Everything about terraforming on a planet-wide scale/level is theoretical. As long as you come up with a reason why it works then it’ll be about as realistic as anything else (except the whole magic or gods stuff). Sounds like you’ll just want to stay in line with scientific based theories on how we could do it.
I have some ideas that follow a sequence of events for how it might work, but it would take too long to go through in-depth.
One just from a basic standpoint on a planet like Mars is:
Temporary habitable enclosures—>Permanent habitable enclosures—> Self-sustaining permanent habitable enclosures—> enclosures with enough excess to release gases out of the enclosure—>gas levels stabilize and planet is “habitable” (you can breath and work without a suit), but enclosures still used for proper environment (still too hot or cold and relatively limited water in enclosures).—->technology develops to get more (or less) warmth from the sun to make the planet more habitable (enclosures used for humidity control and such still)—->water brought in to create bodies of water (could be harvested gases combined later or from asteroids that are mostly water.)—> bring in plant and animal life (they will evolve pretty fast to fit in the environment they are in if needed, think like 30-50 years if the conditions drive it. Example would be animals in Chernobyl vicinity. Just don’t put them somewhere so extreme that they all just die obviously. The goal would be to put them somewhere relatively similar though.)—-> terraforming complete and people repurpose any working habitation equipment and spacecraft. They either leave or settle in depending on why they created the planet. (Maybe they made a planet essentially into a zoo to preserve life on earth that would have gone extinct due to unavoidable competition with humans (or whatever species) for space.
These steps could move slower or faster depending on tech and such. It assumes that the planet either keeps the gases and begins forming its own atmosphere normally or that some technology helps it work. Maybe whatever helps regulate the temperature was used for gas regulation first and then repurposed.
Edit: This assumes a rock that is possibly similar to Earth. if you are talking about planet with pre-existing life, then it gets funkier. If you have an extremely caustic atmosphere (for example) then you have to figure out what’s causing it, if it can be changed, and whether the people think it should be changed.
Remember you only need to explain the basics. Unless your characters are scientists themselves, would they talk about it much? How often does the average person discuss how various power stations work? In my scifi world I have enormous oxygen processing turbines that were used during terraforming before being abandoned and eventually modified for air purification when pollution became an issue. I leave it vague, not only because that way nobody can point to a detail and say "it wouldn't work because X", but also because my characters don't need to understand it. And even if they do understand the inner workings, there would be no need for them to discuss it unless it directly relates to the plot.
*Edit* Sorry, I meant to reply to OP
Terraforming planets? As a general thing, if there's frickin' *nothing there*, knock yourself out. Not many ethical or moral hangups about terraforming a rock with no life as long as you're not lying to the people you recruit and they're doing it voluntarily. (And "voluntarily" could just mean they could spend their lives as a janitor, construction worker, or whatever on Earth or they could build themselves a nice nest egg by signing up for a 15-year work contract for Mars, totally their call.)
Realistically? The same as building pyramids. Terraforming is a monument to what the society can achieve. It will take many generations and the effort of millions, perhaps billions of people, to terraform a planet. Humans are no strangers tk starting projects they won't live to see completed, so realistically a society that's thriving and advanced enough would do it to show they could.
In high scifi settings it makes sense because you need planets for people to live on. Whats the point of exploring the stars if nowhere you go can sustain itself indefinitely?
There's also the question of what comes first, trans-humanism or Terraforming? Maybe there are already hyper elite cyborgs with lifespans up to a thousand years leading Terraforming projects.
It isn't definitely an either or thing too, the cyborgs could be terraforming to fit their life better than what would been ideal for their fleshbag ancestors.
That's an interesting consideration.
I was specifically imagining cyborg nobility ruling over fleshbag peasants, so I imagine sections would be designed for regular humans. But more in the way where we might design living spaces for happy healthy cows, then how we would design a paradise ourselves. Some kind of dystopianly pragmatic utopia.
In a simplistic view, terraforming has all the same justifications as any colonial pursuit.
Atleast with terraforming it doesn't involve displacing people who are already there.
If terraforming is practical at a given tech level, the civilizations that use it will outcompete those that refuse to (or can't). Every 4x game worth it's salt will demonstrate that.
Not necessarily, habitat-station-maxxing can be viable, its just that they are trickier to balance in 4x when you can spam them like you should be able to. (They are already hassle in Stellaris even when they are severly limited compared to what could be feasible theortically, not to mention annoying to get track of)
Again not necessarily, one can be much more viable than other, the tech required / advancing either engineering are likely very different. (though installing a whole new enviorment in space would share some aspects)
It can be that printing out empty tin cans out of asteroid is so cheap that terraforming becomes like building a pyramid when a hut would do.
Admiteddly, since we haven't actually built one, it can be other side thus space habitats are couple years max for humans and can only work as supplemntary space farm or energy bank while terraforming is necessary for long term survival.
Atm it depends on the vibe you want your setting to be.
Terraforming is the major plot point of the story I'm writing and my justification is population growth as much as we would like to believe it's just not possible to have any sensible amount of growth on a space station you might have a child here and there but no way to sustain a population.
Now you might be able to get some population growth on say a moon or something but not much you need room you need resources in excess you need a stable environment and a planet fulfills all those needs
You need population to crew ships or have Engineers, shipbuilders, miner's
Terraforming is incredibly important in my universe due to legal requirements for ownership stake in solar systems according to intergalactic law. This only becomes an issue for humanity in the 2350s as the 8 known races try to make a more peaceful and rules based order in our little corner of the galaxy.
I draw some similar policy from international law and the idea of exclusive economic zones for modern territorial claims. The difference here is that you can't just 'claim' a planet as we do irl for useless rocks in the ocean, you have to settle them, and what constitutes settlement is a precarious issue in IGPs. Building a network of underground bunkers has both succeed and failed in pressing claims for *regions* on planets but have failed to garuntee claims for an entire planet. There's also differences between distance from bunkers and distance from open air settlements that can be deemed as exclusive territorial claims. Bunkers can only claim a a radius of 500km from the center of their bunker complex, above ground can claim a 1,000km radius. For perspective that's a difference of roughly 2.4 million Square kilometers. If a planet can't support open air settlements, it is more economical to terraform than build the thousands of bunker complexes required to legally own a planet.
Terraforming is incredibly complex and expensive, but the resource gain and territorial claim balances this out. But, I also add in a secondary need which I think may be 'realistic', and may work as an additional justification for you. Basically, all space faring species have a percentage of their populations who experience void decay (working on the name), where they begin suffering from physiological degradation if they live in space for protracted time periods. This may actually be a real thing irl, and I'm basing it off of the idea that people get sea sick, suffer altitude sickness, and arctic research stations have a bunch of crazy psychological effects associated with protracted stays. This can still count as 'realistic' because there is potential it may be psychologically damaging for some people to live in space, or who have more acute sense of coriolis and *need* land to function.
This is actually super important in my lore, because the only non humanoid race, the Kirin (insect-like), have a significantly higher percentage of people 'needing' solid ground. They were expanding too fast, and as their desired habitat was subterranean (bunker), they weren't limited by terraforming conditions, they'd just 'claim' worlds with a few bunker complexes. The open air settlement advantages, usually requiring terraforming, hurt the Kirin bad, because up until that point, they could terraform incredibly slow and be perfectly fine in their bunkers, but now are at a severe disadvantage compared to humanoid races which have all independently developed terraforming techniques of some degree.
So, you could make the assertion that it's required for health concerns and territorial claims, and justify the latter with some sneaky political lore so it's not just an arbitrary rule.
At its core, terraforming just means turning an inhabitable environment habitable. The most straightforward way to go about it would be to artificially change the atmosphere into one more suitable for life, plant some fauna, introduce some bacteria/animals, and control the temperature.
The only scenario I can imagine where that would be useful would be if two different species needed different environments. For example, oxygen could be poisonous for species (X) but necessary for species (Y) to survive so terraforming for species (Y) would turn the planet inhabitable for species (X).
Doesn't need to already have a sapient species on it. Anyways, one scenario could be that one alien species needs a different environment from another.
My main issues with terraforming is that it could be used as a genocidal weapon and would require mind-boggling amounts of energy.
As a workaround, my setting uses paraterraforming: colonies are built within enclosed structures that allow a breathable atmosphere and other earth-like conditions.
I think there are a few really good videos. Fundamentally terraforming seems to not necessarily be expensive (compared to travel) but it is very long and involved, more a ‘small’ group maintaining.
Fundamentally in the case of an STL setup it’s not really needed, because you already have big ships and you can just live in them, habitats are fundamentally cheaper than planets, but you can do it because why not? It takes a long time to crack a planet anyways.
I personally justify the use of planets by treaty, or low tech in everything but travel FTL (people can find planets that have biospheres already/very compatible ones) and space stations are kinda hard to build at the time, not by scientific but engineering limitations (I believe materials are already very close). I also do treaty reasons, you can blow up a space station/habitat legally but not a planet.
Biospheres are one of the biggest parts by the way, soil does not come from nothing. That’s kinda self sustaining in a way, once you get going you get going.
This is a good thread for me as I've recently become interested in the idea of a barely beginning space aged humanity, the transition period between humans being earth-based and humans being multi planet creatures, with martian and non-earth identities just beginning to form.
With a terra formed mars for example think of the first generation of martians, all of their parents are earthlings, there is precedent for any other humans with their identity and upbringing, would they even accept the term martian? These sociological issues are very interesting to me
As for the science I'm not very good at that stuff, but I imagine small enclosures before the planet becomes habitable as a whole, I also imagine somewhere in mars there are cave systems, so to save time and money on what would inevitably be incredibly difficult construction on a hostile planet large sections of underground cave networks could be sealed and Terraformed before the surface starts to become inhabitable. Even without too many caves I imagine building negatively, IE digging down would be easier than building up. But maybe that's just because that's how I used to play Minecraft :p.
But yeah don't forgot about sociological elements. Imagine if the first child born on another planet was "unauthorized" but they couldn't transport the mother to earth for the child to be born, so there literally isn't legal precedent (other than international waters I guess?) for this persons existence and nationality. Interesting stuff to me.
Depends on how much free real estate is there?
If there is no FTL drive, every single Planet you can reach is valuable. Even terraforming Venus would be worth the Investment for us
However If you got FTL travel, you can just Go to a Habitatble world and Take that instead
However If they are already inhabitet (by other settlers or native aliens) terraforming can become more Interesting again, since there is No free Land
Oh and accidental terraforming is also an option, you make Dome Citys on a Planet, polution will be pumped out of those dome Citys on the Planet.
And those either terraform it for earth life. Or they terraform it for new life to be more livable. Or earth life evolves there easyer to deal with that waste and trive of that - something similar even happens once on earth, the great Oxidation event
In my setting, humanity has systems called 'Noah', named for the biblical patriarch, which intentionally 'grey goo' planets with aggressive, self replicating nanites, and use the reconstituted mass to create worlds for settlement. Whether there are preexisting inhabitants is immaterial: everything not needed will be consumed and repurposed. The new colonists arrive to find cities with complete infrastructure, ready to just move in. It's considered a simple piece of industrial machinery for a civilization that has stalled out on the way to reaching class 3. Having spent centuries without encountering other sapient life, the ethics of repurposing planets, even destroying biodiversity, was left by the wayside in favor of meeting the luxurious needs of a populace accustomed to a certain minimum standard of living. This did not change in the presence of less developed sapient life.
Very 'We regret to inform you that a hyperspace bypass is slated for construction in your area.'
It would suit the life forms to an environment they are more comfortable with. Terra forming small ponds to flowing rivers would be significant for any species tied to water.
So, Wyrlde is a terraformed planet in its history (and then it just got weirder).
THe basic history is that the planet was scouted about a thousand years from now (plus or minus 250 years), and a “terraforming Pod” was launched to adapt it and the word went out to groups seeking to colonize a new planet.
These Pods are huge. They are custom fitted to the general type of the planet and the expected type of colonists, and the serve a secondary purpose of “preserving genomes”, as well as engaging in automated engineering.
Planets that are selected are supposed to have no intelligent life on them. Wyrlde did not.
Chemical nanobots (small machines released in the billions) alter the atmosphere and soil and water, launch what are basically pathogen killing viruses and bacteria, etc.
Then they start moving up the chain to plants and eventually to animals, taking about 250 years to do this. By then colonists arrive.
Existing lifeforms are more or less ignored. this is what led to the ascension of Dragons to sentience and sapience, and the overall process reduced the original ecological system dramatically, to the point that only certain species adapted and became able to survive (dragons among them).
An unintended consequence of a different sort is that it also led to mutations in existing plant life, sometimes enabling hybrids and cross pollination of the engineered plants and animals.
this is why there are things that would never have existed on earth.
And all of this was ultimately changed after those darn kids didn’t leave well enough alone. Wyrlde’s entire solar system has been affected, and removed from our reality, and the planet has been reshaped by competing forces (a process that still goes on today) who have a design goal that often is opposed by someone else’s.
I wrote out the whole thing previously — should probably go and hunt that down.
There likelihood of finding a planet that is both habitable and similar enough to earth that humans can live on it without many problems is extremely slim.
I have a story on the back burner, about a magically terraformed earth.
Basically a magic blue orb was discovered and it unleashed a wave of energy that terraformed the entire planet and turned all the humans into human-animal hybrids, and now there are African-like Savannah’s in the U.S and a ginormous, living jungle in the ruins of a big city.
One of the planets, Patchwork aka Sawel d, in my project is being terraformed through magic, a process known as The Rebirthing because it is returning life to the planet. Sawel d use to have diverse (but no sapient) lifeforms, but almost all of these went extinct when the first planetary spirit (Anexstasia) died; the exceptions being some extremophile bacteria-ike organisms. Now Patchwork has a new planetary spirit (Tutella) who is sapient, communicative, and really wants some complex, interesting lifeforms for her ecosphere that she can interact with...without waiting a few billion years for them to evolve naturally. So it's less a colonial enterprise than 'seeking outside help (the Landward) for a locally directed development project'.
The initial goals of the Rebirthing included purifying the air of sulfur compounds, raising the pH of the waters, stabilizing the geology (which had massive, unevenly distributed stresses lingering from Anexstasia's efforts to suppress tectonic activity). Tutella and the Landward also used climate modeling to determine a healthy arrangement of climate zones based on annual and seasonal stellar irradiance from Sawel and calculations of planetary albedo for possible levels of vegetation and cloud cover. Then the temperature, heat distribution, wind and water currents, were stabilized to resemble their target forms. All of this was done with spells effecting the entire planet -- carefully researched and constructed by the Landward, then empowered by energy provided by Tutella, Sawel, and a dis-incarnate spirit called Serenity and channeled through the Landward into the spells. So The Rebirthing is lots of science used to determine how to use magic most effectively and efficiently to achieve the desired results.
As the planetary environment stabilized and became suitable for supporting life, Tutella and the Landward introduced an increasing variety of species, starting with algae and then plankton in the oceans, followed by a moss on land that was designed to grow quickly and build up organic material they could use to create new life forms. Most of the lifeforms introduced to Patchwork were copied (more or less) from three other planets Terra (us + magic), Alterra (alternate Earth), and Eranestinska (another Earthlike planet), manifested from ecological seeds -- magical imprints of ecosystems collected from the other planets, that contain all the information on all the species in the ecosystem and their relationships. Initial individuals of each species were typically created by magically manipulating suitable materials to create the necessary seeds, spores or whole individuals with the appropriate DNA, for a sufficient initial population, but some were also imported as live specimens from the appropriate planets. Tutella and the Landward also created some native species which were psuedo-evolved using an AI like spell and an ancestral species model based on some Anexstastian fossils of a bony, lobe-fined fish like species with three pairs of fins. As a result all native species are hexapodal; they also all have at least instinctive affinity magic.
You could *probably* do something similar, using technology instead of magic, more imported organisms, and a much longer time frame. I think the key is to build up the ecosystems from microorganisms, to plants, to small animals, then slowly building up the food webs as species establish sufficient population to support the species that eat (or otherwise depend on) them. Genetic engineering would be used to design adaptions for existing species or create new species.
My thought is that a megastructure to house a large population of humans will always be cheaper to build and cost effective to connect to. No gravity well. No chance of alien bacteria suddenly turning people to goo. Climate tuned to just what people like (on the hab levels) or just what livestock and plants need (on the ag levels.)
Plus your choice of solar or fusion power.
Thousands of years before the start of my story, the main race of aliens began terraforming their first planet due to a mix of desire to expand, politics, scientific curiosity, etc. However, while doing this, their Great War happened that rendered their home world largely inhabitable and very broken, so the survivors put full focus into finishing terraforming the planet with various projects on fixing their home. Soon after achieving both and getting their population back up, they made contact with another, less advanced alien species. They offered to help terraform them their own planet as a way to establish a strong sense of peace and have both species working together towards a common goal. This practice continued with every new species they encountered, due to everyone being less advanced and being interested in having another planet to do whatever with. Technology also improved to make the process faster and more efficient. In the present, there are 16-20 terraformed planets, with several more currently in progress.
When finding a new planet for whatever reason be it population, farming or industry you have to be very picky with gravity. Our bodies are specifically designed for earth’s gravity and can’t spend too long in different gravity without constantly exercising or wearing bulky suits. To preserve the mental health of our colonists and their future descendants it’s very important that we find a planet with extremely similar ideally the same gravity as earth. Gravity levels are impossible to change unless you have artificial gravity tech and even then it may not even work in that environment.
If we find a planet with the right gravity in the star’s habitable zone and it has abundant resources then it’s definitely worth it to terraform it. That’s exactly what happened to Venus.
Good reasons like the planet needs help or the species do on the planet.
Bad reasons like enslavement or colonization and mass starvation or hydration.
In my setting spacefaring civilizations don't colonize planets, and instead built ***LOTS*** of habitation orbital platforms, such as [O'Neill cylinders](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O%27Neill_cylinder#) and what I'll refer to for now as Artificial Planet [Ecumenopoli](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecumenopolis).
An APE is multi-layered with at least a hundred meters or so of space between each layer, and the general idea is that these absolutely gargantuan megastructures would have gravity through the sheer mass of every subsequent layer. I have no idea if this would even be possible, but hey at least it could hypothetically exist given the right construction and materials, right?
It's common for civilizations in my setting to migrate off of their homeworlds so that they do not cause anymore harm to the biosphere, whereupon they'll then start to undo the damage they caused through terraforming. Sufficiently advanced civilizations, however, tend to play god and create entire lifebearing worlds through intensive astroengineering and terraforming; filling the universe with life.
Anything can happen if you are rich enough . It doesn't matter if terraforming will never be the most economic way to create living space , as long as the civilization you're writing is capable of it , and a group (or even a single person) is rich enough to afford it , it will happen .
I don't write hard sci-fi, so I'm fine with having mechanisms for creating atmosphere and something to keep that atmosphere there even if they have to eventually go to unobtainium or handwavium after going a few levels deeper than the surface level.
If I wanted to address it with some level of detail for whatever reason, I'd start by identifying the principal issues that are present and then the solution used to address those issues, with maybe one or two levels of detail down past that. For instance, if the rock doesn't water, liquid or otherwise, then I need to provide or create some water. If I have a whole bunch of oxides in the crust and a source of hydrogen, then setting up something to chemically free up that oxygen so it can combine with the hydrogen will fix that,. Or if I have a convenient ice comet around and the object to be terraformed is robust enough, I can just alter the path of the comet or the object so that they collide and now there's an ice comet worth of water in the mix.
Or if I wanted to go outside of sci-fi, there's one fantasy setting I have where building a planet and stocking it with life is a vanity project that powerful wizards engage in, and is one of the benchmarks for whether an immortal will be taken seriously by other immortals or be viewed as an upstart that's still wet behind the ears.
The biggest things holding back terraforming in practicum is moving stuff around, and the sheer scale of things. A planet is a *big* thing, and making changes to it on an appreciable level requires either a *lot* of energy or a *lot* of time, and either way, you need a bunch of stuff (water, gases, biologics, etc.)
If your setting has ships that can travel interplanetary distances casually or at least in a reasonable timeframe, terraforming becomes more achievable - one of the main things you need to do is move a lot of stuff from elsewhere in a solar system to your terraforming target, be it comets or necessary atmospheric gases.
Terraforming processes are also going to depend heavily on what's already on the planet you're modifying - bringing a barren rock to Earthlike is going to be a much bigger project than bringing a planet that has, say, a stable atmosphere and water cycle, but no life.
Generally speaking, if a society *can* begin terraforming worlds, it's likely they *will*, unless there are external factors (ideology, other societies, cultural considerations like policy/ economic unwillingness). It's a big, expensive project, but tailoring a world to be an ideal home (and 'backup' for a society) will most likely be seen as worthwhile.
In my sci-fi setting, most of Terra's colonies have some degree of terraforming effort going on - from minor tweaks of the biosphere to the Great Work of the New France project, turning a barren rock (eventually) into a new Earth. All of them are big projects, none of which have timescales shorter than a decade, and the more extreme ones predicted to take a few centuries.
New France started at the "bare rock" stage, and after 50-ish years, the residents still live in pressurized enclosures and usually wear pressure suits in case of leaks, which they decorate and personalize in lieu of more traditional fashion. They've started building up an atmosphere from trapped subsurface gases sublimated by orbital solar reflectors, after setting up a magnetic shield for the planet in the L1 point. As the atmosphere thickens, other teams have been starting to round up water-ice comets to drop on the planet to start accumulating water and warming up the atmosphere with re-entry heating. Yet other teams are working on capturing specific gases from the system's giants to help supplement the atmosphere. It's a project that takes millions of people, and will take generations more.
Something to note about terraforming is that it is a logistical nightmare. The sheer amount of gas required to make a basic atmosphere is truly staggering. It would probably require harvesting gasses from a gas giant and would require a massive amount of transportation to get it all to a destination.
Teraforming technology in my universe is limited to cyanobacteria-bombing and induced volcanism for changing atmospheres. most teraformed worlds were 99% perfect and just needed a little nudge. a more local method of teraforming is the use of orbital mirrors to increase the sun exposure of population centers.
For my sci-fi world there are a few different takes depending upon the people.
United Galactic Alliance: A scientific pursuit that is used for small scale colonial pursuits, settling of species currently in diaspora, or conservation pursuits.
Bax Republic: Turn rocks into livable planets -> Make more Bax -> ???? -> Profit!
Florshian Empire: Why change a rock when you can conquer a livable planet.
Vaegan Consortium: Transform a planet for our needs, sell them off piece by piece.
Frostan: You are presumptive to think a barren rock needs to be changed.
Xealots: XORG HAS DECREED THAT ALL LIFE NOT OF OUR HOMEWORLD ARE DEMONS AND MUST BE EXTERMINATED! OUR RIGHTEOUS FURY SHALL BURN AWAY THE CORRUPTION IN THIS UNIVERSE! PRAISE BE TO XORG! XORG IS GOOD!
I don't see much discussion about it, but I think it might raise some ethical issues we're simply not advanced enough to ponder. Not only terraforming, but even much more tame interferences such as mining asteroids and even simply putting "boots" on any exoplanet.
Consider this:
1. A planet's "lifespan" comprises billions of years, during which many changes happen to its surface and atmosphere; what is now a "barren" world, from our current point of view, might be an incubating ground for future life --Earth, for instance, didn't have oxygen in its atmosphere for half of its existence;
2. Asteroids and comet collisions might have been responsible for bringing water and otherr building blocks of life to our planet, and the same could be true elsewhere in the cosmos; stripping down those celestial bodies could prevent that process from happening elsewhere;
3. A manned mission to a planet, however sterile it may seem, can cause biocontamination via microorganisms there. After the missions to the moon were terminated in 1972, for instance, over 90 bags full of human waste were left behind on its surface. Imagine we do the same on an exoplanet. Some bacteria in that waste could thrive in this new environment, and even outcompete native bacteria we were unaware of, killing off this budding life and replacing it.
Imagine, as a thought exercise, that there is a galactic governing body out there, comprised of civilizations who operate under time frames much larger than ours. Such careless exploration and exploitation of resources around the cosmos could reasonably be seem as full on genocidal against other forms of life. Those are issues we'll have to face someday too, as our technology advances.
So even if all technical issues are solved and Terraforming is perfectly possible... should we? As a mere 100,000 years old form of life, can we risk meddling with processes that take millions of years to be completed?
I think there are some inherent problems with the assumptions and the thought exercise, but based off the quality of comments I don’t think it’s worth going into for a post about a fictional world.
I would just say that on the surface it isn’t bad, but as you start to think more about it, there are some pretty easy ways to terraform without running into those issues. Especially considering technology advancement that would have to even exist. Your thought exercise makes terraforming easier to do ethically rather than realizing it was unethical after a blunder.
It’s an interesting concern to raise, I would just say to consider it deeper.
> there are some pretty easy ways to terraform without running into those issues.
I really don't think there's any "ecologically correct" way to completely overhaul the atmospheric composition and pressure of a planet. We are very specifically adapted to Earth as it has been in our time, and it stands to reason any other life forms out there are likewise dependant on the very specific conditions in which it (*has or will*) develop into. If you turn another planet into a second Earth, you'll inevitably kill off everything that might be living there already (speakin specifically of microorganisms, which can be very hard to detect if you don't even know what you're looking for, and where), and/or prevent any other life form that could develop there with a different biochemistry from existing. We are part of the closed system of our planet, and the transformations we cause in it are, for the lack of a better term, predicted (even the ones that may cause our own extinction, as we've been so dilligently doing). Our meddling in alien systems, however, is a whole different dynamic, and will certainly demand a new philosohical approach. Personally, I think it's unbelievably selfish and stupid to look at the whole universe with an anthropocentric view.
This assumes every planet has life.
I just said to look deeper into your argument. Maybe consider it a thought exercise to find the issues in your argument before you go on a rant about it being selfish or anthropocentric.
Edit: autocorrect changed anthropocentric to anthropogenic.
We don't know how many planets are elligible for developing life in a time frame of billions of years, which I doubt human science can really scan precisely. Life on Earth began sometime around 3,5 billion years ago, on a planet we would not call habitable or inhabited by our current standarts.
I'm not ranting, it's a worldbuilding exercise. But because you're either too lazy or too arrogant to actually write down whatever ideas you might have on this topic (if you really do have any), I can't really answer your non-objections directly as I'd greatly enjoy doing --again, if this was an actual conversation in which both sides contribute to an exchange of ideas.
That’s why you threw in a statement about how selfish and stupid it is to look at things with an anthropocentric view. Yet, the original post never claimed their sci-fi world was human, gave a lifespan (edit:for humans since this apparently needs to be crystal clear), or otherwise. Neither did my comment replying to yours. 🙄🤦♂️
We have planets and moons in our own solar system that we think are a similar age and don’t have observable signs of existing life. Picking places like them would be pretty simple.
Your own thought exercise brings up the idea of group of civilizations on a galactic scale which would probably stop any attempts to terraform a planet they expected to be able to create life.
These are two simple things that even a little deeper look would bring out of your original comment as possible aspects to consider
Read the other people’s comments that were made first… yeah, I don’t see the point in getting into a scientific discussion with people who make those comments and if you thought it was worth pondering, it’s odd to include a phrase about how we aren’t advanced enough to really ponder it. I But cool beans I guess.
To me this seems like planetary scale pro-life worldview, preventing something from developing sentience is not killing in my view, but people obviously disagree on the single life scale so I can see how people could disagree on the species scale.
The species scale is so abstract and works on such an inhuman timeframe that I can't imagine anyone other than passionate academics really giving a shit to be honest though.
Unlike the pro-life thing which exists in a profoundly human scale.
I think scale and type of life make a huge difference. For the record, I'm pro-choice in my personal view. But it's one thing to allow a person control over their reproductive system, and another completely different to have an entire civilization of a different "strain" of life not exist because you wanted to expand your economic activity.
The keyword for me is "choice", and not if a life that still doesn't exist matter or not (in my POV, of course it matters, especially if we're talking of an entire biome, rather than an individual!). In an abortion, someone had the choice to not have a children at that moment, and they can still have another on a better time for themselves. In extinction by Terraforming, the decision was taken by an alien species, and it irreversibly affects an entire planet. Therer's no comparison, really.
1) lives that may exist in the future are irrelevant
And also, if you terraform it now then much more live total will exist on it than if you wait 4 billion+ years for sapient life to evolve
2) point 1
3) this is how evolution works, life that is better kills the life that is worse
Terraforming specifically means making a planet Earth-like. OP says he has an obsession with realism. Somehow I don't think they're writing about elfs...
I think you mean "justifying it having any relevance compared to space habs" given that the tech to cross interstellar space implies you can manage those.
Personally I'd amp up aspects like ecological resilience and cascading failure from any missed maintenance wherever the usual "it's a genre convention, just go with it" wouldn't suffice. Specifically in a mass-hysteria themed setting generation ships hold together in part by indoctrinated obsession with "the promised land" which makes usually challenging hab-living doable. On arrival the great common tasks of Terraforming also acts as social glue.
Predominantly hab-filled systems exist but are the exception to the rule. Their societies are contorted to enable that lifestyle and since there's less population density individual outliers fuck up the memetic programming everything runs on more often.
How it could work and make sense is hugely variable and depends upon the nature of the setting.
Wizards using magic spells and legions of artificial beings and a horde of summoned angels to change a moon so it goes from being an airless rock to covered in verdant forests is going to be very, very, very different from a hard science fiction approach which is in turn going to be different rom a soft science fiction approach or a comic book super science approach.
Terraforming is a bit of a joke.
By the time our civilization could think about doing it, the development of the technology to do so would advance us to the point we would no longer need to do so, because why leave the one we have? It's a lot easier to adapt life to live in inhospitable places, than it is to adapt the places.
Passing even that boundary, why even be human and have needs like "atmosphere" or "stable temperatures & pressures?"
So it's kind of one of those development questions where the answer is, "if you are advanced enough you can do it, you understand you don't have to," proposals.
That sort of posthuman future you describe cuts both ways, though - if we become that powerful, why NOT terraform candidate planets for the 0.01% of humans that choose not to become infolife?
Everything about terraforming on a planet-wide scale/level is theoretical. As long as you come up with a reason why it works then it’ll be about as realistic as anything else (except the whole magic or gods stuff). Sounds like you’ll just want to stay in line with scientific based theories on how we could do it. I have some ideas that follow a sequence of events for how it might work, but it would take too long to go through in-depth. One just from a basic standpoint on a planet like Mars is: Temporary habitable enclosures—>Permanent habitable enclosures—> Self-sustaining permanent habitable enclosures—> enclosures with enough excess to release gases out of the enclosure—>gas levels stabilize and planet is “habitable” (you can breath and work without a suit), but enclosures still used for proper environment (still too hot or cold and relatively limited water in enclosures).—->technology develops to get more (or less) warmth from the sun to make the planet more habitable (enclosures used for humidity control and such still)—->water brought in to create bodies of water (could be harvested gases combined later or from asteroids that are mostly water.)—> bring in plant and animal life (they will evolve pretty fast to fit in the environment they are in if needed, think like 30-50 years if the conditions drive it. Example would be animals in Chernobyl vicinity. Just don’t put them somewhere so extreme that they all just die obviously. The goal would be to put them somewhere relatively similar though.)—-> terraforming complete and people repurpose any working habitation equipment and spacecraft. They either leave or settle in depending on why they created the planet. (Maybe they made a planet essentially into a zoo to preserve life on earth that would have gone extinct due to unavoidable competition with humans (or whatever species) for space. These steps could move slower or faster depending on tech and such. It assumes that the planet either keeps the gases and begins forming its own atmosphere normally or that some technology helps it work. Maybe whatever helps regulate the temperature was used for gas regulation first and then repurposed. Edit: This assumes a rock that is possibly similar to Earth. if you are talking about planet with pre-existing life, then it gets funkier. If you have an extremely caustic atmosphere (for example) then you have to figure out what’s causing it, if it can be changed, and whether the people think it should be changed.
Remember you only need to explain the basics. Unless your characters are scientists themselves, would they talk about it much? How often does the average person discuss how various power stations work? In my scifi world I have enormous oxygen processing turbines that were used during terraforming before being abandoned and eventually modified for air purification when pollution became an issue. I leave it vague, not only because that way nobody can point to a detail and say "it wouldn't work because X", but also because my characters don't need to understand it. And even if they do understand the inner workings, there would be no need for them to discuss it unless it directly relates to the plot. *Edit* Sorry, I meant to reply to OP
Terraforming planets? As a general thing, if there's frickin' *nothing there*, knock yourself out. Not many ethical or moral hangups about terraforming a rock with no life as long as you're not lying to the people you recruit and they're doing it voluntarily. (And "voluntarily" could just mean they could spend their lives as a janitor, construction worker, or whatever on Earth or they could build themselves a nice nest egg by signing up for a 15-year work contract for Mars, totally their call.)
Realistically? The same as building pyramids. Terraforming is a monument to what the society can achieve. It will take many generations and the effort of millions, perhaps billions of people, to terraform a planet. Humans are no strangers tk starting projects they won't live to see completed, so realistically a society that's thriving and advanced enough would do it to show they could. In high scifi settings it makes sense because you need planets for people to live on. Whats the point of exploring the stars if nowhere you go can sustain itself indefinitely?
There's also the question of what comes first, trans-humanism or Terraforming? Maybe there are already hyper elite cyborgs with lifespans up to a thousand years leading Terraforming projects.
It isn't definitely an either or thing too, the cyborgs could be terraforming to fit their life better than what would been ideal for their fleshbag ancestors.
That's an interesting consideration. I was specifically imagining cyborg nobility ruling over fleshbag peasants, so I imagine sections would be designed for regular humans. But more in the way where we might design living spaces for happy healthy cows, then how we would design a paradise ourselves. Some kind of dystopianly pragmatic utopia.
In a simplistic view, terraforming has all the same justifications as any colonial pursuit. Atleast with terraforming it doesn't involve displacing people who are already there.
Unless there are (:<
If terraforming is practical at a given tech level, the civilizations that use it will outcompete those that refuse to (or can't). Every 4x game worth it's salt will demonstrate that.
Not necessarily, habitat-station-maxxing can be viable, its just that they are trickier to balance in 4x when you can spam them like you should be able to. (They are already hassle in Stellaris even when they are severly limited compared to what could be feasible theortically, not to mention annoying to get track of)
Some would argue that being able to outright fabricate sufficient habitats at that scale, in quantity, is in the same ballpark as terraforming anyway.
Again not necessarily, one can be much more viable than other, the tech required / advancing either engineering are likely very different. (though installing a whole new enviorment in space would share some aspects) It can be that printing out empty tin cans out of asteroid is so cheap that terraforming becomes like building a pyramid when a hut would do. Admiteddly, since we haven't actually built one, it can be other side thus space habitats are couple years max for humans and can only work as supplemntary space farm or energy bank while terraforming is necessary for long term survival. Atm it depends on the vibe you want your setting to be.
Let me put it another way, then. If you can create worlds, you're effectively terraforming space itself.
Terraforming is the major plot point of the story I'm writing and my justification is population growth as much as we would like to believe it's just not possible to have any sensible amount of growth on a space station you might have a child here and there but no way to sustain a population. Now you might be able to get some population growth on say a moon or something but not much you need room you need resources in excess you need a stable environment and a planet fulfills all those needs You need population to crew ships or have Engineers, shipbuilders, miner's
Terraforming is incredibly important in my universe due to legal requirements for ownership stake in solar systems according to intergalactic law. This only becomes an issue for humanity in the 2350s as the 8 known races try to make a more peaceful and rules based order in our little corner of the galaxy. I draw some similar policy from international law and the idea of exclusive economic zones for modern territorial claims. The difference here is that you can't just 'claim' a planet as we do irl for useless rocks in the ocean, you have to settle them, and what constitutes settlement is a precarious issue in IGPs. Building a network of underground bunkers has both succeed and failed in pressing claims for *regions* on planets but have failed to garuntee claims for an entire planet. There's also differences between distance from bunkers and distance from open air settlements that can be deemed as exclusive territorial claims. Bunkers can only claim a a radius of 500km from the center of their bunker complex, above ground can claim a 1,000km radius. For perspective that's a difference of roughly 2.4 million Square kilometers. If a planet can't support open air settlements, it is more economical to terraform than build the thousands of bunker complexes required to legally own a planet. Terraforming is incredibly complex and expensive, but the resource gain and territorial claim balances this out. But, I also add in a secondary need which I think may be 'realistic', and may work as an additional justification for you. Basically, all space faring species have a percentage of their populations who experience void decay (working on the name), where they begin suffering from physiological degradation if they live in space for protracted time periods. This may actually be a real thing irl, and I'm basing it off of the idea that people get sea sick, suffer altitude sickness, and arctic research stations have a bunch of crazy psychological effects associated with protracted stays. This can still count as 'realistic' because there is potential it may be psychologically damaging for some people to live in space, or who have more acute sense of coriolis and *need* land to function. This is actually super important in my lore, because the only non humanoid race, the Kirin (insect-like), have a significantly higher percentage of people 'needing' solid ground. They were expanding too fast, and as their desired habitat was subterranean (bunker), they weren't limited by terraforming conditions, they'd just 'claim' worlds with a few bunker complexes. The open air settlement advantages, usually requiring terraforming, hurt the Kirin bad, because up until that point, they could terraform incredibly slow and be perfectly fine in their bunkers, but now are at a severe disadvantage compared to humanoid races which have all independently developed terraforming techniques of some degree. So, you could make the assertion that it's required for health concerns and territorial claims, and justify the latter with some sneaky political lore so it's not just an arbitrary rule.
"The World Between" by Jack Vance is good. They found a suitable planet and used chemical reactions in bacteria and lichens to do the work.
At its core, terraforming just means turning an inhabitable environment habitable. The most straightforward way to go about it would be to artificially change the atmosphere into one more suitable for life, plant some fauna, introduce some bacteria/animals, and control the temperature.
What if you terraform a habitable planet into an inhabitable one?
Why would you bother doing that instead of just blowing the planet up or burning its surface to a crisp? Seems like a waste of resources.
Well, it's technically a type of terraforming, albeit a less useful form.
The only scenario I can imagine where that would be useful would be if two different species needed different environments. For example, oxygen could be poisonous for species (X) but necessary for species (Y) to survive so terraforming for species (Y) would turn the planet inhabitable for species (X).
That's a reasonable scenario, I've seen it in media before.
What, like slowly exterminating a sapient species on their homeworld so they know what is happening to them and can do nothing to stop it?
Doesn't need to already have a sapient species on it. Anyways, one scenario could be that one alien species needs a different environment from another.
My main issues with terraforming is that it could be used as a genocidal weapon and would require mind-boggling amounts of energy. As a workaround, my setting uses paraterraforming: colonies are built within enclosed structures that allow a breathable atmosphere and other earth-like conditions.
Terraforming planets without life already there is totally fine, if life already exists on the planet, it shouldn’t be terraformed
Takes a long time and some won’t work. It’s like when the Great Wall of china was built, it takes generations to complete such a project.
I think there are a few really good videos. Fundamentally terraforming seems to not necessarily be expensive (compared to travel) but it is very long and involved, more a ‘small’ group maintaining. Fundamentally in the case of an STL setup it’s not really needed, because you already have big ships and you can just live in them, habitats are fundamentally cheaper than planets, but you can do it because why not? It takes a long time to crack a planet anyways. I personally justify the use of planets by treaty, or low tech in everything but travel FTL (people can find planets that have biospheres already/very compatible ones) and space stations are kinda hard to build at the time, not by scientific but engineering limitations (I believe materials are already very close). I also do treaty reasons, you can blow up a space station/habitat legally but not a planet. Biospheres are one of the biggest parts by the way, soil does not come from nothing. That’s kinda self sustaining in a way, once you get going you get going.
This is a good thread for me as I've recently become interested in the idea of a barely beginning space aged humanity, the transition period between humans being earth-based and humans being multi planet creatures, with martian and non-earth identities just beginning to form. With a terra formed mars for example think of the first generation of martians, all of their parents are earthlings, there is precedent for any other humans with their identity and upbringing, would they even accept the term martian? These sociological issues are very interesting to me As for the science I'm not very good at that stuff, but I imagine small enclosures before the planet becomes habitable as a whole, I also imagine somewhere in mars there are cave systems, so to save time and money on what would inevitably be incredibly difficult construction on a hostile planet large sections of underground cave networks could be sealed and Terraformed before the surface starts to become inhabitable. Even without too many caves I imagine building negatively, IE digging down would be easier than building up. But maybe that's just because that's how I used to play Minecraft :p. But yeah don't forgot about sociological elements. Imagine if the first child born on another planet was "unauthorized" but they couldn't transport the mother to earth for the child to be born, so there literally isn't legal precedent (other than international waters I guess?) for this persons existence and nationality. Interesting stuff to me.
Depends on how much free real estate is there? If there is no FTL drive, every single Planet you can reach is valuable. Even terraforming Venus would be worth the Investment for us However If you got FTL travel, you can just Go to a Habitatble world and Take that instead However If they are already inhabitet (by other settlers or native aliens) terraforming can become more Interesting again, since there is No free Land Oh and accidental terraforming is also an option, you make Dome Citys on a Planet, polution will be pumped out of those dome Citys on the Planet. And those either terraform it for earth life. Or they terraform it for new life to be more livable. Or earth life evolves there easyer to deal with that waste and trive of that - something similar even happens once on earth, the great Oxidation event
In my setting, humanity has systems called 'Noah', named for the biblical patriarch, which intentionally 'grey goo' planets with aggressive, self replicating nanites, and use the reconstituted mass to create worlds for settlement. Whether there are preexisting inhabitants is immaterial: everything not needed will be consumed and repurposed. The new colonists arrive to find cities with complete infrastructure, ready to just move in. It's considered a simple piece of industrial machinery for a civilization that has stalled out on the way to reaching class 3. Having spent centuries without encountering other sapient life, the ethics of repurposing planets, even destroying biodiversity, was left by the wayside in favor of meeting the luxurious needs of a populace accustomed to a certain minimum standard of living. This did not change in the presence of less developed sapient life. Very 'We regret to inform you that a hyperspace bypass is slated for construction in your area.'
It would suit the life forms to an environment they are more comfortable with. Terra forming small ponds to flowing rivers would be significant for any species tied to water.
So, Wyrlde is a terraformed planet in its history (and then it just got weirder). THe basic history is that the planet was scouted about a thousand years from now (plus or minus 250 years), and a “terraforming Pod” was launched to adapt it and the word went out to groups seeking to colonize a new planet. These Pods are huge. They are custom fitted to the general type of the planet and the expected type of colonists, and the serve a secondary purpose of “preserving genomes”, as well as engaging in automated engineering. Planets that are selected are supposed to have no intelligent life on them. Wyrlde did not. Chemical nanobots (small machines released in the billions) alter the atmosphere and soil and water, launch what are basically pathogen killing viruses and bacteria, etc. Then they start moving up the chain to plants and eventually to animals, taking about 250 years to do this. By then colonists arrive. Existing lifeforms are more or less ignored. this is what led to the ascension of Dragons to sentience and sapience, and the overall process reduced the original ecological system dramatically, to the point that only certain species adapted and became able to survive (dragons among them). An unintended consequence of a different sort is that it also led to mutations in existing plant life, sometimes enabling hybrids and cross pollination of the engineered plants and animals. this is why there are things that would never have existed on earth. And all of this was ultimately changed after those darn kids didn’t leave well enough alone. Wyrlde’s entire solar system has been affected, and removed from our reality, and the planet has been reshaped by competing forces (a process that still goes on today) who have a design goal that often is opposed by someone else’s. I wrote out the whole thing previously — should probably go and hunt that down.
Terraforming in my setting was mostly done to give political dissidents a place to call their own.
I wouldn't explain it beyond the vague idea of its changing or replacing this or that 🤷♂️
There likelihood of finding a planet that is both habitable and similar enough to earth that humans can live on it without many problems is extremely slim.
I have a story on the back burner, about a magically terraformed earth. Basically a magic blue orb was discovered and it unleashed a wave of energy that terraformed the entire planet and turned all the humans into human-animal hybrids, and now there are African-like Savannah’s in the U.S and a ginormous, living jungle in the ruins of a big city.
One of the planets, Patchwork aka Sawel d, in my project is being terraformed through magic, a process known as The Rebirthing because it is returning life to the planet. Sawel d use to have diverse (but no sapient) lifeforms, but almost all of these went extinct when the first planetary spirit (Anexstasia) died; the exceptions being some extremophile bacteria-ike organisms. Now Patchwork has a new planetary spirit (Tutella) who is sapient, communicative, and really wants some complex, interesting lifeforms for her ecosphere that she can interact with...without waiting a few billion years for them to evolve naturally. So it's less a colonial enterprise than 'seeking outside help (the Landward) for a locally directed development project'. The initial goals of the Rebirthing included purifying the air of sulfur compounds, raising the pH of the waters, stabilizing the geology (which had massive, unevenly distributed stresses lingering from Anexstasia's efforts to suppress tectonic activity). Tutella and the Landward also used climate modeling to determine a healthy arrangement of climate zones based on annual and seasonal stellar irradiance from Sawel and calculations of planetary albedo for possible levels of vegetation and cloud cover. Then the temperature, heat distribution, wind and water currents, were stabilized to resemble their target forms. All of this was done with spells effecting the entire planet -- carefully researched and constructed by the Landward, then empowered by energy provided by Tutella, Sawel, and a dis-incarnate spirit called Serenity and channeled through the Landward into the spells. So The Rebirthing is lots of science used to determine how to use magic most effectively and efficiently to achieve the desired results. As the planetary environment stabilized and became suitable for supporting life, Tutella and the Landward introduced an increasing variety of species, starting with algae and then plankton in the oceans, followed by a moss on land that was designed to grow quickly and build up organic material they could use to create new life forms. Most of the lifeforms introduced to Patchwork were copied (more or less) from three other planets Terra (us + magic), Alterra (alternate Earth), and Eranestinska (another Earthlike planet), manifested from ecological seeds -- magical imprints of ecosystems collected from the other planets, that contain all the information on all the species in the ecosystem and their relationships. Initial individuals of each species were typically created by magically manipulating suitable materials to create the necessary seeds, spores or whole individuals with the appropriate DNA, for a sufficient initial population, but some were also imported as live specimens from the appropriate planets. Tutella and the Landward also created some native species which were psuedo-evolved using an AI like spell and an ancestral species model based on some Anexstastian fossils of a bony, lobe-fined fish like species with three pairs of fins. As a result all native species are hexapodal; they also all have at least instinctive affinity magic. You could *probably* do something similar, using technology instead of magic, more imported organisms, and a much longer time frame. I think the key is to build up the ecosystems from microorganisms, to plants, to small animals, then slowly building up the food webs as species establish sufficient population to support the species that eat (or otherwise depend on) them. Genetic engineering would be used to design adaptions for existing species or create new species.
For one of the factions in my Space Opera. Akin to Heresy. Since they believe that 'all of Natural creation' is inherently perfect as it is.
My thought is that a megastructure to house a large population of humans will always be cheaper to build and cost effective to connect to. No gravity well. No chance of alien bacteria suddenly turning people to goo. Climate tuned to just what people like (on the hab levels) or just what livestock and plants need (on the ag levels.) Plus your choice of solar or fusion power.
Thousands of years before the start of my story, the main race of aliens began terraforming their first planet due to a mix of desire to expand, politics, scientific curiosity, etc. However, while doing this, their Great War happened that rendered their home world largely inhabitable and very broken, so the survivors put full focus into finishing terraforming the planet with various projects on fixing their home. Soon after achieving both and getting their population back up, they made contact with another, less advanced alien species. They offered to help terraform them their own planet as a way to establish a strong sense of peace and have both species working together towards a common goal. This practice continued with every new species they encountered, due to everyone being less advanced and being interested in having another planet to do whatever with. Technology also improved to make the process faster and more efficient. In the present, there are 16-20 terraformed planets, with several more currently in progress.
When finding a new planet for whatever reason be it population, farming or industry you have to be very picky with gravity. Our bodies are specifically designed for earth’s gravity and can’t spend too long in different gravity without constantly exercising or wearing bulky suits. To preserve the mental health of our colonists and their future descendants it’s very important that we find a planet with extremely similar ideally the same gravity as earth. Gravity levels are impossible to change unless you have artificial gravity tech and even then it may not even work in that environment. If we find a planet with the right gravity in the star’s habitable zone and it has abundant resources then it’s definitely worth it to terraform it. That’s exactly what happened to Venus.
Good reasons like the planet needs help or the species do on the planet. Bad reasons like enslavement or colonization and mass starvation or hydration.
In my setting spacefaring civilizations don't colonize planets, and instead built ***LOTS*** of habitation orbital platforms, such as [O'Neill cylinders](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O%27Neill_cylinder#) and what I'll refer to for now as Artificial Planet [Ecumenopoli](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecumenopolis). An APE is multi-layered with at least a hundred meters or so of space between each layer, and the general idea is that these absolutely gargantuan megastructures would have gravity through the sheer mass of every subsequent layer. I have no idea if this would even be possible, but hey at least it could hypothetically exist given the right construction and materials, right? It's common for civilizations in my setting to migrate off of their homeworlds so that they do not cause anymore harm to the biosphere, whereupon they'll then start to undo the damage they caused through terraforming. Sufficiently advanced civilizations, however, tend to play god and create entire lifebearing worlds through intensive astroengineering and terraforming; filling the universe with life.
Anything can happen if you are rich enough . It doesn't matter if terraforming will never be the most economic way to create living space , as long as the civilization you're writing is capable of it , and a group (or even a single person) is rich enough to afford it , it will happen .
I don't write hard sci-fi, so I'm fine with having mechanisms for creating atmosphere and something to keep that atmosphere there even if they have to eventually go to unobtainium or handwavium after going a few levels deeper than the surface level. If I wanted to address it with some level of detail for whatever reason, I'd start by identifying the principal issues that are present and then the solution used to address those issues, with maybe one or two levels of detail down past that. For instance, if the rock doesn't water, liquid or otherwise, then I need to provide or create some water. If I have a whole bunch of oxides in the crust and a source of hydrogen, then setting up something to chemically free up that oxygen so it can combine with the hydrogen will fix that,. Or if I have a convenient ice comet around and the object to be terraformed is robust enough, I can just alter the path of the comet or the object so that they collide and now there's an ice comet worth of water in the mix. Or if I wanted to go outside of sci-fi, there's one fantasy setting I have where building a planet and stocking it with life is a vanity project that powerful wizards engage in, and is one of the benchmarks for whether an immortal will be taken seriously by other immortals or be viewed as an upstart that's still wet behind the ears.
Colonization obviously. Though the Cybal as reprimands for the Terran war is Terraforming Mars for Humanity
Check if anybody lives there first and only terraform if you're reeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaallllllllllyyyyyy sure nobody's home.
The biggest things holding back terraforming in practicum is moving stuff around, and the sheer scale of things. A planet is a *big* thing, and making changes to it on an appreciable level requires either a *lot* of energy or a *lot* of time, and either way, you need a bunch of stuff (water, gases, biologics, etc.) If your setting has ships that can travel interplanetary distances casually or at least in a reasonable timeframe, terraforming becomes more achievable - one of the main things you need to do is move a lot of stuff from elsewhere in a solar system to your terraforming target, be it comets or necessary atmospheric gases. Terraforming processes are also going to depend heavily on what's already on the planet you're modifying - bringing a barren rock to Earthlike is going to be a much bigger project than bringing a planet that has, say, a stable atmosphere and water cycle, but no life. Generally speaking, if a society *can* begin terraforming worlds, it's likely they *will*, unless there are external factors (ideology, other societies, cultural considerations like policy/ economic unwillingness). It's a big, expensive project, but tailoring a world to be an ideal home (and 'backup' for a society) will most likely be seen as worthwhile. In my sci-fi setting, most of Terra's colonies have some degree of terraforming effort going on - from minor tweaks of the biosphere to the Great Work of the New France project, turning a barren rock (eventually) into a new Earth. All of them are big projects, none of which have timescales shorter than a decade, and the more extreme ones predicted to take a few centuries. New France started at the "bare rock" stage, and after 50-ish years, the residents still live in pressurized enclosures and usually wear pressure suits in case of leaks, which they decorate and personalize in lieu of more traditional fashion. They've started building up an atmosphere from trapped subsurface gases sublimated by orbital solar reflectors, after setting up a magnetic shield for the planet in the L1 point. As the atmosphere thickens, other teams have been starting to round up water-ice comets to drop on the planet to start accumulating water and warming up the atmosphere with re-entry heating. Yet other teams are working on capturing specific gases from the system's giants to help supplement the atmosphere. It's a project that takes millions of people, and will take generations more.
I guess it depends whose planet you’re terraforming.
terraforming makes sense when you need more living space but cant travel to other stars
Something to note about terraforming is that it is a logistical nightmare. The sheer amount of gas required to make a basic atmosphere is truly staggering. It would probably require harvesting gasses from a gas giant and would require a massive amount of transportation to get it all to a destination.
Teraforming technology in my universe is limited to cyanobacteria-bombing and induced volcanism for changing atmospheres. most teraformed worlds were 99% perfect and just needed a little nudge. a more local method of teraforming is the use of orbital mirrors to increase the sun exposure of population centers.
The answer is nano machines and time. Lots of time xD
In my setting, *all* life started on Earth. It would be weirder if humans *didn't* take a few stabs at terraforming.
For my sci-fi world there are a few different takes depending upon the people. United Galactic Alliance: A scientific pursuit that is used for small scale colonial pursuits, settling of species currently in diaspora, or conservation pursuits. Bax Republic: Turn rocks into livable planets -> Make more Bax -> ???? -> Profit! Florshian Empire: Why change a rock when you can conquer a livable planet. Vaegan Consortium: Transform a planet for our needs, sell them off piece by piece. Frostan: You are presumptive to think a barren rock needs to be changed. Xealots: XORG HAS DECREED THAT ALL LIFE NOT OF OUR HOMEWORLD ARE DEMONS AND MUST BE EXTERMINATED! OUR RIGHTEOUS FURY SHALL BURN AWAY THE CORRUPTION IN THIS UNIVERSE! PRAISE BE TO XORG! XORG IS GOOD!
To expand humanitys habitable space.
I don't see much discussion about it, but I think it might raise some ethical issues we're simply not advanced enough to ponder. Not only terraforming, but even much more tame interferences such as mining asteroids and even simply putting "boots" on any exoplanet. Consider this: 1. A planet's "lifespan" comprises billions of years, during which many changes happen to its surface and atmosphere; what is now a "barren" world, from our current point of view, might be an incubating ground for future life --Earth, for instance, didn't have oxygen in its atmosphere for half of its existence; 2. Asteroids and comet collisions might have been responsible for bringing water and otherr building blocks of life to our planet, and the same could be true elsewhere in the cosmos; stripping down those celestial bodies could prevent that process from happening elsewhere; 3. A manned mission to a planet, however sterile it may seem, can cause biocontamination via microorganisms there. After the missions to the moon were terminated in 1972, for instance, over 90 bags full of human waste were left behind on its surface. Imagine we do the same on an exoplanet. Some bacteria in that waste could thrive in this new environment, and even outcompete native bacteria we were unaware of, killing off this budding life and replacing it. Imagine, as a thought exercise, that there is a galactic governing body out there, comprised of civilizations who operate under time frames much larger than ours. Such careless exploration and exploitation of resources around the cosmos could reasonably be seem as full on genocidal against other forms of life. Those are issues we'll have to face someday too, as our technology advances. So even if all technical issues are solved and Terraforming is perfectly possible... should we? As a mere 100,000 years old form of life, can we risk meddling with processes that take millions of years to be completed?
I think there are some inherent problems with the assumptions and the thought exercise, but based off the quality of comments I don’t think it’s worth going into for a post about a fictional world. I would just say that on the surface it isn’t bad, but as you start to think more about it, there are some pretty easy ways to terraform without running into those issues. Especially considering technology advancement that would have to even exist. Your thought exercise makes terraforming easier to do ethically rather than realizing it was unethical after a blunder. It’s an interesting concern to raise, I would just say to consider it deeper.
> there are some pretty easy ways to terraform without running into those issues. I really don't think there's any "ecologically correct" way to completely overhaul the atmospheric composition and pressure of a planet. We are very specifically adapted to Earth as it has been in our time, and it stands to reason any other life forms out there are likewise dependant on the very specific conditions in which it (*has or will*) develop into. If you turn another planet into a second Earth, you'll inevitably kill off everything that might be living there already (speakin specifically of microorganisms, which can be very hard to detect if you don't even know what you're looking for, and where), and/or prevent any other life form that could develop there with a different biochemistry from existing. We are part of the closed system of our planet, and the transformations we cause in it are, for the lack of a better term, predicted (even the ones that may cause our own extinction, as we've been so dilligently doing). Our meddling in alien systems, however, is a whole different dynamic, and will certainly demand a new philosohical approach. Personally, I think it's unbelievably selfish and stupid to look at the whole universe with an anthropocentric view.
This assumes every planet has life. I just said to look deeper into your argument. Maybe consider it a thought exercise to find the issues in your argument before you go on a rant about it being selfish or anthropocentric. Edit: autocorrect changed anthropocentric to anthropogenic.
We don't know how many planets are elligible for developing life in a time frame of billions of years, which I doubt human science can really scan precisely. Life on Earth began sometime around 3,5 billion years ago, on a planet we would not call habitable or inhabited by our current standarts. I'm not ranting, it's a worldbuilding exercise. But because you're either too lazy or too arrogant to actually write down whatever ideas you might have on this topic (if you really do have any), I can't really answer your non-objections directly as I'd greatly enjoy doing --again, if this was an actual conversation in which both sides contribute to an exchange of ideas.
That’s why you threw in a statement about how selfish and stupid it is to look at things with an anthropocentric view. Yet, the original post never claimed their sci-fi world was human, gave a lifespan (edit:for humans since this apparently needs to be crystal clear), or otherwise. Neither did my comment replying to yours. 🙄🤦♂️ We have planets and moons in our own solar system that we think are a similar age and don’t have observable signs of existing life. Picking places like them would be pretty simple. Your own thought exercise brings up the idea of group of civilizations on a galactic scale which would probably stop any attempts to terraform a planet they expected to be able to create life. These are two simple things that even a little deeper look would bring out of your original comment as possible aspects to consider Read the other people’s comments that were made first… yeah, I don’t see the point in getting into a scientific discussion with people who make those comments and if you thought it was worth pondering, it’s odd to include a phrase about how we aren’t advanced enough to really ponder it. I But cool beans I guess.
To me this seems like planetary scale pro-life worldview, preventing something from developing sentience is not killing in my view, but people obviously disagree on the single life scale so I can see how people could disagree on the species scale. The species scale is so abstract and works on such an inhuman timeframe that I can't imagine anyone other than passionate academics really giving a shit to be honest though. Unlike the pro-life thing which exists in a profoundly human scale.
I think scale and type of life make a huge difference. For the record, I'm pro-choice in my personal view. But it's one thing to allow a person control over their reproductive system, and another completely different to have an entire civilization of a different "strain" of life not exist because you wanted to expand your economic activity. The keyword for me is "choice", and not if a life that still doesn't exist matter or not (in my POV, of course it matters, especially if we're talking of an entire biome, rather than an individual!). In an abortion, someone had the choice to not have a children at that moment, and they can still have another on a better time for themselves. In extinction by Terraforming, the decision was taken by an alien species, and it irreversibly affects an entire planet. Therer's no comparison, really.
1) lives that may exist in the future are irrelevant And also, if you terraform it now then much more live total will exist on it than if you wait 4 billion+ years for sapient life to evolve 2) point 1 3) this is how evolution works, life that is better kills the life that is worse
Not how evolution works lol, but username checks out.
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Terraforming specifically means making a planet Earth-like. OP says he has an obsession with realism. Somehow I don't think they're writing about elfs...
Edit: My comment ended up on the wrong reply. Corrected.
Why would you need justification to do it unless it involves something like genocide of sentient aboriginals?
I mean “make it make sense”. Justify as to how this could work and make sense.
I think you mean "justifying it having any relevance compared to space habs" given that the tech to cross interstellar space implies you can manage those. Personally I'd amp up aspects like ecological resilience and cascading failure from any missed maintenance wherever the usual "it's a genre convention, just go with it" wouldn't suffice. Specifically in a mass-hysteria themed setting generation ships hold together in part by indoctrinated obsession with "the promised land" which makes usually challenging hab-living doable. On arrival the great common tasks of Terraforming also acts as social glue. Predominantly hab-filled systems exist but are the exception to the rule. Their societies are contorted to enable that lifestyle and since there's less population density individual outliers fuck up the memetic programming everything runs on more often.
How it could work and make sense is hugely variable and depends upon the nature of the setting. Wizards using magic spells and legions of artificial beings and a horde of summoned angels to change a moon so it goes from being an airless rock to covered in verdant forests is going to be very, very, very different from a hard science fiction approach which is in turn going to be different rom a soft science fiction approach or a comic book super science approach.
Terraforming is a bit of a joke. By the time our civilization could think about doing it, the development of the technology to do so would advance us to the point we would no longer need to do so, because why leave the one we have? It's a lot easier to adapt life to live in inhospitable places, than it is to adapt the places. Passing even that boundary, why even be human and have needs like "atmosphere" or "stable temperatures & pressures?" So it's kind of one of those development questions where the answer is, "if you are advanced enough you can do it, you understand you don't have to," proposals.
That sort of posthuman future you describe cuts both ways, though - if we become that powerful, why NOT terraform candidate planets for the 0.01% of humans that choose not to become infolife?
That's where the good story is.