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Toxic Mars

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Sun, 2013-06-16 17:20
#1
Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture
Toxic Mars
Seems there are nasty perchlorates on Mars: http://www.space.com/21554-mars-toxic-perchlorate-chemicals.html I would assume having them react with something is an important step in terraforming. Any suggestion what to use? Maybe some genetically engineered archaeabacteria? Terraformer teams might be spraying the landscape with slurry to spread them. Poor martians with aplastic anemia from exposure. PCs finding themselves in a toxic peroxide and chlorate drift when they hide in a crater in the southern uplands.
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Sun, 2013-06-16 18:23
Decivre Decivre's picture
Maybe chlorine tolerance is a
Maybe chlorine tolerance is a key element of ruster design. Their bodies may even have to absorb a certain amount of it for proper health, as one of the better ways to make a creature resilient would be to integrate it into their digestive system.
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Mon, 2013-06-17 20:46
Quincey Forder Quincey Forder's picture
just avoid huge Reaper look alike gravity fuckers!
(and by Reapers, I mean big bad bug like Old Machines as the Geth call them) Seriously.
Spoiler: Highlight to view
Where did they got that thing? Apokolyps?!
Now, all joking aside, wouldn't it be simplier and cheaper to partly terraform Mars and adapt future colons to their new milieu through geno-therapy? Of course that would mean it's a one way trip, because Earth would become poisonous to them. If my memory serves me well, that's what was done in the Mars trilogy.
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Wed, 2013-06-19 16:12
Holy Holy's picture
Perchlorates are oxidizing agents
Perchlorates are oxidizing agents. When more water and organic substance will be present on the martian surface due to terraforming, part of the problem will just eliminate itself, i.e. under aqueous conditions the perchlorates will react with organic matter produced during the terraforming process. It is of course far more interesting (and quite reasonable) that the perchlorates might pose a serious problem to deal with during terraforming. The use of microorganisms (be they archaea, bacteria, fungi or what ever else, genetically modified or just left to evolve by themselves) seems to be rather clever to get rid of the perchlorates. Wikipedia tells me that the perchlorates on earth are mainly removed by microorganisms. I do know little about the chemistry of living things, but from my little understanding (and again Wkipedia) I would expect that perchlorate resistant biomorphs use specialized enzymes to deal with the issue. Just because the perchlorates are not present these enzymes will not start to run rampant in their organism, i.e. a morph with high perchlorate tolerance should not depend on the presence of perchlorates to function normaly.
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