Retrocedamos un poco en el tiempo:
Año 2000. Sir Arthur Clarke, y otros visionarios, colaboraron en un polémico proyecto en el que ciencia y ciencia ficción, no estaban en absoluto alejadas de la realidad.
En aquellos momentos, NASA y ESA, buscaban científicos que tuvieran la capacidad de traducir la imaginación en ciencia. Así, surgió uno de los más increíbles y complejos proyectos jamás imaginados por el ser humano: Terraformar Marte.
Para ello, se constituyó un equipo de eminentes personalidades procedentes de todos los campos del saber, al objeto de generar un SCRUM Exocientífico que permitiera nada menos que convertir Marte en una Tierra2. Eran tiempos gloriosos para la recién acuñada exobiología, y así, comenzó este proyecto.
Terraformando Marte.
Inicialmente, dicho equipo estaba compuesto por:
Para ello, se convocó una interesante conferencia. Reproducimos a continuación la invitación individualizada que NASA realizó a los que consideró cualificables para el evento: en http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=2753
Kathleen Burton
NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA
Phone: 650/604-1731, 650/604-9000
kburton@mail.arc.nasa.govRELEASE: 00-68ARNOTE TO EDITORS AND NEWS DIRECTORS: News media are invited to attend a 2-day Mars terraforming conference at NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA, Oct. 10 and 11. The conference will be held daily from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. PDT. Scientific lectures and research papers will be presented in the second-floor auditorium in Bldg. N-245. To get to Ames, take the Moffett Field exit off Highway 101. At the Moffett Federal Airfield main gate, proceed to the Visitor Badging Office to obtain entry badges and maps to the conference. Bring press credentials and photo ID to gain admittance. Foreign media representatives must be escorted. Members of the media may attend the entire conference.
A renowned cadre of researchers from diverse scientific disciplines will present the latest findings in terraforming Mars at a 2-day conference at NASA’s Ames Research Center. The conference, “The Physics and Biology of Making Mars Habitable,” will focus on restoring Mars’ environment so it can support life, including possibly human life.A Mars terraforming press briefing will be held on Wednesday, Oct. 11 between 12:30 p.m. and 1:00 p.m. in Bldg. 245, Room 215. Conference organizer and Mars researcher Dr. Chris McKay will be available to answer questions. Margarita Marinova, Julian Hiscox and Penny Boston also will be available at the briefing.
“Expanding life beyond the Earth is one of the most interesting new areas of Astrobiology” said McKay. “Re-creating a biosphere on Mars is the first step in that expansion.”
Conference topics will include: near-term missions to Mars, engineering approaches to warming Mars, survival of life under Mars-like conditions, terraforming models and the problem of creating oxygen levels in a thick carbon-dioxide atmosphere.
More information, a conference agenda and a list of speakers are available at: http://web.mit.edu/mmm/www/terraforming.html
Astrobiology is the study of the origin, evoution, distribution and destiny of life in the universe. Located in California’s Silicon Valley, Ames is NASA’s Center of Excellence for Astrobiology, and manages the NASA Astrobiology Institute.
Media members may pre-register by sending an email to kburton@mail.arc.nasa.gov. Media should include: crew name(s), affiliation, nationality and passport number (if non-U.S.) citizens.
En dicha conferencia, se elaboraron talleres de trabajo restringidos que dieron lugar al proyecto Mars Terraforming.
Durante la etapa 2000-2001-Subsiguientes estudios del MIT fueron llevados a término por el comité del proyecto.
En una primera fase, se concluyó con un informe, que puede encontrarse en:http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=455
En él destacamos, una interesante lista de medidas a tomar en consideración, que en palabras textuales no requieren una gran complejidad, dado que en dicho planeta, se dan las “pre-condiciones” necesarias para iniciar el proceso:
Destacamos dos, que hemos encontrado muy interesantes para nuestro análisis:
Temperature: Mars gets cold. Temperatures can range from -20°C down to -75°C or colder. It can also get warm. It is possible that close to the equator, temperatures could get as high as 20°C during the day. Since there is not much air on Mars, a conductive loss of heat from a greenhouse structure to the surrounding air would be low. However, the greenhouse would radiate heat to the sky at much the same rate as does the Martian surface. As such heaters will be needed to supplement any infrared radiation received from the sun. This will require a substantial amount of power.
Practicing Martian horticulture on Earth
In an attempt to examine some of the operational aspects of operating a greenhouse on Mars, an experimental greenhouse is slated for installation on Devon Island in 2002. Devon Island is a remote location in the Nunavut territory of Canada barely a thousand miles from Earth’s north pole. The greenhouse is being donated by SpaceRef Interactive as part of the ongoing NASA-SETI Institute Haughton Mars Research project [see "Mars on Earth: The Haughton-Mars Research Project"]. Named for noted author (and NSS governor) Sir Arthur C. Clarke, the “Arthur Clarke Mars Greenhouse” is designed to serve over the next few years as a testbed for a variety of technologies needed to develop a greenhouse capability on Mars.
La cuestión de las temperaturas en Marte, no es tan extremo como pareciera creerse, y podría mitigarse, con una fuente de calor adicional próxima, como por ejemplo: ¿La Ignición de Júpiter? Por otra parte hay zonas del planeta que tienen en superficie temperaturas próximas a los 20 grados centígrados. Incluso en aquel momento, el proyecto se presentó a la opinión pública, y ésta fue favorable a su realización.
En varios años, y tras el oportuno proceso de terraformación, podría oxigenarse Marte, y generar las mismas condiciones del ecosistema presente en nuestro planeta tierra. Copio aquí el texto original en previsión a posterior censura:
Making the red planet greenOf course there is a next step beyond greenhouses and closed environments that many envision for Mars. A big step. This involves the creation of a self-sustaining ecosystem – for the entire planet. The most common term for this is “terraforming” which is often used to suggest the creation of ‘another Earth’. Another, more appropriate term is “ecosynthesis” or the creation of an ecosystem. Since Mars is not Earth, any introduction of life from Earth, however successful, is likely to result in an ecosystem that is uniquely Martian.
Various concepts for terraforming have been proposed over the years. Some are slow and would take thousands of years. Others are more radical and might provide some level of results in much less time. Regardless of the time frame, all concepts include the use of living systems (plants and microorganisms) to hasten the terraformation of Mars and the sustainability of the ecosystem that is being created. Since even the hardiest forms of life on Earth would probably have a hard time living on Mars’ surface, the requirement for some genetic manipulation and selective breeding is almost certain. Since Mars offers a unique set of physical environmental factors, some of which cannot be duplicated on Earth (gravity) it is likely that the organisms developed for use in terraforming would be develop on Mars – inside Martian greenhouses.
El aspecto final de Marte tras su proceso de Terraformación
Pero sigamos con nuestra exposición cronológica referenciada con documentos científicos públicos.
Con fecha de 28 de Enero de 2003, el entonces comité de estudios físicos, bajo el epígrfe de : SPACE TECHNOLOGY AND APPLICATIONS INT.FORUM-STAIF 2003: Conf.on Thermophysics in Microgravity; Commercial/Civil Next Generation Space Transportation; Human Space Exploration; Symps.on Space Nuclear Power and Propulsion (20th); Space Colonization (1st); doi:10.1063/1.1541431, publica un interesante manual de terraformación de Marte, denominado: Fases en el proceso de Terraformación.
Dicho informe es elaborado por el Dr. James M. Graham de Department of Botany, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53706 y aborda, de forma procedimental el estudio de la fotosíntesis en Marte, así como los procesos necesarios para que la atmósfera marciana se enriquezca en Oxígeno, partiendo del CO2 aportado por plantas que literalmente “resisten” el ecosistema marciano, así como el análisis del “permafrost”.
Reproducimos aquí el Resúmen ejecutivo de la investigación:
The process of the biological terraforming of Mars can be compared to the process of primary ecological succession on terrestrial barren rocks. Each stage in the succession alters the environment in such a way that the next stage in the process becomes possible. The initial stage in terraforming Mars will be dominated by microorganisms and lichens. The initial stage will begin the process of removing carbon dioxide from the Martian atmosphere, adding oxygen and nitrogen, and adding organics to the regolith to produce a true Martian soil. The second stage will be dominated by bryophytes, simple plants such as mosses and liverworts, which will draw down the carbon dioxide level of the Martian atmosphere and raise the level of oxygen. The carbon dioxide removed will be locked up in peatlands and permafrost. The critical limiting factors for the introduction of flowering plants are the level of oxygen in the atmosphere and the lack of animal pollinators. The majority of flowering plants require a minimum oxygen level of 20 to 50 mbar. Most flowering plants require these minimal oxygen levels to support aerobic respiration in their roots and germination of their seeds. Many flowering plant species also must have animal pollinators to complete reproduction. Certain aquatic plants and arctic plants, however, are highly tolerant of anoxic conditions. Some of these same arctic plants can successfully reproduce without animal pollinators by employing one or more alternate reproductive mechanisms such as vegetative propagation, apomixis, autogamy and anemophily. Thus by judicious selection of existing terrestrial plants and possibly genetic engineering, it may be possible to circumvent critical limitations and introduce flowering plants to Mars at an earlier stage in terraforming. ©2003 American Institute of Physics. http://scitation.aip.org/getabs/servlet/GetabsServlet?prog=normal&id=APCPCS000654000001001284000001&idtype=cvips&gifs=yes
En este “residuo de caché de los antiguos servidores de NASA, encontramos este enlace: http://quest.nasa.gov/mars/background/terra.html En él se afirma que el proyecto Terraforming Mars, está siendo realizado. (Es un fichero de 2001). Lo copiamos aquí, por si lo censurasen, tras publicarlo:
Terraforming is the process of transforming a hostile environment into one suitable for human life. Being that Mars is the most Earth-like planet, it is the best candidate for terraforming. Once just the subject of science fiction novels, it is now becoming a viable research area. The famed astronomer and Pulitzer prize winner, Carl Sagan, says that there is enormous promise in the search for ancient life on Mars. If life was once sustainable on Mars, it is important to know what caused Mars to evolve into the cold and lifeless planet it is today. With this knowledge, we can terraform Mars by reversing the process.
NASA scientists believe that it is technologically possible at the present time to create considerable global climate changes, allowing humans to live on Mars. But this will not be by any means an easy task. Raising the atmospheric pressure and surface temperature alone could be achieved in a few decades.
This research has strong environmental implications for Earth. What researchers are trying to do involves global warming, a sort of greenhouse effect on the cold planet Mars. Scientists may be able to test their hypotheses about global warming in their attempts to elevate Mars’ surface temperature. Likewise, once theories, they may be applied to our own planet in an attempt to reverse environmental damage done by pollution and deforestation. http://quest.nasa.gov/mars/background/terra.html
Con fecha de abril de 2005, se constituye un comité secreto en el marco del Terraforming Mars Project, y se incluye en la partida de la DoD. A partir de ese momento, el proyecto Mars Terraforming, pasa a ser una “aparente historia de Sci-Fi”, en el marco de http://abscicon.arc.nasa.gov/ El programa de Divulgación de Ciencia Ficción de la NASA.
Con el abscicon NASA Puede censurar la ciencia de investigación y decir que es Ciencia Ficción.
A partir de este programa, durante los años 2005 al momento presente, el proyecto Terraforming Mars, ya no existe Oficialmente , salvo como un programa de Ciencia Ficción en ABSCICON.
Fuentes: Departamento de Investigación exocientífica del Team.
Referencias:
Dr. James M. Graham de Department of Botany, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53706
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=2753
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