• Question: How long would it take to terraform a planet?

    Asked by Terror Hurts to Andrea, Charlie 🚀, Col Op, Kirsty on 22 Jun 2016.
    • Photo: Charles Laing

      Charles Laing answered on 22 Jun 2016:

      Hi PootisBird,

      It really depends which planet and by what method.

      Mars for example may take anything from 1,000 to 100,000 years but with newer technologies could be much faster.

      The Martian atmosphere is about 96% carbon dioxide so using carbon capture to reduce this would be a sensible first step. Also, heating up the planet as a whole may take a long time and it was recently suggested by Elon Musk (not sure how seriously) to drop nuclear bombs on the poles of Mars to do that!

      Charlie 🚀

    • Photo: Andrea Boyd

      Andrea Boyd answered on 22 Jun 2016:

      Mars is the only one near us with any possibility of terraforming. The others are way too hot or way too cold. It’d be a few hundred to a few hundred thousand years, depending how Earth-like we’d try to make it!

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