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RE: Mining for water on MARS! Could it sustain our future colony?
What about towing or slingshot ice balls from the asteroid belt (or wherever else it is found, under zero g). If the ice is controlled so that minimum damage is caused, we could mulitply the amount of water avaiilable, without having to strip the little there is.
Before we do anything, I was hoping we would first explore and study the planet. It does not look like it will happen and we will just rush in and do what we want for our own benefit, and cry later and castigate ourselves for destroying...whatever it is we destroy. It is a great system, for it means we never have to learn, we never have to "know better"
This article is focusing only on near-future resources needed for habitation. Probably just for the first 10 years of habitation. During the long run, the asteroid belt objects can come into place, and many other techniques I have read about. Stay tuned and I promise I will write about them in a later chapter.
I talked previously in my series about the Planetary Act:
"Terraforming in the long run
Some other preliminary studies cover the introduction of certain bacteria and algae, that could survive in the current Martian environment and if spread in a sufficiently big enough area could thrive and contribute to the gradual martian atmospherical composition change. However this is not allowed yet, under the Planetary Protection act. This is in place due to the fact that Mars has a high probability of hosting life which could be endangered by introducing new forms of life."
from: https://steemit.com/mars/@alexdory/can-we-make-enough-breathable-air-in-our-future-mars-colony-colonization-of-mars-series
I really appreciate your concern, it is also one of mine as I really believe that we will find some sort of evidence of life there ( at least past). It seems more unlikely not to find evidence of life as all the criteria are currently being met.
The Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson has the tension between terraformers and conservationists as a running theme. Particularly in the first two books. You may want to check it out.