New Mars Forums

From reading some of Howard Scott's ideas, who first coined and defended the idea of Technocracy, he hated the whole idea of money as he believed it was a bad allocator of resources (he thought resources should have been distributed based on more objective factors like energy production, etc.)  A lot of his ideas were and still are way ahead of their time and won't be seen unless molecular nanotechnology and artificial intelligence make everything truly abundant and human labor as good as obsolete.  I believe, if technology continues to evolve at exponential rates, we will gradually evolve into a Howard Scott style technocracy.  Scott though seemed a bit naive on his "political-less" society.  Humans and politics will always co-exist.

The California Institute of Technology is one of the best schools for that.  They run JPL and are located in an area known for it's aerospace industry. Here's their Lab for Spacecraft and Mission Design page.

Good point.  Everybody just assume that "winged" means "lifting body."

Which of these design options do you favor the most?  I think the capsule would be the simplest and therefore most economical design.

What happens though if Mercury misses Venus?  Would we suddenly have a giant comet flying around in the inner Solar System threatening to slam into Earth?  I've heard of ways to move a planet over a very long timescale using massive asteroids to loop around the target planet occassionally but I'm not sure you could get the process precise enough to get Mercury to slam into Venus.   

I think a better way to prep Venus for terraforming would be to put a small version of Clark's sun shutter around it to reduce the sunlight and temperature.  It would take awhile for sure but so would moving Mercury into a position to collide with Venus.

What if Lowell had been right about the Martian canals, that they were signs of a dying civilization desperately extracting every last drop of water?  Would it be ethical for Earth to assist them in anyway it could to save them from extinction or it would it be more wise to follow some kind of "prime directive" and not help prevent their demise?  I'm hypothetically assuming that since we can get to Mars but they can't get to our planet, Earthlings would have a technological superiority that could aid Mars (maybe we could send giant tankers full of water, recycling/reclamation equipment, or whatever.) 

One danger I can think of is that sending them more advanced technology may enable them to eventually mount a hostile act toward Earth.  They might threaten to send an armada of tankers filled with regolith into NYC if we don't send them X,Y,Z.  Technology transfer sometimes has unintended consequences.  But I'd give the benefit of the doubt and send the help.  Prime Directive be damned.   

Solar panels may have their negatives but do we really want nuclear reactors orbiting the Earth?  I can live with sending a nuclear reactor to another planet but I'm not sure I want one that could inadvertently re-enter the Earth's atmosphere and spread contamination.

Supposedly it could launch payloads for a $100kg.  Just imagine the possibilities of amateurs designing and launching their own space probes to go to places like Venus.  At those types of prices I might try to send my own doomed robot to the surface of Venus since nobody else seems willing to do it.    I imagine you could piggy back your cargo on the back of somebody else's.  And Shaun, thanks for that wonderful image of being cut in half with a string of carbon nanotubes.  I've read a lot of articles on nanotubes but never have I come across a sick thing like that.  :laugh:

Any relation to Shaun Barrett?    Like you, I've pretty much resigned myself to the reality that NASA shows its worst colors when engaging in human spaceflight.  NASA's robotic missions though are a whole different story.  NASA shines in that department.  It could live up to its credo of "exploring the way only NASA can" if it put less emphasis on sending people into space and more on developing big robotic missions.  I'd prefer a giant, well equipped Mars rover or robotic sample return mission any day over another shuttle launch or new ISS modules.

The evidence Gaians usually cite is how the various natural feedback loops of the planet maintain the environmental qualities needed for life.  For instance I've read some Gaians who cite how life has kept the biosphere at average temperatures through the eons even though the sun has grown much brighter over the lifespan of Earth.  The more 'theocratic' style Gaians maintain that humans should remain bound to the Earth because we depend on Earth's photosynthetic systems which is somehow construed as evidence that Earth brought us about to be its sentience and therefore we'd be something akin to traitors if we leave it.  I don't really understand the latter very well, it strikes me as a stretch of an argument.

To those of have read The Case For Mars did you also find it offensive how Zubrin kept glorifying the American expansion across the West without any mention of the hardships frontierism inflicted on indigenous peoples as though they didn't exist in the first place?  It was particularly disturbing how he chided European governments for not seeing the "economic benefits" of colonizing the New World earlier than they did (p. 219).  Whenever I read through these parts of the book I gave Zubrin the benefit of the doubt and just assumed he hadn't really considered the environmental and genocidal tragedies these settlers actually caused.   Below is an excerpt from the book that I think typifies Zubrin's attitude:

Thus Zubrin, whether he realizes it or not, is basically saying humanity must keep conquering new territory if it wants to maintain 'progress', that new frontiers in the universe must be found and exploited for the glory of science and humanism.  I didn't believe that Zubrin realized how parasitic this would make humanity until I found out he was the only person at a recent exo-biology conference that actually defended the colonization of Mars regardless of whether life exists there or not.  Here's what he said:

source

And thus Zubrin immorally states that life elsewhere is irrelevant if it stands in the way of our "progress." I think it is time for Mars Society members to call into question Zubrin's moral qualifications for being the MS leader and to re-establish the Mars Society as an agency for the peaceful exploration of Mars as opposed to one that advocates brutally conquering and colonizing Mars despite any native life that may live there.  And I'll admit that at one time I didn't think that microbial Mars life was much of a moral issue either but have since changed my mind.

Here's a good article on space environmentalism: 

Astroenvironmentalism: The Case for Space Exploration As An Environmental Issue

Actually of all the ideas of heard for moving an asteroid I think that laser idea is the best one.  Maybe putting mirrors on an asteroids surface that would act to heat it up and change its reflectiveness could work.