A number of scientific writers have proposed manipulating the ecology of Mars in order to make the planet more comfortable for future immigrants from Earth.  However, the ethical acceptability of such ‘terraforming’ proposals remains unresolved.  In response, in this article I explore some of these scientific proposals through the lens provided by Buddhist environmental ethics that are quantitatively expressed by practitioners in the ethnographic field of the United States.  What I find is that contemporary Buddhists combine philosophical notions of interconnectedness with moral considerations not to harm others and then creatively extend this combined sensibility to the protection specifically of abiotic features of Mars.  In so doing these Buddhists significantly reject proposals to alter the Martian ecology planet-wide as beyond the ethical right of humans.  Along the way these Buddhists also importantly provide an innovative basis for enriching Buddhist environmental ethical protection of abiotic locations, and this strengthening can assist in mitigating climate change on Earth.

The concept of modifying the environment of another planet, so that it can support terrestrial life, is known as terraforming. As a speculative scientific subject, it has been slowly gaining in respectability and, over the past 30 years, has amassed a considerable body of published work. In this paper, the present day capabilities of civilisation to bring about global environmental change are breifly discussed, followed by a review of the progress of research into the terraforming of the planet Mars. Whilst such an undertaking does not appear technologically impossible, whether it will actually happen is an unanswerable question. However, the control space for thought experimentation that terraforming provides is of use for both planetological research and education. The subject is therefore relevant to the present day, as well as to a possible future.

It is true to say that the runaway greenhouse model of Martian terraforming, dating as it does back to the early seventies, represents a sort of "standard paradigm" -a framework in which the most influential and cooperative studies of the problem have been conducted. Alternative approaches exist, but these are almost exclusively the work of isolated researchers. The standard paradigm therefore is also the most popular one, receiving the largest share of publicity and media attention. .1 a. Ecopoiesis produces an anaerobic biosphere suitable for bacteria and primitive plants. Ecosystemic energy flow is now possible on a global scale. However, the usefulness of this for humans is rather limited. Aerobic life must still be carefully regulated and contained within sealed habitats. b. Terraforming produces an aerobic biosphere in which humanity can play a full part. Like on Earth, recycling of atmosphere, water, wastes, and the supply of food is largely an automatic process. Running the life support system is now a task similar to that of civilized terrestrial agriculture rather than the ceaseless monitoring and control of a space station.

Previous outline proposals for terraforming Mars nearly all require, as a first step, the creation of a dense atmosphere of carbon dioxide, with a surface pressure of ~ 1 bar and with sufficient greenhouse effect to raise surface temperatures above 273 K. However, since it is now thought that the bulk of Mars' CO2 inventory lies either within carbonate rocks, or has been lost from the planet in an early episode of impact erosion, this first step may be more difficult to achieve than commonly appreciated. If carbonate bearing minerals are abundant within the Martian regolith, it would be necessary to devolatilise them to return their store of CO2 into the atmosphere. The most practical way to do this would be through the use of buried thermonuclear explosives. It is shown that at least ten million such explosives, in the multi-megaton range, buried at depths of hundreds of metres would be required. All materials required for their fabrication could be obtained from Martian resources. The most serious objection to such a scheme is that Mars is likely to be settled before terraforming becomes practical, thus ruling out highly energetic or intrusive engineering techniques.

It is possible in the future that Mars might be transformed into a habitable planet by a process of global environmental engineering known as terraforming. This paper provides a thumb-nail sketch of the terraforming concepts that have appeared in the technical literature, focussing on the steps required in order to render Mars fir for anaerobic life. Its intention is the provide a referenced guide of progress to date for any future researchers of the subject.

The idea that it might one day be possible to alter the prevailing conditions on Venus so that the planet is made habitable is a popular one. This is not surprising as the concept of 'terraforming' has sprung up largely from the pages of science fiction and popular science publications and has yet received only cursory scientific analysis.
This paper reviews the previous scenarios for the terraforming of Venus and their significant deficiencies are identified. It is shown that in particular, the proposed timescales are too short, and final conditions achieved would be far from those necessary to make Venus truly habitable.
A more detailed model for the terraforming of Venus is presented. Principal findings are that an energy expenditure of ~ 10^30 J, over a time period optimistically estimated at 16500 years would be necessary. The great length of time required to complete the terraforming is more than compensated for by the end result--an earthlike, habitable planet, but still in many respects a unique and exotic world.

The political ecology of water shapes environments and human responses. Water also plays a prominent role in Science Fiction, either by its abundance or its absence. Floods destroy cultures and necessitate them to adapt, such as in Stephen Baxter's "Flood" or Kim Stanley Robinson's "New York 2140". The absence of water is a powerful backdrop for how people survive in a harsh environment in Frank Herbert's "Dune" novels. Patterns of power are contoured by water not only today, but also in futures and worlds far away.

If we had the ability to terraform Mars, would it be morally permissible to do it? This chapter surveys three preservationist arguments for the conclusion that we should not terraform Mars and three interventionist arguments that we should. The preservationist arguments appeal to a duty to conserve objects of special scientific value, a duty to preserve special wilderness areas, and a duty not to display vices characteristic of past colonial endeavors on Earth. The interventionist arguments appeal to a duty to fulfill our pioneering nature, a duty to extend the lifespan of our species, and a duty to restore the ecosystems Mars may once have housed. The preservationist arguments are stronger than the interventionist arguments; terraforming Mars is probably morally wrong.

The outcome of terraforming on Mars is examined by considering the function of its biosphere. By borrowing a life-support model of the Earth's biosphere, scenarios of ecopoiesis and full terraforming are contrasted in terms of their energy flow and matter cycling. It is argued that Martian colonists are unlikely to be satisfied with the services provided by the anaerobic biosphere produced by ecopoiesis and that full terraforming will be the specific goal of planetary engineering. The distance of Mars from the sun and its probable lack of a closed rock cycle will require small scale, conscious intervention in biogeochemical cycles to maintain the habitability of the planet. Vernadsky's concept of the noosphere (an envelope of mind) will thus have more relevance to Mars as an abode of life than Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis.

Frank Herbert's Dune trilogy is, on the surface, a political space opera. A Mars-like planet sets the scene for a tale focused on the intrigue and drama of a powerful ruling family, the Atreides. However, this superficial plot thinly masks deeper ecological truths, which warn the reader of their anthropocentric perspectives. Herbert used his novels as vehicles to promote environmental conservation. This paper is an exploration into the didactic lessons and more subtle ways Herbert constructs his fictional planet, Arrakis, and the role of humanity's interaction with the planet and its ecosystems. Herbert's work is reflective of the current geological age of the Earth: the Anthropocene and the environmental criticism that echoes within it. This paper will consider Dune as an Anthropocene landscape terraformed by its inhabitants, and the contrasting environmental messages between the three novels (Dune, Children of Dune and Dune Messiah).

Aspects of currently understood planetology relevant to the possibility of terraforming Mars are reviewed. Evidence that Mars may have been naturally habitable in the past, for at least anaerobic life, is supportive of the feasibility of rendering the planet habitable in the future. The physical and the chemical state of the intrinsic resources needed for such a task and their whereabouts are less certain. However, what constraints can be placed provide a context in which superficially realistic terraforming models can be proposed. It is argued that the detailed knowledge needed in order to assess the ultimate realism of terraforming requires the presence of a permanently established population, exploring Mars as part of living there.

The planet Mars, while cold and arid today, once possessed a warm and wet climate, as evidenced by extensive fluvial features observable on its surface. It is believed that the warm climate of the primitive Mars was created by a strong greenhouse effect caused by a thick CO 2 atmosphere. Mars lost its warm climate when most of the available volatile CO 2 was fixed into the form of carbonate rock due to the action of cycling water. It is believed, however, that sufficient CO 2 to form a 300 to 600 mb atmosphere may still exist in volatile form, either adsorbed into the regolith or frozen out at the south pole. This CO 2 may be released by planetary warming, and as the CO 2 atmosphere thickens, positive feedback is produced which can accelerate the warming trend. Thus it is conceivable, that by taking advantage of the positive feedback inherent in Mars' atmosphere/regolith CO 2 system, that engineering efforts can produce drastic changes in climate and pressure on a planetary scale.

This preliminary proposal and the original research within it was recommended in June 2016 by The Prince of Wales and The Duchess of Cornwall to His Royal Highness's International Sustainability Unit.

It is a massive project, 800 sq miles of inhospitable desert. It is the hope of my tribe and myself that even if this project never receives funding, the research within it will help millions of people around the world, it is our humble gift to the world.

The aim of this article is to give a brief review of the history and current status of research experiments with cyanobacteria, algae, and lichens concerning their adaptation in space or their potential use for the needs of astronauts. The future of algological space research is also being discussed with regard to creating self-sustainable stations and terraformation of Mars.

A two-stage terraforming scenario is outlined for Mars. The approach adopted differs from past methodology in two ways. It adopts a more conservative and plausible Martian volatile inventory. Possible planetary engineering solutions, including possible synergic use of terraforming techniques, are examined in detail. In the first stage, the Martian environment is modified to a state where it can support microbial and hardy plant life in approximately 200 years. While this step is conceptually similar to past scenarios, it differs greatly in detail. The second stage deals with the creation of conditions tolerable for human beings over a period of approximately 21,000 years. It is concluded that terraforming Mars is possible but not by the passive, or near-spontaneous, methods favored by some workers. A powerful industrial effort is required both on the planet's surface and in space as will be continuing technological intervention to stabilize the postterraformed regime.

The Anthropocene is an era that owes much of its self-understanding to data obtained from space. It is also a period in which fantasies of escaping from Earth to space are proliferating. This article examines one of these fantasies-- the astropastoral dream that imagines that by going out to space we can somehow return to an idealized rural state--an ideology that we argue is contributing to keeping our society unsustainable by offering false hope for a post-planetary and more importantly post-ecological future. Yet as the article also points out, other versions of astropastoral, in particular those forms of astropastoral writing which integrate but also modify practices drawn from nature writing, can prompt us to take into consideration already threatened outer space ecosystems and can likewise contribute to helping us understand more clearly the nature, and the limits, of environmental awareness in the Anthropocene.

One of the stated goals of NASA’s Astrobiology Institute is to investigate the possibility of whether life can spread beyond its home planet: ‘What is the potential for survival and biological evolution beyond the planet of origin’? This boils down to where we are going as a species, and the really big question is, could Mars have a biosphere once again? In October 2000 a two-day conference entitled The Physics and Biology of making Mars Habitable’ was organised by Chris McKay at the NASA Ames Laboratory to discuss the possibility of one day changing the climate of Mars to a more Earth-like environment, suitable for terrestrial species to flourish. Twenty six papers, by an international cast of authors, were listed on the programme and the attendance was so good that the venue had to be transferred to a larger auditorium.

In times to come when the Parasol was dismantled and the sun's light shone again on Venus, a world shaped by men and women would be revealed. The lifeless, sterile ocean far below, an acidic ocean that might have boiled away in the still intense heat but for the high atmospheric pressure, would teem with life. Pamela Sargent

Venus is often overlooked as a target for settlement or terraforming because of its extreme environment, which is the result of a massive and dense super-greenhouse atmosphere. This paper presents a scenario in which Venus could be made habitable and ready for settlement in only a few centuries, based primarily on ideas put forward by Paul Birch in 1991. In addition, orbital habitats are constructed from additional materials used in the creation of the orbital infrastructure needed to begin and maintain the terraforming process. These habitats allow for the early settlement of Venus-space and can potentially provide a rapid return on investment. The massive CO 2 atmosphere is frozen out using a sunshade and stored in large ice caps at the poles, where it is mined and processed into various materials such as artificial limestone and carbon nanotube composite structures. The sunshade is also a vast solar farm used to beam power to the orbiting habitats during the long 200-year occultation of the sun. Oceans are created by dismantling several moons of Saturn, including Epimethius and Janus. Finally, simple cyanobacteria and other organisms are imported and seeded in the oceans to begin fixing nitrogen and oxygenating the atmosphere. At this point, the surface is ready for human occupation.

Looking out into the Universe on a dark and clear night, and feeling that unique sense of awe the night sky provides, one can gain some appreciation of why ancient astronomers named celestial objects after their gods and heroes. This is particularly so for the planets which, month by month, could be seen to alter their position against the fixed stellar background. The serenity and regularity of their motion hinted at some order to the Universe, underlying the capriciousness and chaos of daily events. Whilst the study of the mystery of planetary motion was ultimately successful and was a major factor in the invention of modern science, planetary astronomy has not entirely shed all its mythical connotations. This is particularly the case with the planet Mars. Although Mars no longer conjures up images of the blood-red Roman god of war -modern myths have replaced it. We have the unforgettable Mars of Lowell [1], shaped out of necessity into a dour utopia by a race of planetary engineers; we have the anarchic arena of adventure that sprang from the mind of Edgar Rice Burroughs [2]; and the beautiful, stark and haunted world of Ray Bradbury [3], with its empty seas and slender, alien ruins.

Planetary biology can be considered in terms of four
components: (1) planetary protection, (2) the search for life, (3)
human life support and (4) ecopoiesis and terraforming.
Initially, contamination of a planet with Earth life is to be
minimized in order to facilitate a search for planetary life.
Meanwhile, humans, if present, must be sustained.
Subsequently, large-scale modifications of a planetary
environment can be considered. “Ecopoiesis” is a term
introduced by McKay and Haynes to describe the initiation of a
living, self-sustaining ecosystem in a planetary (Mars)
environment. “Ecosynthesis” refers to the development of an
ecosystem that includes succession (ecosystem maturation by
the replacement of organisms). “Terraforming” refers to
creating an Earth-like world and includes planetary engineering.
A considerable amount of debate, discussion and publication has
been devoted to these subjects, but, at least in the case of
ecopoiesis, there has been very little, if any, experimental
research. The speakers in this session address, in order, issues
of planetary environments and habitability with reference to
Earth analogues, the role of extremophiles as pioneer organisms
in ecopoiesis, and the concept of succession

How to offer criticism in a way that is most likely to be accepted, is the subject of this discussion paper. The essential underlying value is the equal worth and dignity of every human being and the belief that everyone deserves to be treated with respect.

Hamlet: To what base uses we may return Horatio! Why may not imagination trace the noble dust of Alexander till he find it stopping a bunghole? Horatio: 'Twere to consider too curiously to consider so. Hamlet: No, faith, not a jot; but to follow him thither with modesty enough, and likelihood to lead it: as thus; Alexander died, Alexander was buried, Alexander returneth into dust; the dust is earth; of earth we make loam; and why of that loam whereto he was converted might they not stop a beer barrel? Imperious Caesar, dead and turn'd to clay, Might stop a hole to keep the wind away: O, that such earth which kept the world in awe Should patch a wall to expel the winter's flaw!-William Shakespeare

The critique of human exceptionalism has necessarily led to a renewed questioning of the status of "life" systems more generally. Pursuing a radical deconstruction of those Cartesian dualisms that continue to infiltrate theoretical discoursemind-body, human-animal, and technology-lifehas not merely decentered western anthropology (or re-centered it within a global Anthropocene), but has altered the entire genealogy within which both humanism and its various posts-had previously been conceptualized. The term "entropology," having begun as a marginal allusion by Claude Lévi-Strauss...

Everything in space obeys the laws of physics. If you know these laws, and obey them, space will treat you kindly. And don't tell me man doesn't belong out there. Man belongs wherever he wants to go-and he'll do plenty well when he gets there.

interested in the colonization of space and has been attracting the interest of an increasing number of researchers. This is because of one simple observation: the only life-support system of which we know, or can conceive, which is stable over geological time in the absence of all-encompassing technological management, is the biosphere of the Earth. In other words, it may be that planetary biospheres are sufficiently large and complex that they can be left to "run themselves" (or nearly so) once made, being truly robust and nearpermanent living systems. It is this prospect therefore that motivates scientists interested in terraforming: the possibility of the engineered creation of habitable planets from lifeless worlds such as Mars and Venus.

Fredric Jameson’s Allegory and Ideology (2019) not only constitutes the most recent installment of his ongoing series, The Poetics of Social Forms, but constitutes an elaboration of his account of allegory first formulated in The Political Unconscious (1981) and offers his most recent contribution to a Marxist conception of literary and social criticism. This brief review-essay consists of some jotting to attempt to take some measure of the critical and political import of Jameson’s reworking of allegory. It argues that in this recent work Jameson mostly casts allegory in terms of ideology-critique. Moreover, what emerges most crucially is the notion that allegory enables a dialectical grasp of an increasingly fragmented reality, thus contributing to the vital task of historicizing the present and conceiving it as one more episode in an ongoing plot in which the future of a terraforming of the world, beyond capital, is at stake.

While proposals for settling in the space frontier have appeared in the technical literature for over 20 years, it is in the case of Mars that the ethical dimensions of space settlement have been most studied. Mars raises the questions of the rights and wrongs of the enterprise more forcefully because: (a) Mars may possess a primitive biota; and (b) it may be possible to terraform Mars and transform the entire planet into a living world. The moral questions implicit in space settlement are examined below from the standpoints of four theories of environmental ethics: anthropocentrism, zoocentrism, ecocentrism and preservationism. In the absence of extraterrestrial life, only preservationism concludes that space settlement would be immoral if it was seen to be to the benefit of terrestrial life. Even if Mars is not sterile, protection for Martian life can be argued for either on intrinsic or instrumental grounds from the standpoints of all of these theories. It is argued further that a strict preservationist ethic is untenable as it assumes that human consciousness, creativity, culture and technology stand outside nature, rather than having been a product of natural selection. If Homo sapiens is the first spacefaring species to have evolved on Earth, space settlement would not involve acting outside nature, but legitimately within our
nature.

Due to the recently growing interest regarding the future colonization of Mars, an increasing number of plans appeared in the last few years to fulfil the need for a safe habitat for the first Martian colonists. Numerous fanciful design ideas presented on competitions held by NASA and other space research organizations. However our detailed study revealed, that most designs suffer of shortages and either difficult to manifest or does not meet the safety requirements of the first Martian missions, e.g. shielding against radiations or impacting particles. After analysing the problems of safety and feasibility we tried to design a habitat that is realizable taking into account the cargo capacity of the spacecrafts of our near future and the use of the locally available materials of Mars. Further requirement was for our design that the pioneers’ habitat should not be a tiny, prison-like lair, but a spacious, liveable and safe living area, that is suitable for continuous habitation. The frame of our design is an inflatable structure, which is supplied with the proper shielding and insulation by locally available materials. The special ventilation system and the large greenhouses of this habitat is serving the colonists with food, oxygen and liveable space – and even rocket propellant materials.

In this chapter I explore Karl Jaspers’ idea of the ‘Axial Age’, and the complex relationship between ‘Axial’ cultures and the path to the Anthropocene. I then discuss a series of ‘theory-fictions’ that use a fictional Second Axial Age, based on a radically different metaphysics, in order to try to stretch the scholarly imagination. I develop in some detail one particular example of this imagined cultural shift, an offshoot of Tibetan Buddhism – Mangalayana or ‘Mars-Vehicle’ Buddhism, which involves a form of geological mysticism and a new understanding of cosmic human destiny.  I argue that such experimental fusions between literary genres can help us to understand what it might mean to escape the limitations of First-Axial-Age thinking and imagine radically different ‘geo-spiritual futures'.

Jupiter might be turned into an artificial star by seeding it with a primordial black hole of approximately 10^-4 Earth masses. Eddington limited accretion onto the hole would produce sufficient energy to create an ecosphere ~ 7x10^8 m from Jupiter, giving effective temperatures for Europa and Ganymede similar to the values for Earth and Mars respectively. As the black hole grows, so does its Eddington limit and its accretion luminosity; Jupiter would exponentially brighten. The Galilean satellite zone would remain habitable for ~ 10 -- 100 million years. After this time, Jupiter might be surrounded by a miniature Dyson Sphere until, about half a billion years after stellification, the planet would have to be dismantled to starve the hole of any further mass to prevent it from becoming dangerously over-luminous.
The feasibility of this scenario depends upon (1) the prevalence of primordial black holes; (2) the existence of a technologically advanced civilisation within the future Solar System and (3) a modest to high value for the efficiency of conversion of rest mass to energy for black hole accretion from a dense medium. All three of these assumptions are reasonable, given the magnitude of uncertainty in each case.

The widespread growth of plants on Mars following ecopoiesis has often been invoked as a method of generating atmospheric oxygen. However, one issue that has been overlooked in this regard is the fact that terrestrial plants do no thrive under conditions of low oxygen tension. A review of the relevant botanical literature reveals that the high oxygen demands of root respiration could limit the introduction of most plants on Mars until after terraforming has raised the atmospheric pO2 to 20 - 100 mbar. A variety of physiological strategies are discussed which, if it is possible to implement them in a genetically engineered plant specifically designed for life on Mars, might allow this problem to be overcome.

In 1996, NASA's Magellen shot these images to reveal the surface geology of Venus using infrared radar technology to penetrate the thick sulfuric cloud that envelopes the entire planet. The images show the surface of Venus, not cloud formations. In 2012, coincident with the end of the Mayan calendar, I discovered a mural on Venus that illustrates the Aztec legend of Creation, where I believe that the surface geology of Venus represents the "canvas" upon which this complex message was created. I believe that this mural was specifically designated for the people of Mexico by their ancestors, because this legend belongs to them.

This miniscript seeks to contribute to the international debate on the ethical implications derived from the processes of colonization of space and more specifically from space mining and resource exploitation (space economy aspects). Until now, the debate and technical scientific development have focused on finding and developing solutions for the
exploitation of these resources and even future housing models, but social, human and ethical research has not been involved in these projects based on new proposals or alternatives in the economic model and the prevailing rationality. In this advance, it is suggested from
the perspective of speculative and performative sciences, to propose the place that could possibly occupy a line of work in artificial intelligence and robotics oriented to ethical consideration in these space economic environments and developments