Terraforming's more aggressive, hands-on cousin. It's the deliberate, large-scale modification of a planetary body's geology, atmosphere, hydrology, and magnetosphere to achieve a desired state—whether that's making a Mars-like world habitable, cooling a Venusian greenhouse, or even dismantling a gas giant to use its raw materials. Tools include orbital mirrors, genetically engineered extremophile seeding, directed comet impacts, and core-stimulation to reactivate magnetic fields. It's planetary-scale civil engineering with a millennia-long project timeline.
*Example: "The Venusian project is full-on planet engineering. We're crashing ice asteroids into the upper atmosphere to scrub CO2, while floating solar cities mine sulfuric acid and pump out albedo-enhancing aerosols. It's a fixer-upper of cosmic proportions."*
by Dumuabzu January 29, 2026
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