New Mars Forums

I can't say if the US acted on its own on Bosnia or with the UN/NATO. But at the end they did get UN/NATO support unlike Iraq now. But this also due that Europeans didn't want to many refugees in their countries. Also Clinton believed if he didn't act other countries may follow with the same Serbian policy.

I have seen this MAD doctern before on the net but I don't know what it is.

I think there is a really small chance that the NK regime will collapse any time soon. As they tend to get all kinds of stuff from the US, SK, Japan and China to shut up and stop nuclear research.And the same time they will be selling WMD (buzzword alarm ) to other countries. Like they are doing now with Iran.  Or just look at Cuba the only reason it may change is the death of Castro and that only if there is no other strong leader to follow him.

Yes Iraq supported anti Isreal terrorisme to some degree. But so do a lot of Arab nations. And hate for the US is not only something that is something of the old Iraq regime. WMD, just look at what Iran is doing now.

No they don't need ICBM's but they do need money and a place to hide.

I believe the US was asked by Europe to help in the Bosnia situation. And there is proof that there was a genocide going on in Bosnia by the serbs.

I don't know why the US wants to go alone to the Moon and Mars. As surely the US, Canada, Europe and some South American countries have the same basic values as the US. Such as free market, human rights, government styles and religion.

It would be a lot smarter to work together with those countries and share the cost and ideas. So that maybe things will happen faster.

Well, in the early days it will be hard to get humans to Mars for several reasons. Radiation, No luxeries, need hard work to get things started etc, etc, etc.

However bases and other constructions need to be build. Who is going to do this? Robots can't as of now. So life sentenced inmates that would just sit and rot in prison should be given a chance to work on Mars doing all sort of pre-colonization work.

To compensate for their hardwork they will earn a nice salary and will be free on Mars.

However in Germany you have the same religion / church taxes. And probably a lot of other European nations.

I care as much as infecting Mars, as Mars microbes would care about infecting the Earth. Remember although we are humans we are just multi-cellular life forms at the end. We are just an advanced form of microbes thats able to travle between planets.

And will have science based disagreements. Like you have now on Earth.

My personal opinion would is that religion and believing in an after-life are different things.

Religions are like a political party and believing in something is like a personal opinion like what is you favorite color, music and other stuff.

There fore I think a religion should be treated like capitalism, communisme, socialism or any other political ideology. But not as bringing God is a bad thing because, that is a personal thing / issue.

If you make a difference between religion(politics) and believing (color/left handed/sexuality) its like asking should we allow gays or hetereos on Mars? Should Mars be only be for left handed people?

I say let religion be out of it for now and allow people to pray and believe. And in the future have religions as political parties. Like now I’m paying taxes for some church in what I don’t even believe in.

I couldn't vote for any of the two. As I'm not scared of non earth life nor with the idea of only earth life.

Of course you can think like what of those aliens would be smart and act like humans did in the past?

But what is scary about being the only life carying planet in the universe? I mean as soon as there are interstelar ships and humans and earth animals settle other planets other then in this solar system you will get diversitation and non Earth solarsystems beings will enventually look and act very different from earth born humans. So the desendends of humans at the end will be the aliens.

Why only send one or two probes at a time to Mars?

Cost you say? But why are they so expensive?

Well I think those probes are so expensive because they are all-in-one probes and big. They have everything on board on one probe. The motto should be:

1. Redundancy in numbers not parts. A probe doesn’t have internal backups but multiple similar tasks probes
2. Specialization. I only do this.
3. Cheap but greater numbers.
4. Smaller but more of them.
5. Smarter.

Why not have specialized probes? One probe should be a scouter and mark interesting objects and go on. Another probe could have special anaylizer that would put that marked object into its to-do list. If that probe is done another with another tool would follow it and do its tricks with the marked object. The specialized probes should come in pairs or more so you can allow one to fail. Ideally you would also have a repair probe. That has tools to take apart a probe and replace an engine or clean a probes solar-cells.

To save money on communication devices and size the probes only come with a low range communication devices and have them communicate with a communication stationary drone or satellite.

For example you would have a scout probe that only has a camera on board. It would scout the area and mark targets. Then a probe with a drill would follow and take a sample of the target. That probe can take multiple samples so a route can be planned to make a rendezvous with an analyzer probe. Which will take all the samples and analyze them. All communications will be done between probes between the communication probe that is contact with a satellite.

However I would recommend that AI’s should be studied more before this is done. My idea would be probes that can act independently and also learn via a network. Like those soccer playing robots.

Humans are also specialized. You have CEO's, musicians, MD doctors, teachers and more professions. You don't have humans (normally) that can do everything. It’s just not efficient.

I agree with REB and want to add the following.

A lot of todays farmland is not natural and we can't go by without them. For instance the hooverdam allowed farming in its states. In the netherlands the "polders" were swamps (like the everglades) that were and still are pumped of all excess water. Also all those dykes arround the world rivers (canalization) make humans safer but stop the natural overflooding of rivers and create with that a biodiverse river side swamps. And you know building cities also destroys that natures habitat. I'm sure you can think of other examples when people stopped natures natural flow for the sake of humans.

I'm not saying that we should be going crazy and make a big concrete and farm planet with no wild nature at all. I'm saying that at this moment of time farms can sustain people it only needs to be devided better. But in the future when population grow and that growth will mostly happen in poor countries that already import a lot of food from the US and Europe. So in future with a bigger Earth population and especially in poor countries there will be a big problem. And then you will have to ask your self. Do I like deserts more then people or if you say that you prefer deserts, then I will have to awnser that those poor nations should have the right to sustain their own food needs.

And about the deserts some were already populated by humans before. The one in China had some old civilization on the silk route that went dead when the water dried up and the silk route wasn't needed anymore.

North Africa used to have forrests during the Roman era however due to population increase and war (destroying of enemies hunting grounds) they dissapeard.

The sahara is also growing due to human influences. People cut trees and or bushes for fire wood, those same plants used to keep the sand at it's place with their roots and keep some moisture in the ground.

Another example is lake Chad in Chad that is shrinking and getting saltier due to bad use of the water and not enough water filling it in again. A big lake in Russia (forgot name) has the same problem.

Conclusion a lot of deserts are dryer and growing due to small scale human influences over the centeries. Pumping water in them would be restoring them to their natural state.

Last thing, I think the deserts in the US don't need to be turned into farms. But you could build towns in them when supplying enough of water (like Las Vegas). I think this as the US produces enough food already as its able to export a lot of it.

I'm for a city-state Mars. And the only central agencies would be the Interpol (crime travels with humans), world court and Earth Mars relations.

People who make part of a certain city-state will decide what kind of government they want, the taxes and anything else that doesn't hurt other city states (such as building a dam in a terraformed mars could hurt another city state)

However there should be some base on understanding regarding pollution, human rights like you have on Earth with the WTO, UN, and Kyoto.

A city-state is a city-state if it has a certain dome size / population. Its territory is only 5 kilometers around its dome. All the other land is public and free for recreational use. However if you want to build a settlement or mine you need permission from all city-states. In this decision each city-state has the same vote. So that a bigger city-state can’t vote for mining by one of it’s businesses.

To cut a long story short basically like ancient Greece or a federation. I don’t need some government seated on the other side of the planet telling me how I must conduct my business. Remember Mars although smaller then Earth is still a whole freaking planet. To have the centralized government would be like the UN ruling the world from New York, which wouldn’t work, would be extremely expensive and very burocratic.

Of the list of huge Earth countries, there is only one that I’m sure of that isn’t a Federation. That country is the USA. Brazil a federation, India I don’t know but it has a lot of problems, China well people can’t decide for them selfs, Russia a federation.

And in India, China and Russia people are fighting or lobbying for more local power. The USA had a big war sometime ago about this issue.