We’ve seen lots of speculative fiction about terraforming, such as Ben Bova’s Moonbase series, in which micro-machines are used to extract materials essential for sustaining life from the moon’s surface. Couldn’t the same thing be done using living organisms? Has anyone seen any terraforming fiction involving biological agents? How is terraforming done in Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars series?
If you were going to terraform a planet using living organisms, with the intent of eventually populating it with humans, you’d probably start with some blue-green algae and some lichens to break the rocks down, and then progress through a series of increasingly complex organisms until you had a sufficiently thick layer of arable soil, and a breathable atmosphere with the Carbon-Hydrogen-Oxygen-Nitrogen cycles balanced and stable.
Would you “program” your organisms to evolve into more complex species, or would you manually introduce new species from time to time?
Would you need “heavy machinery,” such as dinosaurs and mammoths, or could you do the job with single-cell organisms?
Would you need to fill every available niche with inter-dependant plants and animals? How many types of organisms would be required?
Would you need to kill off any of your organisms as the terraforming progressed?
How long would it take to terraform a planet, using biological agents before you could introduce your humans? Or would you house your humans in an ever-expanding enclosed environment as the terraforming advanced?
Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :
Skillery -- hat post of yours looks like it was made by somebody that just finished Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars series. He uses all of the above. Genetically programmed simple organisms whose purpose is to increase the amount of biological matter on the surface. Self-replicating large machines that dig down to deep in the crust to get geothermal energy. If you are interested in this stuff, you've gotta read those books. They are big, but they are fun. I just wish I could get somebody I know to read them.
In the books, the whole thing takes place in about 1000 years, but Robinson himself says that that is unrealistic. He cheated so that the whole thing could take place within the life span of the orignial characters for literary purposes.
Posted by imogen (Member # 5485) on :
I read Red Mars in January.
What makes it slightly more impressive is that the book belonged to the apartment we had in Paris. We were only staying for a week, and I had jet lag, and then an already started book to keep me company for the first 3 1/2 days. So I read Red Mars in 3 1/2 days - around sightseeing - and I absolutely loved it!
Given the book didn't belong to me, I had to leave it there - but I will hunt out the other two. And soon!
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