New Mars Forums

Yeah, like the link says, coal burning is, from the perspective of the consumer, who sees only the kilowatts produced and pollution released, the same as a wildly inefficient nuclear plant.

Which ironically is more radioactive than the nuclear power plants, believe it or not.

We could start a 'what plants' thread, but let's keep it here.

At a guess, but a decently informed one, I would go with potatos. Potatos originally come from a high-altitude, dry, and often cold area, the Andes, and thus might have some advantages compared to other plants on Mars, but their real benefit is sheer calories per unit area. An acre of potatos using even low-tech, unsophisticated farming is enough to feed 4 people for a year as far as calories alone. So they would probably be the staple part of an early Martian colony's diet.

Other plants would be carrots; the green leafy part we don't eat can be fed to animals, and the rest goes well with the potatos.   And spinach, which is pretty vitamin-rich.

Other plants I'd grow would be, well, things like lettuce, radishes, etc, along with herbs. But those mostly would be done in small amounts as an adjunct to potatoes. Come to think of it, we need to grow some sort of oilseed plant so we can hydrogenate the oil. Need butter (well, margarine) for those baked 'taters, you know...  :laugh:

Gas is generally about $1.98 here, but there's one renegade station that is priced at $1.93.

Journal log - unknown date +5

Managed to make good my escape. Hopefully I managed to dent their airplane program. If not, oh well. Explosion wasn't quite as cool as I hoped, but at least I've delayed any pursuit.

I've reoccupied my crater dome home, and need to rethink my strategy. Or maybe not... maybe I should just lie low. I have the supplies and wherewitheral to wait out the current madness, unless something big happens.

Alcohol production is up. I keep looking at it and thinking that it would make an excellent rocket fuel. If worst comes to worst I can contact the colonists who left the old colony when the UN goons came. Maybe they're still sane. We could build some missiles and prevent these new colonists from trying to arrest us or whatever.

Still trying to figure out a method of secure communications...

Mars needs women, and at least for a century or two, it will need children. My own opinion on this would be to try to do better than past colonization efforts as far as gender ratios, then let the chips fall where they will as far as reproduction. Birth control on Mars is going to be dicey (send the pills from Earth? Spare precious plastic production for condoms?) to begin with, and abortion would be subjected to an incredibly powerful Roe effect within the first few generations. People settling new frontiers tend to have more children than the stay-at-homes anyways, and I don't expect that to change.

Journal of Trebuchet. Completely uncertain of date now.

These newcomers tranquilized my ass. They thought my warnings about the raving madman meant I was crazy. Haven't they ever heard of "don't shoot the messenger"?

I disabled the guard by pouring water on the floor and using wires from one of the lights to zap him. Clever Trebuchet! Tied the guy up and put him in the bed. Wonder how long it will take them to discover my clever escape. I managed to snag an EVA suit without anyone noticing and snuck outside.

Flint has escaped. I have no idea where he is. These people are building some sort of airplane, which seems harmless enough. I planned to see what sort of sabotage I could cause, but someone has already handled that by releasing wiring-eating bunnies. I relocated a few to 'interesting' locations in the base. Also removed a small tank of nitric acid from a sample probe. They have UMDH here, too, among the tanks of other fuels for use in vehicles. Hypergolic fuels + other flammable stuff + lots and lots of LOX = big explosion. See if you can fly that plane without fuel, suckers!

Have set bomb and heading back to my crater home.

Of course, this is apart from the smart-aleck response of "Humans". Seriously, what animals are most useful to a colony?

My short list of 'desireable critters', in order:

1) Honeybees. Useful pollinators, they also provide honey and wax. Not many necessary, but they will be a big boon to any large-scale agriculture. Remember, Mars has no native pollinators.

2) Chickens. Eggs. Meat. Cute little chicks for the colonist's kids to coo over.

Journal. Stardate 90210

The French are still here and babbling stuff I don't understand. Sometimes they attempt to enter my hab. I have given them booze and they seem happy with it, though they keep asking for "Vin". I tell them there's no Vin living in our colony and wave them away. That gets them to go away and keep CC away from me. He's still nuts. The rabbit slaughter seems to have abated, though.

The others are moving to a new hab... like hell, I just put everything here. I now have carrots coming in. This would be good if there were any rabbits still alive.

There is still a sniper perched at the edge of my crater. Uncertain what he's doing. You would think he would have potted whoever he's after by now, or maybe he just died. I'm not checking. Bastard's still armed.

Journal - Date Irrelevant

Everything continues to go to hell in a handbasket. I have buried the tunnel to the greenhouse and my hab in more dirt. The radioactivity increases, but I am protected now. Hopefully I won't get cancer from my trip outside.

The sniper has not moved, save to fire at CC and Clark. They could not have possibly survived out there in all that radiation. They must be zombies. Or vampires. I'm not sure which. I wish that some of the base cameras survived so that I could see if they were eating brains or drinking blood so I could plan accordingly. Then I realized, what if they are vampire zombies? Death to all the undead! I will burn them at the stake, if I can find any wood. Perhaps I will be forced to use plastic painted brown...

What the? When did I get dragged into this?

Journal entry. Date uncertain, as usual. I'm not sure what day it is. Very happy that my home away from dome was nearly finished in the hills outside of town. It's hidden in a crater outside of town where these crazies won't bother me.

I gave the catapult I built as a lark to Mundaka. Can't carry it to the new hab anyways. I plan on defending my hab with alcohol and LOX potato guns of doom. There are plenty of potatos growing in my greenhouse to make the alcohol and serve as ammunition. Any day they don't attack I can bake them in the crude solar furnace I built or drink the raw, burning vodka made by my still.

I have heard the UN has landed. I would be concerned. But it is the UN.

Some strange man is up on the other side of the hill. He wired up a connection to one of the solar panels I had not installed yet and seems to have some sort of sniper setup. Perhaps I can buy him off with vodka if he notices me.

1) Actually, poll results - nonUS polling, for the suspicious - reveals that a majority of the Iraqis want the US to stay. At least until the situation dies down.

2) One of the soldiers involved has already been court-martialed and sentenced. The others will follow quickly. US military tribunals don't screw around like the civilian courts sometimes do.

3) There are other points - like the fact that the US military was the one to notice, crack down on, and replace the staff at that prison, months before the story broke to the media - which seem to never get noticed.

4) The US did not ratify the ICC because it was a spectacularly bad idea on its own merits, much like the Kyoto Accords, and moreover would directly conflict with parts of our own Constitution. Making requests that it knows other countries (read: Europe) won't accept is a way of saying 'No' without simply tearing up and spitting on it (what we did with Kyoto)

5) The average American is growing as annoyed and irritated with Europe as the Europeans are with America. That situation is a hell of a lot more dangerous to a stagnant EU than it is to the US. Perhaps you ought to follow your won advice and "ask yourselves why they hate you."