"A blue world but the oceans and continents aren't in the right places" "This isn't earth it's Mars" "After we get our hands on it ls the red planet our next frontier?" "Our own blue world is the only place we know where life rises but it didn't always and who knows it'll always will" "Someday all of us may have to move" "Sixty five million years ago a huge Cosmic collision wiped out seventy five percent of the earth species including the dinosaurs" "Another galactic missile a comet or a asteroid could have all the timo our own planet is getting crowded With so many people we are exhausting our natural resources as fast as we can extract them" "Another world war could not only mankind but our planet." "All good reasons for increasing our options and then there is simple human nature we want to know what's out there" "Of the planets in our solar system" "Mars is the likely spot for a human colony but that's down the road" "We have to get there first" "This is something that could happen in my lifetime" "The preparations will probably take five to ten years to convince ourselves that it's economically scientifically sound" "That we could do it safely" "That we could do it for a cost that America could afford" "That the rest of the world could afford and then we could go to the American people and say we're ready" "Getting people to Mars is just the next chapter in the long story of humankind's journey into the space The journey began when the first man" "looked through a narrow tube and a piece of glass and be held a whole new world" "With the advent of the space age and space technology we could take our telescopes closer to the planets or onto the surface of planets themselves" "The exploration of the solar system has been a very simple step by step process" "First of all there were quick visits flybys pictures sent back to earth" "They were followed by closer visits where spacecrafts stayed in orbit or landed on the planet ln turn, in the case of the moon they were followed by manned landings themselves" "This is the pattern that should be followed for the exploration of the solar system beyond our earth and the moon in other words Mars and the other planets" "The first step on the voyage into space began with the human telescope used by Galileo in 1 61 0" "Our first observations were simply with the naked eye the planets as dots of light moving against the background stars" "The telescope turned those dots into real worlds for the first time ln the late eighteenth century a single observation with a homemade telescope doubled the size of the known solar system in one day" "William Herschel a German born composer living in England thought he'd found a new comet" "What he'd actually discovered was a distant satellite of our sun the planet now called Uranus" "Herschel was the only star gazer to ump to the wrong conclusion ln the early twentieth century the great American astronomer" "Percival Lowell thought he found canals on Mars" "An Italian astronomer had earlier spelt canali" "This Italian for canals natural or otherwise" "Lowell decided the canali were not natural their parallels were too regular" "What he observed through his great telescope was evidence enough for Lowell" "His famous drawings of the canals on Mars started a century of on again and off belief in Martians" "The most modern of earth telescopes still takes us only heir heavenly views so far of the solar system have wet our appetites for a close look" "The answer , the flyby mission" "With the spectacular images from the Voyager flybys of the late nineteen seventies and eighties the outer solar system became more familiar" "The next generation of explore were robots that could actually land planets and orbiters that could map them in detail from above" "The most ambitious space mission ever is due to blast off in October 1 997 the Cassini-Huygen space craft is heading for the magnificent ringed planet Saturn and its largest moon the mysterious Titan" "Titan is one of two known worlds shrouded in a dense nitrogen the other is our own earth" "But Titan's a cold cold place in some ways it is like a very young earth in a deep freeze" "To get to distant Titan will take Cassini seven years lt would take far longer without the technique called gravity assist ln a kind of celestial slingshot" "Cassini will swing past Venus twice the earth once and giant Jupiter once before gaining enough speed to be flung out to Saturn" "reaching speeds of above eighteen thousand miles per hour ln November 2004 as it approaches Titan Cassini will release its robotic lander, Huygens" "It actually looks somewhat like a flying saucer no question about it lt has a sort of conical shape in the front and uh, it looks somewhat like a large convex lens and small one which has often been associated with the appearance" "of unidentified flying objects" "As Huygens enters Titan's atmosphere the eight foot large flying saucer will be traveling at four miles a second almost ten times faster than Concorde" "As it slows down a heat shield protects it from searing temperatures" "The main parachute opens when it gets down to a quarter of a mile a second lt's still more than a hundred miles above Titan's surface" "As the probe drifts down on a smaller parachute it will collect scientific data" "Finally a few hundred feet above Titan's surface landing lights will switch on so cameras can record the touchdown" "The headlights are a backup system lt believed that enough sunlight filters through Titans clouds to bathe the surface in an eerie glow" "We wound know for sure until 201 4" "The Cassini mission is just one link in a chain of space exploration stretching back to the fifties" "Cassini represents the next step in our exploration of the solar system" "Back in 1 958 a plan was enunciated forfirst sending the reconnaissance missions" "Then sending missions that stayed longer in the planetary system and did more exploration and then finally when possible for sample return and" "Cassini is that second step" "Cassini is as up to date as space probes get" "But inventors at is Robotics in Boston are taking things to the next level they're designing space bugs" "These agile, self-powered mini robots will crawl out of future landers to gather data like a hatch of smart insects" "Uh, the future of legged robotics in space is the fact that for one thing they're ability to get over obstacles is much better than a traditional ract vehicles or wheeled vehicles" "And, um, a smaller package like this is much more robust than say a larger package where you only have one that you sending to the planet whereas we could send fifty or a hundred of these to Mars or something like" "that to do it's exploration" "And, uh, you know even if half of them fail we're still getting valid data back" "You can have video links on the robots so that you know when they're sent out into space to be planetary exploration you can get video data back on on what it's seeing and where it is and you know the structure of the rocks" "or the planet or the soil or whatever data you want" "Man you are really bouncing ls he on the ground at all?" "With space bugs go man may follow" "Ever since the Apollo landings proved we can visit other worlds" "We've been importantly wait for our next destination to land us" "Mars is it" "As long as it hangs in our sky like the crimson eye of the Roman god of war, Mars beckons" "The exploration of Mars is a roller coaster history of discovery" "One after the other" "First in 1 965 images from Mariner iv laid to rest half a century of science fiction" "There was no civilization here, not even a trace of life" "The Martian surface looks nothing like earth" "Then in 1 969" "Mariner Vl and Vll gave us closer up views of the scarred face of Mars" "Forbidding craters some of them hundreds of miles wide" "This closer encounter also revealed the thinnest of atmospheres" "For the Russians,Mars has been a jinx" "Since the '60s it's bought them a string ofaccidents and failures" "Two Russian craft manage to reach Mars in 1 97 1 but sent back little date lnstead, these and later Russian probes drew fire for poor space hygiene" "There has been a lot of concern that the probes the Russians have sent to land on Mars have not been adequately sterilized" "that perhaps terrestrial microorganisms could have stowed away" "Survived the trip and actually once they landed thrived or survived on Mars lt's a remote possibility but it's one that the Russians have not been adequately uh, reassuring about" "Until the mid 1 990's two US space craft provided most of our knowledge of Mars" "When Vikings l and ll reached Mars in 1 976" "They were the most ambitious spacecraft yet" "Giant leaps for in the history of space exploration" "Each had two parts, an orbiter for mapping the planet from above and a lander for touchdown" "Because the Viking were so fragile and so expensive" "NASA worried about putting them down on heeling terrain instead, it chose two relatively flat landing sites" "Touchdown, we have touchdown, touching the ground" "We have touchdown." "Number One Song" "We're looking good" "Far out in space on this cold, boulder strewn world a robot went to work" "To scan the strange Martian landscape each lander had a pair of stereoscopic TV eyes" "Extending from the lander's body was a long,robotic arm at its tip was a shovel which could scoop up soil and small rocks" "For those hoping to find signs of life on the red planet the results were disappointing" "The Martian soil seemed completely sterile with no traces of even the most primitive life forms living or fossilized" "The Martian day is just half an hour longer than ours but the Martian seasons last nearly twice as long as those on earth" "It was the Viking orbiters that gave us the color images and surface data to imagine what a flight across the red Martian landscape would be like" "Viking also provided the first spectacular color views of the" "Martian polar caps" "Especially revealing were the layered deposits of dust and ice" "Appearing as alternate dark and light bands of the Martian south pole" "This weird terrain is believed to have been formed by huge climatic variations on Mars when global dust storms became periodically more intense and frequent lf space tourists of the future can one day buy packaged trips to Mars this will be one of the most" "intriguing places to visit lmagine a skiing vacation, whooshing down frozen slopes at half the earth gravity" "During the summer of 1 976 the time of the Viking operations the Martian atmosphere was very calm a lucky break" "Gone with the great dust storms that had blotted out the surface the year before" "Scientists believed they are linked to the changes in the Martian seasons and are the most prevalent when Mars is closest to the sun" "This would not be a good time for your Martian holiday" "The winds can rage at up to two hundred and fifty miles an hour" "It is not known what happened to a 1 993 spacecraft called Mars Observer" "The craft had returnedonly one indistinct, black and white image as it prepared to enter orbit around the red planet" "Then all contact was lost" "NASA reported that a leaking valve caused the mission to abort" "Conspiracy theorists disagreed" "They claimed that as Observer approached the so-called face on Mars the data being gathered was so shocking that NASA immediately suppress it" "We have many, many instances of where we've seen features on planets which remind people of things and so they say well then it must be and since you see this thing then you have to interpret that it was a civilization and if people don't agree with you" "they must be hiding something" "So I always say to people we have absolutely no reason to hide anything in fact we'll be delighted because the best way for us to get funding to go to Mars which is what we like to do and which is what we think is important" "is if we could find evidence of an ancient civilization" "Observer's successor called Global Surveyor was launched in" "November 1 996" "The craft will provide the first comprehensive imaging survey of the entire Martian planet" "Global Surveyor uses inventive maneuvering techniques that save expensive fuel lt achieves this by using the dragon a thin Martian atmosphere to gradually reduce its altitude on successive orbits" "This is called aerobraking" "After four months Global Surveyor will end up in an almost circular orbit passing over both poles" "Allowing to image the entire surface" "The highway to Mars is getting congested" "One month after Global Surveyor was launched" "NASA's Mars Pathfinder blasts off" "Pathfinder is by far the most ambitious mission to the red planet ever attempted" "Martian rover, Pathfinder's robot undergoes its final tests" "NASA experts make preparations for the spacecraft landing" "The technique has never been tried before" "While Pathfinder's entry into the upper Martian atmosphere is fairly straightforward its touchdown is spectacular" "A thin heat shield protects the craft from the fiery heat of entry as it slows from seventeen thousand to a thousand miles per hour" "As for the Huygens probe a parachute system is used to reduce the speed even further to just one hundred and thirty five miles an hour" "Seconds before touchdown small solid rockets are fired and a cocoon of giant airbags inflates around the spacecraft" "There's no need to make a soft landing instead the whole craft bounces like a beachball across the surface" "Each rebound is like a touch on a cars brakes energy is lost and speed is reduced" "The giant beachball comes to rest" "Slowly the cluster of airbags deflates and the spacecraft gently settles onto its new home on Martian soil" "Like a cosmic flower its solar cell petals slowly open" "With the first glimmer of Martian sunlight electric energy starts to course through the circuitry of this exotic robot" "It's the Fourth of July 1 997 after landing the spacecraft checks out its own systems" "Although its radio signals travel at the speed of light it still takes about ten minutes for them to reach earth almost a hundred and twenty million miles away" "Pathfinder's next step is to deploy its sensors and television cameras and begin to look around" "Scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory evaluate the state of the lander and the all important Rover" "When everything checks out the rover gets a go ahead to set off and explore" "The visionaries hope that the Pathfinder mission is" "but a small step in space exploration leading to the ultimate quest a human voyage to Mars" "Just like the achievement of man on the moon it's the next stage in space exploration" "The moon is perhaps a less exotic destination than it once was but the hopes of twenty first century prospectors suggest the moon not Mars as the possible site of a first human colony in space" "This isn't a fantasy t's in the works" "A Japanese construction company has designs on the moon not only for industry activities but tourism" "Before any tourists or colonists arrive the moon will become home to a mixed group of scientists an advanced party of men and women" "They'll survey the lunar surface do experiments on food production and prospect for possible building sites, mines and scientific installations" "Some astronomers believe the moon would be ideal for a large optical telescope lt's remote from earth would also make the moon a good place for a radio telescope if it was sited on the far side of the moon it might detect signals" "that the earth can't pick up" "For pioneers looking to plant roots for future generations our silver moon has seemed a forbidding desert but hopes are now raised with the tantalizing prospect of frozen water near the moon south pole lf there is water on the south pole of the moon" "I think it increases the desirability to colonize but if we have to carry water to the moon you know in the most frugal terms a human being needs about five gallons a day" "So now I have a permanent colony on the moon with l don't know, hundreds of people" "Just the cost of bringing water there might be too much" "But if we find frozen water I think the probability is much higher" "A moon colony may be the next stage in space exploration after the human landings" "But the most daring and dangerous space trek now envisaged is a human exploratory mission to Mars lt'll probably take place sometime in the first decades of the twenty first century" "But the foundations for this flight are being laid today" "The greatest challenge of a human flight to Mars is the time it will take getting there and back" "Earth orbits the sun almost twice as fast as Mars does To reach distant Mars from earth it'll take a spacecraft around nine months with the best present technology" "Astronauts will need air, food, water and electrical power for up to two and a half years" "That's more than two years of greatly increased human exposure to harmful cosmic radiation and severely reduced gravity" "That more than two long years until the earth and Mars are back in a position where earth catches up the spacecraft after it leaves Mars for the eight month flight home" "If the human body is to survive long trips to the distant planets research being done right now on space stations in earth orbits will provide the know how" "At the Space Flight Medicine Unit at the Johnson Space Center in Houston" "Texas scientists assess changes in the bodies of the returning astronauts" "However hard astronauts work at keeping fit during a mission the weightless environment of space does the figure no favors" "As we age our bones shrink equally all over our bodies but astronauts lose bone and muscle only in the spine and in the lower extremities" "The challenges humans going tomorrow will face have already been experienced" "Since 1 986, crews aboard the Russian space station, Mir have laid the foundations for long durations space missions in the twenty first century" "Well Mir has achieved already some remarkable things one of which is a made that permanent human presence in space routine" "People have been continuously living in space one crew after the other" "So that the population of the universe consists of N humans on earth and two or three humans in space lt's been that way now for years" "And that's wonderful to get into that idea that people have now gone out into space to live" "Not to colonize yet but at least to visit on an extended period" "Named after Russian word for peace" "Mir was launched in 1 986 just five years after the maiden flight of the US space shuttle" "Mir has a total of six docking ports for visiting craft" "And expansion modules that provide living quarters and research stations for crew members" "One way of keeping morale high among the astronauts is through their stomachs" "So scientists are working out ways to get good food into space with her Russian counterparts" "Vicky Clores is in charge of food for shuttle Mir dockings" "Every time the shuttle docks with Mir it off loads supplies from the space hab which is a cargo type area that's in the cargo bay of the shuttle" "Many of our astronauts say that their sense of taste is different on orbit um, this logically makes sense because uh, when they enter zero gravity a fluid shift occurs that causes all of the fluid in their to shift to the upper portion of their body this" "causes them to have head congestion" "And just like when you and I have a cold it does effect and we are congested it does effect our sense of taste" "So it makes sense that theirs would be effected as well" "The culinary trial and error aboard Mir will probably make for better meals on missions tomorrow" "The most popular food that they really request is pizza" "But we can't provide that because we have no refrigeration or freezers" "But there has been a spaghetti dinner in space" "NASA followed an Italian astronaut's family recipe" "We weren't really sure was it gonna work we had to try it to see if it would rehydrate okay after we freeze dried it but it worked and the product was taken onboard um, and it was a surprise for the crew member" "because he didn't know uh, that we were going to do that" "On the long journey to Mars they'l I be no stopping off points or endezvous with the space shuttle lf there's a problem it'll take up to twenty minutes for Houston even to hear about it depending on the distance from earth" "Excellent life support systems are vital and scientists are exploiting patterns in nature to develop them" "Natures gives us a win, win situation" "Plants give off oxygen for us to breathe" "We turn it into carbon dioxide" "The good news for life support researchers is that plants use the carbon dioxide we breathe out to make the oxygen we need to breathe in" "This is just one part of what NASA calls an advanced life support system" "ln one life support that experiment a scientist was locked away in a chamber mimick some of the requirements for a long flight" "The idea was to find a natural way of recycling the air the astronauts breathed out" "But beyond this scientists wanted to generate enough oxygen from plants to minimize dependence on bulky oxygen cylinders" "Life support system is something that allows really what it says it keeps the astronauts alive uh,while their on the spacecraft or on or on the lunar surface or on the Martian surface" "With providing them things good air to breathe" "Good water to drink" "Keeping them cool or keeping them warm in, in most cases" "Nigel was locked away with the plants for just over two weeks" "One of the worries was whether the plants would generate enough oxygen to keep him alive" "This was especially a concern during when Nigel exercised" "Using more of the limited oxygen supplied by the plants ln fact he did get dizzy when supplies became depleted" "One thing is that there is no shower in here no hygiene facilities really" "Um, also l couldn't use deodorant because that might have got back to the plants" "So it was a, a fairly smelly place after a little while" "The experiment was a great success lt showed that it was possible to regenerate an atmosphere in a long duration space mission" "At the Kennedy Space Center they're trying to incorporate into the advanced life support system the need for nutritious food supplies" "They're pitting the potato against wheat in experiments for long term living in space" "These are the crops we're growing in this system" "This is Cultivar Apogee wheat lt was developed specifically for advanced life support" "What we plan to do with this is hopefully if we can show that this is a feasible system and it works well maybe someday they can use this on a lunar base or Mars base" "This special wheat is threshed and separated like the wheat in a combine harvester" "Every scrap is accurately weighed in tests for a self supporting space ship of the future" "Wheat can make energy from light and it doesn't have to be sunlight" "Using different levels and kinds of light scientists are trying to find the most efficient way of growing space crops" "The potato too has advantages lf we ever go to Mars hopefully they'll be eating potatoes l think they're a good crop for that type of system but potato alone will probably not be all that exciting so maybe we'll grow soy beans, peanut" "If we are in, in space for long periods of time and that's when we're talking about utilizing this type of a of a life support system" "Um, probably the first plant that we look at it something like potatoes because it's very easy to, to uh, process and, and, uh doesn't take a lot of time to, uh, to, to eat" "Plus you once again you have a lot of the potato which is available and you don't have a lot of stems and leaves that you gotta get rid of" "These green experiments are only the beginning of a long process" "Experiments will continue using human waste to water the plants ln an ecologist's dream" "One of the challenges of the life support system is not only growing the plants but also recycling the waste in the system" "Whether it be plant waste or human waste I mean, we've got to, uh, to recycle that and and put it back into nutrients that the plants then can use" "On earth we typically call it composting" "These life support systems will be put to the test long before human colonies on another planet or moon become possible" "The first international space station is scheduled for completion by the year 2002" "This space station will weigh a million pounds lt's gonna have flights from four different launch's complexes around the world" "During it's lifetime I believe there'll be close to eighty flights lt's going to have a hundred thousand watts worth of electricity lt'll be three hundred and sixty five feet across lt'll have a pressurized volume of living space the size of two jumbo jets" "for just six people that'll be onboard full-time lt, it is we're we're Buck Rodgers is here" "At the Johnson Space Center" "Mark Fastona tours a prototype of the new space station" "We're now entering one of the laboratories of the international space station and this'll be easier in a weightless environment to move through" "This facility provides us with capabilities to conduct research and in various areas such as material science or life sciences as provided by a plant growth world facility" "ln a weightless environment on the international space station we'll be able to utilize all the volume in in the module not just the walls or the floor but also the ceiling" "As well as providing laboratories for working the international space station also has living quarters lt'll be about thirty space shuttle launches and fifteen Russian launches to bring all the components up and during that time frame a crew of three" "will live during the assembly phase" "At completion of the space station a crew of six to seven can live on the station" "Looking to the distant future this could be just the beginning lmagine large space stations being situated in earth orbit and used primary for tourism" "Some will be built further out in space nearer the moon or even at the safe distance from some of the more spectacular planets with dangerous environments" "Much easier technically and with possible economic benefits will be a human visit to an asteroid near earth" "More dramatic and extremely exciting would be a human visit to an active comet" "This could be attempted in the year 2061 when the historic Haley's Comet returns to the inner solar system" "Astronauts could conceivably land on the comet before it gets too close to the sun" "Before comets the next great human space trek will be Mars" "Why is Mars the next candidate?" "The outer gas giants of the solar system present insurmountable problems" "Their radiation belts make manned visits extremely dangerous" "And since they have no solid surfaces you can't land on it" "But the spectacular views from their more hospitable moons means Jupiter, Saturn and even distant Uranus and Neptune could become tourist attractions in centuries to come lmagine the sight of the giant planet Jupiter in all its splendor from the surface of its icy moon Ganymede" "Picture the glorious rings of Saturn filling half the sky as glimpsed from the sky of icy satellites Enceladus or Mimas" "Of the inner planets little Mercury is right up there next to the sun" "Only one flyby probe has photographed its heavily cratered surface" "But what about beautiful Venus earth's hot sister" "Could we turn her into a tropical holiday resort" "No fewer than fifteen space craft fourteen of them Russian have penetrated the sulfurous clouds to land on Venus" "But in the near future the high temperature the crushing atmospheric pressure and the difficulty of moving around rule out a human voyage to Venus lt seems that neither the inner nor the outer solar system is actually begging us to come and bring the family" "The problem with the manned exploration of the outer solar system is first of all is the fact that outer planets are so far away and secondly they all have very dangerous environments for human beings" "When we look at the inner solar system we have a different set of problems" "First of all there Mercury too close to the sun too small, no atmosphere" "Then you have Venus, the earth's twin possible place but surrounded by a very dense poisonous atmosphere" "That really only leaves us with Mars" "Mars is half the size of the earth is has a little bit of atmosphere but has lots of other things that mean that Mars will be the place where we set up the first human colony outside the earth and the first in our planetary system" "Before the twenty first century is over the first manned Mars missions will already be history" "The site of that pioneering robotic lander Viking I could be the nucleus of a Martian colony which over the years might develop into the first of the great Martian cities" "Getting humans to Mars is not a future problem it a problem being tackled today" "Fantasy becomes reality through the dreams of visionaries followed by hard work" "As early as 1 948" "German rocket scientists work with US scientists to design craft that could fly to Mars" "Even then they realized that human missions to the red planet would one day be possible" "If the money is available the technology and rockets of the late twentieth century are now able to get humans to Mars" "The vision has already occurred" "Technology has caught up" "Now it'll take financial and political commitment for this two and a half year round-trip to get the go ahead in the new millennium" "We will be on Mars one of these days" "Uh, it's just a question of when because it's, it's out there it's achievable it's the kind of frontier that even though it's difficult frontier we're going to do it" "And I think the human spirit will not rest until we're gone to Mars and learned to live there" "And frankly I think it's the first stepping stone to a human uh, settlement of the solar system lt's possible that the first human will use the largest of the planet's two tiny moons" "Phobos,as a stopping off point" "From here the short distance to the planet itself would allow astronauts to recuperate after many months in the cramp confines of a spacecraft" "The first human landers would be accompanied by one or two unmanned craft and it would contain most of the consumables required for the stay on Mars" "A wheeled Martian rover would allow the astronauts to explore a much larger area than the landing site itself" "Very likely either a robotic or even a piloted light aircraft would also be part of the first deliveries" "For the human landers the experience of Mars will be very different from that of the Apollo astronauts on the moon" "Unlike the black lunar sky the first" "Martian astronauts would enjoy a deep red sky" "The gray soil of the moon would be replaced by the brilliant reds and oranges of the Martian desert" "The Martian astronauts would weigh just over twice as much as they would on the moon" "But they would still need cumbersome space suits to provide oxygen and to protect them from the harsh atmosphere" "But perhaps the greatest challenge for the first human Martians is not technology it's human nature isolated scientific communities have already broken up when personal differences erupted" "ln Biosphere ll a totally self-reliant group of eight people trying to survive in a closed environment" "What they found out about human nature surprised them" "They went in as friends ln terms of the social aspect of being inside Biosphere ll one of the hardest things was really finding out that you know who you come in with as friends ln a way we lost that friendship in Biosphere ll" "and that was really very hard" "Jane Pointer now runs her own company making mini-biospheres" "Small self-contained ecosystems in glass jars" "Despite her experience" "Jane has no doubts about joining a group going to Mars lf l was asked to go to Mars l go in a heartbeat lf one day she gets the nod the first space trek may lead to greater projects still" "A Japanese company the Obayshi Corporation is already preparing to develop areas on Mars for permanent human habitation" "They work on the premise that it would be possible to obtain water from ice believed to lie in the rocks and soil beneath the Martian surface" "Large, domed enclosures will protect human immigrants from the sun's deadly ultraviolet radiation and violent Martian dust storms" "From here self-sufficient colonies can grow crops manufacture fuel and set out to explore remote regions of the red planet" "The Japanese industrialists are just one group with ideas on how to make the red planet green" "For some, these enclosed environments like the Japanese project are merely one step towards the ultimate vision of Mars a planet adapted to human life" "The goal is to give Mars a life supporting atmosphere similar to earth so that humans and animals can breathe freely" "This process is known as terraforming" "Making Mars like earth but can this be done?" "On earth there's a natural network of cycles that maintains water, oxygen nitrogen and carbon at life supporting levels" "Changing the face of the whole planet will take thousands of years" "Using today's computer technology we can visualize in minutes what it will take eons to accomplish" "We begin with red Mars" "The arid planet of today" "Water flows nowhere on the surface lt's all trapped in the rocks and the polar caps" "Time progresses" "We imagine settlers and robots hard at work on the surface" "Slowly, over hundreds of years the planet is warmed by the deliberate release of greenhouse gases and its own greenhouse effect" "Vast, hidden reserves of water are gradually released through the melting of the subsurface ice" "Water levels rise even further as the polar caps are melted until one small liquid water fills the ocean basins, canyons" "and river valleys of what's slowly becoming a blue Mars" "A planet now made in the image of the world of its makers the earthlings millions of miles away" "This is green Mars with its oceans and seas heavy atmosphere and clouds This is a new world" "How on earth could such a preposterous thing come about" "To start making Mars habitable for humans an advance army of tiny bugs would set to work releasing life giving chemicals" "Scientist Julian Hisscocks has prepared a series of jars he calls, Mars jars that mimic the different stages of terraforming Mars" "Mars jars are basically glass vessels and we put bacteria in them and we grow them under simulated Martian conditions so they'd have like a very thin carbon dioxide atmospher would have ultraviolet radiation streaming through the glass I would use Mars jars for adopting terrestrial organisms" "to grow on Mars during planetary engineering" "The problem is at the moment with planetary engineering is that after about two hundred years conditions will be suitable for the introduction of microorganisms and if we can get the microorganisms onto Mars then they can actually help in the planetary engineering process" "For example we can design bugs that will liberate um, carbon dioxide from carbonate" "And this carbon dioxide will act as a greenhouse gas rather adding to the warming of Mars" "But it's not only professionals who plan the terraforming of the red planet" "Enthusiastic amateurs both American and European have worked out their own schemes for greening Mars" "Seems like it's uh, pretty much coming together" "We've got the whole story told here I I really can't wait to see what it looks like when it's complete I'm glad to start ln Colorado, Robert Zubrin is already planning a Mars colony l want, uh, need a drilling rig here Okay" "So they can drill down into the soil probe for the water table that's where you find ex extent life" "While the visionaries perfect their fantasy Martian colony the grow frustrated at what they see as government foot dragging" "The idea that we are not ready to go to Mars is completely false, okay" "That is we don't have every single piece of hardware we need but we know exactly how to build them and we know much much more about how to send people to Mars today than we did know about how to send people to the moon in 1 961" "The Evolution House in London's stately Q gardens is the closest example of terraforming that Dr. Richard Taylor can find here on earth" "He too has big plans for Mars" "On Mars there probably isn't enough gas to produce a gravity bound atmosphere that you could breathe" "So like this glass house here I propose to build a structure on Mars called a world house which is a gigantic global glass house with the roof held up by towers that is about two miles above the surface" "Sounds like a gigantic project but it would be made entirely out of materials that already exist on Mars lt will be cheap and fairly speedy to do and the only thing that holds us up really is the determination and the imagination to go and do it" "At a salt mine in the north of England another British terraforming proponent" "Martin Fog is even more impatient" "He has traveled underground to explore the problem." "Fog believes the secret to terraforming lies in explosive releases of material deep within Mars" "These would heat up the planet and supply gases essential for an atmosphere" "For Fog, dramatic problems require dramatic solutions lf it turns out that the CO2 has is actually turned into, uh, rock then" "um, you need a much more, um more energetic method to" "uh, release it" "And the only feasible way I can see of in that case would be to explode underground a nuclear explosives in rich strata that could then cause the CO2 to be released" "Not everyone agrees" "Now Martin Fog proposes to release volatiles to the very deep in the rocks by putting down more holes and setting off thermonuclear devices and this is perfectly acceptable because it's just a form of explosives but the real trouble is it damages the rock strata" "and if you want to mine the planet extensively or you have other things you want to do with it you cannot put those rocks back together again once they've been fragmented" "One day Mars will be explored and may be terraformed" "By then we'll probably be able to see further out into space where who knows" "There might be earth-like planets already hospitable without dramatic intervention by us" "Our first tentative steps on the moon and hopefully Mars will mostly likely lead to our first halting steps on a world orbiting another sun" "The distances are so great that a single generation of space travelers couldn't possibly get there instead our grandchildren may start up a biosphere iv a huge hollowed out asteroid a space arch inside four thousand families and a traveling zoo of species leave our solar system forever" "Thus begins the exploration and colonization of our galactic neighbors"