Terraforming is the process of re-creating an environment suitable for life on an initially nonviable planet.

Mars

The terraforming of Mars was approved in ca.2030 by UNOMA. It would come to be completed less than two centuries later, exceeding many conservative expectations.

Several terraforming techniques were used in tandem.

Solar irradiation

Solar irradiation was increased with the use of the sails of Earth-to-Mars ships as mirrors.

The soletta increased irradiation dramatically.

Heat

Residual heat from power generation, such as nuclear power plants, and industrial processes was released to the atmosphere.

Moholes served as heat generators through natural pressure and ventilation.

Coupled with the soletta, the aerial lens focused light and heat on specific spots.

Atmospheric chemistry

Greenhouse gases were released in the atmosphere. Of particular effect was the so-called Russell cocktail.

Water cycle

Aquifers were identified and their water was progressively pumped to the surface.

Biomass

The most important element of the terraforming process.

Beyond Mars

Following the colonization of the solar system during the Accelerando, terraforming projects developed around many planets and moons. As of the end of the 22nd century:

• Venus‘s terraforming project was ambitious and extending over a very long time period.
• The Jovian system counted 18 moons being terraformed.
• Saturn’s moon Enceladus was being terraformed.

The space elevator is means of ground-to-space travel. It consists of a cable attached to the surface of the planet upon which cars physically travel up and down. On its end, beyond geosynchronous orbit, a space station counterbalances the weight and helps to keep the cable vertical above the planet’s equator. Science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke is commonly credited for making the concept known to the wider public, in his novel “The Fountains Of Paradise” (1979), although American science fiction writer Charles Sheffield also wrote a novel featuring a space elevator in the same year (The Web Between Two Worlds) and the scientific concept of space tethers in general is attributed to Russian space scientist extraordinaire Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (late 19th-early 20th century).

Martian elevators

First elevator

The world’s first elevator was built for Mars.

Phyllis Boyle supported the project throughout the 2040s before UNOMA. The transnational EC constructed the cable; the East-Asian Commonwealth constructed the elevator cars. An Amor asteroid was used to create the elevator. The construction took 11 years, circa 2047-2058. The cable was 35,000 km long and 10 meters thick, weighing 6 billion tons. The space station Clarke, named after the author, was built on the remainder of the asteroid at the end of the cable. The cable was attached to the Martian surface at Pavonis Mons caldera, which was suitably situated at the equator, and in which the city of Sheffield had grown. The attachment point was the Socket. 400 cars went up and down the cable at 300 km/h; the journey took five days.

The elevator greatly improved Mars’s exporting capability. Martian minerals were massively exported to Terra and Terran immigrants flooded Mars.

The elevator was destroyed during the First Martian Revolution in 2061. Bogdanovists placed and ignited charges at the joining point of the cable with Clarke. Clarke left Martian orbit while the cable violently wrapped itself around the Martian equator, twice. Peter Clayborne was on an elevator car during the attack. He left the car and drifted in space; he was rescued by chance by a passing spacecraft.

Those who were on Clarke, among them Phyllis, got all the Earth-to-Mars freighters out, linked them together, loaded all the supplies on them and left Clarke. They propelled themselves towards the Jovian system. After 10 weeks, they used Jupiter’s gravity to swing them around towards Earth (becoming the fastest traveling humans in history in the process) and, with limited supplies, they safely reached Earth and survived.

Second elevator

Amor asteroid 2034B was used to construct the cable, using automated robots. The construction began in 2088. The second elevator used the same departing point, the Socket at Sheffield. The station at the end was New Clarke. The elevator was again managed by the Space Elevator Authority. During the Second Martian Revolution, the Kakaze attempted to take it down, which forced UNTA forces to retaliate with firepower. This elevator survived well into the 23rd century.

Terran elevators

By 2127, Terra had ten elevators. Advances in materials were such that allowed for Y-shaped cables to exist. The elevators could thus depart from cities situated outside of the equator, one North and one South, and join into one cable some 10,000 km above the surface. One forked to Virac (Philippines) and to Oobagooma (Australia); another to Cairo (Egypt) and Durban (Azania). The Martian ambassadors used the one to Port of Spain (Trinidad and Tobago), of which the South branch went to Aripuana (Brazil).

Moholes were artificial shafts created on Mars during the 21st century, for purposes of heat release, as projects part of the terraforming effort. It was calculated that they contributed to about a 5 degrees K rise to mean temperature. A side benefit to their creation was ore mining.

Moholes were attempted on Earth in the 1961, with funding by the National Science Foundation[1]. Their name is a portmanteau of “hole” and “Moho”, the shortened name of the Mohorovičić discontinuity, being the frontier between the Earth’s crust and the mantle.

Artist’s depiction of the view from the bottom of a mohole (crane not mentioned in the original text)

Description

A mohole was a great cylindrical excavation in the Martian regolith that could reach hundreds of meters in diameter (typically one kilometer) and several kilometers in depth (as much as 18 kilometers).

As a result of its great depth, pressure at its bottom was superior to the surface’s and temperature could largely surpass 273 K (for example 49 °C at the bottom of the Senzeni Na mohole midway through its construction), which provided a working environment more adapted to human life. The excavation for its construction brought to the surface ore that could be processed to valuable metals. The resulting temperature and pressure differential with the surface was such that moholes were natural heating systems and passive atmospheric ventilators, thus contributing to terraforming. Heat was released to the atmosphere in the resulting outgassing and violent updrafts were created, sending air higher than the average Martian lower atmosphere’s thickness. The white thermal plume and resulting cloud would be visible from over 200 km alway. Moholes would be dug in proximity to volcanic uprises, so as to catch the wind updrafts and increase the release of heat. Downwind from a mohole, the air would be clear.

Artist’s depiction of a section of a mohole, with mound on the top right

A two-laned road was dug into the walls in a spiral large enough to allow circulation of the giant automated dump trucks; the trip from the surface to the bottom could take over five hours. For manned transport, a series of caged elevators were adapted (a trip to the bottom of a mohole would count over seven successive elevators).

Close to the top, the mohole was beveled and a 200m-wide concrete band at a 45° angle separated the shaft from the surface. A high wire fence circled its outer edge and a 1km-long curving road cut into the concrete led to the mouth of the mohole proper. The mohole was surrounded by parking lots, garages and warehouses close to its rim to shelter the robot vehicles and their fuel; there were also walktubes, small tents and the factory apparatus that ran the operation. The mohole operation, digging and hauling the rock to the surface, was almost entirely automated, and so was most of the security (alarms and AI-operated locks); personnel was mainly needed only for programming and maintenance.

The view from any point of the mohole was impressive.

RM 267: Russians staging Hamlet in pressure suits at the bottom of the Tyrrhena Patera mohole, a production that struck John as crazy until Hamlet caught sight of Claudius kneeling to pray, and the camera tilted up to show the mohole as cathedral walls, rising above Claudius to an infinitely distant shaft of sunlight, like the forgiveness he would never receive.

BM 330: The lights on the mohole’s bottom looked like stars seen through the planet. Art was petrified, not at the sight but at the very thought of the sight, and he would not go near that half of the room. Nadia laughed at him, and then when she was done looking, closed the drapes.

The rock dug up from the creation of the mohole would create large mounds next to them. The Sabishiians famously shaped theirs into snaking mounds that looked like a dragon from above, and dug tunnels, rooms and shelters inside them. The rock could also be processed for trace amounts of valuable metals.

Tented cities would be created next to moholes, which were employment and activity centers. Sometimes the city predated the mohole, such as in the case of Sabishii.

Several moholes were abandoned or decommissioned after the First Martian Revolution of 2061. The moholes as a terraforming option were abandoned altogether towards the end of the 21st century, as other solutions were implemented, such as the aerial lens.

Artist’s depiction of the inside of a mohole

List of moholes

The moholes created were at least 12 (most likely exactly 12): one near the North Pole, three around the 60° latitudes North and South, four along the equator and four around the 75° South latitude close to the South Pole[2]. They are[3]:

 

• Senzeni Na mohole, also referred to as the Thaumasia mohole or Ptolemaic mohole; named John Boone mohole during the Second Martian Revolution (at 40° South). With a depth of 18km, is said to be the deepest mohole on Mars (and approaching the limit of the lithosphere, estimated at 25km). One of the first moholes to be dug. During its excavation in the 2050s, when it had a depth of 7km, it was the site of a sabotage in which a truck fell from the surface to the bottom, nearly killing John Boone.
• Tyrrhena (or Tyrrhena Patera) mohole, next to Hadriaca Patera
• Hephaestus mohole (probably the same as the Elysium mohole)
• Sabishii mohole, near Jarry-Desloges Crater. Its mound was famously shaped by the issei of the adjacent Sabishii into the shape of a dragon, and was dug to serve as shelter.
• Low Point mohole, also referred to as Hellas mohole. 13km deep. Drowned during the revolution of 2061. The heat kept a layer of liquid water in and above it; later provided heat as the central point of the newly created Hellas Sea that covered the area.
• Vishniac mohole (at 75° South). After 2061, Bogdanovists moved in the mohole and dug caves in the side walls; the city, Bogdanov Vishniac, a major industrial center of the Martian underground.
• Playfair mohole (at around 75° South). Displayed on map in Blue Mars, but otherwise not mentioned in the novels.
• Rayleigh mohole (at around 75° South). After 2061 it was abandoned. In ca.2091 Coyote reactivated its digging robots and left them on autopilot; a decade later, the robots reached the bottom of the lithosphere and thus the Rayleigh volcano was created.
• Lyell mohole (at around 70° South).
• Ap mohole, in Tempe Terra. It was drowned in the Oceanus Borealis.

References

[1] Description of Project Mohole, 1958-1966, on the National Academies
[2] RM 279, GM 43
[3] In the map in GM 36, the four moholes around the South Pole are named: Lyell, Vishniac, Jeans, Playfair. However the narrative makes it clear that one of the four should be Rayleigh mohole, with a fifth mohole in lower latitudes north of Rayleigh. For this list, precedence has been given to the text and the Playfair and Jeans moholes, never referenced in the text, are not listed.

Metanationals were private giga-corporations resulting from the fusion of many transnationals in the decades following World War Three in the later 21st century. The metanationals completely overtook national rule in Terran affairs and became the new world order of the 2100s.

Some metanationals:

 

• Amexx
• Armscor
• Consolidated
• Mahjari
• Mitsubishi
• Praxis
• Subarashii: were the principal contractor for the construction of the second space elevator of Mars

 

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