Zachary WatsonMrs. WilletAstronomy3/5/13Terraforming of MarsTerraforming of Mars is the process of making Mars hospitable to human life and colonizing a safe environment for people to live in. Mars, in retrospect, is the most Earth-like planet residing in our solar system, so it is the best planet around Earth to attempt to inhabit. I would choose to use a thousand year timeline to complete the habitation process. Most scientists' timeline is between one hundred and one hundred thousand years, I believe one hundred is too short and we would be moving too fast and perhaps making a mistake along the way. One hundred thousand on the other hand is too long, the earth's population would be too high and we would need another environment first. Mars has a good amount of resources available to us to use if we can get to Mars, including oxygen, nitrogen, and water. To take humans to Mars, we would obviously fly there with a spacecraft, this spacecraft would be extremely large because it will serve as people's home for the entire journey. The spacecraft would be made up of a fusion of other spaceships all connected to form a single one, and would represent a human environment, a bit like a flying house, with the appearance of boxes practically stacked on top of each other and increasingly small, like a wedding cake. Each box represents a “floor” of the “house”, the lowest and largest floor would be the house. We would need a significant amount of fuel to reach Mars and nuclear would be the best choice. Liquid hydrogen would be heated to a very high temperature in a nuclear reactor and expand through the rocket nozzle to produce thrust... middle of paper... The Mars Global Surveyor was sent as an orbiter to fly around on Mars, he took photos and was able to highlight the annual changes in the Mars cycle, he also highlighted some new craters. The Odyssey monitored atmospheric and radiation 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 the landing site. Obviously on Mars we couldn't breathe, we would need at least a small supplement of oxygen through a kind of mask. We should worry about radiation, even though soil would protect large amounts from excessive damage. It will be extremely exciting to see the future that humans can make regarding the terraforming of Mars and hopefully in about a thousand years humans will be cycling on the Red Planet.