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posted by n1 on Monday May 15 2017, @02:25AM   Printer-friendly
from the new-colonial-era dept.

John Timmer at Ars Technica reports:

So, why Titan? The two closer destinations, the Moon and Mars, have atmospheres that are effectively nonexistent. That means any habitation will have to be extremely robust to hold its contents in place. Both worlds are also bathed in radiation, meaning those habitats will need to be built underground, as will any agricultural areas to feed the colonists. Any activities on the surface will have to be limited to avoid excessive radiation exposure.

Would anyone want to go to a brand-new world just to spend their lives in a cramped tunnel? Hendrix and Wohlforth suggest the answer will be "no." Titan, in contrast, offers a dense atmosphere that shields the surface from radiation and would make any structural failures problematic, rather than catastrophic. With an oxygen mask and enough warm clothing, humans could roam Titan's surface in the dim sunlight. Or, given the low gravity and dense atmosphere, they could float above it in a balloon or on personal wings.

The vast hydrocarbon seas and dunes, Hendrix and Wohlforth suggest, would allow polymers to handle many of the roles currently played by metal and wood. Drilling into Titan's crust would access a vast supply of liquid water in the moon's subsurface ocean. It's not all the comforts of home, but it's a lot more of them than you'd get on the Moon or Mars.


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Monday May 15 2017, @01:54PM (1 child)

    by GreatAuntAnesthesia (3275) on Monday May 15 2017, @01:54PM (#510010) Journal

    Evolution does not work that way! Bacteria do not "adapt the environment to their needs." They consume, they reproduce, and they die. They can adapt their environment, but they do so entirely by accident and they probably won't enjoy the result.

    Your bacteria will either (a) die or (b) survive and adapt to their new environment. Assuming (b), they will then (b1) exhaust all resources in that environment until they are forced to adapt or die again or (b2) be so successful that they completely change their environment with their chemistry, forcing them to adapt or die again. The chances of (b3) the various branches of life descended from but very different to your initial bacteria colony falling neatly into a huge and complex series of self-sustaining feedback loops that just happen to work together to maintain a consistent human-friendly environment are... well... nobody knows for sure, but there's no reason to believe it will just happen. There is no guarantee that you'll get any kind of long-term steady-state environment like the one we enjoy on Earth. Even if we were to luck out, it would take millions or billions of years to get there.

    If we are to terraform Venus it needs to be a deliberate, planned engineering project (which may well use various carefully-selected / engineered strains of bacteria, granted) rather than just "drop off some bacteria and hope for the best".

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  • (Score: 1) by DmT on Monday May 15 2017, @06:58PM

    by DmT (6439) on Monday May 15 2017, @06:58PM (#510180)

    But that would be cheap, at least:)
    Yes, would take lots of time, but better than the current terraforming efforts (none). At least this would get the process started.