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Comment by staplers | Hacker News Reader

  by the time we have the tech to figure out how to terraform Mars

A billion year oxidization event that forms an atmosphere, creates water from nothing, and ignites the core of the planet triggering tectonic activity?

The myth of humans "terraforming Mars" is so far from reality it makes me question the aptitude of anyone suggesting it.

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Presumably it's at least worth considering if such a pessimistic attitude is warranted. Such a slow oxidation rate is certainly not warranted on a chemical process level. The trick is performing this chemical process 1.5 AU away.

Absolutely, don't mistake my cynicism for defeatism. I want it as badly as anyone else, but the chemical and thermodynamic makeup of Mars does not warrant optimism (given present knowledge).

Bezos's vision is better than Musk's. This plan to gravitationally disrupt Ceres and turn 100% of it into habitat strictly dominates all other space colonization ideas in our solar system not least that it can provide more square feet of habitat than Earth does but probably not the 0.2 km^3 of ocean per person or the 0.7 million tons of atmosphere per person that we have, areas where Biosphere 2 fell tragically short. [1]

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2011.07487

[1] CO2 levels swung violently from day to night in Biosphere 2 because they didn't have enough atmosphere relative to plants and animals; Biosphere 2 probably shouldn't have tried to simulate oceans at all

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