dietz%usc-cse%USC-ECL%SRI-NIC@sri-unix.UUCP (01/13/84)
l be discovered. Unmanned asteroid probes are needed before billions are spent on a manned mission, if only to find out for sure what the things are made of. menlo!ames-lm!al @Ucb-Vax Why mess around with terraforming? Why indeed? I personally prefer space colonies. It's interesting to note that it *can* be done, if people want to pay for it. As a previous message stated there may be reasons for partially terraforming Venus even if no one wants to live there. To David Alpern (Alpern.Ibm-Sj@Rand-Relay): The explosion of nuclear devices in the ionosphere occured in the 1961-1963 in Projects Argus and Starfish. Exploded at alltitudes of 100 km, the explosions dumped lots of charged particles into the ionosphere, which in some cases caused the Earth's radiation belts to overload and collapse.