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  • Essay / Strategies for creating a self-sustaining environment

    Life outside of Earth has been one of the ultimate goals for generations. Whether it's finding life outside Earth or moving life outside Earth. Yet after so many years, humans are mostly stationed on this planet. The main problem that prevents humans from moving for long periods of time is that they must create a self-sustaining environment, which is complex. To create a self-sustaining environment outside of Earth, humans must address the issues involved in creating such an environment, and then they must terraform Mars and think of strategies for the future. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Before humans can create an autonomous environment, they must solve problems. Two of the major problems are figuring out how to create a self-sustaining environment in which humans can live and deciding whether recreating planets so they can house us is ethical. Environments are made up of many factors and recreating any environment (let alone Earth's) would take a lot of time, money and work. For example, on Earth there is a magnetic field that protects life from UV rays. Mars, the most likely and closest terraforming option, does not have a magnetic field. To create a self-sustaining environment in which humans can thrive, they will need to artificially create a magnetic field that ideally covers the entire planet. One solution proposed by the Council of European Societies is to place large magnets around Mars' equator to redirect solar winds and protect colonists (Sandu). The problem with this option is that the magnets will only cover a small part of Mars and therefore all the cities will have to be in this small equatorial zone. If humans want to expand, thinking about how to increase magnetic field coverage is a good example of one of the tasks they will need to accomplish. Another problem is that sending magnets to Mars is an expensive process from which the return might not be sufficient. justify such an investment. There are many problems with creating a self-sustaining environment and creating a magnetic field is just one of them. The other major issue is the ethics of humans terraforming other planets. Who is to say that humans have the right to go to other planets and recreate them in their own image and potentially harm extraterrestrial life? Ethics is always a sensitive issue, which is why, as Robert Haynes suggests, society must develop a universal code of ethics before proceeding (Haynes). Once humans have decided what they can and cannot do, only then can they start working on alien environments. . Once humans have decided whether it is ethical to restructure the planets, Mars is probably the best option to begin terraforming because it is close and has the potential to be Earth-like (with its ice at the polar caps). and its CO2-heavy atmosphere). There are many ideas for how humans can reach Mars and terraform it. Robert Zubrin's method, named Mars, shows a method to move humans to MarsDirect, is one of the most well-known methods. In the Mars Direct plan, humans send an Earth Return Vehicle (ERV) to Mars. This first ERV will be loaded with rovers and preliminary equipment. On each consecutive trip, the astronauts will be sent in an ERV. These astronauts will stay on Mars for a year and a half. Duringthis time they will explore and live off the land (Zubrin). This is a good start for a strategy to create a self-sustaining environment. This strategy is also known to be cost-effective, with the preliminary stages costing only $50 billion, or only 25% of NASA's annual budget (Zubrin). However, the crux of most strategies involves controlling the composition of the atmosphere and, in this case, warming the planet. Eugene Boland and his team at Techshot are currently working on creating micro-extremophiles that could help control the atmosphere. The idea is to genetically create extremophiles capable of surviving in Martian soil and converting CO2 in the air into oxygen (Hall). This strategy has potential because only one trip would be required to send the bacteria to Mars, meaning this method will remain cheap. Plus, extremophiles will do most of the work, so because extremophiles do most of the work, humans can come in later and tweak the rest of the planet. And when it comes to global warming, James Lovelock has floated the idea of ​​using chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), greenhouse gases notorious for increasing the pace of global warning on Earth. CFCs will trap heat on Mars, which will help start the creation of a self-sustaining environment (Allaby). These three strategies all have their pros and cons, but the best strategy might be to start with Zubrin's method, then slowly use Boland's method and CFC production to solve Mars' two biggest problems. If this is done in the right proportion, the atmosphere will warm up and its composition will be rich in oxygen and then humans will be able to move to Mars and start perfecting the rest of the self-sustaining environment. Mars is the best opportunity for humans to achieve a self-sustaining environment. environment, but at some point humans will have to develop further. Therefore, humans should also consider other strategies. A strategy known as the Kenneth Roy Shell World Approach involves covering an entire planet in a large shell. In this shell, there will be a space between the shell and the planet. Besides gravity, everything inside the planet can be controlled and adjusted. The downside to this approach is that the shell requires a lot of material, so this approach works better on smaller planets/moons. That's why people thought about using this method on the Moon or Mercury. However, this is still a good strategy because humans will have almost complete control over every molecule in the atmosphere. Because the shell acts as a strong barrier, pollutants can be pushed out of the shell and the celestial body can be maintained (Moltzan). Another strategy for creating a self-sustaining environment is space colonization. Rather than attempting to change an entire planet, a space colony isolates a small portion of the earth and creates a self-sustaining environment within that space. Because this is a small-scale strategy, it is a viable strategy during the initial phases of terraforming. But once humans start moving beyond the solar system and space travel takes much longer, space modules could become the best strategy for an autonomous environment. Space pods are like space colonies, but they move through space. For all intents and purposes, the International Space Station (ISS) is a space capsule. Even though it orbits the Earth, it remains largely independent in space. The ISS finds. 52–55.