Fiction
Life waits inside this world's bones.
Your voice flows across the red rock and through the dead valleys, speaking in code and goads.
Ancient volcanoes swell, exploding at their peaks and splitting wide along their shoulders. Ash clouds blacken the starved air. A fossil ocean of ice softens and collapses. Geysers erupt, tall as mountains, throwing up steam and clouds.
Every moment matters. And from a great distance, in the midst of a thousand careful disasters, you watch the transformation with your own eyes.
The rose has blossomed.
Your voice flows across the red rock and through the dead valleys, speaking in code and goads.
Ancient volcanoes swell, exploding at their peaks and splitting wide along their shoulders. Ash clouds blacken the starved air. A fossil ocean of ice softens and collapses. Geysers erupt, tall as mountains, throwing up steam and clouds.
Every moment matters. And from a great distance, in the midst of a thousand careful disasters, you watch the transformation with your own eyes.
The rose has blossomed.
— Ghost Fragment: Mars, Destiny
Ghost: Centaurs
are supposed to be just giant icy rocks. How did all this happen?
are supposed to be just giant icy rocks. How did all this happen?Failsafe: A robotic alien entity called the Vex have achieved 92.014 percent conversion of the Centaur Nessus.
— Destiny 2, "Looped"
Luisa Kim: What we're doing is so exciting, so... inspiring. We take a lifeless planet and, little by little, transform it into an M-class environment, capable of supporting life. Terraforming makes you feel a little godlike. ...Is that a terribly arrogant thing to say?
Lt. Commander Data: Not at all. It is accurate.
Lt. Commander Data: Not at all. It is accurate.
— Star Trek: The Next Generation ("Home Soil")
"To be a great terraformer, you need the green thumb of a gardener, the eye of a painter, the soul of a poet... and it doesn't hurt to be a raging egomaniac."
— Professor Gideon Seyetik, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine ("Second Sight")
"You know what I love most about Mars? They still dream. We gave up. They're an entire culture dedicated to a common goal, working together as one to turn a lifeless rock into a garden. We had a garden... and we paved it."
— Frank DeGraafe, UN Ambassador to Mars, The Expanse
"Now that we are here, it isn't enough to just hide under ten meters of soil and study the rock. That's science, yes, and needed science too. But science is more than that. Science is part of a larger human enterprise, and that enterprise includes going to the stars, adapting to other planets, adapting them to us. Science is creation. The lack of life here, and the lack of any finding in fifty years of the SETI program, indicates that life is rare, and intelligent life even rarer. And yet the whole meaning of the universe, its beauty, is contained in the consciousness of intelligent life. We are the consciousness of the universe, and our job is to spread that around, to go look at things, to live everywhere we can. It's too dangerous to keep the whole consciousness of the universe on one planet, it could be wiped out. And so now we're on two, three if you count the moon. And we can change this one to make it safer to live on. Changing it won't destroy it. Reading its past might get harder, but the beauty of it won't go away. If there are lakes, or forests, or glaciers, how does that diminish Mars's beauty? I don't think it does. I think it only enhances it. It adds life, the most beautiful system of all. But nothing life can do will bring Tharsis down, or fill Marineris. Mars will always remain Mars, different than Earth, colder and wilder. But it can be Mars and ours at the same time. And it will be. There is this about the human mind: if it can be done, it will be done. We can transform Mars and build it like you would build a cathedral, as a monument to humanity and the universe both. We can do it, so we will do it. So, we might as well start."
down, or fill Marineris. Mars will always remain Mars, different than Earth, colder and wilder. But it can be Mars and ours at the same time. And it will be. There is this about the human mind: if it can be done, it will be done. We can transform Mars and build it like you would build a cathedral, as a monument to humanity and the universe both. We can do it, so we will do it. So, we might as well start."— Sax Russell, Red Mars
Rather than adapting to a different world, they have created a copy of their old world. Such are the benefits of an advanced civilization.
Narration for "Terra", Alien Worlds (2020)
Real life
You need to live in a dome initially, but over time you could terraform Mars to look like Earth and eventually walk around outside without anything on... So it's a fixer-upper of a planet.
— Elon Musk
Here we are on Earth, a world that's very sophisticated and developed and complete, and anything we do is just a subtraction, because we live on such a biologically-rich planet. But if we go to Mars, we have an opportunity we don't have on Earth. Here's a planet that's died. Here's a world that's not full of biology, probably doesn't have any at all. Well, there, we can actually do something to help.
[...]
This is a philosophical debate. Some people think the universe has a big sign on it that says 'Do not touch'. "Leave it alone, it was made this way, it is not in our purview as human beings to change anything." I can respect that view, although I disagree with it. I think the universe has a big sign on it that says, "Go forth and spread life". Because when I look around at the universe, I think life is the most amazing thing we see. It is just incredible. And we human beings are uniquely positioned to help spread life from this little tiny planet, which it seems to have started on, beyond. And... that's our gift. Earth's gift to the universe, I think, is the gift of life!''
— Dr. Christopher McKay, a NASA planetary scientist
