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NancyLebovitz comments on Crazy Ideas Thread, Aug. 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Adding rivers was thinking too small. What we need is planet-sculpting-- getting closer to a planet which is optimized for human beings. I suspect that we'd be better off with more and smaller land masses, but this is certainly open to discussion.
Since the politics might be almost (?) as hard as the physical engineering, perhaps the right thing is to move Venus and Mars to more convenient orbits and optiform them.
Terraforming is the usual term.
Artificial islands exist.
"Terraforming" usually means changing an alien planet enough so that people don't need special equipment to live there. This isn't the same as optimizing.
A more general meaning of terraforming is "changing a planet to make it better for humans" :-)
Also, we can (in theory) harvest a lot of gravitational potential energy by pulling Mars closer to the Sun.
There are two major problems with how the earth is currently set up. Only the surface is habitable, and it's a sphere, which is known for having the minimum possible surface area for its volume. A Matrioshka brain would be a much more optimal environment. Although that depends on your definition of "human being".
Can't we terraform them without disrupting entire orbits?