Skunk:Terraforming

Overview

A reformation process in which a planetary body is converted into a given environment, ranging from inhabitable to any specific species with a complete self-sustaining biosphere, to barren rock suitable for extreme-scale mining.

Seeding Process

Seed-complex reformation, commonly called "seedbombing" is not the single comical bomb dropped from on-high that the nickname implies. It is a highly technical process with a customized plan for each planet's unique circumstances.

Biologists, geologists, spatial engineers, virologists and geneticists and many other fields all play part in the creation of a genetic soup that is seeded across a planet, and the lab-grown lifeforms that follow it. Bacteria and algaes help convert soil and atmospheric gases, before the artificially-designed flora and fauna is implanted to build and continue a new ecosystem. Less suitable locations can require the import of water and basic compounds from comets or the creation of an artificial magnetosphere in orbit.

This process can take as little as a few years when done done perfectly on a moon, to decades for larger planets with complex atmospheres and binary suns. There have been notable examples taking nearly a century due to repeated setbacks during execution, and complete failure is not unheard of.

Stripping a planet down to raw resource-baring bedrock is a far more guaranteed process, but the destruction of a planet in such a way is usually reserved for those completely out of a star's habitable zone.

It's a persistent rumor that archeological digs on some planets in Federation space imply that some colonies were home to native intelligent life before being reformed. Many consider it nothing more than an unfounded rumor, and the Federation consistently denies these complaints.

The reformation must be carefully observed and directed, and Onia is still dotted with the long-abandoned ruins of the terraformers' outposts.