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Well, here's my off-hand thoughts on desireable traits for colonists:

1. Ability to fix machinery with inappropriate tools and insufficient quantities of unsuitable parts, a total disregard for design specifications and familiarity with the fine art of duct tape.

2. Not squeamish about drinking their own urine. Let's be honest, that is what water recycling is about. Still, please, use the filter.

3. The "rugged individualist" type is less suitable than the "independent thinking team player" type. Socialist idealogues are the worse possible choice. A Red Mars is a dead Mars, one could say.

4. Anyone who holds the belief that the settlement of Mars will usher in a new dawn for human civilization and from that time forward we will be more rational and peaceful... Out.

5. Someone social enough to work well with their fellow crewmates but who does not need social contact. Mild misanthropy may not be a bad thing.

6. Ability to judge consequences through unbiased eyes, concern for how those consequences will affect the others, and willingness to accept responsibilty when they blow it. Seeing the world as it really is, not how it should be.

7. Willingness and ability to make difficult decisions quickly. Even when it means that people die.

8. Educated people are needed, but not over-educated. Some of the most highly educated people I have ever known have spouted some of the most asinine ideas I've ever heard. Having a doctorate in some arcane field of engineering is great, but if you can't pick up a wrench and work with junk you're not much help.

Hmm. I just have to ask, am I the only one having this absurd vision of George W. Bush standing on the moon in front of a "Mission Accomplished" banner while some CNN pundit complains about him showing up in a spacesuit?

Yes, but then we'd already have significant infrastructure and numbers of people on the planet. When those Chinese squatters arrive they'll be greeted something like this:

"Welcome to US Mars. Please state your citizenship and are you bringing any alcohol, firearms or fruits or vegetables onto the planet?" 

Quite true. This has alwyas been one of my fuzzy areas on the terraforming question, the benefits of a habitable planet on the one hand versus the expense and bureacracy on the other. It seems to me the decision will rest entirely on how Mars is colonized.

If many nations set up many colonies, terraforming will almost certainly have to wait until a Martian Federation is formed and undertakes it. Over a century, probably two or three.

Or, a suitably ambitious nation could start the project before anyone lives there. This would involve at least the implicit claim to the entire planet by that nation, but that's hardly a serious obstacle. It would be expensive, but not necessarily prohibitively so.

A couple years ago I worked out some rough figures based on the projections in the admittedly less than desirable approach described in Paul Birch's "Terraforming Mars Quickly." Unfortunately this was all done on a napkin in a bar, so I'm working from memory here. Forgive me if I make grevious errors.

As I recall the cost of terraforming, minus cost of infrastructure and other expenses that would be present with colonization with or without terraforming, comes to roughly 85 billion BP, which I liberally converted at an exchange rate of .50 US dollars to the Pound., making the cost approx. $170 billion over the course of 70 years. The US federal budget is roughly $2 trillion a year. Roughly one half of that is in the form of programs or services of questionable Constitutionality or outright waste. Being reasonable we can cut the new-found trillion in half and let some of the programs live. Hell, let's be downright socialist and let 3/4 of it stand. We then have $250 billion to work with.

Which means that every year the US government wastes enough money to make a planet!

Clearly this is very crude, full of assumptions and probably riddled with errors, but it's something to think about...

Can we ethically deny future human generations the resources and living space of an entire world simply because a few microbes happen to live there?

I realize that comes across as rather confrontational which is not my intent, but both questions are equally valid.

Yeah, I don't suppose I'd be a card-carrying member either. But I'd go to the meetings from time to time.

The discovery of life on Mars would be extraordinarily significant, even more so if we could prove that it originated independently of Earth life. It should be preserved and studied. This is not in direct conflict with colonization or terraforming, we wouldn't have much luck wiping the planet clean of them if we tried.

From a more long-term perspective, if Mars has native life then it is likely that many other planets do as well, meaning that if we should ever be so lucky as to find another world even remotely Earth-like it too will (by definition as Earthlike) have life as well. If we won't terraform because of microbes, we can't very well start clearing forest or irrigating fields if some higher form of life is present.

If we set the precedent that native life, however primitive, is more important than human settlement or development than it will follow us to the stars and severely limit what we can accomplish. The debate is about more than Mars.

Fight the Red Menace! Terraform now!

I'm looking for clarification on something. "Black separatist," as in breaking away and starting a whole new country?

I can't just leave that hanging without asking.

As an atheist, I'm not in the least bit offended by attacks on any religion, however I see no point in those attacks. If someone wants to believe in something that you don't, why should anyone care? I know that some Christians can be a little overzealous in their desire to convert, but that is hardly limited only to Christianity or religion in general for that matter. When you believe something you try to convince others of its inherent rightness, whatever that belief may be.

To sum it up:

While I won't come to a religion's defense, I applaud Cindy for doing so.

Welcome, Paul.

flashgordon, you're being an ass.

Yep. There's a balance; convenience and security on the one hand and liberty on the other. It would be nice to have the option of choosing one's own balance, rather than having it dictated.

If a group of Muslim colonists want to set up an Islamic society in territory they develop, I don't have a major problem with that. As for an Islamic government "for Mars" I must give an emphatic NO. I would oppose a Martian planetary system of any form for the first several decades at least of settlement.

On a more general note, mixing religion and government has a tendency to end badly. Were I neighboring such a colony, Islamic or otherwise, I would watch them very closely.

Such societies need safety valves. Not everyone wants to live under them, as you well know. I advocate something vaguely akin to the Roman model, in which you have a large, militarized state surrounded by an ever expanding frontier. Most people would be perfectly content to live in the developed "core," while those who choose to can leave and live as they see fit on the frontier. When enough of them are out there and the frontier becomes increasingly developed, it is brought further into the fold while new areas become open for settlement. The civilization grows and the malcontents can always get land of their own and live by whatever screwy ideology they choose, rather than fomenting rebellion and terrorism. Everybody wins. A sort of anarchist-friendly fascism

So yes, I fully expect and would advocate a planetary government for Mars at some point, but only after the planet has been heavily developed and other suitable sites for colonization have been located and can be reached.

Yeah, we wouldn't want to get away from the important issues

I've always thought the Battlestar Galactica premise had great potential, people of an advanced technological civilization suddenly stripped of their home and illusions, forced to survive against an enemy determined to destroy them. It was never quite done as well as I thought it could be, but if the Sc-Fi Channel makes more episodes I'll certainly give it a chance. 

As is always the case. Still, if you must build a sentient robot make sure you have a remote with a destruct button.

I did watch it, was neither impressed nor disappointed. The military was facing cutbacks, everyone felt secure and comfortable, some were pushing ahead with the technology that burned them in the past. It was all very progressive one might say. Progressive like cancer. Cylons kill everyone, no one saw it coming. Fools.

As for the "Noble Lie" element, I'd like to see that played out. It's similar to (I'm going to piss off somebody here... ) the idea of a Heaven, you can't prove it's there, but no one can prove it isn't and as long as enough people believe it behavior is directed toward desireable ends. There was already the element that I can crudely sum up as "when peaceniks run things, people die" and I'd like to see them take on the big, shining lie. They won't, but it would be interesting. To me it's far better than the old premise of searching for a planet they knew was out there someplace.

No apologies needed Cindy, but thank you. You are far more respectful and reasonable than most people I argue with And I mean that sincerely.

But now that I'm here I might as well be troublesome...

Yet we still have the little problem of not having compelling evidence that human activity is causing disappearence of the ice sheets in the first place. We may be the primary cause, or we may be utterly irrelevant. If we accept the above premise that we can't predict what the effects will be and they could range anywhere between wild extremes, how do we know we aren't stabilising it? I don't see any reason to make policy based on what we think could happen projected from what we think is happening, which we think we might be causing.

Gotta watch out for those invisible monkeys, they're bastards.