WEBVTT - To Terraform or Not to Terraform? 0:00:03.800 --> 0:00:06.680 Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff 0:00:06.680 --> 0:00:13.960 Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. 0:00:14.000 --> 0:00:16.760 My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. Hey, Julie, 0:00:16.840 --> 0:00:20.159 have you ever renovated a house? I have. I have 0:00:20.239 --> 0:00:23.200 to tell you that wallpaper removal is the scourge of 0:00:23.239 --> 0:00:27.400 all renovators. It's awful, that's gross. I've never had to 0:00:27.400 --> 0:00:31.760 do that. I had to scrape piles off of hardwood floors, 0:00:31.800 --> 0:00:34.960 but that's about it. I don't know. I haven't done 0:00:34.960 --> 0:00:36.720 that actually, so I can't say if it's worse. But 0:00:36.760 --> 0:00:39.279 I can't say that my own experience, you know, being 0:00:39.280 --> 0:00:42.720 in a really small room, you know, filled with fumes 0:00:43.440 --> 0:00:46.279 like fel methyl kind of stuff and trying to just 0:00:46.479 --> 0:00:50.519 inch my inch and get you know, flowered wallpaper from 0:00:50.520 --> 0:00:54.360 the nine is a horrible thing. Yellow women running around 0:00:54.360 --> 0:00:57.080 in them and all that. Yeah, yes, because, uh, I 0:00:57.080 --> 0:00:59.760 mean it's rough with with renovating because you often you'll 0:00:59.760 --> 0:01:02.560 come in to a house or space that is in 0:01:02.840 --> 0:01:06.080 some cases unlivable, and you you have to put all 0:01:06.120 --> 0:01:07.840 this work into it just to get it up to 0:01:07.840 --> 0:01:10.039 the standard where you can be comfortable with the fact 0:01:10.040 --> 0:01:12.680 that you live in this space. Uh, and that's not 0:01:12.720 --> 0:01:16.200 even you know, discussing the process of getting it where 0:01:16.200 --> 0:01:18.920 you want it to eventually be exactly and if you will, 0:01:19.319 --> 0:01:22.800 which can take forever and never happen, that's right, has 0:01:22.800 --> 0:01:25.399 to become habitable at some point. You've got to get 0:01:25.400 --> 0:01:29.800 the the pp shot sent out of the floor. Yes, 0:01:31.600 --> 0:01:34.760 I sometimes there's a meth lab spas the same smell 0:01:35.520 --> 0:01:41.080 catp meth lab, that's what say. But I tell you 0:01:41.120 --> 0:01:44.000 a real fixer upper out there that that really it's 0:01:44.200 --> 0:01:48.480 far rougher than any wallpaper issues you've had, or or 0:01:48.680 --> 0:01:50.760 tiles on the hardwoods that I've had. And that is 0:01:51.160 --> 0:01:54.400 the prospect of moving to the planet March. Oh yeah, 0:01:54.440 --> 0:01:57.520 that is screaming for a redo. Yeah. That place is rough, 0:01:58.200 --> 0:02:02.080 garish red color. And uh, I mean it's just you 0:02:02.120 --> 0:02:04.400 couldn't live on March right now. That's kind of an 0:02:04.440 --> 0:02:08.320 overstatement of the obvious. But but but you could not 0:02:08.520 --> 0:02:10.639 live in it. You would have to ter a form it, 0:02:11.120 --> 0:02:17.200 which is the planetary version of renovating a space. Yeah. Yeah, 0:02:17.280 --> 0:02:19.040 And I at first I used to think about it 0:02:19.120 --> 0:02:22.919 as as like a terrarium for humans, although there would 0:02:22.960 --> 0:02:25.880 be no dome. But I like the idea of having 0:02:25.919 --> 0:02:29.639 this gigantic terrarium on Mars filled with humans. But that's 0:02:29.680 --> 0:02:33.240 really not what scientists are thinking. Yeah they're they're not 0:02:33.280 --> 0:02:35.160 thinking as much as of that, but just sort of. 0:02:35.520 --> 0:02:37.560 But but it does come down to we really wish 0:02:37.639 --> 0:02:40.520 this place is a little more like Earth, um because 0:02:40.680 --> 0:02:43.160 we want to be able to potentially live there. What 0:02:43.200 --> 0:02:46.480 can we do to make it happen? And I go ahead, No, 0:02:46.520 --> 0:02:48.320 I was gonna say, so, well, why why do it? 0:02:48.760 --> 0:02:51.480 That's what I keep struggling with with this topic, like 0:02:51.600 --> 0:02:54.240 why would you tear for Mars? Yeah, that this is 0:02:54.280 --> 0:02:57.240 a big one because it's hard to make the argument 0:02:57.240 --> 0:02:59.240 that we need to be on March right now unless 0:02:59.280 --> 0:03:03.120 I mean some people, if you're Robert Superan, uh yesterday, 0:03:03.200 --> 0:03:05.639 and then we should have been yesterday years ago. I Mean, 0:03:05.639 --> 0:03:09.560 one of the big key arguments is that it has 0:03:09.600 --> 0:03:11.520 to do with the long term survival of the human race, 0:03:12.200 --> 0:03:16.480 that that eventually we're gonna have to become an interplanetary 0:03:16.919 --> 0:03:20.079 uh race, We're gonna have to become an interstellar race 0:03:20.200 --> 0:03:22.360 because we've got six billion of us right now and 0:03:22.400 --> 0:03:24.840 we're not stopping. We're We're yeah, we're growing. There's a 0:03:25.280 --> 0:03:27.760 the Earth isn't gonna last forever. And if we have 0:03:27.880 --> 0:03:29.920 this idea that we're gonna last forever, we're gonna need 0:03:30.000 --> 0:03:34.760 to expand out diversify our planetary portfolio. Okay, and sort 0:03:34.760 --> 0:03:37.320 of like the lorax, We've we've done a real number 0:03:37.320 --> 0:03:40.400 to our own environment, right, so we want to try 0:03:40.440 --> 0:03:43.720 to maybe escape our atmosphere and go to a new 0:03:43.880 --> 0:03:47.840 virgin atmosphere. That's all lussion. Pretty Yeah, it seems like 0:03:47.880 --> 0:03:49.560 you see less of that these days, but it seems 0:03:49.560 --> 0:03:51.080 like that was a real driving force for a while, 0:03:51.160 --> 0:03:53.360 Like all right, well, this one's about used up. What's next. 0:03:53.800 --> 0:03:55.800 But but at a very basic level, if we're gonna 0:03:55.800 --> 0:03:58.880 becoming an interplanetary interstellar race, you've got to take those 0:03:58.920 --> 0:04:01.200 baby steps. You So people talk about going to the 0:04:01.480 --> 0:04:04.920 going to Mars, and then it expands from there. The 0:04:04.920 --> 0:04:08.240 other side of it, and this is generally touted as 0:04:08.280 --> 0:04:12.600 more of a secondary argument, is that UM, in the 0:04:12.600 --> 0:04:16.000 same way that the Age of Discovery propelled scientific innovation, 0:04:16.520 --> 0:04:21.279 so too would the terraforming and eventual colonization of another 0:04:21.320 --> 0:04:24.560 world UM stir up a lot of technical innovation that 0:04:24.600 --> 0:04:27.440 would benefit life on Earth. Yeah. Actually, I even pulled 0:04:27.480 --> 0:04:29.280 a quote to that effect, because I thought, well, that 0:04:29.360 --> 0:04:32.200 is interesting, that that's the sort of view I can 0:04:32.240 --> 0:04:34.360 take on and say, Okay, it might be worth our 0:04:34.440 --> 0:04:37.760 time because indirectly we would get all this technology. UM. 0:04:37.920 --> 0:04:41.120 Dr Adrian Brown of SETI, with that Search for Extraterrestrial 0:04:41.160 --> 0:04:44.760 Life Institute. UM, he had actually said something very similar 0:04:44.800 --> 0:04:48.120 to that, saying that we wouldn't have invented such precise 0:04:48.160 --> 0:04:51.039 time keeping and navigational technology if we didn't need it 0:04:51.040 --> 0:04:53.760 in order to cross huge expanses of ocean to reach 0:04:53.800 --> 0:04:56.719 frontiers in Asia, Africa, in the New World. So he's 0:04:56.800 --> 0:04:59.600 using that same analogy for space, yeah, which I thought 0:04:59.600 --> 0:05:02.080 was interesting. Thy, Yeah, it is. And uh. And then 0:05:02.120 --> 0:05:05.880 there's the whole argument too that to really understand Mars, 0:05:05.920 --> 0:05:08.039 we would need to be there now. I'm not sure 0:05:08.040 --> 0:05:11.160 how well that holds up with our continued advances in 0:05:11.240 --> 0:05:15.359 the robotic exploration techniques, but there's you definitely run across 0:05:15.360 --> 0:05:17.279 that argument. We're saying like, if we want to we 0:05:17.279 --> 0:05:19.080 want to get to the bottom of the possibility of 0:05:19.320 --> 0:05:21.840 life on Mars now or life in its distant path, 0:05:22.160 --> 0:05:28.400 and therefore understand the um evolution of life in the 0:05:28.440 --> 0:05:30.880 cosmos better than we're going to need to be there 0:05:31.120 --> 0:05:33.320 so well, and see I do understand the argument too, 0:05:33.320 --> 0:05:34.680 but then I also kind of think, well, if you 0:05:34.839 --> 0:05:37.680 if you have samples that are collected by robots and 0:05:37.720 --> 0:05:41.120 sent back, you know, you have the data that you 0:05:41.160 --> 0:05:43.680 need part of It's kind of like you have to 0:05:43.680 --> 0:05:45.920 admit it would be just really cool to be on Mars, 0:05:46.160 --> 0:05:48.800 and that's a reason to go. It's kind of like, um, 0:05:48.839 --> 0:05:52.719 you know, we're as of recording this, we're planning to 0:05:52.760 --> 0:05:55.440 go to south By Southwest to record something. It's kind 0:05:55.440 --> 0:05:57.760 of like if you know, if someone were to say, look, 0:05:57.800 --> 0:05:59.760 you really need to send us there, and we're we're 0:05:59.800 --> 0:06:02.120 making the argument because it would also be cool, you know, 0:06:02.800 --> 0:06:04.400 can be a little different if we just sent like 0:06:04.400 --> 0:06:06.760 a little hologram of ourselves. Yeah. Yeah, And that was 0:06:06.800 --> 0:06:08.480 on the table. We were saying, look, let's just been 0:06:08.839 --> 0:06:11.880 robot explorers to south By Southwest and then we're like, no, 0:06:11.960 --> 0:06:14.919 because we won't give the full effect and uh, you know, 0:06:15.040 --> 0:06:18.360 and we'll also have more advanced technology for having to 0:06:18.520 --> 0:06:20.919 figure out how to send ourselves to it, right, So 0:06:20.960 --> 0:06:23.720 it's sort of a win win from Yeah, But so 0:06:23.839 --> 0:06:27.560 I'm also wondering why Mars, Why not Venus well, Mars 0:06:27.640 --> 0:06:31.080 is ultimately the better prospect. I mean, Venus is. I 0:06:31.080 --> 0:06:34.000 don't want to get up on Venus. The Venus is fascinating, 0:06:34.360 --> 0:06:38.160 but Venus is is pretty messed up. I mean it's 0:06:38.160 --> 0:06:42.760 a hot mess. Yeah, like it's it's a hot, highly pressurized, 0:06:43.640 --> 0:06:47.920 acid clouded world. And uh and and Mars it's just 0:06:48.080 --> 0:06:50.520 a little It's like if you're looking at two houses, 0:06:51.080 --> 0:06:54.360 Mars is the better fix it up property. I think 0:06:54.400 --> 0:06:57.560 it's worth mentioning, like exactly what Venus is a teardown? Yeah, 0:06:57.640 --> 0:07:00.120 Venus is more of a teardown. I guess they're our 0:07:00.279 --> 0:07:02.880 terraforming schemes out there for Venus. But but we're gonna 0:07:02.880 --> 0:07:06.280 focus on Mars just because it's an easier prospect to understand, um, 0:07:06.680 --> 0:07:09.360 and to understand what what is what's exactly wrong with Mars? Right? 0:07:09.480 --> 0:07:10.960 We need to I feel like we need to, we 0:07:11.000 --> 0:07:12.600 need to look at that. So one of the big 0:07:12.680 --> 0:07:18.840 things terrible atmosphere, just really bad. Yeah. Then, um, you know, 0:07:18.960 --> 0:07:22.000 keep in mind that humans are involved to live in 0:07:22.040 --> 0:07:26.080 a very small atmospheric level of our own world and 0:07:27.480 --> 0:07:30.080 sort of a special sauce here that ye obviously isn't 0:07:30.120 --> 0:07:32.440 present on Mars. Yeah, and there are layers of this 0:07:32.520 --> 0:07:34.480 special sauce where we die. You know, if you got 0:07:34.560 --> 0:07:37.400 to go up to the top of Everest without any 0:07:37.480 --> 0:07:40.360 kind of transition, then you you wouldn't survive most people, 0:07:40.560 --> 0:07:44.240 most people the serpens would do, but they're used to it. Um. 0:07:44.680 --> 0:07:47.200 So yeah, we wouldn't get enough oxygen we die. Uh. 0:07:47.600 --> 0:07:50.080 It's it's just just way too thin, it lacks efficient 0:07:50.120 --> 0:07:52.880 air pressure and contains way too much carbon dioxide. It's 0:07:52.960 --> 0:07:56.160 freezing to Yeah, it's also really cold. It's the to 0:07:56.200 --> 0:07:58.880 go back to the Goldilocks idea. Venus is too hot, 0:07:59.080 --> 0:08:02.560 Mars is too cold. Earth is just tract and if 0:08:02.600 --> 0:08:04.240 you had just even a speck of water at the 0:08:04.400 --> 0:08:06.400 moment that it hit the surface, it would just sizzle 0:08:06.600 --> 0:08:11.000 and evaporate. Yes. Um. There's also an important point to 0:08:11.040 --> 0:08:12.760 be made about there, the fact that there's no intact 0:08:12.800 --> 0:08:18.040 electromagnetic field um Earth as one. It's generated by hydrodynamic 0:08:18.160 --> 0:08:22.160 convection between the liquid outer core and the solid intercore. 0:08:23.040 --> 0:08:25.480 And without this shielding we to be exposed to a 0:08:25.560 --> 0:08:29.080 deadly stream of highly charged particles called the solar winds. 0:08:29.240 --> 0:08:32.760 So uh, for reasons we don't entirely understand yet, Mars 0:08:33.000 --> 0:08:36.800 lacks the protection of this electromagnetic field if they haven't, 0:08:36.800 --> 0:08:39.440 thank you lately. Yeah, they have. Mars has like only 0:08:39.520 --> 0:08:42.280 remnants of a magnetic field around its solar ice caps. 0:08:42.520 --> 0:08:45.360 So that's that's it's like not having a roof on 0:08:45.440 --> 0:08:47.240 the working roof and the mouse we'd have to figure 0:08:47.240 --> 0:08:51.240 out how to replace the roof. Um. So yeah, it's 0:08:51.440 --> 0:08:53.839 it's that that's pretty rough. But there's some potential in 0:08:53.920 --> 0:08:57.959 Mars there. You know, there there is water on on 0:08:58.080 --> 0:09:01.559 the on the Martian surface, there's evidence that there used 0:09:01.600 --> 0:09:04.079 to be quite a bit right right, there's carbon and 0:09:04.160 --> 0:09:07.720 oxygen in the form of carbon dioxide, and there's nitrogen. Um. 0:09:09.160 --> 0:09:11.240 You know. The problem is that it's like the atmosphere 0:09:11.240 --> 0:09:14.240 there's like ninety point three percent carbon dioxide. It's just 0:09:14.760 --> 0:09:16.679 as a point as episode was it with like a 0:09:16.960 --> 0:09:20.959 point zero one or something point on Earth? Yeah, and 0:09:21.040 --> 0:09:23.439 then yeah, and also on Mars it's like the oxygen 0:09:23.480 --> 0:09:26.439 there is point two percent, so really really low. So 0:09:26.480 --> 0:09:30.280 you're gonna have to supplement with oxygen nitrogen obviously, um, 0:09:30.720 --> 0:09:33.120 if you were to go in terraform. This in earnest 0:09:33.760 --> 0:09:36.160 also that the rotation rate is on par with the 0:09:36.200 --> 0:09:39.280 Earth's twenty four hour cycle. Yeah, and it's close enough 0:09:39.280 --> 0:09:41.600 to the sun to experience seasons, which is always lovely 0:09:43.800 --> 0:09:46.040 because you want seasons when you live in other worlds. 0:09:47.720 --> 0:09:49.199 You know, you want to have your winter home on 0:09:49.320 --> 0:09:52.559 one part in your summer home on the other, so 0:09:52.840 --> 0:09:57.480 Richard Branson. So, so then this comes to question, what 0:09:57.559 --> 0:09:59.319 would it take to fix it up, What would it 0:09:59.360 --> 0:10:01.560 take to get that new roof on it, to bump 0:10:01.640 --> 0:10:04.240 up the atmosphere, to scrape the horrible wallpaper off the 0:10:04.760 --> 0:10:08.280 walls of Mars and uh and make it look pretty again. Yeah. 0:10:08.360 --> 0:10:11.600 And there are actually some some very good ideas about this, right. 0:10:11.880 --> 0:10:14.440 It's good in the sense that they are solutions. Yeah, 0:10:14.520 --> 0:10:18.120 and they're based in science. Um. I think for a 0:10:18.200 --> 0:10:19.800 lot of people like the idea of Like for me, 0:10:19.960 --> 0:10:24.880 the earliest experience I have with terraforming was seeing I 0:10:24.920 --> 0:10:27.760 think Aliens and they had the big terraforming stations and 0:10:27.840 --> 0:10:29.600 I only had a vague idea of what it was doing. 0:10:29.720 --> 0:10:32.360 That it was like, these giant buildings that are like 0:10:32.440 --> 0:10:34.960 spitting out smoke are going to somehow transform this world 0:10:35.040 --> 0:10:38.439 into a place that humans can live on. So the 0:10:38.520 --> 0:10:41.120 greenhouse gas effect, Yeah, well, a lot of It breaks 0:10:41.200 --> 0:10:43.280 down to that, like our experience and screwing up our 0:10:43.320 --> 0:10:46.599 own world crosses over to some of the ideas for 0:10:46.760 --> 0:10:49.679 making Mars a little more like what we want. Okay, 0:10:49.720 --> 0:10:52.640 so we want like big coal mining factories, which you're seeing, 0:10:52.960 --> 0:10:55.000 but basically the yeah, they're one of the ideas, the 0:10:55.120 --> 0:10:56.960 the Aliens model, if you will, is to create these 0:10:57.000 --> 0:11:01.440 greenhouse gas producing factories. Um you know, they would be uh, 0:11:01.640 --> 0:11:05.120 the same heating effect that we have here on Earth 0:11:05.800 --> 0:11:09.079 with greenhouse gases could be reproduced on Mars by setting 0:11:09.160 --> 0:11:11.720 up sending up hundreds of these factories across the Martians 0:11:12.240 --> 0:11:16.400 and releasing cfc CFCs methane, carbon dioxide, other greenhouse gases, 0:11:16.480 --> 0:11:19.679 just pump it into the atmosphere, just basically pollution machines 0:11:20.280 --> 0:11:23.880 on on Mars to try and it's kind of like 0:11:24.320 --> 0:11:26.080 on Mars it's like the water is a little too hot, 0:11:26.440 --> 0:11:29.800 so we'll add some some some cold water to cool 0:11:29.840 --> 0:11:33.240 the bath down, and on Mars it is the reverse. 0:11:34.480 --> 0:11:38.800 So that's one scheme. Another involves large orbital mirrors to 0:11:38.920 --> 0:11:42.440 reflect the sunlight and heat the Martian surface. All right, 0:11:42.640 --> 0:11:45.360 This would giant mirrors kind of like the ones that 0:11:45.400 --> 0:11:48.800 the Soviets experimented with for the idea of of of 0:11:49.240 --> 0:11:53.240 of giving sunlight to dark regions during the winter uh, 0:11:53.360 --> 0:11:57.959 and these would would concentrate light onto the polar caps 0:11:58.000 --> 0:12:00.960 and melf the ice. This would release carbon oxide believed 0:12:00.960 --> 0:12:04.240 to be trapped inside the eyes, and the rise in 0:12:04.280 --> 0:12:07.360 temperatures would over the years would conceivably release greenhouse gases 0:12:07.440 --> 0:12:10.720 such as these CFCs and the same that you find 0:12:10.760 --> 0:12:14.040 in your air conditioner, so like melting polar caps, and 0:12:14.120 --> 0:12:17.080 then this would all lead to photosynthesis at some point, 0:12:17.280 --> 0:12:19.719 right for years and years and years, and again we're 0:12:20.280 --> 0:12:21.760 one of the things I think to think about is, 0:12:22.080 --> 0:12:24.640 you know, you've had some people say it could take centuries, 0:12:24.679 --> 0:12:26.679 and you have other people saying it could take thousands 0:12:26.720 --> 0:12:29.440 and thousands of years. Yeah. One of the important things 0:12:29.520 --> 0:12:32.160 that when you're talking about changing an atmosphere, you're you 0:12:32.480 --> 0:12:35.280 get into this whole area of fluid dynamics, you get 0:12:35.320 --> 0:12:39.240 into the into into just the chaos theory itself. Just 0:12:39.600 --> 0:12:42.559 refreshure the idea that the chaos theory emerged from the 0:12:42.600 --> 0:12:46.920 attempt to create more reliable computer models of weather, of 0:12:47.120 --> 0:12:50.800 of how our atmosphere works, and the chaos theories is 0:12:50.920 --> 0:12:53.000 that you can only figure it out so far and 0:12:53.080 --> 0:12:56.640 then it just it just breaks down. So we're up 0:12:56.640 --> 0:12:58.520 against that and trying to figure out how to tinker 0:12:58.600 --> 0:13:01.360 with another world at fear we don't fully understand how 0:13:01.400 --> 0:13:03.439 our own works, or we at least the thing we 0:13:03.559 --> 0:13:06.000 understand the most about it is that it's incredibly complex. 0:13:06.800 --> 0:13:08.360 So there are a lot of what ifs that end 0:13:08.440 --> 0:13:11.640 up falling into it in different people's figures. Will you 0:13:11.720 --> 0:13:14.240 know will say decades and another will say centuries. Well, 0:13:14.240 --> 0:13:16.200 and then there's the whole dark matter out in space, 0:13:16.920 --> 0:13:19.240 the fact that we don't really know what exactly it 0:13:19.400 --> 0:13:24.120 is and how it affects planets, right so, and then 0:13:24.320 --> 0:13:27.400 when we actually talked about this yesterday about the possibility 0:13:27.440 --> 0:13:32.640 of smashing ammonia heavy asteroids into the planet to sort 0:13:32.640 --> 0:13:36.760 of create the same greenhouse gas level effect. And this 0:13:36.840 --> 0:13:40.360 is another one that's UH that Robert Zubrin UH is 0:13:40.400 --> 0:13:42.960 really fond of and presented in his book A Case 0:13:43.000 --> 0:13:46.360 from Mars. And Zubrin is a really interesting guy. I 0:13:46.440 --> 0:13:49.160 get to interview him for a Discovery News article and 0:13:49.240 --> 0:13:51.480 I have I don't think I've ever interviewed somebody just 0:13:51.640 --> 0:13:54.439 so passionate about their thing, and I haven't plenty of 0:13:54.480 --> 0:13:57.680 people are really passionate about their their topics and their 0:13:58.000 --> 0:14:00.480 their their life's work. But Zubrin is in He's just 0:14:00.559 --> 0:14:03.880 like we should be on Mars yesterday. Yeah. Yeah, I 0:14:04.440 --> 0:14:07.280 listened to the audiophile and at the risk of um, 0:14:07.720 --> 0:14:10.520 Robert Zubern like reaching out to me and saying, you know, 0:14:11.320 --> 0:14:14.679 you're the devil incarnate. That dude is a fanatic. But 0:14:14.800 --> 0:14:17.280 I kind of like that because you need those people, 0:14:17.320 --> 0:14:20.000 You need that passionate level in order to be like, 0:14:20.200 --> 0:14:22.760 we gotta do this, you know, yeah, I mean, you 0:14:22.880 --> 0:14:26.320 got it. You need extremist or and and and and 0:14:26.440 --> 0:14:29.840 extremely passionate people to push these ideas into the public mindset. 0:14:29.880 --> 0:14:33.000 Otherwise there's too many people would just not listen, right 0:14:33.160 --> 0:14:34.760 And and also you know, I know this is a 0:14:34.800 --> 0:14:36.920 little bit of an aside. I was thinking about him, 0:14:36.920 --> 0:14:38.600 and I was thinking about his role and if even 0:14:38.640 --> 0:14:40.560 if this doesn't happen right now, I mean he he 0:14:40.800 --> 0:14:44.640 very well maybe like the da Vinci in the sense 0:14:44.720 --> 0:14:46.600 of his time and that you know, da Vinci had 0:14:46.640 --> 0:14:49.960 all these drawings for flight, but obviously the technology didn't 0:14:50.000 --> 0:14:53.240 exist until much much later. And you know, who knows 0:14:53.280 --> 0:14:55.480 people could go down in history be like that super 0:14:55.520 --> 0:14:57.480 and guy was righteous. He knew it I was talking 0:14:57.480 --> 0:14:59.080 about and he was he was ahead of his time. 0:14:59.520 --> 0:15:02.200 We should have in on Mars in the twentieth century. 0:15:02.400 --> 0:15:05.960 Right that being said, let's talk about the ammonia ridden 0:15:06.120 --> 0:15:10.200 aster which is a little bit creepy. Well, it's it's 0:15:10.200 --> 0:15:11.800 one of the another one of these ideas. This is 0:15:12.000 --> 0:15:16.440 very catastrophic sounding because you're talking messing with the planet's atmosphere. 0:15:16.640 --> 0:15:19.880 It's it's very reminiscent of some of the the scenarios 0:15:19.920 --> 0:15:22.600 we look at with things like nuclear winter or or 0:15:22.800 --> 0:15:27.520 um or you know, asteroids impacting the Earth um And 0:15:27.720 --> 0:15:29.240 this basically boils down to the belief that if you 0:15:29.360 --> 0:15:31.960 hurled these large I see asteroids that were just full 0:15:32.000 --> 0:15:34.800 of ammonia at marks, they would produce tons of greenhouse 0:15:34.840 --> 0:15:38.520 gases and water. Okay, so you would need nuclear thermal 0:15:38.720 --> 0:15:41.440 rocket engines and you'd have to somehow attach these to 0:15:41.520 --> 0:15:44.480 an asteroid from the outer Solar System, and then the 0:15:44.600 --> 0:15:47.400 rockets would move the asteroids in about four kilometers per 0:15:47.480 --> 0:15:50.280 second for a period of about a decade before the 0:15:50.400 --> 0:15:52.480 rockets would shut off and allow the ten billion tons 0:15:52.480 --> 0:15:56.560 of asteroids to glide unpowered. Towards the Martian surface, and 0:15:56.960 --> 0:15:59.480 the energy released upon impact would be about a hundred 0:15:59.480 --> 0:16:03.880 and thirty million mega wats of power. Yeah yeah, and 0:16:04.160 --> 0:16:07.040 can you imagine the dust settling from that? I mean 0:16:07.160 --> 0:16:10.720 it would take centuries and centuries. And it's not that 0:16:10.800 --> 0:16:13.680 you mentioned dust. That's another scheme that's out there is 0:16:13.760 --> 0:16:17.080 to take material from a sea class asteroid or a 0:16:17.160 --> 0:16:20.200 Martian moon and spread it over Mars polar caps. So 0:16:20.320 --> 0:16:24.160 this would be um and another kind of drastic global 0:16:24.240 --> 0:16:27.120 warming type of scheme coated with dust. The poles would 0:16:27.120 --> 0:16:29.960 then absorb more solar radiation because remember you have you know, 0:16:30.080 --> 0:16:32.440 you wear a dark shirt on a sunny day, you're 0:16:32.480 --> 0:16:34.720 warmer than if you wear a white shirt. It's the 0:16:34.760 --> 0:16:39.400 same scenario. Yeah, They absorb more sunlight, causing them to 0:16:39.440 --> 0:16:44.800 heat up, release carbon dioxide, atmospheric atmospheric pressure increases, and 0:16:45.000 --> 0:16:47.240 you'd have the greenhouse effect, and eventually we get it 0:16:47.320 --> 0:16:49.760 up to the point where Arnold Schwartzenhager's eyeballs would explode 0:16:49.760 --> 0:16:51.760 if he took his filmet off. That's the ultimate goal 0:16:52.760 --> 0:16:55.640 in all things, but but also in terraform, all right, 0:16:56.000 --> 0:16:57.600 So I mean I guess that that is the point 0:16:57.680 --> 0:17:01.200 where then people could be supplemented with oxygen and nitrogen 0:17:01.600 --> 0:17:04.119 to a certain degree, but not like full on like 0:17:04.480 --> 0:17:08.200 they would need right now. Yeah, any of these schemes 0:17:08.240 --> 0:17:10.399 you're looking at, it's not you wouldn't be able to 0:17:10.480 --> 0:17:15.040 turn Mars into Idaho in a decade or center. You know, 0:17:15.080 --> 0:17:17.200 there would be this long, slow process of where it 0:17:17.240 --> 0:17:20.720 becomes more Idaho esque. Yeah, And I guess that that 0:17:20.920 --> 0:17:25.280 sort of plays into the outmoded idea that this would 0:17:25.320 --> 0:17:28.840 be a population outlet for for Earth. Right, Like, if 0:17:28.880 --> 0:17:33.080 we reached billion people by the time we actually by 0:17:33.119 --> 0:17:34.960 the time we reached twenty billion people, you'd have to 0:17:35.040 --> 0:17:37.120 assume that we would have had some sort of solution 0:17:37.160 --> 0:17:39.520 in place, because by the time that you can actually 0:17:39.880 --> 0:17:43.399 have Mars habitable, it would be thousands and thousands and 0:17:43.520 --> 0:17:45.960 thousands of years from now. Yeah, So that's one of 0:17:46.000 --> 0:17:48.000 the arguments of like, hey, let's not try to this 0:17:48.040 --> 0:17:51.720 shouldn't probably be our backup plan for humanity. Right. Plus, 0:17:51.760 --> 0:17:53.840 I I like to or I don't like to think this, 0:17:53.960 --> 0:17:56.960 but it seems like if the more we were we 0:17:57.080 --> 0:18:00.600 moved towards potentially having more world peace, that's just going 0:18:00.680 --> 0:18:02.560 to get in the way of people needing to leave here, 0:18:02.680 --> 0:18:04.760 so we do. If we got to the point where 0:18:04.760 --> 0:18:07.320 we have the technology to go to other worlds and 0:18:07.440 --> 0:18:09.640 seed them with our people, you might want to make 0:18:10.119 --> 0:18:13.080 conditions on Earth particularly hellish, and then people would have 0:18:13.119 --> 0:18:15.840 a reason to flee right right right, same models the 0:18:15.920 --> 0:18:18.359 early or just a good reason to make tons and 0:18:18.440 --> 0:18:21.600 tons of money, which is another huge factor. Um you 0:18:21.680 --> 0:18:24.160 get into like mining on on Mars for healing them 0:18:24.200 --> 0:18:26.880 three and things like that, then you could conceivably see 0:18:26.920 --> 0:18:30.240 it being a possibility. Yeah. Yeah, Halliburton's all over this. Um. 0:18:30.840 --> 0:18:33.119 So this also kind of plays into the ethics, right, 0:18:33.320 --> 0:18:36.320 there's um and there are there's actually like kind of 0:18:36.400 --> 0:18:39.800 like a science gang war going on here, and it's 0:18:39.840 --> 0:18:42.000 like the reds and the Greens. I'm like ketting, like 0:18:42.080 --> 0:18:44.159 the reds are the are the folks are Like you 0:18:44.240 --> 0:18:47.360 know what, maybe we should look at Mars and try 0:18:47.440 --> 0:18:49.440 to keep it intact as much as possible and still 0:18:49.520 --> 0:18:51.800 study it, but keep the integrity of it because maybe 0:18:51.880 --> 0:18:55.280 there's something that it's ecosystem can tell us, and if 0:18:55.320 --> 0:18:57.160 we were to try to tear a format, we would 0:18:57.480 --> 0:19:00.600 sort of pollute that possibility of learning more out of it. Yeah, 0:19:00.640 --> 0:19:03.040 it's the idea that there might be some you know, 0:19:03.720 --> 0:19:06.840 little signs of what life may have been like on Mars, 0:19:06.880 --> 0:19:09.000 if there was life on Mars at some point in 0:19:09.040 --> 0:19:11.840 the past, that those those secrets are buried and those 0:19:11.880 --> 0:19:14.200 secrets are there to be found, provided that we don't 0:19:14.359 --> 0:19:18.359 completely contaminate the place. It seems like a controlled crime scene. 0:19:18.640 --> 0:19:21.240 You don't want the bumbling local detectives to go and 0:19:21.359 --> 0:19:23.760 local police have to come in and touch everything, because 0:19:23.760 --> 0:19:26.240 the big city detective he needs to get in there 0:19:26.280 --> 0:19:29.159 with all its high tech gear and figure out what's what. Right, Like, 0:19:29.240 --> 0:19:32.480 we wouldn't want to introduce an invasive microbial species that 0:19:32.520 --> 0:19:35.800 would just you know, lay waste to everything, because then 0:19:35.840 --> 0:19:38.199 we'd be like, oh, we didn't learn anything really about Mars. Now, 0:19:38.240 --> 0:19:41.760 we're just trying to fit our earthly paradigm, you know, 0:19:41.960 --> 0:19:45.520 into Mars this other thing which we don't really know 0:19:45.640 --> 0:19:49.439 about yet. So those are the reds, yes, and then 0:19:49.520 --> 0:19:53.040 the greens, of which Zubrin is definitely a member. Um. 0:19:53.200 --> 0:19:55.760 I mean, his whole thing is like this is actually 0:19:55.800 --> 0:19:57.879 he put it really nicely in the interview I did 0:19:57.920 --> 0:20:00.480 with him, um and a phrase used to this exact 0:20:00.520 --> 0:20:03.000 example of many times. But he's like, if you were 0:20:03.040 --> 0:20:06.000 to make the argument, hey, let's take um, let's take 0:20:06.040 --> 0:20:09.400 Earth and let's turn it into a barren, lifeless world. 0:20:09.480 --> 0:20:12.200 Let's do that. Let's let's get started this project right away, 0:20:12.240 --> 0:20:16.200 you would say, dude, you're crazy. Don't turn don't turn 0:20:16.280 --> 0:20:19.200 the planet, this living, lush planet into a desert. And 0:20:19.320 --> 0:20:23.119 his thing is then the reverse is true too, that 0:20:23.240 --> 0:20:25.600 the argument like, look at Marks. It's dead, it's empty, 0:20:25.640 --> 0:20:28.200 there's nothing living there. It's a waste land. We have 0:20:28.280 --> 0:20:31.840 a responsibility to turn it into a green world. See. 0:20:31.840 --> 0:20:33.760 And that's the problem I have with it because it's 0:20:33.840 --> 0:20:37.399 like absolutism, right, It's like it's dead. And I was like, well, 0:20:37.440 --> 0:20:40.560 I don't know, because NASA actually has said, well we 0:20:40.800 --> 0:20:43.680 you know, there are these methane plumes that keep kind 0:20:43.720 --> 0:20:46.840 of unfurling in front of us, making us realize that 0:20:47.400 --> 0:20:51.399 there's methane being released, which kind of points us in 0:20:51.440 --> 0:20:55.399