How about a second moon

[HydrogenBond]

Here is a hypothetical scenario. What would happen if we could go to one of the distant planets and borrow one of the moons that has surface water. What we do is alter it orbit and slowly bring it into orbit around the earth. We would now have a moon that could support life. We would have to seed its oceans and plant things to bind the soil. If the plants thrived they would create an oxygen atmosphere. We can then add animals.

[Jay-qu]

and at the same time screw up the tides - who know the ramifications of messing around with the hydrosphere. Not to mention that it would be incredibly hard to do, how do you propose to move this moon?

[HydrogenBond]

Like I said it is hypothetical. I thought it would be fun to terra form something close by that already has the basics needed for life in place. As far as getting it here maybe a pulley system. I think someone who invented pulleys said if he had a place to stand he could move the world. A little moon should be a piece of cake.

[Tormod]

It would probably be a lot easier to work with the moon we already have, and it wouldn't screw up things so much (and apart from the fact that it's already in place, it's also conveniently close).

There's plenty of water there, as long as we can thaw the polar ice, and we'd need to keep it in huge closed basins but that shouldn't be too much of a hassle. In fact the base that is to be established on the moon by 2018 and thereafter will need to do this. I'd say we'll have a living moon within a hundred years. If you wanna tow one from elsewhere, you'd have to go at LEAST out to Jupiter (since the Martian moons are slightly uninteresting and Venus and Mercury have no moons) and that would take, let's be optimistic, a couple of hundred years to figure out. Hypothetically speaking, of course.

[Jay-qu]

It would be cool to have a moon like endor

Our moon is covered in the regolith, a thick layer of fine dust, wont this have to be cleared where you want water or else you would end up with a thick sloppy mud..

[Tormod]

Originally Posted by Jay-qu

Our moon is covered in the regolith, a thick layer of fine dust, wont this have to be cleared where you want water or else you would end up with a thick sloppy mud..

Like I said, you'd need to keep the water in basins (ie, pools which separate them from the environment). That not only keeps it from turning the regolith into mud, but it also has the added bonus of not having all the water vaporize into space in milliseconds.

[Jay-qu]

..and would also have to be heated would it not? ice is pretty useless for drinking

[Tormod]

Originally Posted by Jay-qu

..and would also have to be heated would it not? ice is pretty useless for drinking

Man which part of "thaw" did you now understand?

[Jay-qu]

yeah but after you thaw something if left at sub zero temperatures it is prone to re-freezing...

[Janus]

Problems with terraforming the Moon:

It's to small, At 1/6 the surface gravity and 1/81 the mass of the Earth, you would have a devil of a time maintaining an atmosphere of any thickness.

It rotates too slow. You will have to find some way to "spin it up". Otherwise you are going to end up with 14 days of sunshine and 14 days of night. under present conditions the daytime temp on the moon reaches 212°F and drops to -300° at night. Now while an atmosphere(if you can maintain one: see above), can help moderate this, 14 days of sunshine and 14 days of night are going to lead to some hot daytime temps and cold nightime temps. Also, since weather is generally driven by such differential heating by the Sun, you are going to have a lot of wind to contend with.