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Excellent-Pattern119 t1_j8t10t3 wrote

I will put it bluntly: we can't even terraform the Sahara Desert, the Namibia Desert, and the Atacama Desert to be inhabitable and people are talking about terraforming a planet that has not have enough gravity to maintain an atmosphere for geological time unless that is a very heavy gas: the tail end of Maxwell velocity distribution of speeds will make all those molecules get to the escape velocity and leak to the space after a few million years or less. So If you can breathe sulfur hexafluoride maybe we can. It is a calculation so easy you can do it yourself, it is usually one of the problems or examples that are given in the kinetic theory of gases course. So come back with your feet to Earth and spare me the Elon hype.

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PandaEven3982 t1_j8thfbl wrote

I agree with everything you've said. I would add one caveat. We haven't really tried to terraform, with realistic amounts of resource applied. You'd need a significant amount of resources to actually attempt remediation. Resources equivalent to a significant percentage of worldwide military expenditure for 5-10 years.

You'd need a world government.

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