Practical Terraforming: Closer Than You Think

August 1st, 2042:
An Excerpt from: Practical Terraforming: We're Closer Than You Think!
By: Doctor Julius Gustafson
From the Chapter: On Mars: The First Test
The Moon has never even been considered for terraforming. How could it be? While mankind may be able to churn up rock and pull water from the depths of a planet, creating an atmosphere from nothing is something most believe is well beyond our current technology. Some scientists even claim it is impossible! I say, if God did it, then we can do it. Just not yet. With that in mind, we did not turn our sights on the Moon with the aim of creating a viable place where one can walk outdoors without first donning a protective suit. Simply put, it's not worth it. 
Thus, the Red Planet, our next step in human space exploration, was to be the first test in seeing what we could do with terraforming. 
The idea was to pave the way for eventual colonization and terraforming of Europa. One day, even Venus (if we can get past the pressure problem). Mars presents a unique challenge in creating an Earth-like environment due to its distance from the Sun, lower temperature and more erratic surface structure. What it does have is water. Lots of water. The problem being all this water is in solid form, trapped at the polar icecaps. Enough to submerge the entire planet if need be. 
Getting to Mars and setting up habitat domes, that's easy. Finding a way to transform the entire planet so that man could eventually stand outside and breathe without help? Not so easy. For six years now scientists and researchers have worked on the problem. When the go-ahead to leave for Mars finally came, it was TERRAform INC, with the blessing of the Global Senate, which took the lead on the project. In layman's terms, the idea was to take the frozen carbon dioxide polar caps and mix it with massive quantities of ammonia via asteroid delivery in the atmosphere to create a massive greenhouse effect. 
As stated, this is layman's terms. The actual process is significantly more complicated, with major research time spent on Mars' lack of a real magnetosphere and to determine cause and effect of crashing an asteroid into the side of a planet. There isn't an extinction event to worry about, as there is no life on Mars, but there is still concern over kicking up a cloud of dust which could put terraforming efforts back several years. 
Now that the Mars terraforming process has begun, successfully, scientists and researchers are looking to the future. Is this a process that could be used on Europa? It was certainly thought so, for when the H.M.S. Athena was launched last year, it contained with it the technology and equipment to cause a similar asteroid event. The difference being Europa is an ice planet, and while the dust problem does not exist there, whole new levels of complications need to be taken into consideration. Would launching an asteroid of ammonia into an ice ocean, especially one that could contain life, do considerable, if not irreparable harm to the environment? We don't have much information on what lies under the Ice of Europa, nor what sort of structural damage such an impact would do. Despite all reservations, based on the success of the Mars terraforming, plans for Europa are a real possibility.
There aren't a lot of other options left in our Solar System for terraforming planets. Venus remains out of reach due to the intense high pressure and proximity to Sol, and the outer planets have very few habitable moons. There is already talk of looking at Titan or beyond, to Alpha Centauri, and more. With these new technologies, humanity has a whole galaxy to explore, and quite literally, the sky is the limit.
Category:Mars
Category:Luna
Category:Europa
Category:Venus
Category:Global Senate
Category:Athena
Category:Titan
Category:Alpha Centauri