Stupid Idea....but humor me

S

sargentlard

Save the whales motherfucker
Valued Senior Member
We keep looking for life on other planets right?...so why not just make life on other planets?

Can't scientists gentically modify bacterias or higher life forms to take advantage of a certain planets inhabitable atmosphere in order to put out Oxygen as a byproduct?

Some planets such as Jupiter and Venus etc (too gassy, acidic or liquid for use).

For, let's say Mars....can't we design a bacteria and sent a few thousand pounds or more of it to Mars to slowly convert the atmosphere over....let's say 100-200 years. By the time we're done trashing this planet Mars would be ready for a beating.

How much time would that take really?....I am guessing more than feasible amount? To convert a planet?

Can we even modify bacterias to do that? Lets say we could and go ahead with it, would Mars's atmosphere change the species in some unexpected way?
 
If you're suggesting terraforming other worlds to make them fit for human habitation, it's not stupid at all, although rather a large scale project, and is often discussed. In the arena of science fiction, see "Rammer" by Larry Niven.
 
There's nothing wrong with terraforming other planets. As long as there's nothing living there already. And as long as you wait a few generations because we haven't got the biotechnology, much less the resource bandwidth, to do it now. That few generations won't be much of a wait in context, because as you say it will probably take centuries, if not millennia, to complete. Look how long it took to terraform Terra, and we had Mother Nature as the project manager, a real expert. ^_^

But the purpose of finding existing life on other planets is totally different from creating some new real estate for the wealthy or parks for the... well I guess those would be for the wealthy too. What we hope to find is "life" that has very little in common with "life" as we know it. No DNA. Perhaps no carbon and oxygen at all. Maybe not even solid state. Maybe not consisting of matter, but energy. Maybe we won't even recognize it as life, maybe we won't even perceive its existence except using newly designed instruments.

That will advance science, not just engineering.

Considering that our population will fill up a second planet in exactly the same number of years it takes to double the population of this one (assuming we have the transportation bandwidth to get all those billions of people over there), terraforming doesn't have much practical application. Except for the rich. The people who will be financing it... Oh well I suppose it will happen.

But for the rest of us, finding native life on other planets is far more promising. As long as they aren't evil, speaking of sci fi scenarios. Stargate SG-1, Capt. Picard, and John Crichton found life out there that could cut our own lives short.
 
In studies with computer simulations of Martian terraforming it would take only a centaury or two of artificially pumping out fluorocarbons (extremely strong green house gases) to get mars in a run way green house effect and have it at comfortable temperatures and pressure (depending on how much latent CO2 there is in the ground) its would take on the order of thousands to millions of years with photosynthetic organisms to get the O2 levels breathable though.
 
Well, maybe making Mars earth-like require a heat source.... a big one. After that, plants will make it to make O2, maybe---
Wait a minute, I'm feeling crazy here. But this topic is a good idea:)
 
You don't get it: heating mars up won't be as hard as making the air breathable, we would need something much more powerful then photosynthetic life.
 
My question exactly. The problem is that genetic altering won't be here for another century or so.
 
genetic alteration, cybernetic alteration hell it should all be in working order by 2100.
 
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