New Mars Forums

So your calling terrorism and crime a force of nature? So do you suggest that we try to placate it instead by making offerings of tribute? Sorry I don't want my country to be part of somebody else's empire ruled by terrorism. We try to win the war in order to deter the next enemy and in that way we secure public safety. As for crime in general, there are cases where the problem requires a military solution instead of law enforcement. The Italian Mafia is one such example: If an Italian prosecutor pursues mob figures too vigourously, then he ends up assassinated, the arm of the Mafia reaches up to the highest corridor of power. I'd rather not have terrorism rule my country the way the Mafia rules Italy. Living with a criminal organization running a country is no better than rule by a military dictatorship. So you'd rather the US Government pay protection money to terrorist organizations like Saudi Arabia does instead of fighting it? I'd rather my country go down fighting terrorism in an ever expanding conflict than have it submit to the forces of terrorism and pay tribute. You see the countries and peoples that support terrorism can be made to pay a terrible price for it if the US fights instead of submits. If the War is not winnable then at least we can make sure both sides lose and maybe that prospect alone will deter the enemy from attacking, same as the principle of mutually assure destruction. The key thing is even if we can't win, we'll make sure the other side loses the same as us. Besides 3000 casualities over several years is not alot, despite how much the Media wants to hype it, and we're taking a toll in enemy casualities that is many times that of our own despite how much the Media wants to suppress it. The best way to win a war on terrorism is to outlast the terrorists and get a media that is on our side in fighting them, instead of acting like we could end it at any time simply by withdrawing. Can you guarantee that there will be no further terrorist attacks if we withdraw from Iraq?

Not really. Either they are prosecuted and arrested or that country is not an ally.

Then the law will prosecute them if they are found to be supporting terrorists, we do not allow them simply to continue to operate if known. If unknown then they are rebels, and we fight them like we did the previous rebellion in this country.

The that arms dealer will cease to exist as a legitimate arms dealer. We fight all enemies foreign and domestic, that is part of the Presidential Oath of office in fact. I guess you kind of President would take that Oath with a wink and a nod and vow only to fight enemies that are in uniform and stand up right in front of our guns.

That is where the FBI and CIA get involved. Terrorism is not in of itself profitable, resources must be siphoned off from legitimate sources and people's incomes to fund terrorism, we must find those people and arrest them. If its alot of people then we expel most of them and arrest the ring leaders. I am always nervious about immigrants who might be sympathetic to terrorist goals.

Forgotten about mutually assured destruction already have you? Why are you against missile defense then, if you seemingly have doubts about the ability of our offensive nuclear forces to deter? Let if be know to the World that if the World goes against us, then that is how the World will end, it would be no different than if the Soviets attacked us during the Cold War except that our missiles would be spread out across more of the World. Now if the World expects us to simply accept terrorism and if we don't, they'll attack us, then they'll find our that they too and their countries will also be destroyed.

Yeah, I can just picture the terrorist recruiting in a shopping mall right next to the Army recruiters. Here you have the clean shaven sergent recruiting soldiers and the scruffy looking terrorist recruiting terrorists, and some young kind trying to make a thoughtful decision about whether to join the Army or become a terrorist.

We didn't obtain Germany's approval to knock out its War plants and training camps did we? What would have happened if we went up to Adolf Hitler and asked his permission to bomb his country, because we had information that certain people in his country were training to fight a war against us, we're manufacturing weapons to kill our soldiers etc.? Would Adolf Hitler give his permission to make a strike against his country, which technically is not under our jurisdiction?

Was the Confederate Army of the Confederate States of America a Criminal Organization? The United States did not recognize the Confederate States as a sovereign nation, therefore any activities of the Confederate Government and Army would fall under our jurisdiction. What would Lee and his Army have done if he was confronted by a bunch of cops who wanted to arrest him instead of the Federal Army? Was it unlawful for Federal Troops to fight the Confederacy since the Federal Government did not recognize the Confederacy? For me, instead of tackling these legal questions, I would have wanted to just win the War.

Quite a book here that you've written, and almost impossible to respond to the whole thing without spending a whole day on it. So therefore I have to respond to some choice parts even though I've taken the time to read the whole thing:

When criminals take over a whole country as in Afghanistan, they cease to be criminals and become an Enemy. But if I take your argument and it is only criminals that we are fighting, then how can we allow the Armed Forces of the furemost Superpower in the World to be defeated by a band of Criminals? I say allow because it looks like the US Congress is going to allow this band of criminals to defeat our armed forces by withoulding funds from them for this operation in fighting them, this means our soldiers are going to run out of munitions, food, and that they are not going to get paid as they fight this band of criminals, so therefore this band of criminals wins and the US Armed Forces look weak and to satisfy the Democrats political cravings to defeat George W. Bush.

Obviously the terrorists operating in other people's countries are breaking the law and are therefore criminals, but the nations sponsoring them are the Enemy. There is a bit of fuzzy logic here, if we mechanically prosecute these terrorists, no matter the scale of their operations then at some point the scale can overwhelm the courts and it becomes a national security matter instead. Due process is overly long and not designed to fight an enemy.

What if we were to treat the Confederates during the Civil War as criminals instead of enemy soldiers? We could send the Keystone cops out after the Confederate Army in Gettysburg, Pennsyvania instead of Mead's Army, what do you suppose would happen if we did that? The Confederate Soldiers are after all US citizens, so therefore the US Constitution applies to them, they cannot be arrested and kept in confinement without a trial or access to Lawyers. If we acted as robotic policemen and treated the Southern Rebellion as a series of crimes such as murder, arson, illegal militias, destruction and theft of Federal government property etc and tried to push that through the courts, we would have lost the War, but you seem more concerned about process rather than results. So long as we mechnically do what the Constitution says were supposed to do, the outcome of the War doesn't matter, we can lose all knowing that we did our duty according to the book.

There are some unscrupulous politicians that don't care about their country enough to wish that it wins its foreign wars with an enemy, they care only about gaining some political office and not about solving the problems of America. They figure that if the US suffers some major defeat to an inferior enemy, then there will still be enough left over of America for them to gain that office and defeat rivals in the next election. The Democrats have some influence in Congress, but they also want the White House, and one clear path to the White House as they see it is to make sure that the United States loses the War. George W. Bush wants an additional 20,000 troops sent to Iraq, but the Democrats in Congress aren't going to give them that flexibility, they want to "hog tie" him and drag him and the whole country down to defeat by a band of criminals, then they will say that as Commander in Chief it was George Bush's responsibilty to fight the War and he lost, thus he was an incompetant president and by extention all Republicans are incompetant. Of course by cutting off funds Congress wouldn't let the President be Commander in Chief, if they do that, then Congress takes responsibility for the outcome of the War, and if they lose, they will be blamed for it.

The funny thing is that the ABM system would be an argument in support of not invading Iran to stop their nuclear missile development, but here you are opposing that very system which would bolster you argument for this. Missile defense is certainly a less aggressive posture than invading and occupying Iran to prevent their nuclear missile program from being developed.

But without the ABM system which you oppose, there is nothing to stop their one feeble missile from destroying one of our great cities full of liberals criticising the War in Iraq.

Actually China is too, and Putin hasn't given up on Russia. The difference between you and me is I don't view dictatorships to be equal players with properly elected governments in democratic countries. I don't give a fig about what the head honcho strongman of country X thinks, if he's not properly elected, he is not a legitimate representative of that country. If the people were to elect a Chavez and her were to seize power, take over the media and try to destabilize his neighbors for no reason other than to aqcuire power for himself, this calls into question the judgement of the people who elected and reelected him, perhaps they aren't ready for democracy yet, and perhaps they aren't ready to be an independent country either, I'd be happy to have Brazil take them over. Perhaps we should support a Brazilian version of Manifest Destiny and get rid of Chavez by getting rid of Venuzualia. Its people are certainly dumb enough to elect leaders who so obviously want to overthrow democracy, so they wouldn't mind if their Spanish speaking population were to suddenly become a minority in an enlarged Brazil. They have no right to complain after all, since they threw away their rights when they elected a leader that wanted to take away their rights.

Or perhaps their people ruling them instead of they ruling them. The main thing a leader of an undemocratic country wants is to preserve their power, they don't want the US ruling them not because they care about their countries independence but because they would lose there power over their countries in the process. If the US were to hold elections in their countries, the dictators would still lose power, that is what they are worried about. Independence is meaningless without freedom, it means something for the nation's leaders, but not for the people in those nations. If a strongman rules them or the United States makes no difference to the average citizen. if you want the average citizen to have a dog in this fight, then give him some freedom and democracy. If you care only about independence, then you have to persuade the people to fight for their dictator's right to rule over them independently, which is what that dictator is actually concerned about.

Which is why we invaded Afghanistan. Fighting terrorism only when they come into our country is much like that missile defense system that you criticize, its not going to get every one. When we can't stop every missile that comes into this country, it doesn't make sense to let things develop in the world to the point where our enemy gets to launch them at us, and the same goes for terrorists, if the problem comes from another country, we have to go to that country to root them out.

It would seem sensible then to have one base that all missions keep on returning to. A preferible location might be at the mouth of the Vallis Marinaris. Water flowed here, there may be some frozen water underground. So the sensible thing would be to drill down until ice is hit, and then apply heat to melt the ice. Recover the vapors at the ambient air pressure and then condense it under pressure into pure water for drinking purposes, fuel production, rehydrating food supplies, and agriculture. A dedicated greenhouse would be added and some personell to grow the food, later on another hab might be added for raising chickens.

Then I have an interesting idea for a flush toliet. You flush the toilet and the human waist empties into a holding tank, then the valve between the toilet and the tank closes and the valve between the tank and the outside opens. The human waist gets sucked out and deposited onto the Martian soil right next to the hab. I suppose the urine either freezes or boils away, the solid waste would turn into a fine powder and all the liquids inside boiled away. Over time a sizable pile of human waste would accumulate right next to the hab, at least it wouldn't smell.

I wonder how much room two years worth of food would take compared to the facilities to grow new food? Seems to me that if they were serious about growing food, they'd need to bring along an agricultural specialist or two. Growing food is fairly labor intensive. You'd probably need a full time farmer to take care of the food needs. One person growing food is one less person exploring Mars.

Religious faith might actually accelerate space travel too. The Pilgrims came to Massachusetts because of Religious faith. Skeptics might question why we spend so much on space travel and seek to cut the budget, thus delaying space travel, they have in the past after all. But some religion that has a Manifest Destiny that it believes is to spread itself throughout the Solar System might push space travel ahead. Religious faiths that want to establish that perfect society according to their doctrine might pass the collection plate and establish their own colonies on Mars, and live according to their own philosophy. Those bean counters might perceive no benefit from space exploration, while the religious cults might find it a change to get away from the "corrupt" influences of the "Global village".

I heard that Al Qaeda celebrated the Democrats elections to Congress, and the first Muslim American to swear on the Qoran upon taking the oath of office was also a Democrat, I'd say the terrorists are the ones who see light at the end of the tunnel with this election victory. Meanwhile in the wake of this election Victory, Hugo Chavez decides to assume dictatorial powers in Venuzualia. I guess with Democrats in power, he calculates that the US will do nothing to stop him from forming a mini-Soviet Block in the Western Hemisphere. Iran's emboldened already, is developing nuclear weapons and its waiting for its birthday present of Iraq from the Congressional Democrats, probably at the end of this year when money for Iraq operations runs out. I just wonder at the timing of the Bush administration when he waited with his new plan for Iraq to ask the Democrats for money rather than the Republicans while they are still in power.

Hugo Chavez may be right, we may have to invade his country because he will make it necessary. We can't have some new dictator threatening our freedoms in the Western Hemisphere. Perhaps Brazil should annex it, since by voting for Hugo, the Venuzualians have demonstrated that they don't want to run their own country.

Certainly China has a higher prison population than we do, and North Korea is one great big prison, and its population is larger than the number of people we have in prision.

New York City gets the same amount of sunlight as does an equivalent area of flat land without buildings. If you add buildings, you are increasing the available surface area, but not increasing the amount of sunlight. The more people you put in an area, the less area for solar energy there is per person. The tallest buildings stand out rising above all the others, while shadowing other buildings, but never the less the same amount of sunlight reaches the City as an equivalent area of vacant farmland. When people live close together and on top of each other, each doesn't have sifficient room to spread his solar collecting array. Most people live in cities where rooftop solar panels aren't an option. You probably need as much collecting area as the total amount of floorspace in New York city, except that solar panels can't be stacked on top of each other as people can.

The purpose of the first Mars mission should be to set up a base that would be used by the next mission and the mission after that. Perhaps the pressurized rover can be prepositioned ahead of time, it should be similar to the 2 Mars rovers in that they can be controlled from the Earth to a limited extent, except that it would be much bigger, it probably should have some camera's attached and other instruments including a sampler arm and a drill. All these things can be controlled from the operators or programmed to do something with commands from Earth. I think the ROver should have the mass of a Hab, and thus it would require a seperate launch just to get the rover there ahead of the manned expedition. Now what would be the best way to land a pressurized rover, the size of an RV on Mars?

Well you called the founding fathers of my country terrorists, as I am American, I think you can see how I might be offended by that, and I see you are from Canada, thus maybe your ancestors were Red Coats. I for one had ancestors who were Continental soldiers, including a relation to Martha Custis Washington.

Solar cells are also heavy, and they become less efficient as you concentrate sunlight on them, the biggest problem with Solar cells is that they don't work in cities so well, especially if you live in a high rise. If you live on the second floor of a 5 story building, all the tennants must share the same roof, and the roof won't have enough area to supply all the occupants with electricity. Also some buildings will tend to shadow others. If you wanted to supply New York City with electricity from Solar Cells, you'd have to blanket the suburbs with them, clear cutting the trees and using up expensive suburban real estate. New York City would have to be surrounded by a field of black stretching out to the horizon. Also the further north the city is, the larger the collecting array would have to be. I think it would be much better to collect power in space and then broadcast it down to Earth. Blanketing the Earth with solar cells surrounding each city is probably bad for the environment. In the North East, you'd have to clear cut forests, and this would contribute to soil erosion, also the heating effect would be similar to surrounding New York City with a giant parking lot. If you are going to waste so much valuable real estate, you might as well build the parking lot too. Raise up the solar cell collecting surface and put a parking lot underneath. New York City is in bad need of parking space anyway, so build a giant parking lot around New York City, and force them to use Mass Transit to get in. As for the people living in the Suburbs surrounding New York City, too bad for them. That house with the solar cells on the roof that is too close to New York City will have to be torn down, as well as those of all their neighbors too. Tsk tsk tsk.

Batteries are fairly heavy, and houses aren't the only consumers of energy, there are also vehicles. When was the last battery powered airplane that you saw? One possibility for SPS is to power airplanes, transmitting microwaves to them and powering their engines instead of burning fossil fuels. As for birds getting fried, birds don't fly at jetliner altitudes. All that's required is the ability to track the air planes.