By the time we're able to create a habitable space on mats, surely we'll also have cultivated some sort of transforming ability to go with it right? The latter not only would help us in colonizing other planets, but most likely also aid in preventing our own from falling into ruin, hopefully.

I'm no expert, but isn't fixing that nutrient problem exactly what the scientists mean when they say they'll terraform mars?

huh. it would seem martian soil is in quite a sorry state, and as a result is rather inhospitable. that martian movie sure made it seem a whole lot easier than it apparently is. I also had no idea that martian soil had minerals like "perchlorates" that would need to be removed from the soil, lest plants die because of it.

http://tomatosphere.letstalkscience.ca/Resources/library/ArticleId/5302/soil-on-mars.aspx

We'll harness microbes! But it'll take time- a lot of time. It's a matter of how we can encourage them to reproduce and spread faster, I guess? It only took bacteria a few hundred million years to fill the atmosphere with oxygen, right?

>>656
Maybe. But then we might be placing too much faith in science. I don't think our planet will fall into ruin though, it might change and many organisms may fail to adapt but thus is the nature of the world, it's happened before and will happen again.

>>658
No, generally that refers to creating an atmosphere nutrients are never really mentioned. Creating an atmosphere itself is next to impossible for us, enriching the soil of the planet is another thing entirely. The composition of the soil is quite important and even now is only really a novel field of serious enquiry. The reason that we use so much fertiliser to grow things is because we didn't really understand this and so the way we grew crops was removing nutrients from the soil and damaging the organic matter beneath it so we keep having to use fertiliser.

>>659
We'll just figure this out when we get to it through terraforming.

>>661
we could just throw tons and tons of rockets full of algae at mars and hope they do something.

>>661
>>1648
In order to fill the atmosphere with Oxygen you have to have an atmosphere to fill in the first place.

>>1650
The poles are covered in CO2 ice.

>>1651
Nowhere near enough, plus there is no magneto sphere to keep an atmosphere(hence why Mars no longer has one).

I could not think of a new thread to make but I thought this video was interesting so I will post it here.

deserts are closer than mars

>>2084
but maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaars

>>2085
Screw Mars!! Worst planet!!!

>>2082
naah,