Could mars be habitable due to terraforming?

[cesarcurado]

I think pretty much everything can become habitable with proper terraforming.

[Accelerando]

Indeed, asteroids could be habitable if you put a skin around them and inflated it. I think that's a pretty likely candidate for the first kind of terraforming we'll see, personally.

[Seret]

I see no reason why Mars won't be terraformed someday.

How about:

1. Because it's unlikely to be cost-effective. The amount of resources and energy required are truly intimidating. The real estate value of the land recovered by the process would be so high it's unlikely anyone could actually afford to live there.
   
2. There's a reason Mars died. Without a magnetosphere any atmosphere will get inevitably stripped away by the solar wind.
   

[vger]

How about:There's a reason Mars died. Without a magnetosphere any atmosphere will get inevitably stripped away by the solar wind.

No problem, we'll just melt the core (yeah, right).

[Skyler4856]

Why would you think that? The USA isn't even 250 years old. That's 1/200,000,000th of the Earth's entire existence. Brought down to the scale of an average human lifetime of 80 years, the USA has only existed for less than 2 minutes.

What makes you think the USA will last thousands, let alone billions of years? Can you name a single political or cultural entity that has survived more than 500 years in a recognisable form?

To be fair Rome fits those parameters

[Seret]

Can you name a single political or cultural entity that has survived more than 500 years in a recognisable form?

Fun facts regarding longevity: Cambridge University was founded in 1209, which means it has outlasted whole civilisations that have arisen since then (such as the Incas). Fez in Morroco has an even older madrasa, al-Karaouine which dates back to 859.

The oldest sitting government is that of Iceland, which was formed in 930, although it hasn't been active continuously.

[*Aqua*]

The family line of the Japanese Emperors is said to be more than 2000 years old. Although Japan changed in size and government form several times, the emperor's family was always at the top.