** Mars is NOT terrformable **
Sorry, but the phsyics are clear on this one.
There are two reasons Mars can’t sustain an earthlike atmosphere, the more important being that the Mars lacks a magnetic field.
This is geeky rough sledding, but here goes.
The dominant problem for maintaining an atmosphere is the solar wind, charged high speed particles emanating from the sun. When these charged particles strike a planet’s atmosphere, they whack bits of the atmosephere into interplanetary space. Earth has a strong magnetic field that deflects the solar wind before those charged particles get close enough to whack an air molecule into space. Mars has no magnetic field, and thus Martian atmosphere is continually “scoured” (Yes, that is the technical term used by planetary scientists. Back when we had planetary scientists).
The first step to terraforming mars is the creation of planetary sized magnetic field. I have some ideas how to do that, but all run a high risk of turning Mars into the Inner Asteroid Belt. Also, geological processes generally require geological amounts of time. and we don’t have that kind of time.
But even if the “scouring” problem could be solved, Mars would still boil off its atmosphere at a frightening rate because of it’s low gravity relative to earth.
That doesn’t mean Mar’s can’t be made more habitable for short periods of time. The great seer Bruce Sterling gave hints about what this would look like (cf “Sunken Gardens”, “Cicada Queen”) – but notice he grounded the mechanism in DIS-equilibrium physics. That was not casual literary reference, but central message:
We can make Mars briefly habitable if we have access to fusion-level power sources, but only by screwing it up faster then we screwed up the Earth
A bit more knowledge from the past. “Tony Stark” was an alter ego for a guy named Elon Musk. A guy who knew a thing or two about rockets and had a physics degrees. Back when we still had physics degrees. He knew everything I wrote above – and he built that rocket in anyway.
So that rocket does something good – something Elon Musk thought was useful to him. But living on a terraformed Mars couldn’t ever have been the plan, whatever the ancient corporate PR flacks claimed.
Let Cougar fall for the prank – again. Giving us hope, getting all to work together, is reason enough to tolerate the lie.
We need to determine the true purpose of this rocket, and if Cougar or anyone else knows that true purpose.