New Mars Forums

You mean John McCain don't you? Do you know what happened to the Republican Party in the wake of Watergate? Nothing good! Well John McCain is trying to instigate a Watergate on his own party. Well it looks like John McCain rode on Trump's coat tails in 2016 to be reelected to a sixth Term in the US Senate. Has John McCain shown any appreciation for that fact? Nope! He was hoping that Hillary Clinton would win and all the fine Republicans in his state would elect him anyway, maybe splitting the ticket, voting for him and then Hillary, then Hillary could teach John McCain to fetch, roll over, and play dead, and then she could reward him with a bowl of dog food, of perhaps a doggie treat if he acts as a real good "lap dog" for the Democratic Party. In all honesty, why should the Republicans vote for such a fake Republican as John McCain? If they wanted to vote liberal, they could elect a Democrat, John's next election is in 2022, I'm getting a feeling this is going to be his last term in office, I don't think the Arizona Republicans will be played for a sucker one more time.

So you think that if you search hard enough, you can always find it even if its not there? How much money do you think NASA should spend searching for UFOs that are alien spaceships? How much money should the Federal Government spend on Loch Ness Monster research? These things are not proven to exist, does that mean we should search harder, or redirect our efforts to more productive avenues? The Democrats are using the fact that no evidence was found as a reason to keep on searching, but we can't prove that UFOs are alien spaceships either, does that mean not enough money was spent to investigate these claims. How about paranormal research, should we have a real Ghostbusters? How much money should we spend on quackery?

Seems that the Democrats hated James Comey until Trump decided to get rid of him! Have you seen this interview with Maxine Waters? The Democrats sure do have a tough time explaining themselves. Chuck Schumer was calling for James Comey to resign, until Trump fired him, and now Chuck Schumer is complaining about that! What do you call Chuck's knee jerk opposition to the only President from New York since FDR was last President of the United States? In stead of trying to help his fellow New Yorker to be a memorable President, Chuck Schumer is being an oppositional impediment, thinking only about the perceived good of his party and not of his country or state! Chuck Schumer is not a loyal American, he is a Democrat trying to gain power instead!, It looks like Chuck is facing another reelection in 2022 just like John McCain. If New York Voters only want a Democrat to win and don't care about the results other than that, they can vote for Chuck Schumer in 2022! But personally, I would like to see Chuck get chucked! politics is not a game for the average voter, it is not a sport where they can sit on the sidelines and the result does not affect them except for bragging rights!

But there is no evidence of wrong doing except for the part where a private American citizen was unmasked.
You know what the standard is, "Innocent until proven guilty!" No Witch Hunts! It is a waste of government resources to pursue improbable and unproven leads. The FBI should not b investigating UFO or Bigfoot, of anything else where their is no evidence, there are people who swear they have seen a UFO, its only that their film was over exposed, or the UFO flew too fast, or the UFO zapped his camera with a ray beam, and that is his excuse for presenting no concrete proof of a UFO sighting. So I say we should treat the Russian connection just as we would a UFO sighting, there is no proof after seven months of investigations, and the FBI's resources are limited, there are murders to investigate, and investing time and money in this political witch hunt is taking away resources from criminal investigations.

 
Which far right do you mean? That of Hitler? I do not think I can be compared to Hitler, and as far as I know, references to "Far Right" usually means Hitler, or Nazi or Fascist, that is far right. Someone like Rush Limbaugh is not a Hitlerian, a Fascist or a Nazi so he does not qualify as Far Right in my book. Are you making up new terms and definitions for old labels by any chance? By your standards, most of th Presidents of the United States would be called "Far Right" because most of them were not socialists!
Most Presidents of the United States were not like Barack Obama.

Here is a example, see the picture above, which ones of these Presidents would you consider to be "Far Right-wingers"? Donald Trump was to the right of which Presidents? I can think of only 2 out of these 45, that would be Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama. I think for instance that Trump's position on immigrants and minorities was more liberal than FDR's. FDR for example interned Japanese-Americans, he presided over  segregated armed forces for example, I don't think Trump has advocated any of that, so I am just saying becareful of who you call a "Far Right Winger" I believe most of the Presidents of the United States would qualify under that definition.

 
Okay, if someone effectively says, the world is going to end because of Global Warming, don't we have a right to be skeptical? Skepticism is part of the Scientific method after all. You have a bunch of liberals that advocate we make drastic changes because of global warming, so what I'm saying is before we make these drastic changes, you have to prove that there is global warming.

 
I wish it were so, if it were so, the Republican Party would have nominated Ted Cruz instead of Donald Trump, we would have repealed Obamacare within the first 100 days of the new Presidency, it would have been real simple to do, if what you were saying is true, but to not! We have a lot of "mushball moderates" in the Republican Party, people who say they will repeal Obamacare when they are running for election, but then find excuses not to do it once they are elected. A Tea Party dominated Republican PArty would have cut taxes, and would not have looked for new revenue to balance it out. The Tea Party is a Political Party within a party made up mostly of moderate and RINOs, it wouldn't have passed and funded so many of Obama's programs over the past 8 years if it were not! I think, in the future, the Republican Party may split due to lack of competition from the Democrats. It is a two-Party system after all, and if the Democrats can't fill the shoes of that other party, someone else will fill that vacuum.

Lets take these two propositions you put forward:
1) Humans cause climate change.
2) Vaccines cause autism.

Why do you automatically assume 1) to be true and 2) to be false? How come for instance, you do not have to prove that vaccines do not cause autism? Then why do you assume that we hve to prove that humans do not cause climate change with a default position that the do. The data collected has been suspect, where you put your thermometers to detect climate change is very important, for instance, if you put them on top of smoke stacks of factories and power plants, you will detect climate change and global warming.

 
You know science isn't  democracy, you don't prove something to be true by having scientists voting on it, and whoever can get enough scientists to agree to position A is the winner. You know scientists only exist because someone has hired them and pays their salary. So what do you get if you have tobacco companies hire scientists to determine whether cigarette smoke causes lung cancer? If they say it does, they may be out of a job! Just polling scientists is not the scientific method. Most scientists like to keep their jobs, and if they have to lie or fake data to do so, many of them will.

 
I note the fact that many Democrats cannot accept the fact that Donald Trump is our President, I still see cartoon covers of President Trump on many magazines with titles suggesting "How we can fire Donald Trump!" The campaign has not ended for many Democrats, they are still attacking Trump o everything they can think of, putting up resistance and not accepting the results of the last election, this sort of behavior is a threat to democracy itself! If they cannot accept the results of the last election, then what can they accept? I've never seen so much hatred for a newly elected President, than I have for this one, yet he has not gotten us in any wars, has not presided over a recession that is clearly his fault, yet the Democrats were on full attack mode for day one, they don't seem to understand that there will be another election in less than four years, if they position themselves as the party that hates everything that is Republican, they are going to blow it, because most Americans don't care as much about Partisan politics as they do!

With he emphasis on slavery instead of the abolition thereof. Also why did they get rid of Lincoln's Birthday as a national holiday and replace it with Martin Luther King's? Clearly who was the most important person for the civil rights movement, was it the one who freed the slaves, or the one who organized marches on Selma, Alabama? I thought it was a mistake to get rid o Lincoln's Birthday as a Natinal Holiday, maybe it was because he was a Republican.

The thing is that with simulations, you can do just about anything and still called it hard science fiction, so long as whatever it is remains within the simulation. So lets say the story is about a manned mission to Mars, lets say there are 6 astronauts, they are following a hard science mission, everything is laid out pretty much along the lines of NASA plans, the crew takes a number of months to travel from Earth to Mars, and they are all set to land their crew capsule or Mars hab. The Crew Ascent Vehicle is already positioned, it has made enough fuel for the return journey to Earth and everything checks out. Mission Control gives the crew the go ahead to land the hab on the surface of Mars. Little does the crew or anyone else know, that everything the experience is only a simulation. The program they are a part of, has a built in trigger. The trigger condition is that when a manned spacecraft reaches a certain altitude above the surface of Mars, the old Mars is swapped out for another Mars, this Mars has canals, an indigenous population consisting of a type of humans, and a breathable atmosphere. The capsule is entering the atmosphere, its heat shield is glowing, they've slow down enough so they can deploy their landing parachutes, and suddenly Bam! That atmosphere around them suddenly and expectantly gets thicker the crew gets pressed down on their acceleration couches as the wind outside suddenly wails, to make it more interesting, lets say suddenly they are in a rain storm with thunder and lightning, rain is pelting their windows and its making quite a racket. the parachutes are deployed. Mission Control is unaware of what happened because of the time delay between Mars and Earth, but an amateur astronomer looking through his telescope suddenly sees this Mars

get replaced with this Mars

It all occurs suddenly as soon as the light reaches Earth, he sees the change. Mission Control get analomous readings, the landing crafts suddenly decelerates more sharply and starts drifting with the wind more than anticipated when the parachutes are deployed. There is a blue sky above and a sandy desert below, their crew ascent vehicle is nowhere to be found, the topography is the same as in the old Mars with some erosion, their landing site I now underwater, as a river now courses through the dry river bed that their mission was originally to investigate. They report the situation to Houston, and then they separate from the parachute, and their hab drops like a rock. The Pilot has to assume manual control, to prevent the autopilot from landing the ship in a river. The Pilot slows the craft, and carefully touches down on the shore of the river instead. Lightning flashes in the distance followed by thunder as the wind thrashes the hab as it settles on the muddy ground. After a time the engine shuts off, and there is only the sound of the wind, the thrashing rain and the sound of thunder. The crew looks out the circular windows of their craft in astonishment, their instruments read an atmosphere close to 1 bar of pressure, and the presence of oxygen is detected. After a time the rain settles into a steady drizzle. Messages from Mission Control catch up with the craft, they want to know what is going on. A patch of blue appears in the sky. The astronauts seem some men approaching outside on horseback, the horses gallop in an odd way in the low gravity, the men on the horses seem to be armed with a variety of medieval weapons, it is possible they could do damage to the ship with some of these weapons. What do you suppose the astronauts would do next? I don't think they brought any weapons with them, or at least nothing that was intended to be used as a weapon, there is a rover attached to the hab. Everything they need to conduct the expected Mars Mission is in the hab, the only thing they don't have is the means to return to Orbit, their Mars Ascent vehicle was swapped out with the old Mars and is no longer there. so here is the test, what do the astronauts do now?

The "natives" of Mars were descended from colonists from a parallel history that was also run in a separate simulation until this trigger condition was met. Their technological civilization declined until the reached their current state of development. As far as they're concerned, Earth is just a legend, a light in the sky where their ancestors once came from, they terraformed the planet, because in their timeline, human civilization developed much earlier than in ours. One possibility is that in their timeline Alexander the Great lived long enough to establish a stable empire, and line of succession was established, and science flourished, their descendants got into space one thousand years before we did. The languages the natives speak sound similar but not identical to ancient Greek, they seem to have a pagan religion, monotheism has not developed the way it did in our timeline, so they still worship a pantheon of gods and goddesses related to those of the Ancient Greeks.

Mission Control becomes aware of what happened, what they don't know is how it happened, everything else in the Solar System remains the same, the crew remains in contact with Houston, their mother craft continues to orbit this different Mars. Phobos and Deimos also continue in their orbits the same as always, nothing has changed about them. The President is called up, Congress is consulted, another mission to Mars with a rescue craft could be sent to Mars, but it will take a couple of years until the next launch window, for the time being the astronauts are stranded on Mars and have to make the best of things, including with the armed men on horseback.

Here's a place.

They have had the same consistently evil governments since 1979 when they overthrew the Shah. I would ask the same question about the Russians, why are their governments more often bad news for us rather than the opposite? What gives rise to their tendency to have evil governments that mean to cause us trouble and disturb the World peace? They are always trying to build their empires by reducing the amount of freedom in the World. I believe in peace, why don't they?

The Russians overthrew the Czar, was it because he was oppressive or insufficiently evil?, they replaced the Czar with the Bolsheviks, their leader promised "Land, Peace, and Bread" but did not deliver on any of those. The Iranians overthrew the Shah, whom they claimed was oppressing them, but they replaced him with an even more oppressive bunch of leaders, and warmongering ones that chant "Death to America" at that! Why should they be allowed to have nuclear reactors capable of producing bomb grade Uranium or Plutonium? the World was a much better place before they entered the scene and started destabilizing the region. We don't need the endless conflicts in the middle east that they tend to cause. if they would just seem to maximize their economic output and mind their own business, that would be fine with me, but they don't!

So what is the cause of evil rising to the top if they are not evil themselves? I would ask the same of the Germans who put Hitler into power, but perhaps they don't know the answer. Hitler made his attempt at World conquest and it cost Germany dear! Why would people want to put such a self-aggrandizing evil egomaniac in charge of their country? I don't think Germany was any better off because of him.

There are a lot of dead Germans who died fighting for Hitler's dream of grand conquest, why take the chance? Why couldn't they just live in peace and try to prosper? Ultimately the people are in the end responsible for the governments they have, the Iranians had a chance at democracy when they overthrew the shah, but they chose a theocracy instead, The Russians had two chance at Democracy, the first when they overthrew the Czar, the second when they overthrew the Communists, they failed at both tries, what the Hell is wrong with them! If Poland can have democracy why can't they?

Are the Russians too big to have a truly representative government? are the temptations to try and conquer the World at every opportunity just too great for them to resist? I think in the 1990s the Russians had  choice, they could either strive for more freedom in a free society or they can attempt to build another Empire and attempt to conquer the World, why do they always seem to want to go for the second? Why do we have such trouble makers in the World when we do not need them?

I think industrial development won't produce many jobs on Mars, I think that by the time we are settling Mars, industrial development won't be producing many jobs anywhere. Maybe Mars would be a great industrial park if we don't want the environmental impact here! People who love to live in cities, are going to love Mars, once we get down to colonizing the place!

So according to your timeline James Starkey is 18 years old at this time, since he was born in 5910 AD.

 
Funny that you can list only Fox News as being on the conservative side, but you have NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, kind of unfair that we have so many TV stations pushing the leftwing point of view and only one Fox news to counter that, technically not a monopoly, but it is very close to being monolithic, and here you are trying to diminish that one TV station that is on our side by calling it "Faux" News, seems like you desire a monopolistic News Media that allows various left wing politicians to sweep dirt under the rug instead of solving our problems. Once you get rid of Fox News, how would we be different from Cuba? You will get your one-party state with politicians that can do anything they want, now competition, no challengers, the News Media won't cover them or worse, they will try to smear them like the attempted to do to Trump by calling him a "Fascist" and saying he has no chance to get elected in order to depress his voters into not showing up at the polls!

I wonder how bad Marine Le Pen is? The Media says she's a racist, but the Media also said Trump was a racist, I wonder if I can trust the Media? How much of it is actually her and how much of it is just the Media trying to smear her and call her a fascist? If the Media called Trump a Fascist and he's not, how do we know anything about her? What if she is a fascist? Well then there are some French people who will compare her to Donald Trump, they will say that the Media did a smear job on Trump and they are doing the same to Marine Le Pen, and they will go to the polls and vote in Marine Le Pen as the next French President, and it will in part be the Media's fault if that happens and she turns out to be a Fascist! You ever hear of "The Boy who Cried Wolf?" The Media has been "crying Wolf" at every Republican candidate for President since George W. Bush! So why shouldn't we take our chances with someone the Media calls a "Fascist?" How can we tell the real ones from the smear jobs the media produces? The Media wants us to elect one certain candidate and they will call everyone else a fascist, or a racist, or someone who is unkind to animals, or someone who is too rich when they are a Republican but that ignores their wealth if they are Democrats! I am sick of it, and I want my country back! I am sure many French People feel the same way about France!

 
Where do the Japanese get a lot of their food? You see this map of Japan? What do you think the Japanese would do if the ocean levels rose? Japan looks very rugged, does it look like they grow a lot of their food on land? A lot of their food comes from the ocean, they have fishing fleets, what do you think would happen if the ocean levels rose? They would just have more places to fish, that is all. I don't think the Japanese would starve, they can build factories on higher ground, export cars and import wheat from other places, and meanwhile their fishing fleets would go out and pull in nets full of fish. Fish are a major part of their diet, more water equals more fish to eat, I don't see them starving!

Well maybe the folk in Minnesota would like to shovel less snow as well. Global Warming could give them milder winters. As for moving, if you can move from Texas to Minnesota, don't you think other people can move away from the coast, or are all those coastal people a bunch of poor mud hut dwellers? Lets take a look at some of those properties on the coast.

Here is a nice home in Maine with a view of the Ocean, does he look poor to you?

Here is another property on the coast, such poor unfortunate people, having to live in a place like this. How much do you want to sacrifice to save their homes?

I think we should do a Saturn mission with the SLS, it will be made obsolete anyway with the ITS. Might get off a few probes to the outer solar system if we hurry.

Those politicians don't believe in profit either, they believe in wasting your money on themselves and their cronies, and if they run out, they just grab some more from your pocket, does that make them any better than those "greedy businessmen and businesswomen who are only interested in making a profit? They cannot legally steal your money unless they pay some politician to steal if for them!
The businesses that I want to see more profitable are the small to medium-size businesses, the ones that create most of the jobs. The policies the Democrats advocate hurt small to medium sized businesses the most with their taxes and regulation. When I think of a business, I am thinking of a small to medium sized business, not the giants like Exxon Mobil for example. The giant businesses can always bribe politicians to go steal your money for them and spend it on their "pork", which they sell to the government. Liberals don't like energy companies or defense contractors, they love universities and the entertainment industry however, they love to control the information that reaches the voters through their control of the media, we re seeing that being played out with the endless attacks by the Media on Trump. The Media wants to control this country by controlling what you perceive, and that way they can control what and who you vote for! When the news isn't objective a democracy becomes undemocratic and a republic unrepresentative!

 
You mean like a wall of water suddenly crashing into the skyscrapers of Manhattan from those suddenly melted glaciers on land and all the freshwater releases into the ocean is going to weaken the Gulf Stream causing all that water to suddenly freeze into solid ice? That is the plot to the Day after Tomorrow That is the sort of thing that will kill people, they will either die when that wall of water crashes into them or they will die when all that water freezes solid. Now do you really believe that is going to happen?

   
How do people down in a slowly rising ocean? You can have a few hurricanes, but most people will say it was the hurricanes that killed them, not global warming. We have things called weather satellites that warn of approaching hurricanes and if they get out of the way of those, they won't die, if they are suborn and refuse to move, then you can say it was their stubbornness that killed them!

 
What's wrong don't you like warmer weather? Then why do you live in Texas? it would be much easier for you to move North than to halt global warming. You get into a car, pack a moving van and drive North and to higher ground if you must.

The best way to develop alternatives is not to force them on people before they are ready, it is not to arbitrarily increase MPG standards in cars, that is what liberals call a "solution". We need to develop the technology first and the technology itself, when it is ready, will encourage the switchover, not government coercion.

Yes, there are a number of different versions of it, they all involve different ways of scoring a hit and taking damage, the most common versions use 6-sided dice only, there is one published by Mongoose, there is the out of print T20 Traveller which is more compatible with Dungeons & Dragons and the different dice used in it. Typically Traveller characters don't have levels, but T20 characters do, though T20 has a system to counter the mounting hit points with increasing level. Unlike D&D characters, Traveller characters don't become more powerful with experience, they gain new skills, but are just as hard to kill as they were before. Most power comes from all the things and wealth a character accumulates, rather than the new abilities he has, with D&D its all about the abilities and hit points, thouh wealth accumulation is possible too. In D&D rulers tend to be high level characters that are very formidable in combat, they often don't need security guards to protect them, in Traveller Emperor Stephon is just an ordinary bloke in a high position of power, he needs that security detail, and if you want to get to him, you have to get past those guards first, that is the hardest part!

Yes, I am greedy, I like to keep my money when I go to fill my gas tank at the pump, and I don't like to give to Arab charities such as Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, Al Qaeda, or the Islamic Brotherhood, that is why I like to develop domestic sources of energy! How exactly did the Federal Government acquire this land in the first place? By declaring them "National Monuments" by Presidential Fiat? You understand that most of the land out West is owned by the Federal Government and was acquired by this means? You also understand that the Federal Government has $20 Trillion in debt? What happens if the Federal Government sells this land to pay off he debt? Then it can balance its budget without raising taxes, maybe even cut taxes and grow the economy for a change, then we can fund an ambitious space program!