His poll numbers were in decline and most analysts believe his actions are a crass political ploy to boost his poll numbers in Russia: http://www.usatoday.com/story/...
I can cite articles and conclusions from think tanks all over the world if you like. I read something from a Japanese source the other day that said the same thing.
This is how the governments of the world see this action.
And that US counter response is going to focus on Putin's support base.
Well... I didn't say china was asking for anything either. I said they were inclined to "TAKE" not ask.
let me explain again:
Vietnam is near a large power that is inclined to eat bits of their territory or claim their sea resources by force.
To put that off, Vietnam has to appeal to outside authorities to keep china from doing that.
The only credible power capable of and willing to do that would be the US. The russians aren't especially capable of doing anything.
So Vietnam has to keep the US nominally happy so that the US supports Vietnam's claims in the international community to its own resources.
At the same time, it helps if Vietnam can defend itself to some extent. And the Russians make that cheaper. They provide cheap weapons and between the US support of international law and the Russian provision of cheap weapons... vietnam has a CHANCE of holding on to their resources.
Pissing off the US means that the US "MIGHT" not help them if the Chinese make a move. And pissing off the Russians might mean not being able to get access to Russian weapons.
As I said, Vietnam is between three fires.
Which is why I said "poor vietnam". They're in a very bad position. I hope they come through it.
And Venezuela isn't an ally. I'm going to guess you're going to try and blame their financial melt down on the US?
Not us... that's them just killing themselves with stupidity.
Not every idiot nation that kills itself is our fault. The only nations I'm aware of at the moment that we're engaged in suppressing to any great extent are Russia (early stages), Iran (we appear to be turning that off but who can say), and North Korea.
Beyond that, we're not conducting suppression against any other power.
If I missed one, then correct me but I think that is the full list.
I looked it up, apparently you can do it. It is used extensively by space probes.
I can provide links if you want. I don't know how much you could slow something down that went from the earth to the moon... but apparently you can use the process to slow something down.
1. Not being able to buy cheap weapons from Russia.
2. Suffering ongoing economic, diplomatic, and strategic undermining from the United States.
3. The Chinese building oil wells 10 miles off their coast and draining their reserves dry.
Realistically these are the first things that each power will do if it feels it needs to send a message.
Russia really can't do much. Vietnam does need their weapons but maybe they can get them from India or possibly get some discounted hand me downs from the US. And keep in mind, that whatever they were buying from the Russians were Russian hand me downs.
The US can make it harder for US and other western companies to operate in Vietnam which is a lot of money and jobs out the window. And on top of that there are a lot of subtle things the US can do that individually don't matter but collectively are quite debilitating. If you really piss the US off, we can strangle nations. It isn't fast. But it can be sustained for generations... decade after decade after decade. And it just adds up.
And the Chinese are just right there. They have the most relevant military force in the area and have shown a willingness to just take what they want even with a US presence. Absent such a presence they'll just do a survey of anything they want and in the oceans at least off of Vietnam and strip it.
Yes, because the Republicans just invented two of our sky scrappers having commercial airliners crashed into them.
I love that people also forget that the demomcrats got the US into WW1, WW2, and Vietnam. To say nothing of the wars Bill and Obama went into. But no... its just the warmonger republicans.
If you're a complete fucking shill.
The reality is that both parties will go to war often for similar reasons.
They don't go to war for different reasons.
The republicans have an isolationist streak. The part of them that wants to not go to war does so for that reason.
The democrats have an increasingly relevant kumbaya contingent that thinks war is not the answer, etc. Hence reset buttons to Russia with predictable results.
Regardless, saying the republicans are the war party when neither party is for or against war in general is silly. They each have different views on geo politics and they each have relevant points to make.
China could just take Vietnamese resources at sea. That would require a naval presence to stop. They're already dicking around with south Korea and Japan. There's no reason for the Chinese to not covet something off the shore of Vietnam... if only fish. A few big chinese fishing fleets could depopulate the seas near Vietnam forcing Vietnamese fisherman to sail farther or just shut down entirely. Either way the price of fish and therefore all relevant food stuffs would go up in Vietnam. And rising food prices in economically depressed countries is a recipe for big fucking problems.
Putin needs to get total victory in Ukraine. He doesn't need to actually absorb them literally but he does need to bring them into the Russian sphere of influence and break the western strategic ties in the region. If he doesn't, then his domestic political position collapses.
You have to keep in mind that prior to the invasion of Ukraine, his polling numbers in Russia were very low. Then he went to war and his numbers popped up.
If it goes on for too long and he doesn't come out of it looking like a winner then he'll probably suffer for it politically.
As to china, they have similar political problems brewing as well as mounting economic problems.
They've just recently sold their US bonds as well as many other assets. Their ability to pump money into their economy is coming to a close. And with that a sea change in china's economic position. And with that, changing political, diplomatic, and strategic relationships.
I know of three possible examples and they're all highly suspect.
You have the attack on the Maine which is alleged to have been sabotaged by American forces wanting to justify the Spanish American war, you have Pearl harbor which is alleged to have been intentionally allowed to happen by FDR, and you have the gulf of tonkin which is sort of a tragedy of errors.
Is there an opposite of the sling shot maneuver? Can't you do some sort of gravity breaking?
If I can use an orbit to accelerate myself away from a body, then can't I use one to slow me down?
I'm actually a little perplexed as to how the sling shot maneuver works since my understanding would be that you'd lose whatever energy you got leaving the gravity well that you got out of it by diving into it.
In any case, if you can steal some momentum from a body you can certainly deposit it.
I'm not even going to get into the why of that or bother justifying anything. I'm just going to point out that from a purely pragmatic position... if you were counting on that happening, you are in for a long wait.
As to the "brutal US war machine"... Is there an "effective' war machine that isn't brutal? That's sort of the whole point.
I think there are misconceptions about the point of war in the first place. You don't go to foreign lands with soldiers to give them candy-grams.
Furthermore if you really want to start judging the US, I'm going to insist that you compare us against a peer nation and show that we are worse then them in some respect.
So... that would be hegemonic powers.
You can compare us against the British Empire, the Soviets, the Holy Roman Empire, the ancient Roman empire, the old Chinese Empire, the Moguls, the Ottoman Empire etc. Big powers only please.
Too many of the moral comparisons are apples and oranges in that they'll try to compare the US against Switzerland or something. That's silly.
Word to the wise, I've had this discussion many times and I don't lose it. It would be awesome of if you had new information or a new argument and could surprise me, but that rarely happens at this point. This is a well rehearsed dance for me. I know where you're going to move before you go there... and I've put rhetorical landmines all over the place.
The US is not going to invade Vietnam or really anyone else for sometime.
The US is politically fatigued by war.
The only thing that will get us out of this mode will be an attack on our soil that will force us to savage our opponent so that no other rival thinks that our territory can be struck without a lethal response.
Or some atrocities against our core allies. The US has many allies and they're not all equally important to us. Strike a member of NATO or one of our core east asian allies... possibly Israel as well.
Anything outside of that and the US will dither before committing troops.
Vietnam can host Russian bombers without risking US invasions. The real risk would be political, diplomatic, and economic isolation.
The US could simply give Vietnam the cold shoulder. And that could be just as dangerous for them because it might embolden the Chinese to invade Vietnam or nearly as bad the Chinese might just start appropriating Vietnamese shipping or build oil wells right off the coast of Vietnam.
The ability of these countries to protect their sovereign territory from China is based almost entirely on appeals to the international community to see that territorial borders are respected.
IF the US abandons Vietnam they may find there is no political or economic cost for china to simply take what it wants. Which means Vietnam loses natural resources at the very least and has no recourse. What is more, the US has clean hands in the whole thing because we will not have stolen anything from them. We'll just have selectively abstained from some meetings in the UN.
That is the sort of thing the US can do to Vietnam without using its military at all. It also has the benefit of making the US look good because we're not the ones taking people's stuff. And there will probably be appeals for the US to do something which itself is an admission of the value of US power. So again, America has that option and it is a pretty strong hand.
The Russians however are supplying arms to the Vietnamese. Not just guns... ships.... missile batteries. Something that could actually pose a problem for the chinese. The chinese could eat the damage and keep coming. There really isn't much the Vietnamese could do about it. But it would increase the cost or possibly even slow them down a bit.
Regardless, the Russians don't have to sell weapons to the Vietnamese. And the Russian weapons are pretty good while being a lot cheaper then western suppliers. The chinese are also big suppliers of weapons but like the Russians and Americans they only sell weapons to people they want to have weapons. The chinese are unlikely to sell formidable weaponry to the Vietnamese so they have to rely on whomever might supply them.
Another option might be the Indians. They're also pretty big arms suppliers. Their alliances are a little confused these days though. Traditionally they were allied with the Russians which is why the US has its complicated relationship with Pakistan. But they have more cultural, economic, and diplomatic ties with the west these days so the relationships are confused.
And those are just the ones wikipedia will print about itself.
There are other issues I'm aware of that are not in that list. Issues where long time editors got banned or where various articles got locked arbitrarily with incorrect information preserved.
A lot of it boils down to ignorance and a general lack of integrity amongst a lot of people. They want to be seen as right more then they want to actually be right.
They're very "ends justify the means" type people not appreciating that the means ARE the ends. If you get to your end by lying, extorting, and tricking people then your ultimate victory if you get that far will have been achieved through deceit. It won't be about science, or logic, or the truth. You will have won because you lied so effectively that you tricked a lot of people. And that will mean the over all culture and climate of future debates will happen in that fashion. People will not even attempt to honestly discuss things because they know that isn't being offered or respected. They'll know that victory only goes to whomever lies more effectively. And so the next time those people come up against an opponent they're going to be coming up against someone more like themselves. And when they complain that the opposition is lying... they'll at best be hypocrites.
I'm going to have to invoke poe's law then. You weren't being sarcastic but the same principle applies. No one can hear your phrasing and sarcasm and wit are often signified by changing the tone or cadence of your voice to signal it.
As to 1, isn't that highly dependent on how fast you want to get there? I mean, if I just barely get enough speed to reach the moon, and the moon is ALSO in orbit around the earth, I could theoretically arrive at the moon going 1 mph.
Also keep in mind that the mars trip takes a lot longer in your graph. If you slowed down the trip to the moon so that it was the same length, which is theoretically possible... then you could arrive at such a low speed as to not care if you just crashed right into it. I mean... you could land on springs.
Please correct me if that is wrong. Do not mistake my thinking on the issue as either arrogance or a dismissal of your opinion or disrespect towards you. I'm just going through the thought process.
As to point two, I stand corrected. However, given the closer proximity to earth etc... I really don't think it is such a big problem. Furthermore, if you were doing something like that with any frequency, you'd have some sort of launch platform on the moon that did throw things back to earth. Possibly it would use a magnetic accelerator. Correct my math but that would be about 2.4 seconds or so at 10 g's which I think a fit person can handle. Assuming you were throwing people in the thing. You could speed the package up a lot faster if it weren't full of squishy meat bags. Possibly a better system would be to have a minimum package that had just people and very short life support. And then you could throw the majority of the mass into space at g's a human couldn't handle but which is efficient. And then have the two meet up shortly after launch.
Also if what I saw from the robotic lander they sent to mars, you still need to come down on rockets when you land on mars. Just at the end. I think the rockets had to slow it down the last 500 or so mph. Not a huge deal compared to I think the 40,000 mph it came in at or whatever it was... but that's still fuel you have to bring and burn.
As to meteorites, I stand corrected again. However, because of the radiation and heat thing you're still going to want to be underground.
As to whether it matters if you're in a burrow... that's like asking why go to the bottom of the sea if you're just going to sit in a tin can the whole time.
See... if I leave the tin can... I die. So I'm not going to do that. And if you are in a sterile bunker on the surface of mars how is that better then me being in a sterile bunker 100 feet below the surface of the moon? You're acting like one is superior to the other because you're closer to the surface. Why does that matter? You're not going outside without a space suit regardless. And really as dangerous as being on the surface of either of those balls of rock is... I want to be deeper. I'd feel safer down there.
I'd feel like I could invest in infrastructure and know it wasn't going to get destroyed by something stupid.
Lets say you had children up there. Families. Are you seriously going to put them on the surface? I'm going to but them as deep as is practical and useful. Maybe that's only ten feet. Maybe that's 100. I don't know. I'd go down deep enough that they'd be safe. I'd have solar panels, heat exchangers, and possibly light pipes or something going from the surface down into the colony.
The future of humanity if it is to have a future on other worlds is going to be a future of burrows. The open sky is something we get to enjoy on Earth, but we're not going to get that on other worlds. Not in this solar system in any case.
Which brings me to what I was saying at the end of my first post. Rather then terraforming worlds, we should and probably will change ourselves. Imagine a man that can walk as freely on the surface of mars or the moon or Venus or where ever as a man does on the surface of the earth. At home with it.
Changing worlds to be like the earth is impractical.
And the greatest liability as we travel out into space is that our bodies are not adapted for those environments. It doesn't matter how great our technology is unless we get artificial gravity and warp drive we'd better change our bodies to be less demanding. A certain amount of cybernetics is likely wise as well as extensive genetic engineering.
I've seen a lot of dicy things go down on wikipedia over the years.
They're generally okay with non-controversial information of a very general nature. But anything that gets political or very specific... and you can't trust them.
It isn't just that people will go in or hire people to go in and change things in their favor. The community itself is often biased or just lazy.
They'll do things like make a statement without attribution or proof and then if you say it is wrong they ask you for proof.
Or they'll say something is true and use as evidence a blog post or a tweet as if that's evidence of anything. And then if you say that is wrong... they'll say "where is your proof"... never mind that they were posting assertions without proof in the first place and the burden of proof was on them.
It is an on going thing on wikipedia.
I like the service a lot, it has a lot of really good information on it... it is just very vulnerable to assholes and lazy idiots.
Slashdot Mirror
First, the US doesn't especially want to use the base. That isn't their interest.
Second, the chump change the Chinese would make from running the facility wouldn't be enough.
Third, the Russians likely wouldn't be comfortable with US and chinese military being that close to their nuclear bombers.
Fourth, the Vietnamese want the money themselves chump change though it is and will not share it with anyone.
So... none of the above.
Hmmm... you have to be careful with Russian media:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
http://www.gallup.com/poll/167...
His poll numbers were in decline and most analysts believe his actions are a crass political ploy to boost his poll numbers in Russia:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/...
I can cite articles and conclusions from think tanks all over the world if you like. I read something from a Japanese source the other day that said the same thing.
This is how the governments of the world see this action.
And that US counter response is going to focus on Putin's support base.
I don't proofread my posts. Deal with it.
Any member of NAT would get a major US response. Not only do we care but we are contractually and honor bound to do it.
We have signed agreements to that effect. If the US didn't come then we would be in breach of our agreements.
The US keeps it word.
Well... I didn't say china was asking for anything either. I said they were inclined to "TAKE" not ask.
let me explain again:
Vietnam is near a large power that is inclined to eat bits of their territory or claim their sea resources by force.
To put that off, Vietnam has to appeal to outside authorities to keep china from doing that.
The only credible power capable of and willing to do that would be the US. The russians aren't especially capable of doing anything.
So Vietnam has to keep the US nominally happy so that the US supports Vietnam's claims in the international community to its own resources.
At the same time, it helps if Vietnam can defend itself to some extent. And the Russians make that cheaper. They provide cheap weapons and between the US support of international law and the Russian provision of cheap weapons... vietnam has a CHANCE of holding on to their resources.
Pissing off the US means that the US "MIGHT" not help them if the Chinese make a move. And pissing off the Russians might mean not being able to get access to Russian weapons.
As I said, Vietnam is between three fires.
Which is why I said "poor vietnam". They're in a very bad position. I hope they come through it.
Not really. It happens at the global trade level.
And Venezuela isn't an ally. I'm going to guess you're going to try and blame their financial melt down on the US?
Not us... that's them just killing themselves with stupidity.
Not every idiot nation that kills itself is our fault. The only nations I'm aware of at the moment that we're engaged in suppressing to any great extent are Russia (early stages), Iran (we appear to be turning that off but who can say), and North Korea.
Beyond that, we're not conducting suppression against any other power.
If I missed one, then correct me but I think that is the full list.
If China wanted to buy it then they'd just do that.
Come now. Think about it.
Have you been paying attention to the chinese economy at all? Or are you running on 100 percent pure bravado?
I looked it up, apparently you can do it. It is used extensively by space probes.
I can provide links if you want. I don't know how much you could slow something down that went from the earth to the moon... but apparently you can use the process to slow something down.
What wars are you saying the US engaged in using such tactics?
No.
They can choose between:
1. Not being able to buy cheap weapons from Russia.
2. Suffering ongoing economic, diplomatic, and strategic undermining from the United States.
3. The Chinese building oil wells 10 miles off their coast and draining their reserves dry.
Realistically these are the first things that each power will do if it feels it needs to send a message.
Russia really can't do much. Vietnam does need their weapons but maybe they can get them from India or possibly get some discounted hand me downs from the US. And keep in mind, that whatever they were buying from the Russians were Russian hand me downs.
The US can make it harder for US and other western companies to operate in Vietnam which is a lot of money and jobs out the window. And on top of that there are a lot of subtle things the US can do that individually don't matter but collectively are quite debilitating. If you really piss the US off, we can strangle nations. It isn't fast. But it can be sustained for generations... decade after decade after decade. And it just adds up.
And the Chinese are just right there. They have the most relevant military force in the area and have shown a willingness to just take what they want even with a US presence. Absent such a presence they'll just do a survey of anything they want and in the oceans at least off of Vietnam and strip it.
Yes, because the Republicans just invented two of our sky scrappers having commercial airliners crashed into them.
I love that people also forget that the demomcrats got the US into WW1, WW2, and Vietnam. To say nothing of the wars Bill and Obama went into. But no... its just the warmonger republicans.
If you're a complete fucking shill.
The reality is that both parties will go to war often for similar reasons.
They don't go to war for different reasons.
The republicans have an isolationist streak. The part of them that wants to not go to war does so for that reason.
The democrats have an increasingly relevant kumbaya contingent that thinks war is not the answer, etc. Hence reset buttons to Russia with predictable results.
Regardless, saying the republicans are the war party when neither party is for or against war in general is silly. They each have different views on geo politics and they each have relevant points to make.
You weren't listening.
China could just take Vietnamese resources at sea. That would require a naval presence to stop. They're already dicking around with south Korea and Japan. There's no reason for the Chinese to not covet something off the shore of Vietnam... if only fish. A few big chinese fishing fleets could depopulate the seas near Vietnam forcing Vietnamese fisherman to sail farther or just shut down entirely. Either way the price of fish and therefore all relevant food stuffs would go up in Vietnam. And rising food prices in economically depressed countries is a recipe for big fucking problems.
Putin needs to get total victory in Ukraine. He doesn't need to actually absorb them literally but he does need to bring them into the Russian sphere of influence and break the western strategic ties in the region. If he doesn't, then his domestic political position collapses.
You have to keep in mind that prior to the invasion of Ukraine, his polling numbers in Russia were very low. Then he went to war and his numbers popped up.
If it goes on for too long and he doesn't come out of it looking like a winner then he'll probably suffer for it politically.
As to china, they have similar political problems brewing as well as mounting economic problems.
They've just recently sold their US bonds as well as many other assets. Their ability to pump money into their economy is coming to a close. And with that a sea change in china's economic position. And with that, changing political, diplomatic, and strategic relationships.
We are living in interesting times. ;)
That sort of thing really doesn't happen.
I know of three possible examples and they're all highly suspect.
You have the attack on the Maine which is alleged to have been sabotaged by American forces wanting to justify the Spanish American war, you have Pearl harbor which is alleged to have been intentionally allowed to happen by FDR, and you have the gulf of tonkin which is sort of a tragedy of errors.
what do you say to using gravity assist to slow the craft down? I looked it up and apparently that is a pretty common trick.
Is there an opposite of the sling shot maneuver? Can't you do some sort of gravity breaking?
If I can use an orbit to accelerate myself away from a body, then can't I use one to slow me down?
I'm actually a little perplexed as to how the sling shot maneuver works since my understanding would be that you'd lose whatever energy you got leaving the gravity well that you got out of it by diving into it.
In any case, if you can steal some momentum from a body you can certainly deposit it.
Hmmm... that won't happen.
I'm not even going to get into the why of that or bother justifying anything. I'm just going to point out that from a purely pragmatic position... if you were counting on that happening, you are in for a long wait.
As to the "brutal US war machine"... Is there an "effective' war machine that isn't brutal? That's sort of the whole point.
I think there are misconceptions about the point of war in the first place. You don't go to foreign lands with soldiers to give them candy-grams.
Furthermore if you really want to start judging the US, I'm going to insist that you compare us against a peer nation and show that we are worse then them in some respect.
So... that would be hegemonic powers.
You can compare us against the British Empire, the Soviets, the Holy Roman Empire, the ancient Roman empire, the old Chinese Empire, the Moguls, the Ottoman Empire etc. Big powers only please.
Too many of the moral comparisons are apples and oranges in that they'll try to compare the US against Switzerland or something. That's silly.
Word to the wise, I've had this discussion many times and I don't lose it. It would be awesome of if you had new information or a new argument and could surprise me, but that rarely happens at this point. This is a well rehearsed dance for me. I know where you're going to move before you go there... and I've put rhetorical landmines all over the place.
Fair warning. ;-)
The US is not going to invade Vietnam or really anyone else for sometime.
The US is politically fatigued by war.
The only thing that will get us out of this mode will be an attack on our soil that will force us to savage our opponent so that no other rival thinks that our territory can be struck without a lethal response.
Or some atrocities against our core allies. The US has many allies and they're not all equally important to us. Strike a member of NATO or one of our core east asian allies... possibly Israel as well.
Anything outside of that and the US will dither before committing troops.
Vietnam can host Russian bombers without risking US invasions. The real risk would be political, diplomatic, and economic isolation.
The US could simply give Vietnam the cold shoulder. And that could be just as dangerous for them because it might embolden the Chinese to invade Vietnam or nearly as bad the Chinese might just start appropriating Vietnamese shipping or build oil wells right off the coast of Vietnam.
The ability of these countries to protect their sovereign territory from China is based almost entirely on appeals to the international community to see that territorial borders are respected.
IF the US abandons Vietnam they may find there is no political or economic cost for china to simply take what it wants. Which means Vietnam loses natural resources at the very least and has no recourse. What is more, the US has clean hands in the whole thing because we will not have stolen anything from them. We'll just have selectively abstained from some meetings in the UN.
That is the sort of thing the US can do to Vietnam without using its military at all. It also has the benefit of making the US look good because we're not the ones taking people's stuff. And there will probably be appeals for the US to do something which itself is an admission of the value of US power. So again, America has that option and it is a pretty strong hand.
The Russians however are supplying arms to the Vietnamese. Not just guns... ships.... missile batteries. Something that could actually pose a problem for the chinese. The chinese could eat the damage and keep coming. There really isn't much the Vietnamese could do about it. But it would increase the cost or possibly even slow them down a bit.
Regardless, the Russians don't have to sell weapons to the Vietnamese. And the Russian weapons are pretty good while being a lot cheaper then western suppliers. The chinese are also big suppliers of weapons but like the Russians and Americans they only sell weapons to people they want to have weapons. The chinese are unlikely to sell formidable weaponry to the Vietnamese so they have to rely on whomever might supply them.
Another option might be the Indians. They're also pretty big arms suppliers. Their alliances are a little confused these days though. Traditionally they were allied with the Russians which is why the US has its complicated relationship with Pakistan. But they have more cultural, economic, and diplomatic ties with the west these days so the relationships are confused.
They're trapped between three fires...
They need to keep the Americans happy to get American diplomatic support to keep China from eating them.
They need to keep the Russians happy to get access to cheap arms and possibly whatever diplomatic pressure the Russians have these days.
And then they need to keep the chinese from salivating every time they look at them.
Given that the US and Russia are at odds again, it is a very difficult position to be in these days.
They can't give the Russians or the Americans everything they want because much of what they want is the Vietnamese to choose sides.
And if they don't keep their allies happy they look more vulnerable to the chinese.
Poor vietnam.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...
And those are just the ones wikipedia will print about itself.
There are other issues I'm aware of that are not in that list. Issues where long time editors got banned or where various articles got locked arbitrarily with incorrect information preserved.
A lot of it boils down to ignorance and a general lack of integrity amongst a lot of people. They want to be seen as right more then they want to actually be right.
They're very "ends justify the means" type people not appreciating that the means ARE the ends. If you get to your end by lying, extorting, and tricking people then your ultimate victory if you get that far will have been achieved through deceit. It won't be about science, or logic, or the truth. You will have won because you lied so effectively that you tricked a lot of people. And that will mean the over all culture and climate of future debates will happen in that fashion. People will not even attempt to honestly discuss things because they know that isn't being offered or respected. They'll know that victory only goes to whomever lies more effectively. And so the next time those people come up against an opponent they're going to be coming up against someone more like themselves. And when they complain that the opposition is lying... they'll at best be hypocrites.
I'm going to have to invoke poe's law then. You weren't being sarcastic but the same principle applies. No one can hear your phrasing and sarcasm and wit are often signified by changing the tone or cadence of your voice to signal it.
... this is where this idea always falls apart.
As to 1, isn't that highly dependent on how fast you want to get there? I mean, if I just barely get enough speed to reach the moon, and the moon is ALSO in orbit around the earth, I could theoretically arrive at the moon going 1 mph.
Also keep in mind that the mars trip takes a lot longer in your graph. If you slowed down the trip to the moon so that it was the same length, which is theoretically possible... then you could arrive at such a low speed as to not care if you just crashed right into it. I mean... you could land on springs.
Please correct me if that is wrong. Do not mistake my thinking on the issue as either arrogance or a dismissal of your opinion or disrespect towards you. I'm just going through the thought process.
As to point two, I stand corrected. However, given the closer proximity to earth etc... I really don't think it is such a big problem. Furthermore, if you were doing something like that with any frequency, you'd have some sort of launch platform on the moon that did throw things back to earth. Possibly it would use a magnetic accelerator. Correct my math but that would be about 2.4 seconds or so at 10 g's which I think a fit person can handle. Assuming you were throwing people in the thing. You could speed the package up a lot faster if it weren't full of squishy meat bags. Possibly a better system would be to have a minimum package that had just people and very short life support. And then you could throw the majority of the mass into space at g's a human couldn't handle but which is efficient. And then have the two meet up shortly after launch.
Also if what I saw from the robotic lander they sent to mars, you still need to come down on rockets when you land on mars. Just at the end. I think the rockets had to slow it down the last 500 or so mph. Not a huge deal compared to I think the 40,000 mph it came in at or whatever it was... but that's still fuel you have to bring and burn.
As to meteorites, I stand corrected again. However, because of the radiation and heat thing you're still going to want to be underground.
As to whether it matters if you're in a burrow... that's like asking why go to the bottom of the sea if you're just going to sit in a tin can the whole time.
See... if I leave the tin can... I die. So I'm not going to do that. And if you are in a sterile bunker on the surface of mars how is that better then me being in a sterile bunker 100 feet below the surface of the moon? You're acting like one is superior to the other because you're closer to the surface. Why does that matter? You're not going outside without a space suit regardless. And really as dangerous as being on the surface of either of those balls of rock is... I want to be deeper. I'd feel safer down there.
I'd feel like I could invest in infrastructure and know it wasn't going to get destroyed by something stupid.
Lets say you had children up there. Families. Are you seriously going to put them on the surface? I'm going to but them as deep as is practical and useful. Maybe that's only ten feet. Maybe that's 100. I don't know. I'd go down deep enough that they'd be safe. I'd have solar panels, heat exchangers, and possibly light pipes or something going from the surface down into the colony.
The future of humanity if it is to have a future on other worlds is going to be a future of burrows. The open sky is something we get to enjoy on Earth, but we're not going to get that on other worlds. Not in this solar system in any case.
Which brings me to what I was saying at the end of my first post. Rather then terraforming worlds, we should and probably will change ourselves. Imagine a man that can walk as freely on the surface of mars or the moon or Venus or where ever as a man does on the surface of the earth. At home with it.
Changing worlds to be like the earth is impractical.
And the greatest liability as we travel out into space is that our bodies are not adapted for those environments. It doesn't matter how great our technology is unless we get artificial gravity and warp drive we'd better change our bodies to be less demanding. A certain amount of cybernetics is likely wise as well as extensive genetic engineering.
I've seen a lot of dicy things go down on wikipedia over the years.
They're generally okay with non-controversial information of a very general nature. But anything that gets political or very specific... and you can't trust them.
It isn't just that people will go in or hire people to go in and change things in their favor. The community itself is often biased or just lazy.
They'll do things like make a statement without attribution or proof and then if you say it is wrong they ask you for proof.
Or they'll say something is true and use as evidence a blog post or a tweet as if that's evidence of anything. And then if you say that is wrong... they'll say "where is your proof"... never mind that they were posting assertions without proof in the first place and the burden of proof was on them.
It is an on going thing on wikipedia.
I like the service a lot, it has a lot of really good information on it... it is just very vulnerable to assholes and lazy idiots.