Without massive terraforming all of Mars is very hostile.

But having solid ground is still nice.

A workable compromise is making big habitats in a dome, that gives sunlight, but shields from radiation. And the ground needs to be processed obviously.

The advantage of Venus to me is is gravity.

▲

cosmic_cheese 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Gravity kind of cuts both ways. Closer to that of Earth is nearly guaranteed to be better for long term human health, but there's a possibility that martian gravity is "good enough" when supplemented with excercise while also making heavy operations and getting back out of the planet's gravity well easier.

▲

tarr11 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I wonder if it will turn out to be easier to adapt lifeforms to the planets than to try to adapt the planets to the lifeforms.

	▲	lukan 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Both probably, but you cannot really adapt life to no water and hard radiation. (at most sustain it in stasis, but not growing)

▲

cduzz 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Venus seems like a wonderful place to live, relatively speaking.

At the right altitude where you can "float" on the ocean, it's a pretty comfortable temperature and there's plenty of solar energy but you're shielded from the solar radiation. So, long term, your body will still work, assuming you can solve "the other problems."

Of course, the down-side is that there's nothing to stand on and probably more importantly, there aren't many useful materials to work with besides tons of carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen. Not much hydrogen there, so not much water, which probably is the biggest problem. One of them, anyhow. Also, there's probably not a whole lot to do besides float (zoom, actually) around and slowly go stir crazy in your bubble.

But relatively speaking, it's way nicer than living in a hole on mars where you'll slowly die from gravity sickness, or radiation poisoning, or whatever.

	▲	jcranmer 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> Not much hydrogen there, so not much water, which probably is the biggest problem. Actually, the cloud layer at that level is mostly sulfuric acid, from which you can get your water. It also means you need to be in a hazmat suit when you walk outside, but that's still a step up from everywhere else, where you need a bulky pressure suit instead.

▲

operatingthetan 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If we terraform mars, isn't the dirt still toxic?

▲

lukan 4 hours ago | parent [-]

No, as terraforming means changing that.

Whether it is really possible, is a different question, but after you have an atmosphere, you could have engineered microorganism processing the soil etc.

▲

marcosdumay 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Just exposing the Martian soil to water for some time is enough to destroy the perchlorates.

(Turns out there's a region in Antarctic with them too, so we can always test things there.)

▲

operatingthetan 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

In that sense then the term "terraforming" is on equal footing with alchemy.

▲

wolvoleo 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Doing something like that at planetary scale is science fiction anyway even if we did have the tech to do it.

	▲	baq 3 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Talking to computers and expecting computers to answer coherent English was science fiction 4 years ago. Don’t lose faith
	▲	generic92034 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		I would not be so pessimistic. Look what the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyanobacteria have done for our atmosphere.
	▲	wincy 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		Maybe we’ll turn all of Mars into paperclips with our efforts! Glorious paperclips. First Mars, then the universe!
	▲	naravara 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		If you can kick off self-sustaining biological processes it’ll happen on its own eventually, but you’d just be looking at generational time scales to do it. Of course you’ll probably have lots of side-effects.

▲

JumpCrisscross 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> In that sense then the term "terraforming" is on equal footing with alchemy

NASA has proposed using "synthetic biology to take advantage of and improve upon natural perchlorate reducing bacteria. These terrestrial microbes are not directly suitable for off-world use, but their key genes pcrAB and cld...catalyze the reduction of perchlorates to chloride and oxygen" [1].

[1] https://www.nasa.gov/general/detoxifying-mars/

▲

fylo 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[flagged]

▲

nradov 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Which dome construction material would be transparent to sunlight but block ionizing radiation?

▲

LorenPechtel 3 hours ago | parent [-]

1) Why do you need sunlight?

2) If you have a source of hydrogen: water. Bonus as you don't have to make the dome hold pressure. A layer of water of the right depth will generate the force needed, the structure only needs to keep itself level. The only pressure holding is outside that, enough to keep the water from boiling. And, well, it's water--if it's hit by a rock that isn't too big you'll just have hole in the top layer, easily fixed. The same general idea would work on the Moon but the water is far from transparent if you pile up enough of it and you need a lot of hydrogen.

	▲	lukan 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Well, I did wrote "gives sunlight" and that is a valid reply to it. But ... I would need sunlight actually. That seems somewhat possible with light tubes, but the much nicer solution, a transparent dome to still see mars clouds at day and the stars at night, is indeed not possible with current materials.