Wayne Throop wrote:

The notion that you can obtain land by terraforming mars much more easily
than you can by terraforming the moon is fine... but it's much easier
to terraform earth.

Well, yes, but in the case of both Mars and the Moon there's one
major advantage in doing whatever it is you want to do: there isn't an
established PRIOR biosphere -- with, among other things, 6 billion
other human beings -- which your tampering may destroy. If, for
instance, I use powerful lasers/masers/whatever to focus more sun
energy on the pole of the planet to melt the icecaps, no one on Mars
will care. If I do that to Antarctica so I can actually use all that
land, instead of just recognize that there IS land under the miles of
ice, a hell of a lot of people WILL care.

I'm not saying that necessarily makes it worthwhile to go to Mars for
land, per se. But it IS a very different set of considerations.
Basically, there's stuff you can do on land where it really, honestly,
truly DOESN'T AFFECT anyone else that you can't get away with anywhere
on Earth.



One might say, "a second basket to put some of the species' eggs in".
But that's so long term,

Yeah. I think it's an excellent goal, but it isn't one that sells
many tickets.




--
Sea Wasp
/^\
;;;
Live Journal: http://www.livejournal.com/users/seawasp/