New Mars Forums

I agree that we will have to rely on the Iraq people to supply there own law and order but have we forced the issue too fast. Certainly only last week the UK was talking about removing the UK contingent next year. But we cannot do this if we then leave basically what we came to destroy in charge and actively following Saddam and his Baath parties stock in trade.

We need to be able to leave Iraq and say honestly it is a better place now than when we came. At the moment with the insurgency and rising ethnic factional anger, we leave and we will in all likehood have civil war within the space of a few short years.

We are training people fast but in our drive have we in choosing these people just rejected the Black and too keep the white found we have too few and gone for more and more who are really dark grays. This could certainly explain how this torture camp could have come about. Worse is there more than one or are we going to find a large pit filled with the victims who died.

US troops searching for a missing 15 year old Iraqi boy entered a goverment compound. They then forced a locked door and discovered more than 170 Iraqi detainees with most showing Malnourishment and many also with visible evidence of torture having been used against them. There where also a couple of the prisoners who had been paralysed by the damage done to them by torture.

BBC, Iraqi detainees found starving

THis is a major embarassment for the US, It has been described as having happened on there watch. In a recent speech of President Bush "he told the crowd that this new Iraq would be a beacon of democracy and human rights in the middle east"

These detainess where never recorded as being arrested and for such a large "black" organisation to have collected so many and kept them, tortured and likely killed, indicates that the trust the US puts in the new Iraqi security agency is not well placed.

The problem with Solar is that at the moment the efficiency we get from the solar panels we can easily make on Mars is poor, especially with an efficiency quotient of only about 10 to 20% also due to the distance that Mars is from Earth we get a problem that Mars just does not recieve much solar energy. Actually plans to terraform mars always start with how do we increase the sunlight Mars gets. Not to mention Solar does not work in the cold nights and of course is also heavily interfered with by dust storms.

Gravitational really just when is this miracle power source due to appear, we cannot even do fusion yet so dont expect what we can do in 1000 years to be able to help us now.

The latest news is that it was not a fault with the Arianne 5 ECA that caused the recent launch to be scrubbed but that of the actual launch platform/ground station. Still no date or time for a retry.

The Chinese are just doing what the USSR already had done and what the Russians still do they use large ships as floating space command centers. So the USA uses cheaper control centers in what is friendly nations but they are always at the risk of political change causing them to lose this ability.

I suspect that the Moon will always be considered as integral to the Earth in short a big satellite of the planets.

Still by the time you get to build yourself a shiny space tank and a squad of space marines you will find a hundred years has gone past. 

I suspect that there would be no war as the Idea of claiming a whole region is all well and good, as long as you can actually prove your claim and more importantly able to control it.

In short you would need a lot of assets to be able to do so and so claiming a whole region will thankfully not happen for many years. By then I hope a more reasonable means to claim resources and the rights to utilise them is made law.

Helium 3 from the Moon has always been a no goer financially as a reason to go to the Moon. But Helium 3 is a very powerful means to provide power and I hope that technology allows its use sooner rather than later. And it is not the problem with containment that benefits a Helium 3 reactor its the means of getting power from it. Helium 3 reactors draw power directly from the reaction but a Deutrium-Deutrium/Tritium reactor has to have the whole water for heating and the generators and the cooling towers etc. This means a Helium 3 reactor at worst gets at least a 40% efficiency bonus in power utlisation and this can be a lot more.

Most modern plants loose a minimum of 40% of the potential power generated by simple heat waste etc. A helium 3 plant will not have that problem and with the more effective reaction they also gain from that benefit too.

I suspect that when people get to Mars it will not be one just one set of countries or country that manages to make it. This means there will be more than one culture with the different wants and beliefs of the people there. Who is to say that there will be a single political structure on Mars and when it comes down to it Mars is massive there is a lot of room for a lot of such different political units.

We could have a tyranny in the south and a religous state in the North who can really tell. My own belief is that democracy will flourish with communities linked via Mars internet rather than regular visits to each other. This will actually give incentive to interesting political structures rather than bland across the board methods

I know its politics but it is relevant to this thread.

I have to agree with that assesment BWhite. But we must also put it to its logical conclusion. If one of those craters was found its materials will still belong to the whole world assuming the country accepted that provision in the Outer space treaty. But with the $Billions sitting in such a crater I could well see the Outer space treaty simply discarded and as long as that country kept to the other space provisions and treaties there would not be a problem for that country except for the general lack of legal provision for everyone else.

Actually that is my main concern the Outer space treaty does contain a lot of decent general legislation and it provides a sense of protection and guidelines for many of those who plan for space. If this treaty is dropped to allow a country to use mineral mining then many countries will follow suit. Landgrabbing and probable claimjumping are likely to follow as there will be no set authority to protect those interested in space and utilisation of space.

Of course with China being interested in Mineral exploitation then there is at least one political force interested in changing the current Outer space treaty into something more useful.

The principle of Hunting for a Fusion fuel on the Moon is not considered a good idea by the likes of us in the west but you have to look at it from the point of view of the country that wishes to do it in this case China. China needs to double its power output every few years to keep its expanding economy and rapid industrialisation on track. It can do it but it has limited capability to do it by the likes of cleaner hydro, Windpower is just too expensive and does not provide enough power. It has not enough Gas and the price of that commodity is increasing, Oil is needed for fuel and materials not for burning for power. This leaves only Coal and Chinas coal which has plenty of is as coal goes very very dirty.

Nuclear is an option but the whole world is looking at that option so prices for uranium is increasing. Another problem that China has is that it is a country that is actually water poor and this has major concerns for the Future. Water purification and pumping needs a lot of energy and this will have to be supplied.

Now there is the possibility of Helium 3 which as power goes is clean and from the energy it can give fantastically powerful. So China has to look at the future and it sees this fuel possibility so she will do the sensible thing and make sure that when the powerplant that uses Helium 3 comes available and oil is runing out it has another power source available.

The best way to state a claim to territory on the Moon and elsewhere is to be there and using that terrain when someone else comes along.

So what if the USA got there first all they left was a flag and footprints and a large mirror. As long as China does not disturb that area then they can do what they like with the rest of the Moon assuming they ignore the outer space treaty enough to actually start mineral exploitation.

The USA by the way did Not claim the Moon it was not allowed to.

China plans for first manned mission to the Moon to land about 2017 the intention is Mineral and Helium 3 exploitation. Definitly looking to the long term here with the intentions of actually mining.

Reuters News Agency Article