New Mars Forums

Wow, I wonder whether Robert Zimmermann reads the New Mars Forum? Felt as if I recognized elements from my posts down to the very sentences.
:laugh:

On the other hand, his are only the natural conclusions.

SpaceNut, in situ resource utilization has been a cornerstone of the Mars Direct plans from day one. The Sabatier reaction for example has featured prominently in Zubrin's writings all along.
I naturally counted on it when writing my message. Interesting article though.

I believe the discussion is too much either or. Either it's nothing but science robots until Mars has been fully terraformed (which will take a thousand years) or it's 50,000 permanent settlers before the end of the century.

I would rather suggest a gradual, organical transition. Initially, no one will go to Mars (and much less anyplace else) to take up permanent settlement and have babies. The Solar System is not and never will be the New World. What could happen are people signing on for 5 or 7 year contracts to work on Mars. In exchange they will receive numerous benefits for the rest of their lives which they supposedly would spend on Earth. Think of it as a sort of professional military service (but for loftier goals).

What will set off Martian settlement will be spontaneous responses to economical needs, and in that sense it's really just an organic continuation of the in situ resource utilization used by the early science and mining operations. This of course presupposes an environment which offer several potentials for indigenous production, like Mars does and the Moon does not (the latter most likely to forever remain more of an oil rig than a community, provided there is anything to mine practically at all).

At first, almost everything will be shipped from Earth, that's only rational, but it's equally rational to switch to indigenous production of as much as possible as soon as means become available and demands appear. Agriculture, livestock and fishponds will in turn create demand for bricks, plastics, glass and steel. Suddenly, you not only have an agricultural sector, but a metals, ceramics and petro-chemical industry as well, which unlike the export sector is entirely directed towards "homemarket" consumption.

New niches will prompt the need for more people and will create incentives for people to stay longer and perhaps eventually even to bring up children on Mars. As long as the right to return to Earth is guaranteed and rewards are affluent, recruitment will not be a problem. If you do it right, in other words, tying it to governmental regulation, Mars service will be seen as possibilty, not a predicament. More people will in turn create needs for more construction material, various forms of manufacture, maintainance services, communications, improved living conditions, entertainment, you name it.

This is physical economy, the only real economy worth paying attention to, i.e the links that tie different sectors together and give rise to and possibilities for new sectors to expand. That is what eventually will turn a semi-permanent presence into a permanent settlement, but it will happen only at a pace and scale that correspond to actual needs, i.e organically. It will never happen because someone wants to send 10,000 people somewhere in a colony ship in order to test his latest idea of the "auto manufactured" city.

There was nothing short sighted about Germany not funding rocket research in an all out fashion. They simply had no substantial interest for such a thing. The Luftwaffe was primarily centered on army ground support and would have found little use for a primarily strategic weapon such as a large scale rocket. Only the Allies (predominantly Britain) were preparing for large scale strategic bombing campaigns during the interwar era, and could thus have had the incentive to develop intercontinental ballistic missiles, although they did not, betting on the strategic bomber instead.

Rocket research originally carved out a niche in Germany because the Versailles treaty had forbidden development of artillery systems. What happened was that later on von Braun managed to sell the A4 Project to Hitler and Speer during the war. Speer tells about in his memoirs, describing von Braun as a man who was good at convincing. The context was one of retaliation and the desperate need to counter the Allied air offensive which was bombing German cities to bits day and night. Hence the labels V1 and V2, for "Vergeltung" (=retaliation) which Hitler came up with.

Smearney, to think it's bad in some way because it was "NAZI" is not understanding anything about the circumstances. The way the Germans saw it, those who were opposed to peace were basically to be found in the Allied camp. von Braun naturally did what he could to serve and defend his country, which he had every right to do besides being his duty, although he might much rather have wanted to design spacerockets under peaceful conditions instead. There is even a famous contemporary von Braun quote to this effect. As far as NASA is concerned, I think it's rather surprisingly open and honest about the German importance for its spaceprogram, actually, including the horrible conditions related to the Mittelwerk-Dora slave labour camp.

In the end, the V-rockets were of course nothing but a huge waste of resources. The Amerikabomber largelly falls into the same weird category, the difference being that it was even more pointless and never recieved any notable backing, basically because it was nothing the Luftwaffe or the war effort needed or wanted.

You seriously can't believe this crap yourself. You're much too smart, Cobra. Missing troop movements preceeding the Ardennes offensive, that's bad intelligence. Inventing mobile WMD launch sites in order to explain their obvious illusiveness is not bad intelligence, that's hoaxery, pure and simple. I never believed for a second that Iraq was a threat in any way and I was right.

Why? Maybe Hussein shipped the last can of mustard gas off to Nigeria? Who cares?

That's not the issue here. The point is that the public is kept in the dark regarding the real reasons why all this is going on, whether altruistic or not. I believe a people has the right to know why they are fighting. If it's a purely amoral case of "you've got what we want" and everyone's in on it, then fine.

You still seem reluctant to think in terms of the possibility of dog wagging.

It would have made quite a lot of sense if bin Laden wasn't guilty of 9/11 and perfect sense for the Taliban all along. I used to marvel at their immense stupidity when not extraditing Osama, or did I smell a rat already at that point? Extradition to Pakistan would in any case practically mean further extradition to and standing trial in the United States.
???

But sense and sense, it didn't make one bit of sense for bin Laden to condemn the 9/11 attacks and claim his innocence either, which he repeatedly did to begin with. Wasn't this guy supposed to be a terrorist?
???

My bullshit detector is perhaps more unbiased than yours. If the regime lied about the need to invade Iraq - meaning we don't know to this day precisely why the US are in Iraq - they could just as easily have lied about Afghanistan.

That would all depend, I guess, on whether the blood spilling is really done with your best interest in mind or someone else's.

Good commenting regarding the Japanese, Europeans and guilt. Indeed, one wonders why politicians aren't smart enough to do just that, acknowledge ancient misdeeds without taking personal responsibility and move on.

Not that I'm sure the thread needs my reply. The most coherent feature of the face is actually the 'foundation'. As such the slopes of the foundation look exactly the same as several other mesas in the region. Consequently, the face is a mountain.

Just my two pennies.

Uh-ho.
Let's just say I'm a proponent of legal equality.

And in my book that would mean they are not really leftists anymore, but everyone is free to label himself the way he feels fit, I suppose.

Indeed. Well, the eternal question of practical philosophy, I guess.

It isn't. The US could do this on their own if they wanted to. The day they get their tumbs out of their asses, more power to them.
European nations must possibly co-operate to pull it off, but I have no problems with that, because basically we share more than divide us. It's just a matter of centralizing an autonomous executive, and if Norway for some reason refuses to share in the glory, well, I won't force them to contribute.

Ever heard of the social contract? Yep, that's the reason why. The state offers protection. As individuals, we are not responsible for anything. Responsibilities are the consequences of other people.

Frankly, I don't care a penny either for your "human rights" or so-called "democracy". I care for the civil rights of my citizens and wise government. Besides, I want my own European eagles painted on the spaceship fuselage, not the tasteless symbol of some global democratic tyranny, thank you.

Why would you suggest this? Rape has a long history in natural biological evolution. Big apes do it all the time, and big apes among humans do it as well. It's not a sign of illness, it's a sign of strength, the acting out of a primitive mind, power being abused in a voluntarily manner against the defenceless because the perpetrator is able to. It's an act of the will. It's natural.

Punishment should be metered out to serve two functions, settling the scales (as Cobra puts it), you can call this revenge or restoration of honour if you like, and as a cleansing of the social body. On a deeper level, these two are actually intertwined. In the end, civilisation is nothing but power used to protect the community against power used to destroy it. Believing it could try for "rehabilitation" on the other hand is pure hubris, in my opinion (which coincidentally might well be suspected of hiding a sociopathic disregard for the victim - I have come to believe this in fact is a typical trait of the left. They always side with the predator).

As for the soul of the criminal, I can only leave that to the Allmighty. Our responsibility is (or rather should be) to the victim. That this isn't so in our western legal systems is simply a disgrace.

P.S: Some sort of abortion must be allowed in any case. I wouldn't want to force a woman to bear the child of a rapist.

Whatever it is, we'll just have to make sure it won't be a minus. And I don't believe it will.

*Low pitched mumbling*: Now, if we just could get the into some bilateral partnership with the Russians, we could help funding a recommittment to that monster Vulcan rocket they were working on in the 70's... and we could setup a Euro-Russian Mars Direct program, hmm...

http://k26.com/buran/Info/Hercules/vulk … ulkan.html

Nice, although it's mostly just a formal procedure.