earth. While very distant worlds around other stars may have the potential to be Earth-like and perhaps even inhabited, we have yet to venture anywhere close to that far. What about looking for another world here in our Solar System? The most likely candidate is Mars, which seems to have had many Earth-like qualities in its past. Perhaps, with a little help, it could be that way again? That’s the question from Steve Blackband, who wants to know:
I’ve read some about this, more on just trying to live on Mars, which seems hard enough (and now we know the ‘soil’ there is toxic and kills bacteria rapidly). But terraforming as a reality for Mars…
