But in all cases, this is exactly what some astronomers have in mind: transplant human species to these planets before it is too late.

Before colonising places outside our system though, it is logical to try and colonise our neighbour, Mars. To achieve this goal though, many other problems have to be taken into consideration. How do we transform a dusty planet like Mars into one more or less alike to our Earth? How should we proceed? Before we plan to perform any of these though, we should ask ourselves whether we are really prepared to go out there where nobody has ever gone.

Many people think that to make Mars habitable, we only need to take planet’s temperature into consideration. Well this is not true of course but these people will also insist that to succeed in making temperature of Mars same as that of Earth, we only have to crash an asteroid or even a comet into Mars.

Now when you come to think of it, basic essence of this idea is. If ever we manage to crash a space rock on Mars and this is yet another problem, temperature of Mars will gradually increase. This is due to fact that greenhouse gases like methane and carbon dioxide will be released. They will then trap heat making planet become hotter and hotter. Unfortunately, scientists are working on teraforming so as to manage to make man, one day, live on Mars! The latter’s air thus has to be, well… breathable! If asteroid/comet theory is put in practise, percentage of these greenhouse gases will mount instantly and will take ages to drop back to normal.

To me huge mirrors might work out alright. These will orbit Mars and reflect light and heat from sun to red planet. Another idea is that instead of using these man made mirror-satellite, why not use natural mirror-satellites? Mars has two natural satellites orbiting it namely Phobos and Deimos. We could cover these with mirrors! They may then act as mirror-satellites and reflect light and heat onto Mars.

Many of present ideas of how to teraform Mars seem ridiculous and only good for science fiction movies but isn’t teraforming itself still in realm of science fiction? Maybe these ideas will, one day, from part of revolutionary ideas mankind has had; but maybe they will not.

Teraforming is a dream. And this dream lies on shoulders of next generation of scientists and astronauts. But we really should bear in mind that teraforming Mars is only a small step in human flight for survival. When sun blows up, both Earth and Mars will disintegrate. Teraforming Mars is only an experiment before really doing ultimate job: teraforming a planet outside solar system for humans to live in peace at least for some millenniums. Can humans bear a 2 year-long voyage in shuttle condition though? Won’t we be obliged to modify ourselves to make this Mars experiment a success?