terraforming
I like to daydream about terraforming planets. When I was young and reading science fiction novels I often read about it but the authors couldn't really describe the details. These days it's getting to where you could actually build a terraforming simulation in a computer with details on what species would suit the ecosystem, and what bits would need to start first. I think we'll terraform mars and sooner than we realize.
First you find a place that has a reasonable quantity of the natural minerals and elements you think you'll need. If you're facing a world like Titan, you might focus on planting cetaceans as the dominant species in a water world. So you'd need all the necessary sea life to support the whole ecosystem and only after you'd developed the lower orders and basic chemistry would you be able to introduce higher orders, even if it's their waste on which the lower species depend. You'd have to manually feed, care for, and accelerate the natural growth processes. Like when you deliberately seed legumes into wheat growing soil to reintroduce nitrates, and plow them into the ground unharvested. We have many ways of remediating dead soil. We have many ways of remediating sterile water. Farmers and fish hobbyists, zoo keepers and pet owners, biologists and chemists all know these processes. When someone puts them all together into one crack team, they'll figure out how to make mars bloom, or titan's seas breach with life.
I imagine you'd start with things like lichen and algae, fungi and bacteria in general. However, rather than waiting for grasses to evolve, as soon as there was enough nutrition, you'd see them. Same with every other part of the ecosystem, you'd seed it at the right point in the development to accelerate the process. I don't know how long it would take, seasons for sure, possibly decades, but like Gods, we'd create life on a dead planet and bring the whole planet into fruition by design, and with speed.
That's when I start worrying about what the focus will be. Will we turn it into an industrial advantage, breeding advantage, or a giant zoo with a genetic library of it's own? What will colonists be tasked to do when they're there? Conquer or nurture?
First you find a place that has a reasonable quantity of the natural minerals and elements you think you'll need. If you're facing a world like Titan, you might focus on planting cetaceans as the dominant species in a water world. So you'd need all the necessary sea life to support the whole ecosystem and only after you'd developed the lower orders and basic chemistry would you be able to introduce higher orders, even if it's their waste on which the lower species depend. You'd have to manually feed, care for, and accelerate the natural growth processes. Like when you deliberately seed legumes into wheat growing soil to reintroduce nitrates, and plow them into the ground unharvested. We have many ways of remediating dead soil. We have many ways of remediating sterile water. Farmers and fish hobbyists, zoo keepers and pet owners, biologists and chemists all know these processes. When someone puts them all together into one crack team, they'll figure out how to make mars bloom, or titan's seas breach with life.
I imagine you'd start with things like lichen and algae, fungi and bacteria in general. However, rather than waiting for grasses to evolve, as soon as there was enough nutrition, you'd see them. Same with every other part of the ecosystem, you'd seed it at the right point in the development to accelerate the process. I don't know how long it would take, seasons for sure, possibly decades, but like Gods, we'd create life on a dead planet and bring the whole planet into fruition by design, and with speed.
That's when I start worrying about what the focus will be. Will we turn it into an industrial advantage, breeding advantage, or a giant zoo with a genetic library of it's own? What will colonists be tasked to do when they're there? Conquer or nurture?