Zachary WatsonMrs. WilletAstronomy3/5/13Terraforming MarsTerraforming Mars is the process of making Mars hospitable for human life and colonizing a safe environment for people to live. In retrospect, Mars is the most Earth-like planet that resides in our solar system, so it is the best planet among those around Earth that we can attempt to inhabit. I would choose to use a thousand year timeline to complete the habitation process. Most scientists' timeline is somewhere between a hundred and a hundred thousand years, I think a hundred is way too short and we would be moving too fast and maybe making a mistake along the way. On the other hand, a hundred thousand is too long, the Earth's population would be far too high and we would need another environment sooner. Mars has a good amount of resources that we can use if we get to Mars, including oxygen, nitrogen, and water. In order to get humans to Mars we would obviously fly there in a spaceship, this spaceship would be extremely large as it will serve as housing for people during the entire journey. The spaceship would be made up of an amalgam of other spaceships all connected to form one, and would represent a human environment, much like a flying house, resembling boxes practically stacked on top of each other and continually becoming smaller, like a wedding cake. Each box represents a “floor” in the “house”, the lower and largest floor being that of the living rooms. We would need a large amount of fuel to reach Mars, thermal nuclear power would be the best choice. Liquid hydrogen would be heated to a very high temperature in a nuclear reactor and expand through the rocket's nozzle to produce thrust...... middle of paper ...... The Mars Global Surveyor was Sent as an orbiter to fly around Mars, it took photos and was able to report annual changes in the Mars cycle; it also reported some new craters. The Odyssey monitored atmospheric and radiological data from Mars. Spirit was a rover that discovered direct evidence of hydrogen on Mars. The Opportunity rover landed shortly after Spirit and found a large amount of hematite in the crater at its landing site. We obviously couldn't breathe on Mars, we would need at least a little extra oxygen through some sort of mask. We would need to worry about radiation, even though the ground would shield large amounts of radiation from too much damage. It will be extremely exciting to see the future that humans can achieve when it comes to terraforming Mars and hopefully in about a thousand years humans will be cycling on the red planet..