Terraforming / Colonizing a planet: How would we do this?

[Ming the Merciless]

OK ChiefsPlanet....

We need to get off this ****ing rock.

How would we go about it? We have all of the cash we need (the inventor of drop box and Dave lane funding us) and we have all of the science / education (Dave Lane's degrees and intelligence combined with the rest of us, as well as CDcox's math skillz)

We have KC native and Chris 616 to guide us spiritually when we get there......and we have Pat , Donger, Cosmo, AUstinChief and others to be our council of elders / leaders.

We have a cornucopia of resources. We have an embarrassment of riches...

Lets make this happen...How do we start?



Basically we send some spacecraft out with some machines that take rocks and dirt and shit and make water and air/atmosphere while we wait and hibernate until we can emerge onto our new land?

What do we send? What do we need? What would life be like?

How could we do shit better than we are now?

What could go wrong?

[Arrowhead Thunder]

Originally Posted by Rain Man

I read once long ago a concept that seems cool, and which seems more feasible than ever.

The original concept talked about Venus and how the atmosphere has too much carbon dioxide in it. But apparently there's some sort of bacteria that eats carbon dioxide and releases oxygen. So all you do is shoot a rocket of this bacteria into Venus' atmosphere where it goes to town like a sumo wrestler at an all you can eat buffet. You wait 500 years or so and then you've got a nice atmosphere full of oxygen to breathe.

With all of the specialized forms of life that have been discovered in recent years, it seems like the first permanent residents won't be human, but rather will be some type of organism that lives on sulfur or carbon dioxide or some other nasty element, and that spits out stuff that we like - oxygen and hydrogen and stuff. Once their work is done, you send the next generation of microbes or whatever to build up more of the stuff we like and less of the stuff we hate. Then you send tadpoles or something, and just keep working your way up the food chain, maybe throwing in the occasional mammoth for fun.

I think that human colonization would ideally not involve people in spacesuits living in sealed environments. Ideally, we do a few hundred years of investment, and then land our ships in a new Garden of Eden. Wouldn't that be cool?

Right track, cyanobacteria and chemobacteria, respectively. 500 years is probably a little off the mark. it would probably take millions of years. Ideally, the planet would need rather large quantities of liquid water.

[vailpass]

Originally Posted by Arrowhead Thunder

Right track, cyanobacteria and chemobacteria, respectively. 500 years is probably a little off the mark. it would probably take millions of years. Ideally, the planet would need rather large quantities of liquid water.

What are you waiting for man? Get to it...

[Arrowhead Thunder]

Originally Posted by vailpass

What are you waiting for man? Get to it...

way ahead of you... now only if I could think of a name. for a planet...

[ThaVirus]

Originally Posted by Rain Man

I read once long ago a concept that seems cool, and which seems more feasible than ever.



The original concept talked about Venus and how the atmosphere has too much carbon dioxide in it. But apparently there's some sort of bacteria that eats carbon dioxide and releases oxygen. So all you do is shoot a rocket of this bacteria into Venus' atmosphere where it goes to town like a sumo wrestler at an all you can eat buffet. You wait 500 years or so and then you've got a nice atmosphere full of oxygen to breathe.



With all of the specialized forms of life that have been discovered in recent years, it seems like the first permanent residents won't be human, but rather will be some type of organism that lives on sulfur or carbon dioxide or some other nasty element, and that spits out stuff that we like - oxygen and hydrogen and stuff. Once their work is done, you send the next generation of microbes or whatever to build up more of the stuff we like and less of the stuff we hate. Then you send tadpoles or something, and just keep working your way up the food chain, maybe throwing in the occasional mammoth for fun.



I think that human colonization would ideally not involve people in spacesuits living in sealed environments. Ideally, we do a few hundred years of investment, and then land our ships in a new Garden of Eden. Wouldn't that be cool?

Surely we could find a more suitable location than Venus. It's like 800 degrees there..

[vailpass]

Originally Posted by Arrowhead Thunder

way ahead of you... now only if I could think of a name. for a planet...

Heranus

[Arrowhead Thunder]

Originally Posted by vailpass

Heranus

well done, sir.

[Dunerdr]

We're going to need al gore to keep the new planet green. And bob dole to answer our pm's.

[tiptap]

Several steps:
First you need to finish the scanning of the local area of our Galaxy. That could be completed within 50 years.

Two you produce robotic ships to go ahead that utilize different proposition systems to perfect try out. 200 to 1000 years.

Get several asteroids of different composition to hollow out and engineer to make trip. At least three different colonies to send. 1500 to 10,000 years.

So we need this rock for at least several round trips 50,000 to 100,000 years.

[Hydrae]

Originally Posted by vailpass

Heranus

Then we won't just PIIHB but we will live there.

[ThaVirus]

Yeah, the most important thing, aside from the technology to actually terraform a planet, has to be a faster means of travel.

It takes several months to land a rover on Mars with our current technology, no? And Mars is relatively close!

[Mother****erJones]

Bungie's Destiny...or play Wolfenstein

[vailpass]

Originally Posted by Hydrae

Then we won't just PIIHB but we will live there.

Good point. Not seeing the downside...

[DrunkBassGuitar]

Originally Posted by Pawnmower

OK ChiefsPlanet....

We need to get off this ****ing rock.

How would we go about it? We have all of the cash we need (the inventor of drop box and Dave lane funding us) and we have all of the science / education (Dave Lane's degrees and intelligence combined with the rest of us, as well as CDcox's math skillz)

We have KC native and Chris 616 to guide us spiritually when we get there......and we have Pat , Donger, Cosmo, AUstinChief and others to be our council of elders / leaders.

We have a cornucopia of resources. We have an embarrassment of riches...

Lets make this happen...How do we start?



Basically we send some spacecraft out with some machines that take rocks and dirt and shit and make water and air/atmosphere while we wait and hibernate until we can emerge onto our new land?

What do we send? What do we need? What would life be like?

How could we do shit better than we are now?

What could go wrong?

You find yourself a nice comet and asteroid and start mining it for resources (mostly metals and water). Then you build a space elevator (basically just a satellite at geosynchronous orbit with a really strong ladder hanging from it). Start pulling out CO2 from the Earth's atmosphere (bonus side effect of slowing down or reversing climate change) and transport it to Mars. Pump that shit into the Martian atmosphere for a few decades or a 100 years or so to start raising and stabilizing the temperatures. Once you've done that, you can start introducing plants.

[Rain Man]

Originally Posted by ThaVirus

Surely we could find a more suitable location than Venus. It's like 800 degrees there..

I think that's mostly because of the carbon dioxide. If you clear that out you can get it down to Arizona level or thereabouts. I recognize that's still uninhabitable, but you can use air conditioning.

[Mr. Laz]

If we could make 'water,air and shit' we wouldn't need to leave this rock