Alternate history green mars

[drake000666]

What do you think the world would be like today if Mars was really green and alive like many people think it was like early in its history?

-Some of the things that hit me would be a colonizing race during the cold war and after the cold war the people their would start their own nation because they would not want earth to rule over them.

-Could we eat anything from a planet that evolved differently so would we try and kill all martian life so we could install life we can eat their.

-Would a planet like this have driven us to find all kinds of space tech that we do not have today.

[WestAir]

One thing is for certain, we'd certainly have people there by now.

There would probably be more reality TV shows from the surface than scientific documentaries, though.

[G'th]

Oh yes, if Mars was green the space race would likely still be going on today (as I guarantee you even a post-Soviet Russia would have continued on with the space race) as the rush to at least step foot on Mars settled in.

We also likely wouldn't have had the Space Shuttle, as a green Mars would have given Nixon more of a reason to choose Mars over the ISS/Shuttle.

As for Martian plant life, if it evolved in the same basic way we did (IE, Carbon based), presumably at least some of the Martian vegetation should be edible for us. Appetizing, who knows, but edible yes. But, if Mars was green, we also have to consider the fact that it would also have animal life as well. Its unlikely I think that a planet would never evolve animal life but still have plenty of vegetation.

[Scotius]

Maybe we would have a big, sophisticated space station in orbit - serving as a space dock. refueling station etc. And fully developed nuclear propulsion technology. ISRU processes should be more advanced than ours too - i imagine station on Phobos or Deimos would be beneficial on Mars end of operations. Or maybe there would be nuclear war instead of space race, because major powers preferred to fight for Mars, instead of cooperating

[magnemoe]

Maybe we would have a big, sophisticated space station in orbit - serving as a space dock. refueling station etc. And fully developed nuclear propulsion technology. ISRU processes should be more advanced than ours too - i imagine station on Phobos or Deimos would be beneficial on Mars end of operations. Or maybe there would be nuclear war instead of space race, because major powers preferred to fight for Mars, instead of cooperating

Read two books about that, The Sky people/ Hall of the mountain king if I remember correctly.

In short the pulp fiction writers was right, it was both dinosaurs and humans on Venus, Mars had an old civilization.

Main way of getting to orbit was an two stage: supersonic plane with shuttle upper stage.

Nuclear thermal for crew and important goods to Venus/ Mars, solar sail for most cargo, main change from our world was that they found more and more evidence for life up to 1950 so the planetary probes got a bit higher priority.

After that Apollo style funding started and never stopped. World was far more peaceful as both superpowers was to busy in space and did not want distractions.

The reason why Mars and Venus was like this was ailiens who had teraformed both planets around 200 million years ago and transplanted species, near enough in time to move humans, but mars is slowly failing.

First manned landings around 1980, one mistake that Mars was not done first as leaving is much easier, but they found that we could survive on both so the Venus mission was one way

Around 2004 we had village sized based on both.