A New World... A Better World?

[Comet Tail 808]

Okay, talking about going to Mars has this kind of "that's crazy talk" reaction, because for the last hundred years almost it's been a popular object of, well, crazy talk and pulp fiction.

 

Technologically, it was possible in the 80's.

 

Financially, is when it will really happen, when someone can make a profit off of it; that's when it'll happen big-time, because where there's money to be made, you can rest assured a company will do it.

 

In the 21st century, we've seen a revolution in spaceflight of private companies become big players.

A few years ago, the first private spacecraft went into space.

Last year, SpaceX, a private company, put a capsule into orbit and returned to Earth.

(space and orbit are different; space, you fall back to Earth in about 5-15 minutes. But in orbit, you're going so fast you "miss" the Earth, so you stay in space indefinitely, it is much harder to do, and requires insane speeds: mach 27, 5 miles per second, 17.5 thousand mph.).

 

I introduce you to SpaceX, their almost radical, revolutionary leader, Elon Musk, and his vision for mankind's future in the next decades: http://www.bbc.co.uk...health-17439490

(I've seen a number of sources, this was just a quick google to share it)

 

I wouldn't normally believe this kind of claim, but this is kind of my expertise, and SpaceX has a track record that's already done a lot of incredible things. They've reduced the cost of getting stuff into orbit by 4x. On top of that, not only is their current only rocket, the Falcon 9, 4x cheaper per pound of payload, but it's also much, much safer and far better built than any other rocket. (Though the technical term is "launch vehicle")

 

They and NASA built two space capsules. SpaceX built Dragon and NASA is building Orion. SpaceX spent less than 1/10th the money, and finished a lighter spacecraft that could carry more people in 7 years. NASA has spent billions, 7 years in, and it's still maybe halfway done.

 

NASA's capsule uses the same type of abort system that's been used since the very first spacecraft, yet they spent more money on that abort system alone, than SpaceX spent on their entire capsule, including it's radical new abort system (uses rockets in the sides rather than on a tower on top).

 

So these people know what they're doing, and when they say crazy things like "we can put people on Mars for $500k", they're the kind of people that know what they're saying, and they can do it.

 

 

So now, my real topic; Even if it takes 3 decades, point is, soon a whole new world will be open. Who will go there? Anyone willing to sell everything they have here to scrape up $500,000.

 

Who would do that?

 

People who think they can build a better world

...compared to our "scumbag" world, they don't want to live on this planet anymore.

Aureity wasn't even thinking about Mars, but I am. It may sound crazy, because people have talked about it so long, but it may have been technologically possible, but there was no will.

 

But now, this private company is finding out how to make a profit off of it. There's a will. There's a will, and there's a way, so sometime in the upcoming decades it will happen.

 

 

But here's my question; what kind of world will we actually build? Will it actually be better? Just to survive, everyone will need to be very well-disciplined and well-informed on how to survive. There'll have to be 3d printers and machine shops to make replacement parts when things fail, and it'll take a work ethic just to keep from dying, maybe even an Applejack-type work ethic.

 

What will it take to make an "Equestria", so to speak, and make the new world far better than our own?

Would you go if it was possible today?

[Whiteshade 1,426]

Technology is progressing faster than ever, so a Mars trip is feasible. However, the big expense would be terraforming Mars, which has surface temperatures ranging from −17.2 °C (1.0 °F) to −107 °C (−161 °F) and a thin atmosphere. Still though, even that barrier may fall quickly, and scientists could find (or manufacture) some special genes that can overcome those conditions, but the research definitely won't be cheap, and will have to be consistently funded for years, if not decades. Travel is cheap, settlement is the real challenge.

 

As for utopia potential, there is nil. If colonized, Mars will be colonized by humans, so no chance of equestria-type world happening. Due to the difficulty, the colonizers would develop some work ethic and camaraderie, but how long? I am familiar with Canadian history so I'll draw my evidence from that. People came, and initially it was tough, so everyone had to get along and work closely, including with the Indians. So it was all fine and dandy, but then the British arrived, fur companies were set up, territories were established, and that world ceased to exist. I'm guessing Mars would have the same scenario, since history repeats. Initially it would go well, but once they are established, once survival isn't an issue, then people will pursue their own selfish aims and start undermining others and corrupting themselves.

 

I will take the cynical position on this one and say that people ally out of convenience, not out of genuine closeness.

Edited April 18, 2012 by Whiteshade

[Typhoid Libby 1,265]

Would you go if it was possible today?

 

no thnks gooby I lieks mah air.

 

And there'd still be hunams littering the landscape.

God I hate hunams.

 

Off-world projects/colonies will NEVER make profit.

Shipping costs plus the fact that it's a separate planet "few" miles away makes it impossible to extract anything useful out of there in the long term.

"No, thanks, I'd rather keep what I have sown, not give it to those greedy bastards back at earth."

And no-one is making those investments for short term.

 

Dream on, but it's impossible until someone makes a FTL or a super-efficient re-usable engine capable of planetary landings repeatedly.

 

The difference between Class 0.1 and a Class 1 culture.

 

Besides, who wants to get eaten by voracious hibernating Martian super-lizard analogues anyway.

[Comet Tail 808]

no thnks gooby I lieks mah air.

 

And there'd still be hunams littering the landscape.

God I hate hunams.

 

Off-world projects/colonies will NEVER make profit.

Shipping costs plus the fact that it's a separate planet "few" miles away makes it impossible to extract anything useful out of there in the long term.

"No, thanks, I'd rather keep what I have sown, not give it to those greedy bastards back at earth."

And no-one is making those investments for short term.

 

Dream on, but it's impossible until someone makes a FTL or a super-efficient re-usable engine capable of planetary landings repeatedly.

 

The difference between Class 0.1 and a Class 1 culture.

 

Besides, who wants to get eaten by voracious hibernating Martian super-lizard analogues anyway.

 

Looks like we have some...

 

Okay, I'm somewhat surprised...

1) What do you think the $500,000 ticket is for? That pays for the colony. The entire reason it's possible is the approach SpaceX is taking is lowering costs drastically.

2) They have. It's called a rocket engine. It's old news. You can use it to go to other planets. SpaceX is making it profitable. Rocket engines are efficient enough, when you use ISRU to gather propellant from Mars, a very straightforward process.

3) Please, tell me you know that's pulp fiction and nothing like reality. At worst, there might be bacteria on Mars. But our bodies are billions of years evolutionarily ahead of theirs, so we'd dominate any bacterial life there is, should it somehow survive thawing into water that we could use to sterilize wounds on Earth... No real concern at all on the biological end of things.

 

Please, don't contradict those 3 unless you're really serious about getting into a highly technical debate, because I'm not going to bother with anything less than convincing evidence or serious concerns. Generally speaking, if you haven't heard it from NASA, then it's not a real concern. Like alien lizards (even frozen, after 10,000 years things decay so much they'd be dead. Hibernating is even worse at preservation. Mars has been devoid of liquid water for more than 3 billion years.). These people have spent their entire lives doing research and really know what they're talking about. Some random person on the internet, or yourself, will not know better. Heck, I'm a bit of an armchair aerospace engineer, and I know that I don't know better. In fact, we're talking about the guys at SpaceX. The guys at NASA don't even know better.

 

I can, however, tell you how it's possible. But that's a somewhat lengthy post and I think it would really detract from the topic too much...

 

Technology is progressing faster than ever, so a Mars trip is feasible. However, the big expense would be terraforming Mars, which has surface temperatures ranging from −17.2 °C (1.0 °F) to −107 °C (−161 °F) and a thin atmosphere. Still though, even that barrier may fall quickly, and scientists could find (or manufacture) some special genes that can overcome those conditions, but the research definitely won't be cheap, and will have to be consistently funded for years, if not decades. Travel is cheap, settlement is the real challenge.

 

As for utopia potential, there is nil. If colonized, Mars will be colonized by humans, so no chance of equestria-type world happening. Due to the difficulty, the colonizers would develop some work ethic and camaraderie, but how long? I am familiar with Canadian history so I'll draw my evidence from that. People came, and initially it was tough, so everyone had to get along and work closely, including with the Indians. So it was all fine and dandy, but then the British arrived, fur companies were set up, territories were established, and that world ceased to exist. I'm guessing Mars would have the same scenario, since history repeats. Initially it would go well, but once they are established, once survival isn't an issue, then people will pursue their own selfish aims and start undermining others and corrupting themselves.

 

I will take the cynical position on this one and say that people ally out of convenience, not out of genuine closeness.

 

You don't have to terraform it to colonize it!

 

We haven't created a working closed-looped ecosystem, but you don't have to. Mars has water, silicates, iron, nitrogen, and carbon. With some electrical power from solar, or preferably, nuclear, you can survive off of those compounds. You can make replacement parts with 3d printers from raw plastics shipped from Earth. Machine shops can make metal parts from refined iron: steel. Water you can drink, or use electricity to extract oxygen from and couple it with the nitrogen for air. Use the water to water plants, the carbon, nitrogen, and waste to grow plants.

 

You can live on Mars without terraforming it.

 

And anyways, the point of the thread, is how could we make it a better world? It's not something that happens on it's own, what we're lacking is that realization that we're not spectators to the course of human events, we, human beings, are the drivers of human events. The world doesn't happen. We act, and make it happen.

 

I guess the real OP is really like this;

 

We have our own world. What do we do to make it better than the old? Things don't happen on their own. They happen because we do them.

 

The new world means hard work, a determined effort, and the will to do what it takes just to survive, but it also carries the prospects of being able to create a Utopia, if that's what you do. Would you go there? A new world for the hopes of making the fantastic world you've always dreamed of living in? How would you live and act differently, if what you did built the world you lived in?

 

I mean, it's true here on Earth. We aren't just spectators to the course of human history. We are human history. We're not the audience, yet everyone thinks of themselves as the audience, like in your post. But we're not. We're the scriptwriters and the players. Realize it, believe it, live it.

 

Now, soon, there will be a new world.

 

What will we do with it? Realize, that the type of people who are bronies, people who love this idea of a better world, who are sick and tired of the wrongs of this world, are the same types of people who will go to build a new one.

 

This new world is in your hands. Would you go, for that opportunity to take part in creating a new world? What would you do to make it better? It's only going to be a better world if people realize that everything they do makes it what it is. There's no audience, only writers and players in the pageant of human history. In the new world, it will be all the more true, because there will be so few people at first.

Edited April 18, 2012 by EASA - Matt

[Fizz. 1,078]

This is why the world sucks. Private companies are incredible at doings things, and get them done faster and better than a government, but they would never do anything unless it's profitable. Governments are terrible at getting objectives done, but a good one will do it simply for the advancement of society.

[Starswirl the Trixie 974]

No need to go to Mars. You guys do realize that, with M-Theory becoming more accepted by the scientific community, Equestria probably DOES exist in another universe. In fact, it exists in an alternate reality of this one too...

 

Bronies, new mission: Build a machine to travel through the 5th dimension.

Edited April 18, 2012 by Starswirl the goateed

[Comet Tail 808]

No need to go to Mars. You guys do realize that, with M-Theory becoming more accepted by the scientific community, Equestria probably DOES exist in another universe. In fact, it exists in an alternate reality of this one too...

 

Bronies, new mission: Build a machine to travel through the 5th dimension.

 

Well, actually, any/all of the higher 11 dimensions...

 

What am I saying? No, it's not possible to travel there. You'd have to re-attach your strings to it's membrane.

 

Everything in the universe is made up of vibrating strings, vibrating in little "knots", so to speak, which act like particles with different properties. The ends of the string are attached to a higher-dimensional membrane. You can't detach the string endpoints any more than you could make Pi = 4, or 2+2=6. The reason we don't interact with the other membranes is because our endpoints are on our membranes, but there endpoints are on theirs.

 

However, one theory holds that gravitons exists as loops that can travel through different membranes, theoretically allowing you to transfer information from one membrane to another. So we wouldn't travel there like you travel from your house to the chemist's down the street (which is peanuts to space), but you'd somehow do something with gravitons to project yourself into that universe.

 

First, we need to figure out how to manipulate higher-dimensional gravity, though.

 

Step 1: manipulate gravitons in higher dimensional space.

Step 2: ???

Step 3: profit go to Equestria.

[Finesthour 7,284]

No need to go to Mars. You guys do realize that, with M-Theory becoming more accepted by the scientific community, Equestria probably DOES exist in another universe. In fact, it exists in an alternate reality of this one too...

 

Bronies, new mission: Build a machine to travel through the 5th dimension.

 

Get the tools. We start tomorrow.

 

Ontopic:

 

The whole "living on mars topic" is just... meh to me.

Even if our world is crap, what would make mars much better?

The reason our world is terrible is because of the people who live on it.

If we move to mars, it will be the same people, with the same problems all over again.

[Nah 3,181]

I remember seeing something about in 100 years we will be on Mars, mainly in part of planting trees and creating an atmosphere we can breathe.

 

Honestly, the true hype of life on Mars is the media, although, it is a cornerstone of our imagination, and imagination, creativity, and innovation are key to making something possible. No world is better than this, that is why this is the only planet that can support life!

[Comet Tail 808]

This is why the world sucks. Private companies are incredible at doings things, and get them done faster and better than a government, but they would never do anything unless it's profitable. Governments are terrible at getting objectives done, but a good one will do it simply for the advancement of society.

 

The world doesn't suck (well if the planet didn't suck, we'd all fall off, silly), it's really a matter of how you look at it. What's wrong with private companies? What's wrong with profit? Doesn't everyone seek to improve themselves, and to succeed? Is that wrong? It's wrong when you do it at the expense of others, but just because someone's trying to succeed and make money doesn't make them evil. In fact, the success of one person helps everyone. Millionaires are good for society, they spend money on things which eventually earns it's way to your paycheck. In a free market world, you don't make any trades unless both sides think they're getting a profit. It's a free market, so everyone makes a profit that has something to trade.

 

And even what we call "poor", those people are still doing much better and have a drastically higher standard of living than the vast majority of humans in human history. It kind of disgusts me how people are almost taught to hate companies and completely overlook how amazing civilization is. The natural state of mankind is something like Somalia, people fighting to the death for their selfish pursuits, or North Korea, some organization taking total power and controlling millions of people.

 

What we have is a monument of human success, a thriving civilization with free trade, freedom of speech, freedom of education, and a total lack of any caste system. You can even be one of the "1%", too, if you learn how to do it, read up on it, gain some practical knowledge and experience on how companies work, then try your own hand at starting a company. It's risky, but that's how they did it, and that's how anyone can do it. We live in a free world, yet it's organized so well that it's normal for people to have cars. Just think of how much work and organization it takes to make a world where we have the level of trade and connection to make everything possible. Everything you see, someone made, roads, houses, walls, computers, every little part on cars, etc etc. What if you had to make everything you own? I can promise there wouldn't be computers, for one thing.

 

Ugh, but I'm really tired of all this "businesses are so evil" stuff. They're just groups of people working in an organization to make money. Is the average Joe that works in an office 8 hours a day evil for wanting a paycheck?

 

I mean, sorry, that's not what you said, really, but it's something I've been seeing a lot and it's a prevalent mindset.

 

And anyways, they really do what's for the growth and advancement of humanity. It's measured by what people will pay for. If nobody's going to pay for it, then nobody must want it.

 

Get the tools. We start tomorrow.

 

Ontopic:

 

The whole "living on mars topic" is just... meh to me.

Even if our world is crap, what would make mars much better?

The reason our world is terrible is because of the people who live on it.

If we move to mars, it will be the same people, with the same problems all over again.

 

Well, the thing is, is what type of people will go to Mars?

 

The whole reason I made this thread, is Aureity wrote this line:

 

"...compared to our "scumbag" world, they don't want to live on this planet anymore."

 

[Re-wrote this part, EDIT: ]

He then went on to say how they'd rather live in Equestria.

 

Well, the whole point of this thread is, that if you buy that ticket and go, then whether that world is Equestria, or just as bad as this one, will depend on your actions. If we were willing.

 

I mean, what if we really could open a portal straight to Equestria and we could go?

 

Unless we changed how we behave to be true Equestrians, then we'd bring all the evils of mankind with us and make that world just as bad.

 

Or, because we're in the world, would we act like it? Would you change how you behave to fit the world if you woke up in Equestria? Wouldn't you want to, at least, and avoid bringing your own evil into that world?

 

But, now, a totally blank world is about to open. If you think of it like Equestria, and act like a good pony there, then you would make it better. Now add another person. Two people. You're half the world. Twenty. Forty. A hundred. Five hundred. A thousand. It makes no difference, you still create the world you live in. Your influence is far more powerful than you think. The only reason any place is dark is because there's no light shining there. All it takes is a good example and people to follow the lead. Would you be a part of that?

 

And it's important to realize this. Because although there's a chance for a fresh start there, your role is just as real on this world, too. We could make this world, a New World, today. What if I said; today, do everything good you can, give to the hobo, open the door for the person, stop to help those who need it, give to charity, don't ignore your friend or relative who seems sad, forget yourself and help others. People see that, it stands out greatly, it's that light, and it's much easier for them to be better when they see an example of it, and then it spreads virally. Would you be a part of that? Do you want to make a difference in the world?

Edited April 18, 2012 by EASA - Matt

[Strafe 593]

Space flight is now as crazy as it sounds, in fact, we can probably travel to jupiter, there's just the problem of money and resources. I believe the human race has everything it needs to travel the galaxy, it just needs to make use of the resources we have now so we can travel to other planets and make use of their resources. The problem is we're doing a pretty crappy job, just look at all the careless oil spills.

 

Living on mars, on the other hand, would be interesting but it lacks a good atmosphere and enough water to support a large amount of intelligent life.

[Whiteshade 1,426]

What's wrong with profit?

- A service or other may be offered to a customer, but to make a profit, the revenues must be greater than expenses, and the customer will be charged above cost. The customer will lose in net terms, paying a markup, and the business will win. Rinse and repeat many times, and the business will concentrate wealth, but at the expense of a net loss in the general society.

Doesn't everyone seek to improve themselves, and to succeed? Is that wrong? It's wrong when you do it at the expense of others, but just because someone's trying to succeed and make money doesn't make them evil.

- Self-interest is a neutral concept overall, however wealth is not. Money corrupts, its a simple truth, and there is always more that can be made, for the low cost of burdening others.

In fact, the success of one person helps everyone. Millionaires are good for society, they spend money on things which eventually earns it's way to your paycheck.

- Trickle down economics don't work, as well lets explain this way. Joe is an aspiring millionaire, and he has 100k in capital. Joe makes 900k more, becomes a millionaire, then decides to be charitable and donates 200k to charity, or 200k to raise employee wages, or whatever. What is the net change in wealth? Joe: +600k, society: -600k, and Joe is a philanthropist, its even worse with the non-philanthropists.

In a free market world, you don't make any trades unless both sides think they're getting a profit. It's a free market, so everyone makes a profit that has something to trade.

 

- House always wins. There is the saying you gotta lose money to make money, but what if you just lose? There are investors out there that lost a load of cash from stocks and whatnot, former homeowners that lost their homes, people who were laid-off, and the list goes on. Of course though, the system does not take kindly to these groups, especially when they start protesting, and label them as "lazy", "drunks", etc.

And even what we call "poor", those people are still doing much better and have a drastically higher standard of living than the vast majority of humans in human history. It kind of disgusts me how people are almost taught to hate companies and completely overlook how amazing civilization is. The natural state of mankind is something like Somalia, people fighting to the death for their selfish pursuits, or North Korea, some organization taking total power and controlling millions of people.

- A bit selective in evidence choice? Somalia is bankrupt, they have way too many guns and not enough food. I wonder why they would buy guns and not food though, but I am pretty sure that it has nothing to do with the military-industrial complex. North Korea is a total failed state, so we have common ground there. So, someone should give some aid to North Korea and pour money into it to get the country back on its feet. Any companies want to volunteer, even though doing so would certainly result in profit loss? Also as my selective counterexample, I give you... Norway. Socialist country, heavy government presence, flat screen TVs in jails, noncompetitive education system, huge social net, and #1 on the human development index with consistent economic growth and AAA rating from all major credit agencies. Good job overall by the government, taking care of the little guy.

 

What we have is a monument of human success, a thriving civilization with free trade, freedom of speech, freedom of education, and a total lack of any caste system. You can even be one of the "1%", too, if you learn how to do it, read up on it, gain some practical knowledge and experience on how companies work, then try your own hand at starting a company. It's risky, but that's how they did it, and that's how anyone can do it. We live in a free world, yet it's organized so well that it's normal for people to have cars. Just think of how much work and organization it takes to make a world where we have the level of trade and connection to make everything possible. Everything you see, someone made, roads, houses, walls, computers, every little part on cars, etc etc. What if you had to make everything you own? I can promise there wouldn't be computers, for one thing.

- Free trade, freedom of speech, and freedom of education are not exclusive to businesses, and is dependent on the policy rather than the entity. Also its fine and dandy getting into the 1%, and people do get in with hard work, but there are also others who inherit the money from the family (Mitt Romney), those who are lucky through lottery or something else, and those who are criminal. As well your arguments neglect the many many many people that DID work hard in their lives, and didn't get into the 1%, and your statement that anyone can do it made me flinch for that reason.

- I don't see how cars, roads, houses, computers, etc are exclusive to business. They could just as easily be made at non-profit, or through investments or grants by government. Also, no one assumes that one person could make everything, hence the reason why trade exists. Another thing: bridges are made by engineers, roads by construction workers, houses by homebuilders, etc. I don't see how these guys suddenly cease to exist outside the context of business.

 

Ugh, but I'm really tired of all this "businesses are so evil" stuff. They're just groups of people working in an organization to make money. Is the average Joe that works in an office 8 hours a day evil for wanting a paycheck?

 

I mean, sorry, that's not what you said, really, but it's something I've been seeing a lot and it's a prevalent mindset.

 

And anyways, they really do what's for the growth and advancement of humanity. It's measured by what people will pay for. If nobody's going to pay for it, then nobody must want it.

- The business is evil stuff comes from corporatism, which Adam Smith himself warned to curb. Businesses seek profit, and at a certain point they will be willing to gouge their customers, lie to shareholders, and ultimately erode the law in the name of money. That is corporatism in a nutshell.

- Your average Joe is a guy in the business. He is not a business, and a LOT of guys are average Joes. They are two totally different things. Also its a prevalent mindset because a lot of Joes are being laid-off by the very businesses, who then channel that money into the 1% executives.

- They seek profit. If that coincides in the direction of human progress, that is where they will go. If profit is in the direction of arms proliferation and higher incarceration rates, that is where they will go.

 

Well, that is just the view from my meritocratic-socialist perspective. I feel very strongly on this, so I may have gone a bit overboard on that section.

Now onto the good part:

Well, the thing is, is what type of people will go to Mars?

 

All types, but the order would be roughly: explorers, then colonizers, then traders, then everyone else

 

Would you change how you behave to fit the world if you woke up in Equestria? Wouldn't you want to, at least, and avoid bringing your own evil into that world?

 

But, now, a totally blank world is about to open. If you think of it like Equestria, and act like a good pony there, then you would make it better. Now add another person. Two people. You're half the world. Twenty. Forty. A hundred. Five hundred. A thousand. It makes no difference, you still create the world you live in. Your influence is far more powerful than you think. The only reason any place is dark is because there's no light shining there. All it takes is a good example and people to follow the lead. Would you be a part of that?

 

And it's important to realize this. Because although there's a chance for a fresh start there, your role is just as real on this world, too. We could make this world, a New World, today. What if I said; today, do everything good you can, give to the hobo, open the door for the person, stop to help those who need it, give to charity, don't ignore your friend or relative who seems sad, forget yourself and help others. People see that, it stands out greatly, it's that light, and it's much easier for them to be better when they see an example of it, and then it spreads virally. Would you be a part of that? Do you want to make a difference in the world?

 

Eeyup to all of it.

Not enough people go by this, so the world is as it is, but for every person who tries, we can count that as a victory.

[Fizz. 1,078]

The world doesn't suck (well if the planet didn't suck, we'd all fall off, silly), it's really a matter of how you look at it. What's wrong with private companies? What's wrong with profit? Doesn't everyone seek to improve themselves, and to succeed? Is that wrong? It's wrong when you do it at the expense of others, but just because someone's trying to succeed and make money doesn't make them evil. In fact, the success of one person helps everyone. Millionaires are good for society, they spend money on things which eventually earns it's way to your paycheck. In a free market world, you don't make any trades unless both sides think they're getting a profit. It's a free market, so everyone makes a profit that has something to trade.

 

Woof, you missed my point by a long shot, although that was my fault.

 

I meant that a business is not going to invest in groundbreaking technological feats unless they make money. Businesses are for themselves and themselves only, that's how a business works after all, so why would they lose money to help the world if it could lead to their downfall?

[Comet Tail 808]

On 2012-04-18 at 8:41 PM, 'Whiteshade' said:

- A service or other may be offered to a customer, but to make a profit, the revenues must be greater than expenses, and the customer will be charged above cost. The customer will lose in net terms, paying a markup, and the business will win. Rinse and repeat many times, and the business will concentrate wealth, but at the expense of a net loss in the general society.

 

Not necessarily. Like another one of your arguments, this works off of the assumption that no value is added to the system, but economics, by definition, is the most efficient allocation of resources. Essentially, this point is wrong because it assumes things have a constant value no matter where and what, but that is not true.

 

Take for example, a man has food but needs water, and a woman has water but needs food. They exchange water for food, so both have enough water and food. Value is created because things are allocated where they're needed. The same thing happens in an exchange with a business, value is generated from an exchange which places resources where they're needed, and both parties benefit.

 

Your argument is wrong because it assumes value is fixed, so only one party can benefit. But value changes with allocation, so both parties can benefit. This is specialization, and the root of human civilization.

 

On 2012-04-18 at 8:41 PM, 'Whiteshade' said:

- Self-interest is a neutral concept overall, however wealth is not. Money corrupts, its a simple truth, and there is always more that can be made, for the low cost of burdening others.

How do you burden others?

 

You have them work for you in pitiful conditions, and if they protest, you fire them and hire new workers. This would be correct, if this was the industrial revolution and unions didn't exist. But as it stands, the "others" actually have as much, and in some cases even more power than those with the money. It also depends on the number of workers. Cheap labor is cheap because it's so common, high supply, low demand/cost. It's really as simple as that, and that system can only continue so long as one party is organized and the other is not. In the modern world, however, both parties are organized, so there is a balance of power. The workers provide the labor, and demand a certain pay. The company provides the pay, in return for the labor.

 

And it's not always "the poor little guy gets abused by the powerful big greedy guy." My own town used to be a thriving center of economics, and might be a big, thriving city today if it wasn't for a union. The town used to provide the country with a huge amount of steel, but now, that steel plant is a huge, ancient, rusted ruin. The workers demanded so much pay, that it would have been impossible for the company to remain in business with the pay they demanded. As a result, the company was forced to move elsewhere or go bankrupt. Either way, all the employees ended up losing their jobs. Killed the goose that lays the golden eggs, so to speak.

 

Both sides are essential. The workers and the company. There must be a balance of power, otherwise one will dominate the other, and both sides will be poorer.

 

On 2012-04-18 at 8:41 PM, 'Whiteshade' said:

- Trickle down economics don't work, as well lets explain this way. Joe is an aspiring millionaire, and he has 100k in capital. Joe makes 900k more, becomes a millionaire, then decides to be charitable and donates 200k to charity, or 200k to raise employee wages, or whatever. What is the net change in wealth? Joe: +600k, society: -600k, and Joe is a philanthropist, its even worse with the non-philanthropists.

Once again, terribly misguided, or outright dishonest. You're still assuming there's only a fixed amount of resources, and on person's riches steals form everyone else's. That's an absolutely horrible, almost evil misconception. If that were true, then it would be absolutely impossible for any technology, goods, or products to exist at all, and we'd be apes fighting eachother for eachother's food. Riches don't come from stealing alone, they come from creating something.

 

Take Bill Gates, for example. He became a billionaire by creating a business. That business created jobs and products. Those jobs gave lots of people paychecks, and those products gave lots of people goods, and Bill Gates alone was the one responsible for all of it. If there were no businessmen, no people who created businesses, then there would be no products and no paychecks, and nobody would have anything. Our wealth depends on their success, their success depends on our work. We're all connected, and we all rely on eachother. In the case of a CEO or similar, though, lots of people rely on that one person.

 

On 2012-04-18 at 8:41 PM, 'Whiteshade' said:

- House always wins. There is the saying you gotta lose money to make money, but what if you just lose? There are investors out there that lost a load of cash from stocks and whatnot, former homeowners that lost their homes, people who were laid-off, and the list goes on. Of course though, the system does not take kindly to these groups, especially when they start protesting, and label them as "lazy", "drunks", etc.

If "House always wins", then how come anybody owns houses or anything? And, once again, the entire idea is based on the assumption one side has to lose for the other to win. But, guess what, value is generated, goods are created through organized effort (which is called business), and you don't have to steal to make something. It's possible for both "House" and "Guest" to both win. Otherwise, there would be no technology at all.

 

And of course some people don't do well. If I don't bake muffins, I don't get muffins. In a highly advanced society, it's not quiet that straight-forward, but it is basically the same thing, only more complicated. If I do something that doesn't pay as much, that means society as a whole is not demanding it as much, and so it's not generating enough value for me to claim some other value as mine.

 

Back to the industrial revolution, the prolatariat labor may have been necessary for society to exist, meaning as a whole, all of society needed the proles so they were a necessity, and thus deserved the goods of society. However, divide all the goods society produces, into who paid what amount of effort and share into producing it, and each individual one of them still fall short of getting enough, because there are so many of them to divide into.

 

It's like a town of 100 people produces 50 loaves of bread. Have you ever worked at a project that had too many people at it? Imagine 75 of those people were out in the field, harvesting the wheat. Well, let's say all it really takes is 20 people to do it, all the extra 55 weren't being productive, not because they were lazy, but simply because there wasn't anything for them to do. But, in the end, what matters is that they didn't play hardly any role in making the bread, so when the loaves are handed out, they get a tiny portion; the amount they put in. Even if they worked harder than anyone else, their labor was terribly inefficient. Because of that inefficiency, they were unproductive.

 

Now, add supply and demand on top of that, and the decrease in the size of what they get, is exponential to how inefficient they were. As a result, they could end up working extremely hard and still get a tiny portion, simply because their efforts were expended somewhere they weren't needed. And that extra effort, goes to exponentially to the people who were more efficient and less over-staffed. As a result, you get that imbalance of wealth. But it makes sense; it's how things happen, you can no more call it injustice than you can call it injustice that an egg breaks when dropped, it sounds horrible and cold, and it is, it's the simple fact of reality. People must make themselves productive and efficiently so to society, otherwise they don't receive an allocation proportionate to their expendatures.

 

We've managed to cheat this exponential effect with labor unions, removing the supply and demand portion, but the linear effect, illustrated in the example of the town with 75 people gathering wheat, is impossible to cheat without outright stealing from people who have played a bigger role in producing things. When that starts to happen, then when they realize they get cheated out of what they produce, they see no reason to produce that extra, and as a result the society is extremely unpreductive and ends up in starvation, like the Soviet Union.

 

The trick is to not allow the exponential effect (which causes cheap labor to be abused), but not to cut into the linear effect (stealing from more productive members of society).

 

With an equal balance of power in-between employees and the company, their bargaining power is directly proportional to their efficiency, which results in fair trade and prices, as a result of balanced unions.

 

On 2012-04-18 at 8:41 PM, 'Whiteshade' said:

- A bit selective in evidence choice? Somalia is bankrupt, they have way too many guns and not enough food. I wonder why they would buy guns and not food though, but I am pretty sure that it has nothing to do with the military-industrial complex. North Korea is a total failed state, so we have common ground there. So, someone should give some aid to North Korea and pour money into it to get the country back on its feet. Any companies want to volunteer, even though doing so would certainly result in profit loss? Also as my selective counterexample, I give you... Norway. Socialist country, heavy government presence, flat screen TVs in jails, noncompetitive education system, huge social net, and #1 on the human development index with consistent economic growth and AAA rating from all major credit agencies. Good job overall by the government, taking care of the little guy.

I wouldn't give aid and money to North Korea, because they'd sell it and use it to make more bunkers and missiles. Seriously, a single one of their recently failed missiles, costs enough to feed millions of their starving population for years. Pour money on it to get it back onto it's feet? No, more like, pour money on it for it to advance it's ballistic missile "space" program with.

 

And I don't care what you call the organization. You bolded "government", big whoop. It's an organization, just like businesses are. A group of people that make executive decisions for a larger group of people. The difference is, a government has guns and can kill millions of people in holocaust and genocide, while a business can't. By necessity, a government has legislative, judicial, and executive authority. I think that's enough power, and the power of the entire economy can only corrupt them further. They're not some angelic beings from heaven that aren't corrupted; personally, I'm perfectly fine with a corrupt business, as opposed to a corrupt government. If what you said is true about money and power corrupting, then coupling supreme executive, judicial, legislative, and economic power (which causes so much corruption) all together can certainly do no good. All you're doing then is giving the monopoly guns and legislative power, too.

 

Let's learn a little more about them from the CIA World Factbook :

 

Quote

The Norwegian economy is a prosperous mixed economy, with a vibrant private sector, a large state sector and an extensive social safety net. The government controls key areas, such as the vital petroleum sector, through extensive regulation and large-scale state-majority-owned enterprises. The country is richly endowed with natural resources - petroleum, hydropower, fish, forests, and minerals - and is highly dependent on the petroleum sector, which accounts for the largest portion of export revenue and about 20% of government revenue. Norway is the world's second-largest gas exporter; and seventh largest oil exporter, making one of its largest offshore oil finds in 2011. Norway opted to stay out of the EU during a referendum in November 1994; nonetheless, as a member of the European Economic Area, it contributes sizably to the EU budget. In anticipation of eventual declines in oil and gas production, Norway saves state revenue from the petroleum sector in the world's second largest sovereign wealth fund, valued at over $500 billion in 2011 and uses the fund's return to help finance public expenses.

That's for a population of less than 5 million, btw.

 

Now in the grand United Soviet Socialist Republic, the est. 10+ million "dissidents" somewhat disagree with the whole good job government on help the small guy deal. I think the 6+ million dead in Nazi Germany, agree.

 

Where's the 16 + million bodycount for companies and private corporations?

 

On 2012-04-18 at 8:41 PM, 'Whiteshade' said:

- Free trade, freedom of speech, and freedom of education are not exclusive to businesses, and is dependent on the policy rather than the entity. Also its fine and dandy getting into the 1%, and people do get in with hard work, but there are also others who inherit the money from the family (Mitt Romney), those who are lucky through lottery or something else, and those who are criminal. As well your arguments neglect the many many many people that DID work hard in their lives, and didn't get into the 1%, and your statement that anyone can do it made me flinch for that reason.

Anyone can try. And at least Mitt can run an economic entity such as a business, something that many failed businesses show that not everyone can do.

 

On 2012-04-18 at 8:41 PM, 'Whiteshade' said:

- I don't see how cars, roads, houses, computers, etc are exclusive to business. They could just as easily be made at non-profit, or through investments or grants by government. Also, no one assumes that one person could make everything, hence the reason why trade exists. Another thing: bridges are made by engineers, roads by construction workers, houses by homebuilders, etc. I don't see how these guys suddenly cease to exist outside the context of business.

 

This wasn't all about business, this was about civilization as a whole. But, alright, I guess we can force them to work without pay non-profit. So let's hand over their working organizations to the super gun-wielding legislaton-passing supreme executive-authority wielding supreme judicial authority monopoly. What can go wrong, there? Of course they'll never, you know, get corrupt or anything, or disrespect that 200+ year-old ink-covered piece of paper that says they can't intrude on our rights, and that they will always perfectly represent our will without flaw, right?

 

On 2012-04-18 at 8:41 PM, 'Whiteshade' said:

- The business is evil stuff comes from corporatism, which Adam Smith himself warned to curb. Businesses seek profit, and at a certain point they will be willing to gouge their customers, lie to shareholders, and ultimately erode the law in the name of money. That is corporatism in a nutshell.

Well of course, any organized body can get too powerful. The question isn't can they, the question is, are they? And so far, they aren't exactly above the law. They get some cuts and favors, but that's because it's necessary for the economy. And of course they can get corrupt, but what's your proposed solution? Commonly, it's give it to the government, because the government is immune to corruption, right? And the run things better, right?

 

On 2012-04-18 at 8:41 PM, 'Whiteshade' said:

- Your average Joe is a guy in the business. He is not a business, and a LOT of guys are average Joes. They are two totally different things. Also its a prevalent mindset because a lot of Joes are being laid-off by the very businesses, who then channel that money into the 1% executives.

Well then they're plain-out stupid and will go bankrupt as a result. A company isn't some evil super-monster that can just swallow everyone's money and funnel it to one guy in charge. If they lay off workers, they will shrink and make less money because there will be less product produced by the company. But sometimes they have to because they can't afford to pay workers, because of things like taxes.

On 2012-04-18 at 8:41 PM, 'Whiteshade' said:

- They seek profit. If that coincides in the direction of human progress, that is where they will go. If profit is in the direction of arms proliferation and higher incarceration rates, that is where they will go.

True, they will offer on sell whatever people will pay for. That means the people themselves are in complete control, a company can't produce something people don't want, or they won't buy it and the company will go bankrupt. A company can't charge rates that are too high, or competition will make more money by getting more customers by charging a lower rate. Deals can circumvent this, but deals are also hunted and busted by the government.

 

On 2012-04-18 at 8:41 PM, 'Whiteshade' said:

Well, that is just the view from my meritocratic-socialist perspective. I feel very strongly on this, so I may have gone a bit overboard on that section.

Now onto the good part:

 

All types, but the order would be roughly: explorers, then colonizers, then traders, then everyone else

 

 

Eeyup to all of it.

Not enough people go by this, so the world is as it is, but for every person who tries, we can count that as a victory.

 

Selling everything you have to go to a distant planet where you might die isn't something people will do without a great reason. Of course some rich people will go and have a holiday there, but it's not like they'll be very keen on establishing a new world if they're perfectly happy and successful in the old one.

 

~

 

All this, and really, the basic idea of communism isn't a bad one. We should share, and money isn't a perfect measure of worth to society (like I said, efficiency has an exponential influence on demand). What I disagree with, is the idea that all corporations are evil monsters that do nothing but oppress the world and don't lead to any good, that one person's riches steals from another person's (like I said, if that were true, we would be apes stealing from eachother because nothing could ever be produced), and most of all, I disagree with the idea that government can somehow run things either efficiently, or without becoming corrupt. Corruption and overpower in businesses leads to financial woes, which is eventually addressed. Corruption and overpower in government leads to millions of deaths and doesn't end until it's completely destroyed.

 

Of course the world isn't perfect, but it's not nearly so horrible as people make it out to be. There are corrupt businesses, and people, but generally speaking, they're not all so evil, and they do provide the goods of society and end up benefiting everyone, most of the time.

 

I mean, things like car companies getting bailed out makes people angry, but realize: they saved millions of jobs. Big companies going down crashes the economy.

 

And they didn't bail out small companies, because if they did that, it sends the message: "Hey, you don't need to run your business well, if you do poorly, we'll bail you out!", which results in economic inefficiency, which hurts the economy very badly, and that's why only big businesses got bailed out.

 

The list goes on, but, generally speaking, usually the only reason the world seems so insane, is because you don't fully understand the situation, even if you think you do.

Edited March 25, 2022 by LadyMercury
Updating a broken link as per the request of CIA

[Marcusaralius76 150]

I believe someone mentioned this before, but Terraforming mars into a livable planet is not possible. Mars is just too light to sustain an atmosphere unless we shot an asteroid filled with lead at it.

[Comet Tail 808]

I believe someone mentioned this before, but Terraforming mars into a livable planet is not possible. Mars is just too light to sustain an atmosphere unless we shot an asteroid filled with lead at it.

 

Over billions of years it couldn't (support a breathable atmosphere), but over millions, or hundreds of millions, it could.

 

And trust me, there's no lead asteroid out there big enough to change that

Edited April 19, 2012 by EASA - Matt

[Guest]

Mars is uninhabitable. Simple as that.

 

They found evidence that water had once existed on Mars (maybe it still does, underground deeeeeeep below the surface) but it was far too salty to support any form of life.

 

Too Hot.

Too Cold.

My feet hurt.

 

All are good reasons why we couldn't live on Mars.

lol.

[cuteycindyhoney 13,283]

Dream on, but it's impossible until someone makes a FTL or a super-efficient re-usable engine capable of planetary landings repeatedly.

The difference between Class 0.1 and a Class 1 culture.

.

 

That's like preventing the Wright brothers from building their aircraft and saying... "You have to wait until someone develops a jet engine before you create a flying machine!" Progress is made in small steps. You can't just say "No, you have to wait for the final version to be invented." No progress in any field would be made with that attitude.

 

The star trek class 0,1 and class 1 culture thing was just silly to even add. In case you didn't notice, Captain Kirk is a fictional character. Star Trek isn't real. You can't use a fictional TV show to gauge progress in real scientific development.

[Typhoid Libby 1,265]

That's like preventing the Wright brothers from building their aircraft and saying... "You have to wait until someone develops a jet engine before you create a flying machine!" Progress is made in small steps. You can't just say "No, you have to wait for the final version to be invented." No progress in any field would be made with that attitude.

 

I was talking about Mars only.

 

 

It's impossible until someone makes those improvements.

Not saying that it should not be strived towards.

It simply remains too expensive in resources to go to Mars and back until there is a engine capable of return trips more feasibly.

Small steps are not aiming for Mars straight away. Cause it's impossible.

It's Geostationary -> Moon -> Mars.

And possibly few way-stations in between before it's feasible.

 

And in the end it's a Economic decision.

There are no economic advantages on Mars until super efficient engines.

Even then, it's short term advantages only.

The star trek class 0,1 and class 1 culture thing was just silly to even add. In case you didn't notice, Captain Kirk is a fictional character. Star Trek isn't real. You can't use a fictional TV show to gauge progress in real scientific development.

 

Hey? Someone got my over-simplified, popular knowledge reference?

Wow, I never intended for that to happen. Man.

I used it because it is fictional and over-simplified. Gets the message across more easily. =P

[Comet Tail 808]

That's like preventing the Wright brothers from building their aircraft and saying... "You have to wait until someone develops a jet engine before you create a flying machine!" Progress is made in small steps. You can't just say "No, you have to wait for the final version to be invented." No progress in any field would be made with that attitude.

 

The star trek class 0,1 and class 1 culture thing was just silly to even add. In case you didn't notice, Captain Kirk is a fictional character. Star Trek isn't real. You can't use a fictional TV show to gauge progress in real scientific development.

 

Lol, actually, it's more like saying the Wright brothers shouldn't try until we've invented nuclear-powered ramjets, or scramjets. The level of technology required for what Libertina suggested, I seriously doubt she even understands how advanced it is in contrast to what's actually required.

 

From what little technicals I know, saying you need FTL or any sort of absolutely absurdly overpowered engine to go to Mars is nothing like saying you need this:

 

To knock over a can sitting ten feet away. I say it's nothing like that, because this example doesn't even begin to describe how overpowered an FTL engine would be to go to Mars.

 

To escape Earth's gravity from Low Earth Orbit and go to Mars requires ~4.3 km/s of velocity change (delta-vee). Going into Mars orbit (slowing down when you get there, assuming you use engines instead of braking in Mars' atmosphere) takes your total delta-vee to 6 km/s. Roughly the same for coming back.

12 km/s / 300,000 km/s (speed of light) = 0.00004.

 

Or, in other words, an FTL engine that could barely reach the speed of light would be 25,000x what's technically necessary.

 

By contrast, that giant gun I linked above is 800mm.

A piece of paper you launch from a rubber band is typically about 5mm.

 

The gun I showed above (The Gustav Gun) is 160x bigger than what you need to knock over a can a few feet away.

An FTL engine is 25,000x what's needed to go to Mars.

 

I was talking about Mars only.

 

 

It's impossible until someone makes those improvements.

Not saying that it should not be strived towards.

It simply remains too expensive in resources to go to Mars and back until there is a engine capable of return trips more feasibly.

Small steps are not aiming for Mars straight away. Cause it's impossible.

It's Geostationary -> Moon -> Mars.

And possibly few way-stations in between before it's feasible.

 

And in the end it's a Economic decision.

There are no economic advantages on Mars until super efficient engines.

Even then, it's short term advantages only.

 

Hey? Someone got my over-simplified, popular knowledge reference?

Wow, I never intended for that to happen. Man.

I used it because it is fictional and over-simplified. Gets the message across more easily. =P

 

Do some more research into it before formulating strong opinions. That's great advice for anything.

 

Traveling in space has very little to do with actual distance. The actual distance to Mars varies from 0.6 AU to 2.6 AU, depending on the position of the two planets in their orbits (89,758,722 km to 388,954,463 km). However, the very last thing you'd ever want to do is launch when Mars is closest. Space travel is all about velocities. We're in orbit around the sun, an orbit is where you're falling towards something, but you've got enough sideways speed that you "miss" it. Imagine dropping a ball on a plate sitting on the ground. Now throw the ball sideways a little, it misses the plate. Now the plate is Earth, your spaceship is the ball; you're going so fast sideways you "miss" the Earth, but the Earth's gravity keeps you from flying off into space. That's how orbit works around anything, the Earth, the sun, a plate, whatever.

 

Going straight to Mars when it's closest would require an astronomical amount of engine power, that is far beyond any near or mid-term technology, as it would require directly fighting the sun's gravity for millions of kilometers and catching a quickly moving planet at the same time. Going to Mars, I'm about to describe, but is also wonderfully described here.

 

We're in orbit around the sun, so to go to Mars, what you'd want to do is to leave Earth's gravity (~11 km/s) and then add enough speed so you "miss" the sun even more, which makes you go further from the sun, or, in other words, to a higher orbit, to Mars, so you meet it some time in the future in space. Instead of fighting the sun's gravity directly, you raise your orbit with "sideways" motion, so you're "missing" the sun more (just like throwing the ball a little faster sideways makes you miss the plate more), which causes you to go further from it.

 

The most velocity-efficient way to do this is a "Hohmann Transfer Orbit", and according to some nice algebraic equations from here, we can find that the velocity to go to Mars is less than 4 km/s (by contrast, Earth orbit is 7.8 km/s). What it won't tell you, though, is a "Free Return Trajectory" - that requires a lot more complicated calculation, but it makes the mission much safer - it's what saved the astronauts' lives in Apollo 13 - so we want one of those. The minimum velocity for that is ~5 km/s.

Now, factor in the effects of leaving Earth's gravity - hyperbolic velocity, and you'll find that departing Earth orbit (7.84 km/s) for Trans-Mars Injection (TMI) takes roughly 4.3 km/s.

 

Now, on arrival to Mars, you can use aerobraking and aerocapture to land on the surface. Use ISRU to create your return propellant, and those km/s figures become irrelevant, because you don't need to take that propellant with you (though it's something like 6 km/s minimum, for the record).

 

Now, let me explain, the reason we're so concerned with velocity, is that that's the major challenge of spaceflight. The more propellant you carry, the more you have to carry to lift that propellant. There's a number called the mass ratio, which is the mass of the fully fuelled spacecraft divided by the mass of the unfuelled spacecraft. If the number is ten, then a fully fueled spacecraft is 10x heavier than an unfuelled one, which means your spacecraft is 9x it's own weight in fuel. At a certain point, it's impossible, a mass ratio far above 20 is impossible - you have to have walls for your propellant tanks, and engines to lift the whole thing off the ground (assuming you're not already in orbit), so there has to be some weight to the unfuelled vehicle.

 

For example, the Saturn-V that took us to the moon had a mass ratio of 22. They went through huge lengths to get it that high - on the lunar lander, they put the control station facing out the side so the wires to control it would be shorter, saving mass. They took out the panels that covered all the wiring - to save mass. Just some examples.

 

The velocity change a rocket can produce is given by Tsilkovsky's rocket equation, Delta-vee = V_e * ln[R].

V_e is the velocity of the exhaust, in m/s

ln[R] is the logarithmic function of R, the mass ratio

and Delta-Vee is the change in velocity the rocket can do. For the above mission, you'd need 4,300 m/s.

 

Now, solving for R,

R = e^(Dv/Ve)

Dv is Delta-Vee.

The V_e for the best conventional rocket engines is ~4,500 m/s. For CH4/LOX engines, the kind you'd want for this mission (So you can use the same engines for ISRU), it's around ~3,340 m/s.

 

Staging, however, gets around this whole issue. By dumping extra dead weight - empty propellant tankage - you lighten the craft and change the mass ratio halfway through the burn. It helps, a lot, in fact orbit has never been achieved without it before.

 

Okay, all this is to say, there's a huge technical side to it. I haven't even began on life support for the 8 to 5 month journey (depending on how fast you leave Earth), powerplants (nuclear vs solar), radiation protection, interplanetary radiation v.s. solar storms, micrometeorites, etc. etc.

 

My point is, don't pretend you know what's possible if you don't understand the technical side. I do, somewhat, at least I have a general idea of things. SpaceX is full of experts who are the smartest people alive today in making aerospace economic. So far, they've reduced launch costs of getting things into orbit by 4x, and they plan to soon reduce it by 100x by making their spacecraft fully reusable, so that you don't have to build a new, expensive rocket every time you launch something into orbit. That's the key to making it all economic. You said we need super-efficient engines to make it economic, I've just showed you why existing rocket engines are efficient enough, coupled with aerobraking and ISRU. (In fact, the engines you call for, would make it drastically more expensive because they would be so much more advanced and difficult to build, service, operate, develop, etc. etc.)

 

The reason it hasn't been economic so far, is that in the past, NASA was struggling just to get to the moon, reusabiltiy and cost weren't an issue. Since then, it's become as corrupt as any other government program - cost-plus contracts: spend as much as possible, just so you barely don't get cancelled, so you can get more money next year.

The United Launch Alliance that works for the air force and commercial satellites - they're built to be safe, not cheap. When a satellite costs $3-4 billion, they don't care if the launch vehicle (rocket) is $300 million or $50 million, they just want it safe and reliable, so the United Launch Alliance builds expensive, but reliable rockets.

 

Now, enter private spaceflight. They want it cheap. And so far, they've done incredibly well. The trick they're going to start using is not having to rebuild the whole rocket every time. Even the space shuttle required huge, extremely intense overhauls with every flight that took tens of thousands of people. The engines were so expensive to refurbish, they later decided it was cheaper to just use new ones each time. The solid rocket boosters are barely cheaper to reuse than to make new ones. I like to call them "reconstructable" rather than "reusable", reconstructable is more accurate.

 

But SpaceX is aiming for aircraft-like operations. Take off, land, refuel, fly again. No huge, enormous 10,000+ man and hundreds of thousands or millions of man-hours with months of turnaround time like the Space Shuttles had. Instead, SpaceX will have hours of turnaround time, extremely simple and quick procedures, and fly again, truly making it far more economic than it ever has been.

. Like I said in the OP, I wouldn't normally believe it, but considering the technical aspects, it's possible, and considering their track record, it's just the kind of thing they'd do.

 

 

 

And finally, back to the technical things I was saying, GTO (Geostationary Orbit) -> Moon -> Mars makes very little sense! Going to GTO requires almost exactly the same amount of Delta-Vee as going to the moon. In fact, while I was writing this, I decided to work out the math.

GTO is, for a circular orbit, at 42,200 km from Earth's center (about 35,800 km altitude). The hohmann to get there takes about 3,870 m/s. You'd have to repeat that process to return from GTO back to LEO, for twice that. Or, you could just go into a highly ecliptic orbit with the same period as Earth's rotation, then a very small delta-vee at apoapsis would lower your periapsis to Earth's upper atmosphere, where you could re-enter.

Whatever the case, though, you're basically going into a high orbit that takes roughly exactly the same delta-vee as going to the moon (on a flyby mission), except you're not landing anywhere. The ISS serves our spaceborne station needs, there's really no need for going into a high orbit like that.

 

Going to the moon is technology that's been done about half a century ago. That's not anything new. And, unlike Mars, it doesn't have the resources needed to eventually keep a colony self-sustaining. Mars has entire polar ice caps that are 60% frozen H₂O by mass and are more than a few km deep, as opposed to the moon, where water is so scarce it's taken us this long to find out it's even there. And, ultimately, going to the moon (~3.8 km/s), capturing into lunar orbit (~0.7 km/s), landing on the moon (~1.7 km/s), ascending from the moon into lunar orbit (~1.7 km/s), and going back to Earth (~0.7 km/s), is 8.6 km/s, which is actually considerably more than what's needed to go to Mars! (If you use aerocapture to land on Mars, and ISRU to return to Earth)

 

What makes going to Mars harder is the longer journey, not anything to do with propulsion. The longer journey can be tested here on Earth, and has been a few times, the most recent example is Mars-500.

 

What makes spaceflight so expensive is how all the hardware is either almost as expensive to reuse as to rebuild, or it's thrown away altogether. Historically, only SRB's are reused, all other rockets either wind up as space junk, or crashing into the Atlantic ocean (burnt first stages, separated before orbital velocity is attained), that was the fate of all the Saturn-V moon rockets. And the lunar modules? Landing stages are still sitting on the moon, ascent stages are crashed across the lunar surface after they were finished and abandoned. (hitting the ground at 1,600 m/s, roughly 3,300 mph, build out of extremely thin aluminum and with tanks of explosive chemicals. I wonder what that wreckage looks like )

 

Service modules for the capsules burnt up in Earth's atmosphere, and the capsules are sitting in museums. Those cost billions to make, in today's money. Using them only once is what makes spaceflight so expensive.

 

Reusing everything, will change that. A boeing 737 airliner costs ~$200 million. A SpaceX falcon 9 rocket that can carry 7 people to orbit costs $50 million. It's reusability that makes air travel affordable but space travel so expensive. It's reusability that will make Mars accessible.

 

How do you make a profit? Simple. Charge money for the tickets to Mars.

Edited April 20, 2012 by EASA - Matt

[Typhoid Libby 1,265]

I can formulate opinions on everything with no basis, I'm awesome like that.

 

Did not know this discussion was reserved for people who knew everything about the subject.

You are absolutely certain you are sure.

Go ahead then, be sure.

Never claimed to have any PH.D under my non-existent belt.

Thankfully for you, I R smarts and actually learned little something from that Tl;Dr

 

Point:

It's maybe possible, but no-one is going to do it because of the cost-to-profit ratio.

There is nothing of value to import unless it's in bulk.

That is to say rare-earths, radioactives and stuff.

It takes quite a setup to bulk mine those.

Never mind the setup to get it back.

How do you make a profit? Simple. Charge money for the tickets to Mars.

 

And who would purchase tickets to a frozen dustball? d:

Fringe market.

 

To work? With the risks associated?

Radiation, constant hazard of de-pressurization, fatal equipment failures and being 89,758,722 km to 388,954,463 km away from nearest qualified repairman with a comforting smile that just oozes of huge bills?

Man, I'd do that line of work just to get away from humans.

Working in a 2 by 2 using computers, eating recycled food watching over hordes of robots mining stuff.

Better prepared to pay me few million a month tho.

[Comet Tail 808]

I can formulate opinions on everything with no basis, I'm awesome like that.

 

Did not know this discussion was reserved for people who knew everything about the subject.

You are absolutely certain you are sure.

Go ahead then, be sure.

Never claimed to have any PH.D under my non-existent belt.

Thankfully for you, I R smarts and actually learned little something from that Tl;Dr

 

Point:

It's maybe possible, but no-one is going to do it because of the cost-to-profit ratio.

There is nothing of value to import unless it's in bulk.

That is to say rare-earths, radioactives and stuff.

It takes quite a setup to bulk mine those.

Never mind the setup to get it back.

 

And who would purchase tickets to a frozen dustball? d:

Fringe market.

 

To work? With the risks associated?

Radiation, constant hazard of de-pressurization, fatal equipment failures and being 89,758,722 km to 388,954,463 km away from nearest qualified repairman with a comforting smile that just oozes of huge bills?

Man, I'd do that line of work just to get away from humans.

Working in a 2 by 2 using computers, eating recycled food watching over hordes of robots mining stuff.

Better prepared to pay me few million a month tho.

 

Exactly, go ahead and formulate an opinion, but know something about what you're talking about. To be fair, though, it's hard to know what you don't know, and spaceflight isn't exactly intuitive, unless you already understand it.

 

And, that was a name of a character, but I decided not to use it, and never really got around to changing my username here. I never meant to claim I actually had a Ph.D. So far, I'm just an "armchair" engineer who's just read stuff.

 

 

Anyways, you may see it as just a frozen dustball, but a lot of people look at the alien world with awe and wonder, and lots of people might want to go there to start a new life, or a new world. All it takes is one out of a million, and that would be enough to send seven thousand people to Mars, which is plenty of business.

 

As for cost to profit, the cost of spaceflight has been so high because, even today, we throw the whole vehicle away each time, and if not, then it's required huge refurbishments with every flight that are just barely cheaper. Make the craft reusable, and you're down to the cost of the propellant and operations. At that level, tickets to Mars are ~$500k, after awhile for some economic effects to take hold that lower costs of routine operations with time.

[Typhoid Libby 1,265]

Anyways, you may see it as just a frozen dustball, but a lot of people look at the alien world with awe and wonder, and lots of people might want to go there to start a new life, or a new world. All it takes is one out of a million, and that would be enough to send seven thousand people to Mars, which is plenty of business.

 

Mars is a frozen dust ball with no air. Fact.

No matter what rose tinted optical apparatus you look it through, it remains a one.

 

Welp, how are you going to get those 7000 people there?

Plus all the equipment to even imagine to satisfy the bare minimum of life support.

Plus the equipment to actually do anything there worth shipping 7000 corpses.

As for cost to profit, the cost of spaceflight has been so high because, even today, we throw the whole vehicle away each time, and if not, then it's required huge refurbishments with every flight that are just barely cheaper. Make the craft reusable, and you're down to the cost of the propellant and operations. At that level, tickets to Mars are ~$500k, after awhile for some economic effects to take hold that lower costs of routine operations with time.

 

Okay, give me the designs to this marvellous machine that gets me there and back with 1M USD.

Alive, preferably.

And that's one person. 100 Kg. Plus what, six, months of rations dis-including air and water.

Three tons or something. (Not arsing with math.)

Times 7000.

To get 7000 people to look at things until they die six seconds later from lack of shelter.

But that's okay cause it's Mars.

 

There is no economic base on Mars to improve on. Absolutely no economic effects to alter anything.

Everything must be shipped there from Earth. 7000 people is not an economic base.

Its a indentured labour force working with bare minimum.

There is no exports to ship back.

 

And if something breaks, you'd need huge support system to replace it.

Machines making machines until the machines making the parts for the machines break.

(Out of what raw resources? You'd need to mine those. Mining is incredibly machinery based. It's impossible to ship those to Mars.)

Then you file for replacements back from Earth.

Estimated time until parts arrive? Six to two months.

Whops, it was the air filter. All the colonists are dead.

Need I remind of the dust?

It's everywhere and clogs everything. And those sandstorms are murder.

Things will break.

Precision machines designed for one task and one task alone, forged to millimeter precision. Impossible to replace on-site with no economic base to support it.

 

Machines need energy, especially something like CO² scrubber or water recycler a lot of MW/hs to operate or it needs to be large, low efficiency model making it heavy.

Solar panels? forgeddaboutit. Dust clogs and scratches it to be un-usable in weeks.

Everything else is heavy. Too heavy to ship there comfortably. Or requiring other, heavy resources to operate. And they will break too.

 

Right now Mars is only a dust ball with no value.

To go there is to waste resources on a incredibly large scale for no net gain of any sort because we do not have the technology to support it.

 

Mars?

 

Let's talk about it again in 100 years, k?

[Comet Tail 808]

Mars is a frozen dust ball with no air. Fact.

No matter what rose tinted optical apparatus you look it through, it remains a one.

 

Welp, how are you going to get those 7000 people there?

Plus all the equipment to even imagine to satisfy the bare minimum of life support.

Plus the equipment to actually do anything there worth shipping 7000 corpses.

 

 

Okay, give me the designs to this marvellous machine that gets me there and back with 1M USD.

Alive, preferably.

And that's one person. 100 Kg. Plus what, six, months of rations dis-including air and water.

Three tons or something. (Not arsing with math.)

Times 7000.

To get 7000 people to look at things until they die six seconds later from lack of shelter.

But that's okay cause it's Mars.

 

They don't die in six seconds because of something called pressurized cabins, and life support systems.

 

It doesn't matter what it takes, if it generates profit, it'll take care of itself. The methods for getting there will be much more than $500k at first, but as it happens on a regular basis, the prices drop. Elon Musk was one of the founders of Paypal and a multi-millionaire from that and other business ventures. He knows economics. He also knows everything from the curing temperature of the materials used, to loads on the rockets, etc. etc. He also knows the technical side of things.

 

What equipment to make it worth shipping 7,000 human beings? They paid for a ticket, that's all that's needed to make it worth it. That's how airlines run, that's how shipping to the New World ran in past centuries, that's how Mars transport will run.

 

It's like saying, how in the world do you plan to not only fly the people, but the chairs, their luggage, the jet engine, and the pressurized cabin systems, etc. etc. on an airliner. The ticket pays for it all. And, I believe I've stated before, a B737 airliner can cost around $200 million. A Falcon 9 rocket costs $50 million. The fields aren't so uncomparable as you might think.

 

There is no economic base on Mars to improve on. Absolutely no economic effects to alter anything.

Everything must be shipped there from Earth. 7000 people is not an economic base.

Its a indentured labour force working with bare minimum.

There is no exports to ship back.

 

And if something breaks, you'd need huge support system to replace it.

Machines making machines until the machines making the parts for the machines break.

(Out of what raw resources? You'd need to mine those. Mining is incredibly machinery based. It's impossible to ship those to Mars.)

Then you file for replacements back from Earth.

Estimated time until parts arrive? Six to two months.

Whops, it was the air filter. All the colonists are dead.

Need I remind of the dust?

It's everywhere and clogs everything. And those sandstorms are murder.

Things will break.

Precision machines designed for one task and one task alone, forged to millimeter precision. Impossible to replace on-site with no economic base to support it.

 

Mars actually has the base materials needed to do almost anything. Most importantly, it's rich in Iron (I mean, the planet's red, it's not red for nothing; that's iron oxide). Iron is where steel comes from. Machine shops can make any part. You make steel parts, you have replacement parts.

 

And anyways, the Space Shuttles were designed with triple-redundancy on vital systems, and had two entirely separate life support systems. The Apollo astronauts didn't have such safety measures, and they did just fine, even with Apollo 13. And about the dangers; we've flown 139 U.S. space missions since then, not counting the ISS expeditions or Russian Soyuz flights. Two ended in catastrophe; both of which were related to the Main Propulsion System of the space shuttle. One was because of the Solid Rocket Boosters, which by the way, some engineers advised not to launch on that day, and the other was because of foam from the external tank falling off and striking Columbia's heat shield. It's long been known that foam (lightweight insulation for the LH2) breaks off from the external tank, honestly I don't understand why they turned a blind eyes towards that.

 

Both were because of the over-complexity of the Space Shuttle, and both were due to things unique to the Space Shuttle. The Falcon 9, by contrast, is designed to be able to take 40% higher material loads than what's needed (the standard for rockets is only 25%), and is designed to be able to continue to orbit, even if multiple engines outright blow up.

 

The redundancy and extreme measures that the aerospace folks go through is hard to overstate. One air filter? Imagine more like, nine completely independent triple-redundant life support systems fail simultaneously, while for no known reason at all the reserve LOX tanks suddenly explode, and all the rovers' multi-layered kevlar and Vectran-polymer textile hulls rupture, is roughly the type of event it'd take to kill a colony.

 

And when it comes to thousands of people in a colony, I'd imagine that's a drastic understatement as to the measures that would be taken.

 

And yes, it's true we can't reduce risk to zero. But to be quiet frank, we take a risk every day when we drive somewhere or live another year during which we could get cancer. You can't demand zero risk, you can demand drastic safety measures, which you'll get and risk will be very low, but zero risk in any facet of life is impossible.

 

And honestly, I'll answer this how Robert Zubrin answered it;

 

Well if they don't die on Mars, they're going to die on Earth.

[...]

People die. All people die. That's our fate. The question is whether we accomplish anything while we're alive. And by going to Mars and creating a new branch of human civilization, and ultimately opening up a new world not just for humanity but for the entire community of life, we're accomplishing something of transcendal importance.

 

I had an uncle that landed on Normandy beach. People died there, but they did something important while they were alive.

 

And, should we shun challenge? I mean, should we say, "no let's not do anything"? Then that is wasting our lives, that's wasting - it is while we are alive that we have the chance to accomplish something of immortal importance, and if you don't attempt to do that then you're wasting your life.

 

 

Machines need energy, especially something like CO² scrubber or water recycler a lot of MW/hs to operate or it needs to be large, low efficiency model making it heavy.

Solar panels? forgeddaboutit. Dust clogs and scratches it to be un-usable in weeks.

Everything else is heavy. Too heavy to ship there comfortably. Or requiring other, heavy resources to operate. And they will break too.

 

Wait... You're saying solar panels won't work, and dust storms will ruin all the machines?

 

Ever heard of the MER's?

The Spirit and Opportunity were designed to last 90 days, and work with solar panels. Spirit lasted 2,695 days, the Opportunity is still running since landing on Mars in Jan. 25th, 2004.

 

By the way, there were dust storms on Mars in 2007, which blocked 99% of light from the sun, and the rovers still survived. You can read about that here, and another fiasco Opportunity ran into when it almost got stuck in the sand here, Spirit was not so lucky when it got stuck.

 

 

 

Lol, as for the rest, this is exactly what I'm talking about when I say you shouldn't make statements you don't know. Too heavy? What shows that? Where do you claim to get that knowledge? We've launched 130 tons into orbit at a time before with the Saturn-V. Interplanetary transfers have been done plenty of times. There are some issues with landing something more than ~20-25 tons, which you can read a little bit about here, but they certainly aren't show stoppers (canted thrust will certainly solve that problem if ballutes don't).

 

But, really, where does all this crushing pessimism come from? Sci-fi shows that have a dark, gritty feel or something? Because the reality is we successfully put men on the moon almost half a century ago when the engineers still used slide-rules and had a bunch of guys downstairs called "computers" to run calculations.

 

Reality isn't some ram-shackled badly-done slapped-together colony with bad lighting with stuff constantly failing and people dropping like flies, reality is rovers that've lasted hundreds of times longer than designed, showing that parts can last at least eight years even through dust storms, parts that were only designed for 90 days. The MER's have returned data that it will take years to fully analyze, the returns from a manned mission will probably take decades to fully analyze And cutting edge technology is being taken further than ever.

And, as opposed to those gritty sci-fi shows, real spaceships and stations are lit rather nicely. (Unless you want to enjoy the view, of course.)

 

Right now Mars is only a dust ball with no value.

To go there is to waste resources on a incredibly large scale for no net gain of any sort because we do not have the technology to support it.

 

Mars?

 

Let's talk about it again in 100 years, k?

 

That last line wouldn't bother me so much, except that that's been that attitude for the last 50 years, and it was possible to go there 50 years ago. Was it economic? No. But now, as for those designs, you'd have to ask SpaceX for those.

 

And no value? Do you value the human race? Robert Zubrin, one of his many addresses on Mars;

 

And generally, I agree; just compare "Terra Nova" to "Star Trek". It's either the future where people live in countryside, rural conditions on colony worlds, or in well-populated cities, that are not crowded or overrun, or it's the future of domes, massive overpopulation, poverty and starvation.

 

And in my own opinion, space will serve as a powerful force for developing technology, and providing value for human lives, i.e. jobs. Historically, wars and cold wars have driven our enormous advancements in technology. But in order to have the drive to develop the technology to make Earth habitable with, say, 40+ billion people, we need the same technology that will make Mars habitable, technology that we can only be driven to create in time by being faced with life or death. That's how wars advanced technology. That's how space advances technology, and how it will when colonists face life or death.

 

And, most of all, human being want a challenge. We need a purpose in life; I have a strong value on religion, I believe that's my purpose in life, but it's not the sort of purpose that can drive my actions every day. The advancement, growth, and seeding of the human race throughout the galaxy to ensure it's survival, is a driving goal. I don't expect interstellar travel anytime soon, but the technology will never happen if we just sit back and wait for it to drop in our lap. That's why in the space race we had visions of Mars colonies in 1980, but those have never happened; only because we didn't work towards them.

 

If we don't work towards that interplanetary, interstellar human race, then it will never happen. And our species, with all it's history, stories, lives of love, hate, war, passion, sacrifice, ingenuity, hard work, triumph and achievement, lessons learned, wisdom, knowledge, philosophy, religion, stories of fiction, art, all our beautiful ideas and our successes and failures at implementing them, it will all die on this remote dust mite around a little speck of light, unless we strive for it's survival. And even if you hate the human race, and are in love with this idea in MLP:FiM of a better world; you must realize that this is a human idea, and that we have the potential to make it into reality. I believe human life is sacred, begotten sons and daughters of God, but even if you don't believe in any religion, at the very least we're sacred as the consciousness of the universe; the only way the universe can know itself in a deep, understanding, intelligent and meaningful way. The only source in the universe of ideas like this wonderful world we've imagined, and the only way they can ever become a reality.

 

And, if we're the mind of the universe, the only way for it to know itself, it's thinking, conscious aspect, and thus it's mind, doesn't that give us the right to terraform worlds, and to establish interstellar civilization, so we can know it better, and more fully become a part of it, instead of just on one little speck in the cosmos?

 

We can't wait until there's a need to develop this type of technology for mass space travel; then it will be too late for it to be effective. We can't expect it to happen on it's own, any more than we can expect world monuments to build themselves. Rome was built one brick at a time, and although we're talking about ideas and technology; it's just the same as physical bricks, in that it must be built one at a time, and it will only be completed if we continue to work on it.

[Typhoid Libby 1,265]

You really are nerdy, you know that? And you have a really bad way of assuming I don't know stuff.

They don't die in six seconds because of something called pressurized cabins, and life support systems.

 

/sarcasm.

It was direct comparison to the futility of the whole task.

It doesn't matter what it takes, if it generates profit, it'll take care of itself. The methods for getting there will be much more than $500k at first, but as it happens on a regular basis, the prices drop. Elon Musk was one of the founders of Paypal and a multi-millionaire from that and other business ventures. He knows economics. He also knows everything from the curing temperature of the materials used, to loads on the rockets, etc. etc. He also knows the technical side of things.

 

There is no reason to visit regularly.

There is no profit generating resources on Mars that Earth does not have.

There is no sense in importing already existing materials millions of miles away.

Profit margin is negative.

What equipment to make it worth shipping 7,000 human beings? They paid for a ticket, that's all that's needed to make it worth it. That's how airlines run, that's how shipping to the New World ran in past centuries, that's how Mars transport will run.

 

Why would you ship people there and back using huge amounts of money when you can make tidy profit without the huge risk factor on Earth?

Going to Mars is not a virtue or a bonus point, it should be done only if there is a very good, profitable reason to do so.

It's like saying, how in the world do you plan to not only fly the people, but the chairs, their luggage, the jet engine, and the pressurized cabin systems, etc. etc. on an airliner. The ticket pays for it all. And, I believe I've stated before, a B737 airliner can cost around $200 million. A Falcon 9 rocket costs $50 million. The fields aren't so uncomparable as you might think.

 

Your vaunted Falcon 9 goes to orbit, not Mars.

Nor does it return from Mars surface.

I think there is a huge disjoint in design and capability.

Mars actually has the base materials needed to do almost anything. Most importantly, it's rich in Iron (I mean, the planet's red, it's not red for nothing; that's iron oxide). Iron is where steel comes from. Machine shops can make any part. You make steel parts, you have replacement parts.

 

Iron oxide in the dust is not easily processable to usable Iron in bulk without massive support system of machinery, made of variety of different materials besides Iron. (process involves acids, IRCC. Those would need to be shipped.)

Machine shops require lubrication for starters. I don't see anyone lubricating with Iron Oxide.

That must be shipped from earth.

Iron is ONE material. Even the most basic system requires countless rare materials and precision factories to make.

And anyways, the Space Shuttles were designed with triple-redundancy on vital systems, and had two entirely separate life support systems. The Apollo astronauts didn't have such safety measures, and they did just fine, even with Apollo 13.

 

Shuttles were Orbit only. Not deep space. There is a disjoint in design ideology.

The redundancy and extreme measures that the aerospace folks go through is hard to overstate. One air filter? Imagine more like, nine completely independent triple-redundant life support systems fail simultaneously, while for no known reason at all the reserve LOX tanks suddenly explode, and all the rovers' multi-layered kevlar and Vectran-polymer textile hulls rupture, is roughly the type of event it'd take to kill a colony.

 

All those are subject to wear and tear.

Sooner or later the minimal support manufacturing capacity of the "colony" will not be able to keep up.

Everything wears, and in high dust conditions like on Mars, that wear is excessive to anything exposed.

And if you plan to do anything on Mars besides live in a hole, it's exposed.

And when it comes to thousands of people in a colony, I'd imagine that's a drastic understatement as to the measures that would be taken.

 

Yes, corners would be cut. With a rough hand.

Because there is always a Departo Munitorium Scribe counting the costs somewhere when it comes to huge undertakings.

And yes, it's true we can't reduce risk to zero. But to be quiet frank, we take a risk every day when we drive somewhere or live another year during which we could get cancer. You can't demand zero risk, you can demand drastic safety measures, which you'll get and risk will be very low, but zero risk in any facet of life is impossible.

 

Risk over nothing.

Nothing to gain, no profit, no great sense of success breathing the same air from stressed out air filters working 18 hour work days to stay alive.

Over the fact that it's freaking Mars and Mars is apparently superior to Earth "because Mars".

Wait... You're saying solar panels won't work, and dust storms will ruin all the machines?

 

Ever heard of the MER's?

The Spirit and Opportunity were designed to last 90 days, and work with solar panels. Spirit lasted 2,695 days, the Opportunity is still running since landing on Mars in Jan. 25th, 2004.

 

By the way, there were dust storms on Mars in 2007, which blocked 99% of light from the sun, and the rovers still survived.

 

Wear and tear.

They still failed, and those panels were designed to power a few meters long rover optimized to use it's power to the maximum while very slowly doing it's poking around and taking pictures.

Humans have the basic biological needs that are not optimized.

Lights take a huge amount of power. Humans need lights to stay sane.

Machinery takes even more power.

Lol, as for the rest, this is exactly what I'm talking about when I say you shouldn't make statements you don't know. Too heavy? What shows that? Where do you claim to get that knowledge? We've launched 130 tons into orbit at a time before with the Saturn-V. Interplanetary transfers have been done plenty of times. There are some issues with landing something more than ~20-25 tons, but they certainly aren't show stoppers (canted thrust will certainly solve that problem if ballutes don't).

 

130 tons on orbit is different from 130 tons in Mars surface.

There is a disjoint in design ideology.

25 tons won't freaking cut it.

You must build additional housing.

250 tonnes minimum, whether its the equipment to mine them or the housing itself.

But, really, where does all this crushing pessimism come from? Sci-fi shows that have a dark, gritty feel or something? Because the reality is we successfully put men on the moon almost half a century ago when the engineers still used slide-rules and had a bunch of guys downstairs called "computers" to run calculations.

 

You do realize that moon landings were a act of propaganda, do you?

US popped in and popped out and flaunted it around like a flayed chicken in the face of ruskies to make it sure they understood US had ICBMs.

US did not stay there, for a reason, I might add.

Because it could not be done nor there was any reason to do so, no strategic or tactical advantages.

Reality isn't some ram-shackled badly-done slapped-together colony with bad lighting with stuff constantly failing and people dropping like flies, reality is rovers that've lasted hundreds of times longer than designed, showing that parts can last at least eight years even through dust storms, parts that were only designed for 90 days. The MER's have returned data that it will take years to fully analyze, the returns from a manned mission will probably take decades to fully analyze And cutting edge technology is being taken further than ever.

And, as opposed to those gritty sci-fi shows, real spaceships and stations are lit rather nicely.

 

Nope, Mars colony will be just that if it's launched in say, ten years.

You can't get enough shit there to upkeep it.

Things will start to get run down instantly. Everything will fail, and it cannot be maintained from Mars.

Mars colony would need a constant supply of more and more high end Materials and end products.

One failed flight and it will be all over.

That last line wouldn't bother me so much, except that that's been that attitude for the last 50 years, and it was possible to go there 50 years ago. Was it economic? No. But now, as for those designs, you'd have to ask SpaceX for those.

 

50 years ago? Possibly, not to stay certainly.

I have yet to see that spacecraft that get's to Mars and back now that we are on it.

Pics or DNE.

And no value? Do you value the human race?

 

Mars carries no value to the human race as is.

There is nothing in Mars that cannot be harvested or found on Earth.

All it offers is more living space. AFTER it has been terraformed.

And that is a whole another tree to pick.

And in my own opinion, space will serve as a powerful force for developing technology, and providing value for human lives, i.e. jobs. Historically, wars and cold wars have driven our enormous advancements in technology. But in order to have the drive to develop the technology to make Earth habitable with, say, 40+ billion people, we need the same technology that will make Mars habitable, technology that we can only be driven to create in time by being faced with life or death. That's how wars advanced technology. That's how space advances technology, and how it will when colonists face life or death.

 

Rushing to waste resources on un-sustainable colony off-planet is folly and a dis-service to the humanity.

Advancement cannot be attained by wasting resources off-planet.

We need everything we have to make this one work before we can rush out.

If we don't work towards that interplanetary, interstellar human race...

 

...Of war-breeding self-loathing dis-unified racist breeders bent on conquest?

That sounds bad for everyone else.

And, if we're the mind of the universe, the only way for it to know itself, it's thinking, conscious aspect, and thus it's mind, doesn't that give us the right to terraform worlds, and to establish interstellar civilization, so we can know it better, and more fully become a part of it, instead of just on one little speck in the cosmos?

 

We area nothing here. Deal with it.

We are, and always will be irrelevant.

Having a interstellar civilization will only ensure that we will, at some point, blow up a considerate part of our galaxy.

One life form cannot master universe, no matter how much it bangs it's head against the wall.

It can only make it more shittier to other possible sentience out there.

All there is and ever will be is heat-death.

We can't wait until there's a need to develop this type of technology for mass space travel; then it will be too late for it to be effective.

 

And why would it be too late?

There are no time lines here. There is no scoring board or hand of "god" to tell us we must do this before alloted timeframe or it's spanking.

We have millions of years until Sol goes ugly.

 

No doubt we will get to Mars and somepoint, but I seriously doubt it any one will maintain a colony there in my lifetime.

And if they try, I hope there is someone banging against it just as much.

 

-Written under the influence of Homeworld Soundtrack.

Edited April 21, 2012 by Libertina Kohr-Ah