Terraforming
 

For those unfamiliar, the act of Terraforming is defined as:
(Further reading can be done at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraforming)

The question I have is this: Do you feel that attempting to (or perhaps successfully) changing another planet's ecology into a form that would be capable of sustaining human life would be ethical or immoral?

I figure this might get some activity. :D

Immoral to whom? The other planet? Do inanimate objects beget personified ethics?

I can't see how someone could argue that being unethical seeing as we wouldn't be artificially creating life or destroying it. We would just simply be moving life to a new location to allow it to grow. As grav said if we change the landscape its not like we would be hurting anything on biological dead planet. Pretty sure rocks don't have feelings.

Perhaps I should phrase it as, "Do you believe that changing the very characteristics of an entire planet's ecosystem into a form capable of sustaining Terran life is acceptable or not?"

Basically looking for any arguments advocating or criticizing this behavior, and why you feel this way.

Edit: The main argument I see against it would be the possibility of exterminating undiscovered life forms or disrupting the natural progression of the environment.

So does the planet have any organisms currently on it or is it just a dead planet with abunch of rocks or is it unknown at the current time. If it has life on it, it should be left alone unless the extinction of the human race inevitable if we dont migrate there. If there is no life on it there shouldn't be a problem introducing something to it and molding the planet.

Let's take an example: Venus.

Do you feel there would be anything inherently wrong if we were to somehow change Venus into a habitable environment?

Nope but we'd all be fucked up by gravity fo sure!

If this were asked of a planet in a Sci-Fi novel, with it's own non-Terran life and ecosystem, then I think you'd get a better response.

In reply to Venus - I don't think it would be wrong, but it'd be a completely daft thing to do, and the cost involved would be ludicrous.

If it was done to every single discovered planet out there, then it could start to border on wrong. Sure, even if it were done to every single planet that has been discovered up to this present day, it wouldn't even begin to start to scratch the surface of what's in the Universe, but I'd still consider it as damaging the natural beauty of the Universe. For all we know, no two bodies are the same, and by terraforming one we just happen to come across, we'd be destroying something unique.

I don't think there would be many people who would disagree that eradicating another lifeform simply to make their planet livable for ours without some extreme circumstance would be wrong, I'm talking mostly about if you feel it would be wrong to change the nature of a planet to suit it to our own needs, after seeing what changes we've made to Earth.

Well, the population generally continues to grow, and we will eventually run out of living space. Also, in the VERY long term, our sun will collapse into a Red Giant, which will swallow most of the Inner Planets, either completely destroying them or rendering them all barren in a manner somewhat similar to Mercury. This won't happen for billions of years, but if civilization lasts that long, we'll be forced to find a new living locale by then.

In the case of Venus, it'd be for exploration purposes as well as living space and resources to fuel industry. By the time we'd hypothetically be considering terraforming Venus, the cost wouldn't be prohibitive (as that would always be a consideration) and we'd already have means to cheaply ship men and materials from Earth via Space Elevator or something as yet undiscovered.

I'm mainly aiming for the philiosophical side of the argument.

I know this is off topic but.... if we do ever go to another planet it would most likely be Mars. Venus has intense gravity, volcanic activity and I'm pretty sure it be pretty damn impossible to live there. Mars does have insane wind storms but at least the gravity and temperature aren't as extreme so we could possibly work around it.

Actually, the gravity is similar. I think that Venus has promise for terraforming, but Mars is more promising left alone (almost no environment is easier to work with than a hostile environment).

Uh...

Venus has a gravity of 0.904g, which is the closest to Earth gravity you'll find. The main problems are the fact that atmospheric pressure is 90 times greater than that of Earth, the fact that the surface is hot enough to melt Lead due to the intense atmosphere, and the complete absence of water.

Atmospheric pressure is largely due to greenhouse gases, which can be relieved along with a fair portion of the heat issue (as they're largely the same problem) via a Solar Shade, to cool the planet to where a lot of the gas could fall to the surface as Dry Ice to be shipped elsewhere (perhaps to Mars, where the problem is not enough atmosphere). Water could possibly be mined from an Ice Moon of Saturn such as Europa and literally just bombard Venus with large chunks of ice.

That's all pretty offtopic (and the info is available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraforming_of_Venus), I'm mainly interested in the ethical ramifications.

Whoops guess I got the pressure/gravity mixed up. I don't remember my 5th grade science too well I guess.

I've been reading this kind of stuff all day, it really has me intrigued.

lol gtf off of wiki srsly.

I've been a proponent of terraforming ever since I played Buck Rogers: Countdown to Doomsday on the C64. I've just always thought it seemed like a logical progression once we've finished jacking up Earth.
Seriously, though, I can understand the ethical issues involved here. Who's to say whether these "lifeless" planets aren't simply progressing on their own evolutionary course. Our tampering could cause irreparable damage to future ecosystems - probably in the form of McDonald's.

To me, it only seems logical that we should move to other planets. Once we're capable, we need to get on it. There's no reason we should just stick to our one planet, that I can really think of. The benefits would be great if we were to go to other places.

I was talking with Chruser recently about this, actually. I was saying, we need to spread our human population out between more than one planet(same with our animals, if possible.) If something catastrophic were to happen to earth, our entire species would be wiped out. If we're split up between a few different places, it would still suck but it wouldn't be the end. Also, with more "bases", we would have more of a chance to eliminate any potential threats(such as meteors and shit like that.)

As for the morality, I don't really see how there would be any problem with it. I mean, if there was some sentient lifeform that we were wiping out, I'd see a possible problem with it(and also possible provoking some problems farther down the road, depending on how intelligent they are.) Wiping out a bunch of bacteria doesn't seem like a big deal to me.

So I say, for cases such as mars and venus where there's not much if any life (I don't know much about the ecosystems of either planet, if they even have ecosystems,) let's terraform, baby!

I agree with you for your reasons of wanting to expand, and even the act of Terraforming itself can teach us things about how our planet formed. The act of colonizing another planet gives us access to other resources that are in short supply on Earth (although Oil wouldn't be one), as well as ensuring the continued survival of the human race by seperating us from being able to be killed all in one location.

I would not have a problem with Terraforming another planet personally after an exhaustive survey to determine if there were any alien lifeform present. I would be opposed to Terraforming over life of any kind though, as I kinda believe outside sources of life should be protected and allowed to continue along their natural path, as they would constitute an Endangered Species of sorts.

Where's Sov? I figured as a Trekkie he'd have been somewhat interested in this thread.

No we aren't playing the "role" of god or anything of that matter, I think there would be nothing wrong with it what-so-ever, even if you try to play the card of ethics, then you could in-turn say that everything was placed for us to use, not to leave untouched, we need to take advantage of these places eventually to continue our survival.

Doesn't the ISS have an evacuation vehicle? Problem solved.