New Mars Forums

Actually, the whole "Rods From God/Lawn Darts From Hell" weapon system could probably be most cheaply implemented by mounting them on top of decommissioned ballistic missiles. Just how many secret underground nuclear complexes do you need to destroy? We happen to be taking the nukes of some of those missiles anyways, might as well do something useful with the booster, and people won't get as exercised about "OMG weapons in space!" if it's stay in space is only a few minutes long.

As far as other weapons in space, they're coming, but UCAVs are probably a more cost-effective new option to explore. Robot bombers are good against both the sorts of enemies we're now fighting (long loiter times mean bombs-on-demand for local commanders) and any main event wars that could break out against higher tech foes (cheap unmanned bombers are faster and less expensive to replace).

Actually, bamboo would grow like crazy in a high CO2 'garden dome' and could be useful. It would probably be the only 'wood' commonly available on Mars, though, unless it's possible to genetically engineer trees to use C4 photosynthesis instead of C3 (which would probably make tree farm domes feasible... on a limited basis, and as a luxury good. No wood pulp paper here...)

Roundabouts are one of the few cases of a legitimate use for off-road capabilities - they turn roundabouts into 4-way stops, if you just drive across the grassy circle.

The only roundabout I can think of around here is one on Clearwater Beach, which takes up about an acre of absurdly valuable real estate for no reason other than to confuse the hell out of tourists.

At least its not the newest stupid idea, which is roads without any signals, lines, signs, or clear boundaries between 'street' and 'sidewalk', which was barfed out of the brain of some allegedly brilliant transportation engineer in Europe.

Actually, the Air Force had lots of interesting space programs, and still does, and wants to have more. I believe it's the pilot mentality - most of the people making decisions are/were pilots (whether fighter, bomber, etc..) and flying a spacecraft appeals to them on some primal level. The end result is a lot of enthusiasm and a lot of interesting/innovative ideas - the USAF pushed hard to have the manned space program instead of NASA, and their proposed ideas of how to do it look a lot more like modern EELV's than NASA's, to the point where I think JFK made the wrong call in giving space to NASA.

(ignoring pointless ethical bickering)

I oppose the formation of any sort of galactic government or association. Let humanity drift like dandelion seeds across the galaxy in a wild, unsorted mess - it'll be for the best in the long run.

GM basically made the conscious decision to 'skip a generation' and go straight to hydrogen. They have a hydrogen fuel cell concept car that is produceable at a sellable price, they're just waiting for the fuel pump infrastructure to catch up. Cue Bush's alt-fuel bill from a few years ago, which IIRC wanted at least one hydrogen pump in some percentage of gas stations nationwide and earmarked some funds for it.

I'm curious if there was any connection between the two strategies, and what sorts of campaign contributions greased the wheels, but...

Oh well.

As for the hybrids, their fuel economy is amazingly inflated - to the point where Consumer Reports discovered that they only get 60% of their stated city gas mileage. 60% of the Civic hybrid's city gas mileage is 28.8 mpg, or *worse* than the non-hybrid version of the Civic. They do get lower emissions, but that's it.

As for unions, yes, they are a major component, if not the only reason, why GM is in such troubles. I believe they're why Ford is having trouble, too, but I've not really looked at Ford's problems in as much detail. If I were an American automaker, I'd be looking at trying to destroy the power of the auto unions by almost any means possible, simply because the pension/health packages they're getting are killing auto sales and profits. If GM had sane labor costs, they'd be underselling everyone but the Koreans on price, and their manufactured quality has improved to the point where anyone who tells you that American cars are crap happens to be well out of step with the times (they're about on par with the Asian manufacturers on quality and light years ahead of Europe).

The economic basis for homesteading on Mars is likely to be agricultural, just like 'classical' homesteading on the US frontier, although an interesting idea would be the ressurrection of the idea of the 'tree claim'. During the age of homesteading, the notion had taken root that the flora in an area helped determine the climate and richness of the soil... which is sort of right, but the idea was taken a lot further. Anyways, the US government gave 'extra' parcels of land to anyone who was willing to plant trees on the extra land and participate in a terraforming project of sorts. Whatever Martian colonial regime pops up could do worse than to trade parcels of land for assistance in terraforming activities (releasing greenhouse gases, etc)

Actually, I believe that the idea of homesteads - single family or smaller habitations - spread out on Mars isn't too inconceiveable. The analogy of trapper/adventurer type is the wrong one, there's nothing on Mars which is economically extractable by those means. But farmer-type homesteads would be a cheap way of establishing a workable food base for the colony. Besides, it's not like their intellectual capital is out of touch with the greater colony; this is the age of telepresence, after all, and they can assist remotely with a lot of things, providing software and possibly even services all the way back to Earth. (Nothing says that an accountant working on Mars can't work up your tax returns, right? ) The relevant travel time to Mars will be twenty minutes, not the half a year physical trip.

Oh, again with the Italian journalist bit.

Some bonehead idiot at the government used the "hide" feature in Adobe Acrobat to 'redact' the classified material in the official US government report on the incident. I put the word redact in quotes because you merely need to copy and paste 'hidden' PDF text in order to paste it into a normal text or Word document, which some enterprising foreign journalist did. While it revealed some stuff the US government wouldn't like made public, mostly dealing with troop procedures and such, it also reinforced the US government line that the Italians were speeding and otherwise behaving suspiciously on a road known for suicide bomb cars.

Those words are technically from the Declaration of Independence, and are a bastardization of "life, liberty, and PROPERTY" which, I believe, was the original formulation by Locke.

It probably will be successful - after all, there are enough 747-400's flying the short-haul high-volume routes in eastern Asia. That will be where the money is for the A380, along the eastern Asian seaboard where there is no alternative but bigger planes.

The 7E7 will simply get all the other direct-flight routes, and do especially well in the US and the Americas in general.

Honestly, I expect air travel in general to get hammered by inductive maglevs whenever someone gets around to it. No expensive superconducting magnets, no cramped airliner body, no ability of fanatics to pilot the thing into a building, 400 mph+ speeds. Honestly, I think the only reason they haven't been built is because the idea originated in the US and Amtrak has the business acumen of a smashed egg on the sidewalk - it's taken something like 8 years to go from small-scale test vehicles to full-scale test vehicles, despite the fact that, unlike a normal maglev, you only need to modify, not replace, train tracks (assuming, of course, that all turns on the tracks are gentle enough for a 400 mph train to rocket through).. Of course, there are powerful lobbies in the US to fight this technology - airlines and truckers - so...

Hey, DonPanic, you guys seem to take pride in superfast trains, you want to upgrade the TGV with some US technology and shock the world with long-distance maglev?

I'm sure the UN will be opening dialogues with the frogs to discover their "legitimate political grievances". After all, there are issues, such as high-school dissections, over which the frogs are so angry that they can't help but blow themselves up. The UN will be interested in treating the root causes of frog terrorism, after all.

Well, what *kind* of ecological approach are you going to use? I can think of several 'models' of ecology that could be used:

1) The Purist - This would be an attempt to build as reasonably complete and earth-like an environment as possible, with an eye towards terraforming Mars into an Earth-like state overall, a second "Blue Planet". This would involve a lot of effort in maintaining the initial nursery biospheres in individual habitation units (domes, vaults, whatever).

Pros- variety, overall completeness of the inventory of species protects you if you overlooked the important contributions of some species.

Cons - initial expense and continuing expense of maintaining the nursery ecosystems... that, and if you really want an Earthlike environment that bad, why are you leaving Earth?

2) McWorld - Take the stuff you like and whatever is expedient to close biological cycles, keep it stashed in spare areas and try to keep it alive. Don't bother aiming towards a perfect reproduction of Earth. Import new critters/plants from Earth along with new colonists from time to time.

Pros - less hassle, less planning. Also less likely to bring pest species and unexpected pathogens.

Cons - general lack of biodiversity; Mars will be sort of a bland suburb of Earth's ecological system. Terraformed Mars will be kind of bland.

3) The Hermit Kingdom - You aren't planning on terraforming, and instead are going to just bring species of direct use to the colony for food, industrial, and pet uses.

Pros - Keeping Mars red ensures an alien feel to the world. The fact that everything will essentially be grown in controlled enclosures allows for very specific, specialized strains of plants to be grown. The world will be less appealing to colonists.

Cons - You need those specialized plants because croplands will always be limited. The world will be less appealing to colonists (I listed it twice because whether this is a fault or not depends on the person). Probably more psycologically stressful, and likely to breed religious fanaticism (no one expects the Martian Inquisition).

4) The Microsoft Ecology - Bring over a short term mix of stuff to grow in domes along with biotech equipment and trained personell. Terraform and fill the niches you don't have by adapting and hybridizing the species you do have to patch up the holes in your ecosystem.

Pros - Creates a nicely unique world and ecosystem, saves on time and effort in the initial stages and shifts it to later when you presumably have more time and people to throw at such problems. May create useful export goods ("Giant Martian Grazing Rats! The perfect pet for your family!") which could return profits under biological patent laws.

Cons - Generally speaking people have a low reliability with designing 'bug-free' complex systems; the ecosystem will probably be insanely unstable for a century or so and thus require extensive 'repair'.

Personally, I lean towards the last two options... when making a new world, make it new, IMHO, not Earth Version 2.0