According to Carl Sagan in his famous book Cosmos, about 1200 Saturn V payloads of dark material could be used to dust the martian polar caps and bring about their melting. How about ICBMs built on Mars at human colonies that detonate packages of dark volcanic soil abundant on Mars, or mass drivers to launch the cannon projectile like packages or even aircraft to make drops of dark heat absorbing material over the polar ice caps? Combine this with CFC factories and solar reflectors at Mars-Sun L4 and L5 and certainly, Mars could be terraformed. Waste heat from human activity and methane emmissions from human composting could contribute to the martian run-away greenhouse effect. Those day side reflectors at L4 and L5 would be the percursors of interplanetary beamrider stations.
Since blue-green algae can double their mass four times a day, it is my personal beleif that Mars could be covered with bacterial life that converts the CO2 to an oxygen atmosphere in just a few years after liquid water and a CO2 atmosphere was formed by melting the polar caps and warming the planet enough to melt permafrost also.
Thousands of human colonists and robots will travel to Mars in the 22nd century onboard ginat space liners built of lunar materials. Their habitat modules, vehicles, mining machines, oxygen, water, chemicals, farm equipment,solar panels, and all other pieces of heavy cargo will be made on the Moon and launched into space either by mass driver or rocket in the case of more delicate cargos.
This will allow them to bootstrap up cities on Mars rapidly using martian resources. During the mid to late 21st century small bases on Mars will exist and these will also use in site resources to bootstrap up. Scientists willl explore and study Mars in great detail in the mid to late 21st century. They will locate ore deposits of great value to colonists.
As the Earth's population grows the stress on the Mother Planet will increase, but I beleive that energy and environmental problems can be solved. Global poverty can be defeated. Still the population will grow until the masses of Mother Earth have decent standards of living and birth control. Where higher living standards exist as in the USA< Canada and Europe population growth slows down and even reverses.
Still, we might have 10 to 15 billion people on Earth by the end of the 21st century. Perhaps there will be a time in thte late 22nd or early 23rd century when billions of people emigrate to Mars to take some of the stress off of Earth. These people will be in search of new land, opportunities in business and plain wonder on Mars.
The first colony ships to Mars might be made of external tanks. See: Spaceships at the L1 Nexus or press this button:
Later ships will be made of frames and aluminum plates from the Moon welded up in the vacuum of space at L5 or L4.
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