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[Provided that something is more exploration, not declare war]
Unfortunately for Humanity, the sad truth is that military endeavors have always been the Prime Mover of technological advance. If not for the war-dialectic of measure and counter-measure, man may not have even smelted ores for metallurgy.
In the current political environment, it is very unlikely that there will be much to the space budget other than the paltry sum it has struggled with for many years. The question the general public asks: what does that do for me? is not usually answered to their satisfaction.
The Chinese are the catalyst. They have openly stated that they plan to challenge us in space and even plan a military base on the Moon. With the potential developement of Lunar H3 fusion technology; allowing the Communist Chinese to monopolize Lunar resources will be unexceptable. National survival and future prosperity will be the impetus by which we get off our butts. The direction that that future will take will not please many of us; but the infrastructure established throughout the Earth-Moon System as a result of this impending space race will be a giant stepping stone to Mars and beyond.
As for the possibility of a Sino-American Lunar War? I doubt it; this will be a 2nd Cold War. Lots of posturing, lots of spying, lots of trying to undermine the others society from within. But the only way to keep it there is to keep up. The Soviets failed to keep up in the last Cold War. That is why they are gone.
Super-Powers don't openly fight one another due to Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD); they fight smaller proxy-wars with puppet states while looking for ways to avoid MAD and acheive victory; thus technological arms races.
Interplanetary imperialism would produce rival colonies that might be granted "independence" by their parent super-powers for the purpose of fighting proxy-wars in space, but neither side will let it escalate into full-blown war on Earth due to MAD.
Struggle; that is war and/or the preparation for war has been the engine of history. That is not likely to change because it is bound in human nature.
Do I advocate this? No. But I am a realist and I know from studying history that this is the way it is; like it or not.
Yes there have been many good shots taken from orbit but that is not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about landers.
When I show friends or family pictures from orbit, their response is tepid, perhaps because they don't know how to interpret the image. When Spirit and Oppurtunity landed however, there was: "wow, ooh. ahh!"
I think the more oohs and ahhs can be generated the more funding space exploration is likely to get and that means risking landing attempts in more interesting areas.
I'm sure we all have noticed how public interest in Mars spikes whenever there is a lander mission that provides the public with pictures of the Martian surface.
I know that mission criteria is centered on two over-riding priorities: mission scientific returns and safety of the space-craft. This makes sense financially and logistically however I beleive the public's interest and therefore support could be pumped with a bit more eye-candy. There are, as we all know, spectacular vistas on Mars, but the impression that the layman gets is of a static and often flat environment (Viking's Chryse and Utopia, Oppurtunity's Meridiani). The most topographical excitement that we have had have been Path-Finder's Twin Peaks and Spirit's Columbia Hills; both of which are cool but pale in comparison to the vistas the public could be shown: The mesas of Arabia Terra or Aeolis, the canyons of Gorgornum Chaos, the ridges and dunefields of Memnonia Sulci; the Black Dunes of Proctor; not to mention Mariner Valley.
These places may not meet the criteria that is currently being followed but I feel that showing the public these places would be proceeded by an increase in public support and thus funding due to the excitement that they would generate.
The History being discussed here is that of Western Civilization which has always been more dynamic that Eastern Civilization.
Mars will eventually outstrip the Earth because it is a clean slate. Here on Earth; monied interests have institutionalized certain technologies even though they are years obsolete (on paper anyway). Mars will not have such technological institutions and monopolies to deal with. New ideas will have free reign to be explored and developed.
The argument that Earth will always be more powerful due to its established infrastructure and availability of resources is utterly defeated by the history of the US.
Europe had more established infrastructure than the American wilderness, but look what happened. Ideas were freed from the establishment and the colony quickly eclipsed the parent society. Mars will be the same but even more so.
Being somewhat paranoid and prone to conspiratorial thinking, I sometimes beleive that it is due to just this very reason that humanity isn't spread halfway across the Solar System by now. The Think Tankers realized years ago; probably during the Apollo era that once people got a toehold out there, it would soon out-pace their ability to control it.
Hopefully, the Chinese will soon become a large enough threat to our supremacy in space that we will once again get off our asses and do something rather than just talk about it.
:angry: The Patriots. "True Democracy" and "..democratic control of the economy" are but code phrases for socialism.
It appears that the Culture War will rage on Mars even though we aren't even there yet, LOL.
The History of Colonization shows a definite trend in that colonies are usually established by the dissenters and rejects of the parent society. So who winds up on Mars will be determined by who wins the Culture War in the here and now.
As increasing population density lends itself to the proliferation of law; it would seem that here on Earth, the Leftist will ultimately prevail; freedom has been in flight from the smothering masses throughout history; so in my opinion it will be the Conservatives that eventually colonize Mars; the ultimate in "white flight" LMAO.
It has been Western ideas and Western values that have brought Mankind this far; it will be whatever remains of Western Civilization that takes it further.
The Solar System; Moon and Mars in particular must be opened to market forces just like everything else if anything meaningful is ever to take place there.
I know that many here are staunchly opposed to the militarization of space, but I think this is an unavoidable fact already. The Keystone of our military supremacy is our orbital assets. Any potential challengers, such as China, will have to challenge us there. That means another arms race. like it or not. With this in mind, it is likely that any future Lunar endeavors will be also be military in nature as there will eventually be so many assets in orbit that Lunar bases for the purposes of building, fueling, launching, and servicing these assets will be logistically favorable. At this point, Interplanetary Imperialism begins, like it or not.
All in all, it is likely that space will be primarily a military domain (Hell, it already is). This is not neccesarily a bad thing. Struggle is the engine of History, always has been, always will be. Militarism has always been the Prime Mover of Technology and later we all get the spin-off benefits. It may well be military spending (which is outside of the normal parameters of supply and demand) that does the trail-blazing and establishes the initial infrastructure that the private sector will be able to utilize later. The best example is WW2. The industrial capacity established for the mass production of war machines and materiel was; after the war, used for the mass production of all the consumer goods that we now enjoy.
Its just the way things are.
My personal vision of Mars is initially one in which we start with the basics in order to keep the cost down. As all high technology will have to be imported from Earth at substantial cost for quite a long time; i suggest that we would have to engage in what I call "retro-tech".
In terms of propulsion, I would say that our best bet initially would be steam power. The compound silane could be easily manufactured on Mars as part of the in-situ atmospheric processing for air, water, and rocket fuel by combining silicon from the sand with hydrogen. At ambient Martian temperatures, silane would be a semi solid. What makes silane useful is that it can combust or :burn" in a CO2 environment.
This silane semi-solid would not be useful in any sort of internal combustion due to its consistency but would make great fuel for a boiler.
Steam power could run vehicles, turn turbines for power, and provide hot running water and the only thing you need to make that happen is sand; one thing that Mars has plenty of.
I know that this is not as sexy as most other ideas but it would be relatively cheap and practical.
In Robert Zubrin's "Case for mars", there is a section where he describes the effects of warming the South Polar cap by 4 degrees celsius; causing a runaway greenhouse effect that not only warms the planet, but perhaps more significantly; raises the atmospheric pressure at the surface to a level sufficient enough that large, ungainly and expensive preassure suits will not be required.
If something like this is done prior to any attempts to colonize take place, there are many areas of the endeavor that become easier and therefore less expensive to tackle.
First of all the pressure suit is traded for a combination of off-the -shelf scuba and cold weather gear.
-There is no longer any need to preassurize structures thereby greatly simplifying engineering problems in building structures out of indigenous materials.
-a thicker atmosphere provides greater lift for fixed-wing aircraft and greater bouyancy for derrigibles and the like.
-Atmospheric processing for air, water and fuel becomes less expensive as less power is required to intake the gases.
-wind power for smallscale power generation is more viable.
-I'm sure the list goes on.
I think that this approach would make things a whole lot easier once we get there.
Well,
As I said in the beginning of the original post; the space aloowed would make this sound like an oversimplification. It is ,I admit; a generalization; but one that i beleive adequately serves as a basis for understanding the reducing nature of History.
When progress is described in the dialectic sense, it is refering to those societies that are on the cutting edge. There are for instance, tribes of people in remote corners of the Earth that are still living in Stone Age conditions. There are still a few left over dynasties and some parts of the world where the order is still more or less feudal. Capitalism still exists but it is now highly regulated. Communism still exists in places like N. Korea and Cuba. There are those societies that are the spearheads of history and those that still flounder in the wake.
Even if one totally rejects the model that I have proposed, anyone with some acquaintance with history would have to agree on several points:
1). The pace of history has been steadily quickening since it began.
2). The population of the Earth has been increasing at an exponential rate.
3). Individual freedoms have been eroded, often by the consent of the governed in exchange for greater collective security.
I still maintain that all these things are interelated and thus some sort of pattern( albeit a rough one) can be established to show that we live in a reducing paradigm in which "the greatest amount of freedom for the greatest amount of people" is something that will be continuously defined downward.
A Breakdown of the Logarithmic scale of the Dialectic:
RobS has criticiized the accuracy of the suppositions I mande in my original post concerning an algorithmic pattern to the Dialectic. As I stated in my original post; it would sound overly simplistic. As people and civilization cannot be broken down into something as simple as numbers; no pattern established will be exactly algorithmic; but it can be established that it is roughly so.
When I stated in my original post that archeologists generally agree that the first Empires are no older than 10,000 yrs, I was not making direct reference to the well known empires of Antiquity, but to the beginning of the Neolithic age which began circa 10,000 B.C. at the end of the Ice Age. Perhaps I should have been more specific. Empire building began in the Neolithic and only later produced the magnificent ruins we associate with what we call the Early Empires. One might notice that I did not say that it took 100,000 yrs for the struggle between Unorganized prehistoric society and the Division of Labor (Tribalism) to produce the order of Empire; I said that it took LESS than 100,000yrs. Regardless of exact dates, it still took LESS than 100,000 yrs.
When I made reference to Aristocracy, What I was talking about was the fuedal system established in Western Europe after the Fall of the Roman Empire and its economic order of Serfdom. Regardless of exactly when the Early Empires of Antiquity were established, it still took LESS than 10,000 yrs from that time for history to produce the fuedal order of the Middle Ages. So the statement: "less than" still applies.
When I mentioned Capitalism, I was refering to the establishment of Banking. There was coinage and other froms of legal tender way before the era I am desrcibing. I was refering to the advent of the first forms of investment banking. This did not occur until around the time of the Crusades; so the statement: "it took LESS than 1000 yrs for the struggle between fuedal aristocracy and the Bourgoisie to produce Democratic Capitalism is still valid.
Anyone familiar with the 20th Century knows that that is when Democratic Capitalism collided with various forms of Totalitarianism (fascism and communism). RobS also criticizes my assertion that the current order we now live in is actually Corporatism. That is not to say that there is not a democratic component to Corporatism. Perhaps I should have said "Democratic Corporatism". Corporatism by definition is a system wherein the government assumes either direct control of the nations major means of production or highly regulates those industries. The United States governement runs the nations Interstate freeways and highly regulates the other transportation industries. It highly regulates the nations national resources. Soon we shall see the nationalization of healthcare. This is a result of the Synthesis of Democratic Capitalism struggling with Totalitarianism. The fusion of these systems began, some would say with FDR's New Deal; was expanded with LBJ's Great Society, and will expand again with nationalized healthcare. This is not to say that the system is not democratic as these changes have been the result of democracy; but it can be said that the system is less Capitalistic all the time. This can be said to be the result of the people surrendering a certain amount of freedom through the democratic process for greater amounts of security in some areas of their lives. However, as the role of government expands; there is less that the voter has a choice about. So i believe that the statement: "it took LESS than 100 yrs for the struggle between Democratic Capitalism and Totalitarianism to synthesize into Corporatism" is valid.
The reason that I beleive that the current struggle is between Corporatism and Religion is this: All the current belief systems currently in collision are all what philosophers refer to as Deterministic Beleif Systems. All Deterministic Belief Systems make the following suppositios in common:
1). That History is finite.
2). That History will produce a final result or Order.
3). That this final result or Order will be permanent.
4). that this final result or Order will be "good".
The only area in which these systems differ is impetus and method. The 3 major Detrministic Belief Systems are Fascism, Socialism/Humanism, and Religion. The impetus is in what these systems identify as what philosophers refer to as the "Prime Mover" of History.
Fascism, for the most part eliminated from the running, beleives that the Prime Mover of History is a gestalt consciousness of race; what the Germans referred to as volkgeist. The fascist views history as a progressive struggle between the races ending woith the triumph of a "master race".
Socialism beleives that the Prime Mover of History is technology and the way it changes production relations over time. It fosters as consciousness of Class. The Socialist views History as a progressive struggle between verious classes resulting in the end in a classless Utopia.
Religion of course sees the Prime Mover of History as nothing other than God. The religious view history as a progressive struggle between good and evil, ending with the ultimate triumph of good over evil.
The current struggle, characterized not only by the War on Terror, but also with the Culture War here in the States, is in fact a three sided conflict between 3 Deterministic belief systems:
1). Christianity (God was a man)
2). Islam (God was not a man)
3). Socialism/Humanism (Man is God).
So here we are near the Apex or top of the Dialectic Pyramid. If the pattern established holds; this struggle will produce some sort of recognizable result within around 10 yrs.
The fact that all the belief systems in collision are all deterministic belief systems indicates that this is the final battle for the gestalt consciousness of humankind itself.
If the dialectic pattern of Synthesis holds, none of these sytems will be the victor. There will indeed be a hybrid; a Universal Religion of Man that recognizes all faiths as legitiment cultural reflections of Humanist ideals; humanism canonized into religious doctrine; borrowing the symbols of religion. In whatever form this takes, Religion will be State and State will be Religion. In any case, dissent will not be tolerated because those who do not adhere to the faith will be enemies of civilization and humanity.
With this in mind, it might be easy to imagine a Mars that is a dumping ground for such dissenters; those who do not wish to dilute their faith or sense of culture or nationality. In this scenario, colonial Mars is a hodge podge patchwork of various and disparate groups.
As the means of procuction will also be the means of survivial, it is unlikely that there will be much in the way of freedom on Mars either unless such a colony is designed in Law and in structure to place a higher value on Freedom than it does on survival; the Martian ergonomics of "give me liberty or give me death".
This perhaps could only be acheived by the esyablishment of many small self sufficient settlements and something like the 2nd Amendment of the Constitution: all citizens are armed. This would create a social environment in which jeopardizing anyones rights jeopardizies the survival of the colony as a whole.
I'm getting off topic here so I'll bring it around. Firstly, I beleive that the process of history as we understand it is near an end and that the only way for that process to continue is to broaden the dialectic with the addition of more worlds.
Secondly, I beleive that time is short. If we find ourselves in a global totalitiarianism ( regardless of form), it is unlikely that that state will be anxious to have folks running around out there outside of their effective means of control. So time to get this going is running out.
Thirdly, I beleive that a freedom loving culture can be established on Mars IF freedom is its primary motivator.
I am of the belief that a police state here on Earth is inevitable and here is why:
With the space allowed, this will seem like an over-simplification, but here goes:
Anyone familiar with political science has at one time been acquainted with dialectic models of history as offered up in the 19th Century by Hegel and Marx. The Marxian model is specific about the "actors" of history. One of the problems of the Marxian model is that it depicts each progressive era of history with an equally sized triangle and represents linear time on the diagonal axis on the left side of the diagram.
It occurred to me several years ago that if one chooses instead to represent linear time on the struggle lines, the picture changes drastically:
Paleontologists usually agree that modern man appeared on the fossil record around 100,000 yrs ago; so one could say that it took less than 100,000 yrs for the struggle between Unorganized Society and the Division of Labor to Synthesize into Empire.
Archeologists usually agree that the earliest of the empires of Antiquity are no older than 10,000 yrs. So one could say that it took less than 10,000 yrs for the struggle between Empire and Barbarism to Synthesize into Aristocracy.
Historians usually agree that banking and hence capitalism as we understand it did not begin until the time of the Crusades; so one could say that it took less than 1000 yrs for the struggle between Aristocracy and the Bourgoisie to Synthesize into Democratic Capitalism.
The 20th Century saw the collision of Democracy with the totalitarian systems of Fascism and Communism; so one could say that it took less than 100 yrs for the struggle between democracy and totalitarianism to Synthesize into the present order that in which we all now live: Corporatism.
9-11 kicked off the official beginning of the last Era of History: Corporatism vs. Religious Terrorism. if the model as shown above remains consistent; then this struggle will be roughly 10 yrs in length and will also synthesize into a final product. Since Dialectical Synthesis is always a hybrid of the two systems that were in struggle, one can only come to the conclusion that the final product of history will be one of the following:
1).State as Religion, or
2), Religion as State.
Its shrinking. Why is it shrinking, you may ask? Because there has been exponentially increasing population and exponentially increasing technology within a finite space: the Earth.
In no matter what form government takes; the proliferation of people within a confined space=the proliferation of law to mediate their affairs in a manner that is consistent with civilization. This condition we call Peace. However, as one might see, as population continues to grow, this peace will itself become enslaving because freedom will become increasingly at odds with civilization.
Within a single planet paradigm, there will be no resistance; each atruggle line in each progressive era is shorter than the previous one because issues, ideas, and beleifs are colliding at faster and faster rates. Each struggle line could be refered to as Geo-Political Space-Time; that is to say thsat for each social order, an antithesis to that order has less time and less space to organize itself. When the Dialectic Pyramid reaches Zero, therewill no longer be any Geo-Political Space-Time left; there will be no time or no space for an antithesis to whatever global order emerges to gather itself.
The only way for the Process of History to continue is to add more Geo-Political Space-Time. The only way to that is to add more planets.
It seems our alternatives are as follows:
1). State as Religion
2). Religion as State
3). Get our asses to Mars in the most expedient manner.
As the model suggests, it may be too late; we may have already passed an Event Horizon of sorts as it is doubtful that any let alone many people will be able to get to Mars and establish a self-sufficient colony within the next 10 yrs.
There is also a third axis that can be added to the Dialectic Pyramid; an environmental one. If the left axis is population (consumption) and the right axis is technology(exploitation), then the Apex of the Pyramid or Zero will be defined when the Earth itself can longer support further progress in either population or technology. After that freedom will die in the name of civilization or civilization will fall in the name of freedom. So it seems that we will have a choice between global despotism or another Dark Age; at least in the former we get another run at it...lol
I know all this is very depressing, but it is necessary to come to grips with our situation so we might in some way inform the public of the dire consequences of not-going, and to perhaps expediate our efforts to GO.
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