Eridani Edict Violation of the most Dismissive Kind...

cthia wrote:... Mars is just as deadly as Grayson. More so....

Perhaps as "deadly" in terms of percentage survivability, but not even close as far as "poisonous." Grayson's problem is heavy metals and without completely refining the planet, they're NOT going to be able to get rid of the heavy metals.

Mars has mostly chemical dangers and possible external radiation exposure. Grayson has multiple massive internal nuclear problems. Completely different problems.

Weird Harold wrote:

cthia wrote:... Mars is just as deadly as Grayson. More so....

Perhaps as "deadly" in terms of percentage survivability, but not even close as far as "poisonous." Grayson's problem is heavy metals and without completely refining the planet, they're NOT going to be able to get rid of the heavy metals.

Mars has mostly chemical dangers and possible external radiation exposure. Grayson has multiple massive internal nuclear problems. Completely different problems.

Granted. Sounds like a herculean task for certain. Still. Removing the fully researched recommended amount of topsoil, backfilling the hell out of it with some crusher run, then filtering the oceans and lakes is a start. I think in terms of the civil engineer that I am.

That method is what we employ to clean up areas deeply soiled by chemical spills, say hydrocarbons from manmade spills like pipelines after essentially vacuuming and filtering groundwater from the resulting plume underneath.

For areas deeply tainted by heavy metals we use several methods, determined by the scope, accessibility and geography of the location. One such popular method is the use of electrodialitic remediation. Electrokinetic remediation is also used, dependent upon the same factors.

The impetus behind my thought is deeply rooted in the fact that we utilize methods to clean areas affected by that problem now, but it considers the notion of such processes paired with the advancements enjoyed with Honorverse technology in the light of the Mars Trilogy to at least consider the proposal.

I did read the Mars series as it came out.
Of course there were problems with creating a planitary enviornment on Mars where humans could live in the open atmosphere. Compared to attempting to remove the heavy metals and radioactive materials from Grayson, what they did in the Mars trilogy was childs play.

Heck, build up an human breathable atmosphere on Mars- which is more likely to take a millennia or so with technology we don't have yet and getting things to grow there (primarily things that photosynthesyse which is going to require a lot of water Mars donsn't have) plus creating that vast amount of carbon in gaseous form so the "plants" can create build celuar material will be interesting...not to mention where/how you are going to build up the free oxygen. There is the combined need to get enough atmosphear not only to provide air pressure as well as breathability but things like CO2 as a greenhouse effect -in this case to moderate the temperature swings. And that little problem of apparently not having a magnetic field similar to Earth'ss to help deflect solar particles etc. It goes on and on. There is also the small matter of producing food humans can eat prior to being able to plant out in that open atmosphere. The solution (quite interesting and actualy probable) in the film "The Martian" would be an initial approach but it will take a lot of shit and space (and sealable with heating and watered facilities) to do that.

Filter the natuarly accumulated heavy metals out of entire oceans, particularly when you are getting more diluted matrials draining into them from the rainfall on the land masses- ALL of the land masses and existing in ALL of the ocean and riverine sediment?
That is a fine engineering problem. At least Grayson seems to have a natual source of Oxygen in the atmosphere (which is also sort of balanced to an extent to which humans can breath it once you filter out all the things that will kill you with the dust and radiation.

But it is fiction. Barrayar seems to have found a possible solution for getting rid of radioactive problems from land from nuclear bombs (it's early days yet) but you would have to take that up with Louis McMaster Bujold

Brigade XO wrote:I did read the Mars series as it came out.
Of course there were problems with creating a planitary enviornment on Mars where humans could live in the open atmosphere. Compared to attempting to remove the heavy metals and radioactive materials from Grayson, what they did in the Mars trilogy was childs play.

Heck, build up an human breathable atmosphere on Mars- which is more likely to take a millennia or so with technology we don't have yet and getting things to grow there (primarily things that photosynthesyse which is going to require a lot of water Mars donsn't have) plus creating that vast amount of carbon in gaseous form so the "plants" can create build celuar material will be interesting...not to mention where/how you are going to build up the free oxygen. There is the combined need to get enough atmosphear not only to provide air pressure as well as breathability but things like CO2 as a greenhouse effect -in this case to moderate the temperature swings. And that little problem of apparently not having a magnetic field similar to Earth'ss to help deflect solar particles etc. It goes on and on. There is also the small matter of producing food humans can eat prior to being able to plant out in that open atmosphere. The solution (quite interesting and actualy probable) in the film "The Martian" would be an initial approach but it will take a lot of shit and space (and sealable with heating and watered facilities) to do that.

Filter the natuarly accumulated heavy metals out of entire oceans, particularly when you are getting more diluted matrials draining into them from the rainfall on the land masses- ALL of the land masses and existing in ALL of the ocean and riverine sediment?
That is a fine engineering problem. At least Grayson seems to have a natual source of Oxygen in the atmosphere (which is also sort of balanced to an extent to which humans can breath it once you filter out all the things that will kill you with the dust and radiation.

But it is fiction. Barrayar seems to have found a possible solution for getting rid of radioactive problems from land from nuclear bombs (it's early days yet) but you would have to take that up with Louis McMaster Bujold

The real problem is that we know so little about terraforming tech in the Honorverse. Chances are it's not wildly developed since we haven't had all that much seen so far on Grayson.

But there are possible techs we know little about that might work. Potsdam has had some extensive work done. But this is just one more item that has managed to not engage RFC all that much.

ldwechsler wrote:The real problem is that we know so little about terraforming tech in the Honorverse. Chances are it's not wildly developed since we haven't had all that much seen so far on Grayson.

But there are possible techs we know little about that might work. Potsdam has had some extensive work done. But this is just one more item that has managed to not engage RFC all that much.

You'd have to resurface the whole planet with material that doesn't produce toxic dust. And a deep enough layer that the underlying material won't leak through. Say 50 meters or so? That's a lot of material, even ignoring the complexity of dealing with the oceans.

Or... you could just genetically engineer the humans to thrive on the heavy metals. Or better yet, not land in a toxic waste dump and stay up in space like civilized people. Or the best solution, both!

If you insist on terraforming you'd probably want to do is find a way to extract all the heavy metal from the soil and sequester it. The heavy metal could be used to build ships or something. Just need some sort of self-replicating nanotech, or robots that would cover the planet, suck all the heavy metals out of the soil, grow/build a spaceship using the materials and launch off into space. And if you're going that far you might as well add the ability for it to create military grade ships, colony grade ships and other useful tools like artificial wombs and new cells with arbitrary genetic sequences. For the AI you'll probably have to adapt something from the CNS so its smart enough when problems arise. I don't see how give self-replicating machines these tools could go badly.

What could possibly go wrong?

kzt wrote:

ldwechsler wrote:The real problem is that we know so little about terraforming tech in the Honorverse. Chances are it's not wildly developed since we haven't had all that much seen so far on Grayson.

But there are possible techs we know little about that might work. Potsdam has had some extensive work done. But this is just one more item that has managed to not engage RFC all that much.

You'd have to resurface the whole planet with material that doesn't produce toxic dust. And a deep enough layer that the underlying material won't leak through. Say 50 meters or so? That's a lot of material, even ignoring the complexity of dealing with the oceans.

And then any volcanoes would presumably be injecting many tons more toxic heavy metals back into the atmosphere

And the whole system is said to have unusually concentrated levels of heavy metals, so presumably asteroids and just space dust would constantly be depositing more heavy metals. The Earth is believed to receive around 40,000 tons of space dust each year - presumably Grayson would be also get getting tons per day
So even ignoring oceans it seems hard to get, and keep, the whole surface down to Earth levels of heavy metal concentration.

At this point is it actualy quite possible that Grayson could find themselves a habitable world and move their entire population there (over quite a few decades or more) while continuing to mine Grayson for some of the more exotic materials found there. That, apparently, isn't quite the way the Graysons view the problems they face. The probably would have been much better off leaving the Faithfull on Grayson (and giving them what they wanted- control of the planet) and going to what is now Massada where they could have thrived more or less. Certainly that planet & system would probably have become the prize that Haven and Manticore were looking to gain in Honor of the Queen- same scenario, slightly different location. Somehow I don't see the Faithfull doing quite as well on Grayson without the people who ultimately gave away their oppertunity to get off that ball of toxin.

Brigade XO wrote:The probably would have been much better off leaving the Faithfull on Grayson (and giving them what they wanted- control of the planet) and going to what is now Massada where they could have thrived more or less.

Except that they barely had the ability to ship out the much smaller number of Faithful, so that was impossible.