gilchristfan
June 25th, 2007, 5:47:16 PM
Not his fantasy of banging some social worker at a Hall and Oates concert,
Terraforming.
The manifesto is there.
Scientist Calls Mars a Terraforming Target for the 21st Century
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/070623_mars_terraform.html
ASPEN, Colorado - Mars will be transformed into a shirt-sleeve, habitable world for humanity before century's end, made livable by thawing out the coldish climes of the red planet and altering its now carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere.
How best to carry out a fast-paced, decade by decade planetary facelift of Mars (http://www.space.com/marsrover/) - a technique called "terraforming (http://www.space.com/sciencefiction/larryniven/niven_wet_mars_000710.html)" - has been outlined by Lowell Wood, a noted physicist and recent retiree of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and a long-time Visiting Fellow of the Hoover Institution.
Lowell presented his eye-opening Mars manifesto at Flight School, held here June 20-22 at the Aspen Institute, laying out a scientific plan to "experiment on a planet we're not living on."
Humans: a terraforming species
"I suggest that the near-term outlook is that Mars will be terraformed," Wood said, and seriously underway by the middle of this century and essentially complete by the end of the 21<sup>st</sup> century.
Wood defined terraforming as "the purposeful alteration of the physical environment to increase its habitability for humans." He noted that we homo sapiens are a terraforming species, pointing to our own planet's alteration over time.
"We're currently in the tenth millennium of the terraforming era," Wood said. Similarly, Mars will be terraformed...as will every other piece of the solar system that we can get to...if-and-as humanity becomes truly space-faring, he explained.
Terraforming.
The manifesto is there.
Scientist Calls Mars a Terraforming Target for the 21st Century
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/070623_mars_terraform.html
ASPEN, Colorado - Mars will be transformed into a shirt-sleeve, habitable world for humanity before century's end, made livable by thawing out the coldish climes of the red planet and altering its now carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere.
How best to carry out a fast-paced, decade by decade planetary facelift of Mars (http://www.space.com/marsrover/) - a technique called "terraforming (http://www.space.com/sciencefiction/larryniven/niven_wet_mars_000710.html)" - has been outlined by Lowell Wood, a noted physicist and recent retiree of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and a long-time Visiting Fellow of the Hoover Institution.
Lowell presented his eye-opening Mars manifesto at Flight School, held here June 20-22 at the Aspen Institute, laying out a scientific plan to "experiment on a planet we're not living on."
Humans: a terraforming species
"I suggest that the near-term outlook is that Mars will be terraformed," Wood said, and seriously underway by the middle of this century and essentially complete by the end of the 21<sup>st</sup> century.
Wood defined terraforming as "the purposeful alteration of the physical environment to increase its habitability for humans." He noted that we homo sapiens are a terraforming species, pointing to our own planet's alteration over time.
"We're currently in the tenth millennium of the terraforming era," Wood said. Similarly, Mars will be terraformed...as will every other piece of the solar system that we can get to...if-and-as humanity becomes truly space-faring, he explained.