Comments on: Terraforming is NOT landscaping

By: Mantar

Mantar — Tue, 21 May 2013 18:18:26 +0000

As a long time sci-fi nerd, I’m with you 100%. Terraforming is the act of taking a planet that is uninhabitable for human beings and altering its temperature, atmosphere, and chemical makeup until it moves into the boundary conditions to sustain human life. If you can land on it and walk around (with or without a shovel), it doesn’t need terraforming. If your ship would melt or freeze, or the atmosphere would poison or suffocate you, you need terraforming.

Deserts don’t need terraforming, they need irrigation and shelter. Rubbish heaps and mining sites don’t need terraforming, they need waste cleanup. And no, landscaping is never “terraforming,” don’t mistake the literal meaning of the latin base for the meaning of a recently minted word.

By: hkmaly

hkmaly — Sun, 24 Mar 2013 15:58:28 +0000

I think that there ARE places which need terraforming even on Earth. Rubbish dumps and surface mines for example. Or deserts. Or you can call it terraforming if you turn sea into land – which, technically, can be done by shovel.

Garden, no matter what state is in, never needs terraforming by definition. If it would need terraforming, noone would call it garden.

By: James

James — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 18:40:47 +0000

Um…. Isn’t that kind of a duh? I suppose some people use the word wrong now days?

By: Temperest

Temperest — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 02:47:58 +0000

I suppose it’s a matter of opinion – the word terraforming could be applied to landscaping as well as the more mundane operations, since both are “forming the earth”, so to speak.