A Colony in the Sky?

After humans get to Mars, they’ll start doing what comes naturally
— terraforming” Mars, turning it into another Earth.

Mars does resemble Earth in several important ways – general

size, presence of water, length of day, range of temperatures – so
many similarities, in fact, that some people are beginning to ask if it
might be possible to make Mars even more like Earth than it is now.
And that’s the question that will shift us to the next level of our
fascination with the place: the idea that we could live there, that Mars
could be “terraformed”.
To terraform means to alter a planet’s surface until Earth’s life
forms can survive there. It’s a hypothetical discipline at this point, born
in science-fiction stories. But in the last 30 years a number of
scientists have taken up the concept. Their studies make it clear that the process could take centuries.
But it is an idea that operates within physical reality as we know it. But it may work, it’s possible to do it.
The recipe is simple. Add nitrogen and oxygen to the atmosphere; pump water to the surface,
cook for decades, spicing first with cyanobacteria, then with all the rest of Earth’s plants and animals,
adding them in the order they evolved here. Mars is blessed with all the ingredients called for in the
recipe; indeed Mars turns out to be perfect for terraforming. So, because we have all the life forms here
at hand, we can try replaying evolution at extreme fast forward.
Of course it will be more complex than the recipe – it always is. But it’s possible. Think
of that! A colony in the sky, a new thing in history.

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