New Mars Forums

It seems you think that since ‘these people’ are used to being ruled forcefully, we need to mimic such roles. This of course undermines the very reason we went there in the first place, remember? We went in precisely because ‘these people; were being ruled forcefully.

Now you're being just as unrealistic as the neo-con post-war planners. There is a timeframe for these things to occur. For all the citing of Germany and Japan done from the Right they miss a crucial point. In both cases, while we did eventually build a free democratic nation, when we first went in we told people what to do with guns in our hands. Only after order was imposed did we start with all the pie-in-the-sky democracy stuff.

In Iraq we may get lucky and it'll work. But we still would have been better served not skipping that impose order phase.

The rhetorical military space program:

This has consisted of speeches and papers by a few Air Force generals advocating the development of various pie-in-the-sky plans, often involving space weaponry. The problem is that most of the programs in rhetorical military space do not abide by the laws of physics, few of them abide by the laws of bureaucratic and international affairs, and none of them abide by the laws of fiscal reality.

Generals have been advocating these kinds of projects since the beginning of the space age, usually from Air Force space outposts in places like Omaha or Cheyenne Mountain or Colorado Springs. But the proposals never survive very long when they reach Washington, DC. A former civilian Air Force Chief Scientist—whose job placed him on the senior uniformed Air Staff at the Pentagon—once remarked that one of his jobs consisted of serving as a reality check for goofy proposals from Air Force Space Command, like using lasers to blow up tanks.

Yeah, next he is going to admit he made all these mistakes, and then renounce God and the Fundamentalist Christian Right. 

My ESP messages to nominate Mike Griffin for NASA Administrator worked well enough.

SO you admit it at long last. You and president Bush are on the same wavelength. It explains so much. It explains why you cant stand his policies they are so similar to your own thoughts.

Also expressing views today was First Lady Laura Bush, who said she hoped her husband would pick a woman. "I would really like him to name another woman," she said on NBC's "Today" show, in an interview from Cape Town, South Africa, where she is traveling. "I admire and respect Sandra Day O'Connor, but I know that my husband will pick somebody who has a lot of integrity and strength."

Key GOP and Democratic members of the Senate met this morning with President Bush for a first discussion of the upcoming nomination of a new Supreme Court justice, with Minority Leader Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) declaring afterward that he was confident that a "consensus" candidate satisfactory to both parties would emerge from the process.

*Now, now Treb...you really don't think it'd be #1?   :;):

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050709/ap_ … ly_4]Italy arrests 142 in anti-terror sweep

Of those arrested, 84 were immigrants and authorities issued 52 expulsion orders

This prompted by the London bombings.

--Cindy

Yes, Stormrage, I'm aware that the Saudis keep the foreigners away, and don't let them in Mecca. That's why I said "Pretend". Saudi Arabia is NOT open and free like a western country; I merely wanted you to imagine it were, and think about what the Saudi reaction would be to a nonassimilating horde of foreigners living there.

What I want and advocate is for humanity to get off this rock, the long and the short of it, and learn to live elsewhere for a variety of reasons... material wealth from scarce atoms available in space, a frontier to restimulate humanity like Bob says, insurance in the event of planetary catastrophy, whatever... But to see that it is done, then we need to be serious about the means required and available to do it, so I like to critique ideas that I believe stray practicality too far, and when insight strikes to inject my own plans & thoughts about practical human space travel. The Moon just so happens to be the best site for material wealth, and Mars the best site for a colony, using exsisting or predicted near-term technologies.

Now, to apply this to Mars, I see a problem. We're looking at colonizing a planet. For various reasons - cost, complexity, travel time - it will be a long time before mass immigration to Mars will be possible. However, the hypothetical Martian colony will basically be starting off with a postindustrial economy, with its implied almost-equilibrium birthrate. How does this thing grow?