On Aug/15/2018 at 4:05 PM, Scott M. Kozel wrote :
On Wednesday, August 15, 2018 at 7:16:13 AM UTC-4, Jeff Findley wrote:

But, at the same time, terraforming will take hundreds or thousands of
years. Not something we're ever going to watch live on YouTube like a
rocket launch.

One website article I found said more like 100,000 years.

All of us here will no doubt be long gone when the first
Kuiper belt object is dropped on Mars.

Just how do you go about "dropping a Kuiper belt object on Mars?"

An object 1/4 mile in diameter would probably be in the billions
of tons. Where will the energy be found to transfer that to a
Mars solar orbit perigee, then accelerate it up to Mars solar
orbit speed, then decelerate it to Mars surface at a speed that
won't create a massive crater on the scale of the one out in
Arizona?

Why not have another crater on Mars? And why not slam the objects at
high speed into Mars. When the thing hits the surface, it will
decelerate. Yes you will lose a little mass that will escape because of
the energy released on impact. You just bring in more objects to compensate.

How many hundreds or thousands of such objects would be needed?

Many thousands.


Alain Fournier