New Terraforming Website

From: victoriatangoman [mailto:tango_dancer@...]

> Ask Mike Combs
> (another list member) what he encounters. I just love reading his
> posts where he plays with the Mars people's assumptions.

I'll have to admit, when I first hit the web, full of vim and vigor, I set
out to prove that terraforming Mars was impossible. The very first draft of
my Space Settlement FAQ (http://members.aol.com/oscarcombs/spacsetl.htm)
flatly stated that terraforming was impossible. When I shared the first
draft with more-knowledgeable people, I was set straight on some things.
Seems like I was making the same conceptual error which others on this list
have been commenting on: confusion regarding timescales, i.e. processes
which are inevitable on timescales of billions of years don't necessarily
ruin the situation on timescales of thousands of years. I modified my FAQ
to state that even if terraforming was technically possible, it would
involve technologies not yet in hand, and would require centuries of effort.
I think that's the only argument which needs to be made to establish that
High Frontier is a more practical plan than the terraformation of Mars.

Maybe you've come up with a new wrinkle regarding the retention of hydrogen,
but it would be extraordinary to me if the many thinkers in terraforming
hadn't already considered this issue. One thing which aggravates me about
some critics of High Frontier is that they sometimes bring up issues which
first-year physics students could think of, as though the experts who worked
on High Frontier could have overlooked something so basic. (For example, I
just finished debating someone who had gone, "Oh yeah, but what about heat
rejection in a vacuum?" as though he thought he might be the first person in
history to consider such an issue.) I think it's important that we try to
extend the same courtesy to the terraformers that we would appreciate
receiving (though we don't always get it) in return: the assumption that
obvious, major issues have been already thought of and worked through.

I'll second the opinion offered by some others here: Terraformation may even
be possible, but has little prospects of happening in the real world, and
should be consider more an intellectual exercise.

But as far as irritating Mars fans, I don't think you can beat asking them
what the Martians will export in order to balance their trade. Their
answers usually betray the bias that there are certain things you can do on
a planet which you just can't do elsewhere, but they're then unable to
defend their assumptions logically, because they've never before subjected
their starting assumptions to critical thought.

Regards,

Mike Combs