REAL CHANGE: Terraforming Mars: A Quick Q&A with … Edwin Kite and Robin Wordsworth on designing a new home beyond Earth. “As the prospect of human settlements on Mars draws closer to reality than we could have realistically imagined pre-SpaceX, so does the concept of terraforming, or shaping alien landscapes beyond Earth to suit human needs. The idea of an interplanetary species was first conceived in the 1890s. Not so long after, the idea of modifying the topography and natural resources of planets and asteroids arose as early as the 1940s, before being picked up by imaginative writers like Carl Sagan and Isaac Asimov.”