With the space age upon us, thoughts about going to other planets and colonizing them for human habitation have been floating around. Conditions on planets like Venus are too harsh for humans to normally inhabit, so ideas for terraforming are being proposed. Is it really possible to terraform a planet to look and feel like Earth?

How Does Terraforming Work?

Terraforming is different for each planet, and it really does depend on the atmosphere and how the planet is made up. For a planet like Venus, the question is how to get the atmosphere less dense and fill it with oxygen. For other planets with a less dense atmosphere, the question is how to fill it with oxygen and other gases that make up Earths atmosphere.

Why We Should Terraform Venus, Not Mars

Even though we need a lot of things to go right for us to be able to colonize Venus, the payoff is much better than that of colonizing Mars for human habitation. The size of Mars compared to Earth is much too different, as Earth is close to double Mars and the gravity is much lower, leading to problems like muscle problems. Venus however, is only slightly smaller and has very similar gravity. This makes it a better candidate for habitation on paper, but a lot of things must go right and technology has to improve at a rapid rate for Venus to be terraformed.

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https://science.howstuffworks.com/terraforming.htm

https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/goddard/2018/mars-terraforming

https://www.earth.com/earthpedia-articles/terraforming/

https://www.space.com/can-we-really-terraform-mars

https://bigthink.com/hard-science/terraforming-solar-system/