You know. I tried to write a calm, and sensible reply to this poisoned barb you have thrown at me, and I just couldn't do it.
The fact that you engage with this discussion emotionally and respond with a long, rambling and self-contradictory screed should signal to you that your view of mars colonisation is based on emotion rather than reason. I have no reason to respect the subjective demands of your emotions above the objective concerns that arise from reason. It's up to you to make a convincing argument. If you are not prepared for the rigours associated with other people questioning your beliefs, then you should not publically express them until you ARE ready to debate calmly.
1) You make the mistake in asserting that people leaving earth as political asylum seekers would be doing so without something already being there. Even the puritans didnt leave england en-mass until AFTER the colonies in north america were fully settled and productive. --What you are are failing to grasp, is that there would not be such a place to go, if nobody makes the damned colony; The puritans would never have left england, because the colonists never would have preceded them. Did all the irish people fleeing ireland after the potato fammine come with metric fucktons of food and other things? No-- they sold themselves into indentured servitude to come here, with just the clothes on their backs. Why? because there was a means of producing food over here already.
I put it to you that YOU are making that mistake. There is nothing on Mars. Therefore, by your own admittance, Mars is unsuitable for colonisation. By your own admittance, we've never successfully implemented the strategy you advocate, even on earth, with it's comparative wealth of resources and freedom of movement.
Why should I believe that such a plan could be successful on Mars?
There is nothing inconsistent with wishing to create a colony, with the intention of permitting political asylum once it is able to accept such persons.
It follows then, that we could also create such a colony on earth.
As bad as things are for us in the west at the moment, things are far worse for others.Therefore when considering the need to establish a refuge for those seeking political asylum our minds turn to those who currently seek political asylum with us and under our (certainly flawed) democratic system. How do these people seek asylum on Mars? How do the Karen, the Tamil, the Hazara, the Uighur people get passage to Mars?
If you understand the means to create a fair and just society then by all means express those principles. I think you don't. I think you want to merely repeat the mistakes of the past, where people fled oppression with a view to creating a fair and just society, and inevitably ended in oppression once more.
Elon Musk has suggested the cost of a round-trip passage to Mars is likely going to cost about $500k.
The gravity on Mars is such that a stay there of any duration (say, 12 earth months) will mean returning to earth will kill you. There won't be any return trips.
That may seem like a whole lot, but it is comparable in price for somebody from a modern 1st world country to what people were paying in the 18th Century for passage to European colonies in terms of needing to literally sell everything they had including their house, save up for years, and then put all of that money on the line for a trip to the colonies.
We now realise that 18th century colonists were actually moving to lands which were already occupied. They were tourists and immigrants - no equivalence with settling another planet.
As for the "tons of supplies needed to keep you alive there", only the first few colonists are going to need that mountain of supplies. Even then, such colonies will simply fail unless they are able to use local resources to produce literally everything they are going to need for survival.
Then the "colony" will fail. Have you seen a long wall miner? An aluminium smelter?
As for money on Mars, I'm sure the people who will live on Mars will figure out a currency among themselves for the allocation of scarce resources. Your presumption that there will be no means to "make money" simply shows a lack of understanding of economics.
That's what I said. There is n o way to make anything on mars, and nothign will grow - implies that the economy wil be entirely based on the things that are brought from Earth. Mars = communism.
I don't even know how to respond to the rest of your essay here.
Ideally, you wouldn't respond with baseless assertions.
Mars has more area to roam upon than the land area of the Earth.
Stop being absurd. Mars is bathed in deadly radiation. People won't habitually go outside, unless there is an emergency. Life on mars is lived inside. Imagine living six to a shipping container. That's Mars.
This is not quite correct, because robots don't have brains, and that is unlikely to change in the near future.
Non sequitur. If we don't need the rest of the human body on mars, it's implied that we don't need the human brain either.
Anyway, the point is, yes, robots could (and will) be a very significant part of colonization effort, but they can't replace humans entirely.
The unconvincing part is the explaining why we should be expending the effort at all. In short, a mars colony is like a monorail, a popsicle skyscraper, and escalator to nowhere. If you actually articulate a reason for going to mars, it turns out this is either something that can be done more easily by a robot, or by an earth bound solution.
I guess my position is, you have to start somewhere,
My position is that this is like saying that an ice block is the first step toward building a popsicle skyscraper. If end goal is unjustified, then so are the intermediate steps.
In fact this summarises the whole enterprise: they needed some cash and this provided them with some cash. There is no reason for us to think they ever had any intent beyond taking the money.
Inuits make their clothes out of things they find locally. Their jackets aren't made 54.6 million kilometres away. Also, if I leave my shirt unbuttoned, I'll feel cold. I won't instantly die. If an Inuit tears their jacket, they don't die instantly. These things are several orders of magnitude apart.
My statement was that we will tailor ourselves through a mixture of technology and biology.
If we were actually committed to the technology, we would never have to go ourselves. Sending human bodies implies a zealous commitment to a low tech solution frozen in time, like steam power in the age of electric cars. If we had the technology to make Mars comfortable we would have no need to do so, since martian robots will outstrip the utility of the human body by a country light year. And biologically we can never survive on Mars. Apart from the cold, there is no atmosphere, so exposure to the outside will cause ruptures in the cell walls, with consequent death directly after. You body is a bag of water made of billions of bags of water: they will burst on contact with the vacuum of Mars.
I stand astounded. Whatever makes you think that living on Mars will bring political freedom? How are those ideas even connected?
Everything about Mars suggests that political freedom is virtually impossible. You will not be able to pay the cost of your transfer to Mars (including the tons of food and supplies needed to keep you alive there). This means that to convince someone to pay for your trip to Mars, they will require something from you in return. The basis of life on Mars is obligation - your obligation to the government or company that paid for you to travel there.
In addition there is the issue that nobody on Mars will have any money or any means to make money. There is no resources , no soil to grow crops, no infrastructure to support primary industry or manufacturing. At best people might trade the various things they brought from earth. And themselves (i.e. prostitution), although the notion of sex will be less attractive after the radiation sickness kicks in.
Mars will be like prison, without any chance of escape. Linking life on Mars with political freedom is simply laughable.
Or has the situation with the orwelian police state in much of the western world, coupled with the growing corporatocracy in the eastern world, and the overall growing issues with pollution and and criminality in the rest of the world.
It might not have occurred to you that you caused that orwellian state. Who is to blame for the state of Western democracy but ourselves? In which, you will just take that corruption with you to Mars. Unless you view yourself and coincidentally your fellow travellers as somehow more enlightened than the rest of us - do you think that?
The people saying "the cure is worse than the disease" haven't provided any proof of that assertion. Just as they didn't provide proof when they said "there is no disease".
That is mostly because they don't have a chimney. With properly designed stoves, the smoke inside the dwelling is not a problem. There is no reason why people could not carry on burning biomass for fuel (since this net CO2 neutral). However, electricity becomes necessary to break the barriers of poverty. The key to delivering that electricity is solar. Over a broad area, solar is cheaper than fossil fuels to establish because you don't need an extensive network of powerlines (which are impossible to maintain in areas without a stable and effective government anyway). Build a local, community owned solar plant, power small industries, fridges and such from that.
SpaceShipTwo is primarily a craft for carrying humans through a parabolic arc. The apogee of that arc is in space. The majority of the design is focussed on carrying humans.
If there is a future for space exploration (I hope there is) then that future won't be based around sending humans into space.
Just pointing out you how you and your kind lost the trust of the average person (like me). A continual stream of assertions which proved wrong
The reason you don't trust me is because you are scientifically and politically illiterate.
That's right. Denialist arguments asserting that climate science is a vast, 150 year old, seamless conspiracy led by time travelling zombie Arrhenius are sooo convincing that only the scientifically illiterate would fail to "get on board". And apparently the view (held by 6.75 billion people) that US elections are irrelevant to them are because all 6.75 billion of us are "politically illiterate". That must be it!
You implied that progressivism was a feature of American politics and you didn't have to care about it outside of the US. In fact, progressivism has been a dominant feature of politics in all modern democracies. The fact that you don't know that just shows how politically illiterate you are.
You seem to have confused "knowledge" with "caring".
In the US, that's going to be stopped at the ballot box.
So tell me how YOUR vote is going to dictate to the rest of us. Unless you are prepared to give me a vote in US elections I intend to carry on thinking that those elections are largely irrelevant to me. So suck it.
That's how we will become carbon neutral in the long run: through individual, free choices.
You openly admit one second that you have NO CONTROL over the choice of humans (collectively and individually) to take action on climate change, and in the next breath claim that you will prevent us from taking action by "voting". Are you insane?
In Europe, it probably isn't going to be stopped and Europeans are going to pay a steep price.
Cite a paper stating that climate mitigation is more expensive (long term) than climate adaptation.
Cite me proposing any such thing.
I just did: you consider yourself to be a member of a group that "takes action on climate change".
By which you mean "the set of sane humans". Because the position "climate change is dangerous but fairly fixable, I insist we do nothing" is insane. We (sane humans) don't look to the insane to tell us what to do.
The IPCC climate report itself says that the costs and benefits about balance out.
Thanks for confirming you were wrong.
Why should I care how much carbon you emit? Are you a sentient power station?
You should care what you emit, because if everybody who talked about the threat of climate change became carbon neutral, we'd far exceed any of the emissions targets you people want us to achieve through agreements and laws. But the fact is that climate activists don't want to take responsibility themselves (and are failing to do so), you really just want government intervention.
Denialists were proven wrong, again and again, on the subject of climate change and it's causes. There is no reason for me to take at face value your view of the people you term 'climate activists'. There is also no reason for me to care.
Cite me making those claims, or retract your allegations.
They aren't "allegations". You are a moron and a hypocrite. End of discussion.
It is exactly as predicted. First deny it is getting warmer. Then later, deny the warming is due to human influences. The later, claim that nothing can be done anyway, we should curl up and die.
And what's your problem with that sequence?
Just point out you how you and your kind lost the trust of the average person (like me). A continual stream of assertions which proved wrong.
I don't give 2 figs for your political views and your manic obsession with the people you term progressives. I'm not an American, so I don't care what happens in US elections.
Progressivism has been a dominant feature of European politics since the beginning of the 20th century as well.
Cite the relevant scientific journal specifying that reducing emissions is ineffective.
Reducing emissions is quite effective. What is ineffective is the way you are proposing to go about it: namely legislation and international agreement.
Cite me proposing any such thing.
Yes we noticed - rendering your protests against taking action completely ineffective, and your claim that we need to convince you and your douchebag mates of the need to take action a laughable fantasy. Better luck in the next life, douchebag.
(no response)
So how do you intend to stop us taking action on climate change? Will you beg? Will you offer us money?
Slashdot Mirror
You know. I tried to write a calm, and sensible reply to this poisoned barb you have thrown at me, and I just couldn't do it.
The fact that you engage with this discussion emotionally and respond with a long, rambling and self-contradictory screed should signal to you that your view of mars colonisation is based on emotion rather than reason. I have no reason to respect the subjective demands of your emotions above the objective concerns that arise from reason. It's up to you to make a convincing argument. If you are not prepared for the rigours associated with other people questioning your beliefs, then you should not publically express them until you ARE ready to debate calmly.
1) You make the mistake in asserting that people leaving earth as political asylum seekers would be doing so without something already being there. Even the puritans didnt leave england en-mass until AFTER the colonies in north america were fully settled and productive. --What you are are failing to grasp, is that there would not be such a place to go, if nobody makes the damned colony; The puritans would never have left england, because the colonists never would have preceded them. Did all the irish people fleeing ireland after the potato fammine come with metric fucktons of food and other things? No-- they sold themselves into indentured servitude to come here, with just the clothes on their backs. Why? because there was a means of producing food over here already.
I put it to you that YOU are making that mistake. There is nothing on Mars. Therefore, by your own admittance, Mars is unsuitable for colonisation. By your own admittance, we've never successfully implemented the strategy you advocate, even on earth, with it's comparative wealth of resources and freedom of movement. Why should I believe that such a plan could be successful on Mars?
There is nothing inconsistent with wishing to create a colony, with the intention of permitting political asylum once it is able to accept such persons.
It follows then, that we could also create such a colony on earth.
As bad as things are for us in the west at the moment, things are far worse for others.Therefore when considering the need to establish a refuge for those seeking political asylum our minds turn to those who currently seek political asylum with us and under our (certainly flawed) democratic system. How do these people seek asylum on Mars? How do the Karen, the Tamil, the Hazara, the Uighur people get passage to Mars?
If you understand the means to create a fair and just society then by all means express those principles. I think you don't. I think you want to merely repeat the mistakes of the past, where people fled oppression with a view to creating a fair and just society, and inevitably ended in oppression once more.
Maybe you could use this as an ad for a future mars colony: "Mars: Live Painfully for a minute and a half!"
, technology inevitably comes out of space exploration that's valuable elsewhere.
The same could be said of a popsicle skyscraper. Such an undertaking would inevitably result in technological advances.
Elon Musk has suggested the cost of a round-trip passage to Mars is likely going to cost about $500k.
The gravity on Mars is such that a stay there of any duration (say, 12 earth months) will mean returning to earth will kill you. There won't be any return trips.
That may seem like a whole lot, but it is comparable in price for somebody from a modern 1st world country to what people were paying in the 18th Century for passage to European colonies in terms of needing to literally sell everything they had including their house, save up for years, and then put all of that money on the line for a trip to the colonies.
We now realise that 18th century colonists were actually moving to lands which were already occupied. They were tourists and immigrants - no equivalence with settling another planet.
As for the "tons of supplies needed to keep you alive there", only the first few colonists are going to need that mountain of supplies. Even then, such colonies will simply fail unless they are able to use local resources to produce literally everything they are going to need for survival.
Then the "colony" will fail. Have you seen a long wall miner? An aluminium smelter?
As for money on Mars, I'm sure the people who will live on Mars will figure out a currency among themselves for the allocation of scarce resources. Your presumption that there will be no means to "make money" simply shows a lack of understanding of economics.
That's what I said. There is n o way to make anything on mars, and nothign will grow - implies that the economy wil be entirely based on the things that are brought from Earth. Mars = communism.
I don't even know how to respond to the rest of your essay here.
Ideally, you wouldn't respond with baseless assertions.
Mars has more area to roam upon than the land area of the Earth.
Stop being absurd. Mars is bathed in deadly radiation. People won't habitually go outside, unless there is an emergency. Life on mars is lived inside. Imagine living six to a shipping container. That's Mars.
This is not quite correct, because robots don't have brains, and that is unlikely to change in the near future.
Non sequitur. If we don't need the rest of the human body on mars, it's implied that we don't need the human brain either.
Anyway, the point is, yes, robots could (and will) be a very significant part of colonization effort, but they can't replace humans entirely.
The unconvincing part is the explaining why we should be expending the effort at all. In short, a mars colony is like a monorail, a popsicle skyscraper, and escalator to nowhere. If you actually articulate a reason for going to mars, it turns out this is either something that can be done more easily by a robot, or by an earth bound solution.
I guess my position is, you have to start somewhere,
My position is that this is like saying that an ice block is the first step toward building a popsicle skyscraper. If end goal is unjustified, then so are the intermediate steps.
That man
Which man?
That man controls the climate which is like saying we control the climate of our galaxy as we orbit around it through various galactic conditions.
Is earth approximately the same volume as the galaxy?
In fact this summarises the whole enterprise: they needed some cash and this provided them with some cash. There is no reason for us to think they ever had any intent beyond taking the money.
And of course if we had the capability to do that, why would we send human bodies at all?
My statement was that we will tailor ourselves through a mixture of technology and biology.
If we were actually committed to the technology, we would never have to go ourselves. Sending human bodies implies a zealous commitment to a low tech solution frozen in time, like steam power in the age of electric cars. If we had the technology to make Mars comfortable we would have no need to do so, since martian robots will outstrip the utility of the human body by a country light year. And biologically we can never survive on Mars. Apart from the cold, there is no atmosphere, so exposure to the outside will cause ruptures in the cell walls, with consequent death directly after. You body is a bag of water made of billions of bags of water: they will burst on contact with the vacuum of Mars.
political freedom for starters.
I stand astounded. Whatever makes you think that living on Mars will bring political freedom? How are those ideas even connected?
Everything about Mars suggests that political freedom is virtually impossible. You will not be able to pay the cost of your transfer to Mars (including the tons of food and supplies needed to keep you alive there). This means that to convince someone to pay for your trip to Mars, they will require something from you in return. The basis of life on Mars is obligation - your obligation to the government or company that paid for you to travel there.
In addition there is the issue that nobody on Mars will have any money or any means to make money. There is no resources , no soil to grow crops, no infrastructure to support primary industry or manufacturing. At best people might trade the various things they brought from earth. And themselves (i.e. prostitution), although the notion of sex will be less attractive after the radiation sickness kicks in.
Mars will be like prison, without any chance of escape. Linking life on Mars with political freedom is simply laughable.
Or has the situation with the orwelian police state in much of the western world, coupled with the growing corporatocracy in the eastern world, and the overall growing issues with pollution and and criminality in the rest of the world.
It might not have occurred to you that you caused that orwellian state. Who is to blame for the state of Western democracy but ourselves? In which, you will just take that corruption with you to Mars. Unless you view yourself and coincidentally your fellow travellers as somehow more enlightened than the rest of us - do you think that?
What problem did they make up?
The people saying "the cure is worse than the disease" haven't provided any proof of that assertion. Just as they didn't provide proof when they said "there is no disease".
Yes it's all a vast, time travelling conspiracy. Like the moon.
That is mostly because they don't have a chimney. With properly designed stoves, the smoke inside the dwelling is not a problem. There is no reason why people could not carry on burning biomass for fuel (since this net CO2 neutral). However, electricity becomes necessary to break the barriers of poverty. The key to delivering that electricity is solar. Over a broad area, solar is cheaper than fossil fuels to establish because you don't need an extensive network of powerlines (which are impossible to maintain in areas without a stable and effective government anyway). Build a local, community owned solar plant, power small industries, fridges and such from that.
This report seems to be saying "Please turn off everything".
Where, specifically in the report does it say that?
Rosetta is the envelope. Cassini and Voyager are the envelope. A craft that is incapable of reaching orbit is not the envelope.
If there is a future for space exploration (I hope there is) then that future won't be based around sending humans into space.
Aeroplane
Just pointing out you how you and your kind lost the trust of the average person (like me). A continual stream of assertions which proved wrong
The reason you don't trust me is because you are scientifically and politically illiterate.
That's right. Denialist arguments asserting that climate science is a vast, 150 year old, seamless conspiracy led by time travelling zombie Arrhenius are sooo convincing that only the scientifically illiterate would fail to "get on board". And apparently the view (held by 6.75 billion people) that US elections are irrelevant to them are because all 6.75 billion of us are "politically illiterate". That must be it!
You implied that progressivism was a feature of American politics and you didn't have to care about it outside of the US. In fact, progressivism has been a dominant feature of politics in all modern democracies. The fact that you don't know that just shows how politically illiterate you are.
You seem to have confused "knowledge" with "caring".
"Action on climate change" means political action
You yourself admit that it doesn't.
In the US, that's going to be stopped at the ballot box.
So tell me how YOUR vote is going to dictate to the rest of us. Unless you are prepared to give me a vote in US elections I intend to carry on thinking that those elections are largely irrelevant to me. So suck it.
That's how we will become carbon neutral in the long run: through individual, free choices.
You openly admit one second that you have NO CONTROL over the choice of humans (collectively and individually) to take action on climate change, and in the next breath claim that you will prevent us from taking action by "voting". Are you insane?
In Europe, it probably isn't going to be stopped and Europeans are going to pay a steep price.
Cite a paper stating that climate mitigation is more expensive (long term) than climate adaptation.
Cite me proposing any such thing.
I just did: you consider yourself to be a member of a group that "takes action on climate change".
By which you mean "the set of sane humans". Because the position "climate change is dangerous but fairly fixable, I insist we do nothing" is insane. We (sane humans) don't look to the insane to tell us what to do.
The ordinary meaning of th
You don't get to redefine language.
You are losing and will continue to lose on the political stage. Stew in that nicely, douchebag, as the temperature rises. Or maybe not...
You delude yourself by thinking that we are going to ask for your permission or negotiate with you. You had a chance to negotiate - too late.
Now your choices are (a) get on board (b) don't, and suffer the reputational and financial consequences.
We aren't going to ask your permission before acting.
The IPCC climate report itself says that the costs and benefits about balance out.
Thanks for confirming you were wrong.
Why should I care how much carbon you emit? Are you a sentient power station?
You should care what you emit, because if everybody who talked about the threat of climate change became carbon neutral, we'd far exceed any of the emissions targets you people want us to achieve through agreements and laws. But the fact is that climate activists don't want to take responsibility themselves (and are failing to do so), you really just want government intervention.
Denialists were proven wrong, again and again, on the subject of climate change and it's causes. There is no reason for me to take at face value your view of the people you term 'climate activists'. There is also no reason for me to care.
Cite me making those claims, or retract your allegations.
They aren't "allegations". You are a moron and a hypocrite. End of discussion.
Sure. Run away. Again.
It is exactly as predicted. First deny it is getting warmer. Then later, deny the warming is due to human influences. The later, claim that nothing can be done anyway, we should curl up and die.
And what's your problem with that sequence?
Just point out you how you and your kind lost the trust of the average person (like me). A continual stream of assertions which proved wrong.
I don't give 2 figs for your political views and your manic obsession with the people you term progressives. I'm not an American, so I don't care what happens in US elections.
Progressivism has been a dominant feature of European politics since the beginning of the 20th century as well.
And I should care why, exactly?
Reducing emissions is quite effective. What is ineffective is the way you are proposing to go about it: namely legislation and international agreement.
Cite me proposing any such thing.
Yes we noticed - rendering your protests against taking action completely ineffective, and your claim that we need to convince you and your douchebag mates of the need to take action a laughable fantasy. Better luck in the next life, douchebag.
(no response)
So how do you intend to stop us taking action on climate change? Will you beg? Will you offer us money?