Oberg popularized the terraforming concepts discussed at the colloquium to the general public in his book New Earths (1981). In March 1979, NASA engineer and author James Oberg organized the First Terraforming Colloquium, a special session at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston. The first conference session on terraforming, then referred to as "Planetary Modeling", was organized that same year. The study concluded that it was possible for Mars to support life and be made into a habitable planet. Three years later, NASA addressed the issue of planetary engineering officially in a study, but used the term "planetary ecosynthesis" instead. Sagan also visualized making Mars habitable for human life in "Planetary Engineering on Mars" (1973), an article published in the journal Icarus. Any carbon that was fixed in organic form would be liberated as carbon dioxide again through combustion, "short-circuiting" the terraforming process. This volatile combination could not be sustained through time. Even if atmospheric algae could thrive in the hostile environment of Venus's upper atmosphere, an even more insurmountable problem is that its atmosphere is simply far too thick-the high atmospheric pressure would result in an "atmosphere of nearly pure molecular oxygen" and cause the planet's surface to be thickly covered in fine graphite powder. One problem is that the clouds of Venus are composed of a highly concentrated sulfuric acid solution. However, later discoveries about the conditions on Venus made this particular approach impossible. The resulting carbon, Sagan supposed, would be incinerated by the high surface temperatures of Venus, and thus be sequestered in the form of "graphite or some involatile form of carbon" on the planet's surface. As this process removed carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, the greenhouse effect would be reduced until surface temperatures dropped to "comfortable" levels. Sagan imagined seeding the atmosphere of Venus with algae, which would convert water, nitrogen and carbon dioxide into organic compounds.
The astronomer Carl Sagan proposed the planetary engineering of Venus in an article published in the journal Science in 1961. Despite this, questions still remain in areas relating to the ethics, logistics, economics, politics, and methodology of altering the environment of an extraterrestrial world, presenting issues to the implementation of the concept. As the subject has gained traction, research has expanded to other possibilities including biological terraforming, para-terraforming, and modifying humans to better suit the environments of planets and moons. The long timescales and practicality of terraforming are also the subject of debate.
Several potential methods for the terraforming of Mars may be within humanity's technological capabilities, but at present, the economic resources required to do so are far beyond that which any government or society is willing to allocate to it. Much study has been done concerning the possibility of heating the planet and altering its atmosphere, and NASA has even hosted debates on the subject. While Venus, Earth, Mars, and even the Moon have been studied in relation to the subject, Mars is usually considered to be the most likely candidate for terraforming. The term was coined by Jack Williamson in a science-fiction short story (" Collision Orbit") published in 1942 in Astounding Science Fiction, although terraforming in popular culture may predate this work.Įven if the environment of a planet could be altered deliberately, the feasibility of creating an unconstrained planetary environment that mimics Earth on another planet has yet to be verified. Carl Sagan, an astronomer, proposed the planetary engineering of Venus in 1961, which is considered one of the first accounts of the concept. The concept of terraforming developed from both science fiction and actual science. Terraforming or terraformation ("Earth-shaping") is the hypothetical process of deliberately modifying the atmosphere, temperature, surface topography or ecology of a planet, moon, or other body to be similar to the environment of Earth to make it habitable for humans to live on. An artist's conception shows a terraformed Mars in four stages of development.
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