New Terraforming Website

The spiders, if they could live in the current environment would be pretty hardy. I imagine as terraform progressed they would end up covering most of Mars and save us designing special life forms to live there. Anything that could live in that kind of radiation and be periodically frozen without being wiped out is likely to handle almost anything, especially if it evolved from a time when Mars was wetter and had a higher atmosphere.

Where the spiders are found would be a good place to set up a base or even for a first landing. The temperatures there seem to fluctuate between -60 and -20C according to bolometric reading for about 1/4 of the Martian year. This could be understated by as much as 40C because the bolometer underestimates temperatures by that much when the ground is bare and dark instead of frost covered. Also it is a very average temperature and includes small areas that would be much colder and so some other areas would be warmer to average it out.

In the area around Chasma Australe there are parts which become frost free even though other areas further from the pole still have frost. Some believe there could be a hot spot in the area geologically. The spider growth coincides with the disappearance of the frost and they wither away when the frost returns. Something like this

http://www.martianspiders.com/illustrations/e1201762.jpg

is not easy to explain geologically. They form well after the sublimation temperature of CO2 is passed. Note these branches are above ground and are not channels.

From: Lucio de Souza Coelho
To: spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, September 03, 2003 4:45 AM
Subject: Re: [spacesettlers] Re: New Terraforming Website

On Tuesday 02 September 2003 04:50, G. Orme wrote:
> One big problem is if the Martian spiders turn out to be a life form. If
> they are I don't know how terraforming will go. They seem to display
> Fibonacci branching which is only found in life forms. They are never found
> in inorganic materials.
(...)

Supposing that Martian Spiders are alive, my view of the future is rather
cynical: if someone in the distant future has the means and the motivation to
terraform Mars, then he (or she) will do so and treat the Martian Spiders in
the same way that we treated Tasmanian wolves, dodo birds, blue ararinhas,
etc.

(But of course maybe just the lower zones of Mars will be terraformable; the
highlands will probably be near-airless even then. Maybe some niches for the
Spiders will remain, or maybe they will even adapt and flourish in the new
environment...)

Lucio Coelho