Gallowglass3000 wrote:First thing to do is to set up test plots, just to make sure that the planet in question is free of the virus. Once satisfied, then you can start to regenerate the planet, not terra-form it.
Basically just add the proper soil/water cultures and stand bak. There won't be any alien life-forms fighting your bio-forms and if you do it right, no diseases-imported or native.
Create huge farms like on the space station, then use the farms to spread the regenerated soil out. A small scale way to do this was written about in 'Farmer in the Sky'. With robots you can easily create huge soil farms. It might take a century or two to get a foothold but not human generations.
Murray Leinster had a very good discussion in "The Forgotten Planet." The story was so long ago that the planet was forgotten because a punched card got lost while HQ was being moved.
The postulated galaxy was one where there were very many lifeless planets suitable in other ways. With the orbital telescopes we are now finding many solar systems that simply could not contain a habitable planet, or even a terraformable one. Not that it will matter for some generations, if ever. ML could be very good about teaching inside a story, also Hal Clement.