> Only then do we start terraforming, which takes thousands/millions of years in addition

The methods we could realistically launch into in our lifetimes would take thousands of years, not millions (but also not hundreds) [1]. Projects of these timescales have precedent in human history, usually with a healthy dose of religious zeal.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraforming_of_Mars

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woopsn 3 days ago | parent [-]

My impression was that pulverized rock/iron is not actually "soil", so after forming the atmosphere you need lengthy biochemical processes playing out on the surface. I admit though, I don't know too much about this.

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JumpCrisscross 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

> pulverized rock/iron is not actually "soil", so after forming the atmosphere you need lengthy biochemical processes playing out on the surface

We're already working on crops that can grow in lunar and Martian regolith [1].

[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4146463/

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bbarnett 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I think that we should consider "the future". Yes, it's intangible but consider this; go back 2 centuries and ask someone if they could setup a business concern which produced millions of widgets a year.

They'd think you daffy.

Now beyond that, ask them to produce any manner of modern device with the precision and high consistency we have. Again, they'd think you mad, and think that such was impossible.

Yet here we are.

The next stage in our development via LLMs is not about AI helping humans. It's about robotics. Automated assembly. Robots (not Androids) able to interact with the environment and able to problem solve akin to say.. a mouse.

Soon, entire factories will be entirely automated. Many almost are. We don't need Von Neumann machines to see this future, but we will certainly have robots capable of building entire factories, collecting resources and processing them, and further building machines to spec. And those machines will be able to self-drive, self-operat autonomously.

Anyone playing typical resource games knows about bootstrapping, but once in the asteroid field we're basically resource infinite. Building engines to attach to asteroids, mining asteroids, building factories to create more robots and engines, all of it will be automated.

We toil at self-driving cars, yet this same tech enables self-driving robotics of all types.

So I honestly think that once we bootstrap in space, this sort of thing can happen fast, fast, fast. Decades to send hundreds of thousands of ice-rich resources to Mars.

The soil? Ah, genetic engineering. Really, this is an entirely new field, and frankly is beyond the danger yet benefit of nuclear science. We have the bomb, yet we have nuclear energy and medicine. Well genetics can obviously be far more deadly, and research all over the world, and startups, are already working on employing bacteria and organisms as self-replicating machines to do our bidding.

The dangers are in our face, but oh well! So if we presume survival, then once an atmosphere is produced we can seed the planet with organisms which can survive on rock and yet work with a mania to process it. It's OK if we immediately have moss like grass substitute everywhere. As long as it's working its magic, we get continued O2 production, and we can always create a rabbit pet or something that licks moss to survive. Or are tasty.

My point is, there are indeed many barriers. But we need to view them with where we will be in decades, not where we are now.

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eru 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

> Yes, it's intangible but consider this; go back 2 centuries and ask someone if they could setup a business concern which produced millions of widgets a year.

To go off on a tangent: two centuries ago was the height of the first industrial revolution (at least in Britain). The first time in history when this actually became realistic.

The Industrial Revolution was the first time we had sustained, broad based productivity growth year after year (even if only around 1%, which is quite low by modern standards).

Weirdly enough, we can see sustained productivity growth in artillery and guns long before the wider industry.

Another weird connection: sometimes people look at a toy 'steam engine' that the ancient Romans had access to (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeolipile) and wonder if they could have had an industrial revolution. But, to make a proper steam engine you need a lot more than just the right idea. You need a lot of metallurgy and precise crafting.

Specifically one thing you need is precision crafted cylinders that gas can expand in to move a piston. Well, at the time of the Industrial Revolution, European nations had just spent several hundred years locked in existential competition over who can make precision crafted cylinders that gas can expand in to move a bullet.

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actionfromafar 3 days ago | parent [-]

That is interesting.

I wonder though, if not it would have been possible to build stationary steam engines with Roman tech using oversized bronze castings for cylinders. Perhaps set in bedrock to give extra strength.

Weirdly though, electric generators in watermills would have been much more attainable - except nobody had any understanding of electricity.

	▲	eru 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		Steam engines were stationary at first. They were used to eg drive pumps. > Weirdly though, electric generators in watermills would have been much more attainable - except nobody had any understanding of electricity. Yes, and proper dynamos were invented only quite a long time after batteries. (So called self-excited generators.) And you have to compare the early bad electric generators they could have come up with against the gears and shafts they knew to transmit the motive force of the water over short distance eg to the mill stone.

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woopsn 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

You make a lot of good points. Including that the technology to do all that incredibly dangerous to develop - I still can't see a path to terraforming where in the end it's human people left to take pleasure in Mars.

I had thought due to the eons we'd simply have evolved, but even on shorter time frames there is the transhumanist possibility. When we can engineer rabbit that eats chlorine moss, I don't know what we're aiming for at all. "People" by then could have robust gut culture that just digests the regolith.

There's a difference between considering all this vs thinking it's realistic. It's speculation, as any forecast into the centuries ahead must be.