Ell Donsaii 13: DNA by Laurence Dahners Read Free Book Online Page B

problems?”
    Lindy shrugged, “There are a number of problems that might turn out to be almost insurmountable. Though we think the plan I just outlined would work, it would take an enormous number of ports to move enough carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and water to Mars to make a significant change. Essentially, if we used 1 meter diameter ports, we’d need 100,000 of them running full time for about a decade to generate an atmosphere even close to the density of Earth’s. Those ports’d be drawing about six megawatts each, which is enough power to run a locomotive. We’ve all gotten used to electricity being very cheap now that ET Resources’ parabolic mirrors in solar orbit let us generate cheap steam energy. As opposed to on earth where we then use deep space cooling to refrigerate the steam to keep from heating the earth, we’d actually like to heat Mars, so we can bring water from Europa, heat it to steam, generate electricity with it and then just vent the steam into Mars’ atmosphere.” Lindy shook her head again, “Nonetheless, we’re talking an enormous commitment of resources over a very extended period of time to move such huge volumes of material. You can see why we really need to do some experiments to be sure that we can get our cyanobacteria to convert that CO 2 and water into oxygen before we start down this path?”
    “Even if you do all that, isn’t Mars still going to be too cold and have too much radiation?”
    “Well, remember that the CO 2 that’s going to be a huge component of the atmosphere early on is a greenhouse gas, so it should help warm up the planet. Even after we get the atmosphere up to an earthlike density, it’s going to take a long time for all that carbon dioxide to be converted to oxygen. However, you’re right to be concerned that it might not be sufficient to warm up the planet to a temperature that we’ll be happy with. We’re hoping to get a little data about the heating we might expect from this dome, but we won’t really know for sure until we do the tremendously expensive experiment of actually trying to terraform. You’re also correct that radiation will remain a problem. A thicker atmosphere will absorb a lot of radiation, but on earth we also count on the magnetosphere to deflect a lot of the radiation. Unfortunately, Mars isn’t magnetic. We think we’d still need to live underground most of the time, going up to the surface only occasionally.” Lindy shrugged, “It may be wishful thinking, but we can hope for some future technological advance that’ll let us block the radiation by other means.”
    It didn’t take much longer to finish up. Carol was impressed by how well Alton had managed to lead the interview, getting Carol to answer questions that he’d obviously known the answer to, while giving the listener the impression Alton was learning right along with them.
     
    ***
     
    Zage liked his new kindergarten teacher, Ms. Binder. She was plump, so he thought she was less likely to look down on him for being fat. He’d lost a little weight on his diet, but feared he’d never be thin. Besides, Ms. Binder seemed to have a permanently happy smile on her face and was able to control her classroom full of gifted but energetic five-year-olds without getting irritated.
    Nonetheless, even though almost every kid in the room could already read, they were going over the letters right now and Zage was bored out of his mind.
    With a quick sub-vocalization he popped a screen up in the HUD of his left contact. He’d been doing this in preschool and had gotten pretty good at keeping a sliver of concentration on what the teacher was talking about. If Ms. Binder asked him a question he’d still be able to answer it.
    Knowing of Zage’s interest in biologic solutions to big problems, Osprey, his AI, popped up a news story from Mars before Zage actually got around to directing a query. With fascination, Zage watched the description of the test dome they were using to