New Terraforming Website

A major issue in Terraforming that has not come up here yet is
uncertainty and untestability. Given a plan (any plan) to terraform
Mars, what will actually happen if you execute it? The models will
tell you something, but these models will be incredibly difficult to
validate so if you use N models you are likely to get N (if not 2N)
answers. This is because its impossible to create realistic tests to
validate the models and without validate models are, literally, worse
than useless. The range of uncertainty over what will actually happen
to Mars on, say, being hit by a small comet to add water is staggering.
BTW: missile defense suffers from the same problem, untestability
under realistic conditions, although its much more severe in the Mar
terraforming case.

On Wednesday, September 3, 2003, at 06:05 AM, Combs, Mike wrote:

> 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
>
The International Space Station (ISS) most important legacy may be
jump-starting space tourism. Consider: the first space tourist, Dennis
Tito, was supposed to go to the Soviet era Mir space station. Under
pressure from NASA, Russia de-orbited the Mir which resulted in Mr.
Tito going to the ISS instead. Now the Mir was old, smelly, crowded and
probably not all that nice. The ISS was brand new, shinny, much more
roomy, etc. Mr. Tito came back to Earth with glowing accounts of how
great space is. Would his experience have been as good on Mir?

Al Globus
CSC at NASA Ames Research Center
http://www.nas.nasa.gov/~globus/home.html

Views expressed in this email are only my opinions and are not the
position of any organization I'm familiar with.