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Terraform the planets

Fans of Colin Maclntyre and the great starship Dahak should take a minute to stop in here for discussions about one of David's best-loved series.
Re: Terraform the planets
Post by DDHv   » Wed Nov 26, 2014 12:05 am

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Gallowglass3000 wrote:First thing to do is to set up test plots, just to make sure that the planet in question is free of the virus. Once satisfied, then you can start to regenerate the planet, not terra-form it.

Basically just add the proper soil/water cultures and stand bak. There won't be any alien life-forms fighting your bio-forms and if you do it right, no diseases-imported or native.

Create huge farms like on the space station, then use the farms to spread the regenerated soil out. A small scale way to do this was written about in 'Farmer in the Sky'. With robots you can easily create huge soil farms. It might take a century or two to get a foothold but not human generations.


Murray Leinster had a very good discussion in "The Forgotten Planet." The story was so long ago that the planet was forgotten because a punched card got lost while HQ was being moved. :!: The postulated galaxy was one where there were very many lifeless planets suitable in other ways. With the orbital telescopes we are now finding many solar systems that simply could not contain a habitable planet, or even a terraformable one. Not that it will matter for some generations, if ever. ML could be very good about teaching inside a story, also Hal Clement.
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Re: Terraform the planets
Post by MPCatchup   » Sat Nov 29, 2014 1:00 am

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bacteria and later mosses would not be affected by a lack of topsoil only more developed plants really need topsoil. Bacteria will grow anywhere ifs food source is including underwater whit no free oxygen.
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Re: Terraform the planets
Post by biochem   » Sat Nov 29, 2014 4:25 pm

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MPCatchup wrote:bacteria and later mosses would not be affected by a lack of topsoil only more developed plants really need topsoil. Bacteria will grow anywhere ifs food source is including underwater whit no free oxygen.


It depends on the species. There is tremendous variation in the requirements among bacterial species.
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Re: Terraform the planets
Post by fallsfromtrees   » Sun Nov 30, 2014 10:57 pm

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biochem wrote:
MPCatchup wrote:bacteria and later mosses would not be affected by a lack of topsoil only more developed plants really need topsoil. Bacteria will grow anywhere ifs food source is including underwater whit no free oxygen.


It depends on the species. There is tremendous variation in the requirements among bacterial species.

But it would be very surprising if the Fourth Imperium had not gotten pretty good at using the correct species of bacteria for terra forming, and that Mother would have that information available.
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