Mars is terraformed, so the technology exists. What we don't know is:

[*:x1fmh9nm]What processes are used

[*:x1fmh9nm]What sort of planet is a terraforming candidate

[*:x1fmh9nm]Whether Mars was a one-off:

[*:x1fmh9nm]Perhaps terraforming Mars turned out not to make a return on investment

[*:x1fmh9nm]Perhaps there are plenty of habitable planets not requiring terraforming, and Mars was altered only to relieve population pressure in the home system

[*:x1fmh9nm]Just how long the process takes:

[*:x1fmh9nm]Decades could mean it's done within a game span, and is economically viable

[*:x1fmh9nm]Centuries puts it out of reach of the human lifetime, and would not give any commercial incentive

Bear in mind that with hyperspace technology, you don't need to settle for an almost-Earthlike planet if there's a perfectly habitable planet even ten times further away.

Ok, thanks Brianetta, I just wanted to check as you had made commentns about 'everything being place holders'.

If you look at what the Saudies have done with ice rinks in the middle of the desert and walled in lakes, if you throw enough money at things you can do it. On a planet wide scale though?? A lot of time and money, I think puts this in the very hard and very expensive basket.

A planet would have to have something pretty special about it to need terra forming.

Something for me to mull over.

Cheers

John

If you want a plot for a gigantic intergalactic war, just drop in some deus ex machina like the Genesis device. It would even attract the Ori (playing for God, naughty humans!)

To make Mars believable as a terraformed planet I think you'd need some external shield that deflects the solar wind and unusable elektromagnetic frequencies. The planet cannot and will not be able to do it by itself, even if it can be done technically, it's not economical at all.

thargoid, do you think the artificial lakes and even islands in the sea will stay for long (especially when not maintained staedy with large investigations thanks to petro$)

i say that's "build on sand" exactly how the bible described it 😉

mankind has no profit of such, it's typical eager of (far to welthy) short visioned people.

if the $'s didn't flow no more (and that won't take to long) what about these projects then, washed to the sea and blown' in the wind.

to take a ice cube and melt it to a lake in the desert, is as wrong as it was wrong to take water from colorado river to humify the desert, it's only a few decades ago, but the desert has taken it back and the once humified ground is now wasteland (deserts have a ecology, wastelands are waste(d)lands 😥

we really shouldn't play god imo, it will return always like a boomerang (and cut off our heads finally).

switzerland has also it's own experiences with that, a little more then 100years ago they sold nearly every tree, until the mountains start to crumble.

and if i guess that $'s (which made only a few ones rich, the rest of the citizens was very poor before industrialisation, such poor that they left for a uncertain future in another continent 😉 , where they also was repelled by the former arrived sisters and brothers, crazy no?) was the reason, it really makes me angry.

we are humans and due to that we make errors, but what is really annoying me, that it seems we are not able to learn from the past.

in contrary, each country/government say's "you can't compare them to us...", "that won't happen to us..." 😡

terraforming seems to me even more impossible as interstellar spaceflight, even if there are some strong reservations i have to interstellar spaceflight.

and, erm, deserts have a high albedo (means ability to reflect light/heat), if we really would make all deserts forested or green, i guess that won't be a good idea.

it's really a "heavenly" task to maintain a planet like ours, we should take care of it, it easy could be that it's unique.

[/hr]

but that didn't means that we shouldn't have such in pioneer, it's a game, it's a sci-fi game, it won't matter much what is possible or not.

to me pioneer is something like a space game under victorian conditions, conquering new terrain, settle new worlds, to find more adventures and a quick way to die. 😉

on the link brainetta linked here it's stated that spaceflight is unlike conquering the seven seas, to me that's not quite true, of course physics are different, but to build bridges over a open and hostile space it's already almost the same.

anything else he stated there is TRUE.

ok, i don't see that we will make it far with ballistic rockets, i think that's a bit overaged, his rocket concepts have no maneuvering thrusters and that means it's a ballistic flight with the only difference that the curve is extended to the space between two bodies. and i really like to see how a rocket can land on it's tail without maneuvering thrusters, his (1950's) misconcept i guess.

but i really start to think to build one for pioneer, just for fun, i could give it weak maneuvering thrust and i'm already curious how such is to handle in pioneer, especially if you don't start to truely calculate the flight. i guess that's very heavy anyway.

to keep all in a realistic range it shouldn't have more then a max. of 10g main thrust (perhaps less), no reverse thrust, and about 0.1g side and lateral thrust. i guess i will get nowhere (or elsewhere) with that thing.