To be quite honest, I wouldn't be embarassed if I had/did pursue it becuase I would be doing so with good intentions. Granted, I completely understood everything you said and I suppose that is basically what I was thinking in the first place. However, I think it is kind of sad the arrogant attitude you had to throw into your posts when it would have been perfectly accepted to just say so in a decent manner ESPECIALLY since you, being a community advisor, represent the World Community Grid. Belittling someone and completely telling them, in essence, they should feel stupid isn't necessary what so over.

My only intentions were to attempt to get involved in something bigger than myself. All through my life I have made my way through school working hard, I am now at Michigan State University and am starting to get to the point in my life where I am not content being a student. I am ready to be something more in life. Partying and living college life can only give you so much satisfaction before you want to be part of the real world. Thank you Sekerob and Keck_Komputers for being reasonable people who are atleast willing to show an ounce of interest regardless of whether you think it is a bad idea or not.

And Didactylos, don't get me wrong, I understand where you were coming from but in reality there are plenty of nice ways to deflate an idea and you were almost there minus telling me I should feel embarressed and mocking me ' "crunching Mars would be cool." '

Mars--maybe, if we don't heat up the earth and marsform it FIRST.

Venus--maybe not. 465 degrees C and 97% CO2 and H2SO4 cloud droplets under 90 earth atmospheres of pressure.

Thank you Didactylos.

As I said, It is debatable as to whether it is humanitarian.

Regardless, I am currently studying Mechanical Engineering and possibly dualing in Astrophysics as well with the intentions of working in the Aerospace field, hence my interest in space.

Believe it or not retsof, Venus is actually looked at as a fairly viable choice because it being techtonically active would make it a more like Earth than Mar could ever be. Granted you make a good point, the first step would be cooling the planet. There are some ideas on how the planet could be cooled: 1) injecting aluminum dust into the atmosphere may reflect the sunlight (this I would think would be a calculation that could be handled by grid computing) 2) another idea is aiming solar flares at Venus using megnetic fields, the hydrogen would possibly react with the abundance of CO2 to form methane/water which would reflect some of the suns heat back into space. 3) planting life capable of living in a hospitable environment would convert the CO2 to oxygen. Another thing that comes to mind is whether or not the planets will maintain an atmosphere once it is created, for instance it is believed that Mars once had a strong atmosphere but it is unclear what happened to it. Could grid computer help figure out what happened to it? There are all kinds of ideas and grid computing would seem to be a logical way to compute the affect of these ideas. This is the reason why I had originally been intrigued by such and idea but I understand where Didactylos is coming from and because I am not a scientist it is unlikely that I understand everything completely and it is very possible they don't require the computations that I believe they do.