Terra Forming Mars Is A Fortuitous Path!

There is a hilarious debate going on in the scientific community over whether or not to attempt to terraform Mars in a bid to expand the human territory times two worlds. I say hilarious because the philosophical, some might say ethical constipation derives from once again, the Purists who believe we first must determine whether or not there is life on Mars before we open up an Interplanetary House Of Pancakes on our red neighbor cousin. It's because they believe that to discover life on Mars would prove to the naysayers once and for all, that life exists on other planets besides the Earth.

The problem here is two fold:

A. People who don't believe that life exists on other worlds will never believe it. In the same way that some individuals believe the Earth is still flat and that Neil Armstrong never did the lunar Cha Cha. If you could take these same minuscule minds and somehow transport them across the galaxy to another inhabited planet these skeptics would tell you they are on the set of a Hollywood movie, and that they know Steven Spielberg's hiding around here somewhere!

B. Proof of so called "native" life on Mars is damn near impossible to validate. This is because of our own dirty boots. That is, all the instruments and gadgets that we clever humans send to the dusty red ball carry with them Earth's robust bacteria. They hitch a ride and voila! You got your first metaphorical dandelions on Mars. That doesn't make exploration any less exciting, it's just that we tend to mix it up where ever we go, especially with microscopic organisms. That's why I stay away from kindergarten drinking fountains. Fossils of a giant Chartreuse Flightless Pelican would prove that life existed there anyway, even if it's coloration was embarrassing to Martians.

As you can see, the argument that we should not colonize Mars because we will contaminate it with our own bacteria is expired. There are other reasons people believe we shouldn't bother. The most common is the case for human rights and budget.

These naysayers to Martian colonization are waiting for all us Earthlings to first get along nice, share all our stuff, and stop peeing in the pool. These people want to see absolute peace on Earth before we go pooling our resources into something as foolish as sailing a Spanish armada off the edge of the Earth searching for a quicker passage to India! There is peace on Earth, did you see it? There it goes! Now it's gone. Now it's back! Now it's gone again. Bummer. These individuals need to sit down with a good nine or ten inch thick world history book sometime. Take a gander at the past few thousand years of human endeavor and there certainly is at least one consistency! People constantly abuse, kill and otherwise enslave other people. I'm not saying we should stop fighting it, we should fight the good fight with all we've got. I propose that the human race is at it's best when it has vast amounts of territory to explore, here's why.

Humans were made to hunt and explore. Despite the best intentions of all my vegetarian and vegan friends, those canines they own weren't put there to pierce the hide of a rutabaga. When people can't hunt, or fulfill that most basic carnal urge, collectively they turn and hunt each other. That is one more reason we need more room. To distract us from ourselves.

Another reason, and this is beyond all argument, is that every once in a few thousand or hundreds of thousands of years a great big rock or snowball aka comet philanders it's way into our orbit then collides with Mother Earth like a drunk Uncle on a wedding reception dance floor. We need to hedge our bets. I'm not much of a gambling man but even I know that playing two rounds of Blackjack gives you better odds than just playing one. If we have two habitable planets to live on, we buy the human race more time to learn how to be at peace with itself.

I posit this notion. If Mars was a big, lush green and blue planet full of ripe red fruit and ambling purple koala bear creatures, we'd already been there and back and set up the first Mars Hotel complete with red sky concierge service. I believe the impetus for other civilizations across our galaxy to master colonization and space travel was driven by the ability to see quickly that their neighbor planet was hospitable. Of the millions of habitable planets out in the universe, certainly some of them contain more than one Earth like planet in the same solar system? These civilizations had the best dangling carrot of them all, and probably are the most advanced creatures out there.

We have a handicap in that Mars needs some work. The atmosphere is thin mainly and it's colder than a polar bears rump out there, from around −220 F/−140C to 68F/20C. Most people don't realize how balmy it can get, which with evidence of water, combinedly exposes the reality of real terraforming. If there's one thing we humans have proved so far about ourselves is we know how to crank up the atmosphere! We're pushing our population so fast we could turn the greenhouse effect up high enough Earth will give Venus (ambient surface temperature average 860F/460C) a run for it's money.

How we do it is a whole different subject that I will address in a future article. But suffice it to say, it's going to take some genius and grit like that of the Wright Brothers building their Kitty Hawk. Many of my Native American Indian kin agree that we didn't arrive here from some lousy land bridge as postulated by European dominated science. We came here from the Sky People. I believe we as human beings have a longer history than we can barely begin to fathom. I believe our future is inherently tied to our past. I believe to gain a future worth living, we have to take the risks our forefathers took when they reached out and grabbed the shore of an unknown wilderness then climbed bravely onto the new land.