New Mars Forums

Kind of depends on how much money he can make launching rockets for other people, that would be his budget in making this happen. If he can undercut his competitors with that reusable rocket, he could have a nice fat profit margin for a while.

So basically it is a "Nova Rocket" with a nuclear upper stage and perhaps reusable lower stages. Have I got this right? He'll need a larger vehicle assembly building than the one NASA has!

I call it using logic, you argue that Marijuana should be legal because its not as addictive as tobacco, but I listed a number of things that aren't addictive, and people are free to smoke crab grass, maple leaves and dandelions, so why don't they, they are nonaddictive?

If Marijuana wasn't addictive, there would be no reason to grow it. How come people don't grow dandelions to smoke? How come people don't smoke crab grass? How come people don't smoke maple leaves?

The more I learn about Gary Johnson, the less I like him, he smoked Marijuana and he runs a company that sells the stuff! Drug addiction is not freedom!

Why wouldn't you want in-situ propellant production, what are the advantages of not having it? Should we not use solar energy as well?

Probably some Earth bound cities on the coast may have to be abandoned too if global warming people are right, of course with sufficient investment, they could be turned into "Aquapolises." I don't know how inevitable global warming on Earth would be. Seems to me any society capable of terraforming Mars would have no problem averting global warming, that is where I disagree with the Premise of Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars trilogy, yet he wanted to showcase the problem of global warming in his third novel, I just say in a world where Mars is terraformed, global warming would have been solved using some of the same techniques used to terraform Mars, that Soletta, for instance, could just as easily have been used to block sunlight as to magnify it! One phase of the terraforming project called for placing a soletta between Mars and the Sun to magnify the Sun's rays to warm the planet up, if placed between Earth and the Sun it could block some of those rays, more than compensating for greenhouse gases. Such a minor task to save the coastal cities and beaches.

I read every bit of what you wrote, that is why I broke it down and refuted it in detail. I don't agree with you that the Vietnam War was an unworthy cause, I may question the way it was fought, but the cause of liberty and freedom was unimpeachable, and it is too bad we allowed the North to win, because they certainly didn't deserve to, they were the ones that started that war in the first place, South Vietnam didn't start it, they were quite willing to live in peace with the North as a separate country until they attacked! It was a terrible war, and we didn't start it, so its not our fault. Our fault was sending hundreds of thousands of drafted US soldiers there, and then abandoning them because of changes in the political winds of Washington!

 
Much like the United States was during the Civil War.

 
If they had Communism in mind, what good is independence? Lets say you ran a business in South Vietnam, it was very profitable, and some independence movement where Ho Chi Minh gets to take power and run everything, wants to nationalize your business without paying for it, its all your hard work down the drain. Now your business did well under the French, and under the Americans, and suddenly the political winds change in Washington, the the Communist troops are closing in in Saigon, where your business is located, people are fleeing, trying to get into America. The Northern troops come in and nationalize your business, you were counting on that business to support you in your retirement and the Communists stole it! Kind of like that scene in Gone With the Wind when Northern Troops burnt down the plantation house under orders from General Sherman. So you are evicted, and you find yourself on a boat in the Pacific, evicted from your home, your business and your country left with nothing! Would you say if you were in that position that independence has done you a lot of good? I think you might prefer the French or the Americans, or the Republic of South Vietnam over what Ho Chi Minh had in mind for your life saving, all stolen by a bunch of Communist troops that invaded from the North.

Russia started the War on the side of the Germans, when they invaded Poland, the Soviet Union back then was the only Communist nation, and someone who was also a Communist asked for our help? Why would we want to advance the cause of Communism, it is no better than Fascism? the French however were an established Democratic Republic under occupation by the Germans, so we figure if we helped the French regain their freedom, those under the French would also be free. Now the Communists wanted independence for Vietnam, because they would have a country to rule, rather than something that was a part of the French Empire ruled by a democratic government.

So they weren't perfect, I'd say the Obama Administration and Hillary Clinton were corrupt also, does that justify a totalitarian state taking over and nationalizing private property and businesses, all of which they didn't build? They also got to rename the City Saigon to Ho Chi Minh City, that egomaniac didn't build that city, Saigon was its traditional name, why did he get to rename it? Does that sound fair to you? Communism is itself corrupt. If corrupt officials abused their power in South Vietnam, Communism introduced systematic corruption in the government structure itself, no fair elections, a political monopoly for one party, the Vietnamese population doesn't get a say in who rules them! I would say the two are not equal, and South Vietnam was a more fair and just political system that what the Communist North offered.

 
Why were there so many boat people coming out of occupied South Vietnam then, if they liked the Communists so much? If they liked getting their property appropriated by the Communist Government, and if they liked being threatened with death if they complained about it?
So North Vietnam starts a war with South Vietnam, and we reward them by giving them the land they started the war to get, how does that encourage peace in the future? for North Vietnam is was simply: Start a war, and get what you want, you double the size of your country at your neighbor's expense. What does the South get out of this, an unrepresentative dictator that looks like them, instead of a round-eyes French Administration, that is an ally of the United States and thus subject to its pressure on human rights, North Vietnam is not going to listen to us on that score. I don't see the advantage in being dominated by the Communist North instead of by France or the United States, unless "slanted eyes vs. round eyes" is the most important thing for you.

 
And the Communist North did not? Did we appropriate as much private Property in South Vietnam as did the government of North Vietnam? How many people were left poor and destitute because of us as compared to what the Communists did?

 
And North Vietnam was not? The Japanese at least looked more like them, they shouldn't mind the Japanese occupation as much by that logic. The Japanese were brutal, but then so where the North Vietnamese, both had slanted eyes, both were Asians.

 
Well they had "round eyes" too, looking much like Americans as far as they were concerned, why should they like their "round eyes" better than our "round eyes?"

Then why did so many Vietnamese come to America after the War, if they wanted us gone?

 
Extermination is not against Communist values if you look at Cambodia, So you are saying they wanted us gone because they didn't like the way we look? There is another word for that and it begins with the letter 'R'
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When you get your country into a war, and you draft young men, who had other careers in mind, into that war to fight for your country, or so you tell them, you have a responsibility to win the war for their sake and for the sake of the sacrifices you are asking them to make. You should go down to the Vietnam War memorial in Washington DC and look at those 58,000 names there. Those names are the names of the victims of Democratic Party politics where they decided to go to war to whip up patriotic fervor, and then the political winds shifted and they decided to go against the war, and thus undermine the cause we send those young people out to fight for in the first place, and they said to those widows, and parents, and children who lost loved ones in the Vietnam War that they were a bunch of suckers to listening to the Democrats in the first place, tough luck about losing a family member to shifting political winds, had we not gone in their in the first place, many of those people would still be alive, it was because mostly of Kennedy and Johnson that they are not, and what did they make that sacrifice for? Because of the Democrats shifting political calculations, they made that sacrifice for nothing!

 
Just as corrupt as you say the South Vietnamese government was, but at least back then they had elections that meant something. The North Koreans weren't so lucky. Its not Capitalism that matters so much as Democracy, Capitalism is nice, but without Democracy, property rights aren't safe, they are subject to the whims of a dictator, and could be taken away just as fast, and there are no elections that can stop them. Independence, and by the way, South Vietnam lost its independence, is meaningless unless it comes with freedom, otherwise it is just an employment opportunity for a dictator.

And I ask you what good has Cuban Independence done the Cubans, are they happier there now? Why are so many Cubans fleeing their homeland? Cuban independence was a failure if it resulted in Communism, they would have been better off as a US Territory or State. As part of the United States, they would not have been under Fidel Castro, the only thing you could say in his favor is he spoke Spanish!

In the American Civil War, when the South Lost, there was Freedom, can you say the same thing about when the South lost in Vietnam? The North in that country freed no slaves.

The blue circle on this map is where I proposed to site the colony, the red circle is the location you proposed. Your site may have more water, but my site, I think has some more interesting geological features to investigate, and part of the way this colony will pay its bills is through exploration. The Valles Marineris is the biggest canyon system in the Solar System, and to the West are a cluster of shield volcanos, one of which is Olympus Mons, the biggest such mountain in the Solar System, a couple of future tourist attractions I think, and this site is about equidistant from both, and there is Pavonis Mons, located right on the equator to the west.

Well North Vietnam started the Vietnam War by attacking the South. Before there were two separate countries North Vietnam and South Vietnam, and the North attacked the South, started this war where 58,000 of our servicemen and women got killed, and then took South Vietnam for all the damage and destruction they wrought, does that seem just, right and fair to you? We let them win because of action taken by Congress, and because of that millions of Vietnam Citizens in South Vietnam lost their freedom and representative Government. Now the regime of North Vietnam may be Soft Communism rather than the Hard Communism of North Korea, but it still isn't a representative democracy, the South Vietnamese citizens don't enjoy the constitutional protections they did when South Vietnam was a free and independent state. Why do you think there are so many South Vietnamese refugees still living in the United States? Now I'm not questioning your patriotism, I'm just appealing to your reason. Maybe someday, the South in Vietnam will rise again! What do you think about that? If the Northerners like their Communism, they can keep it!

A colony can do a lot of exploring. Exactly what is it you need to know about where to plant the colony?

Where would you put it? I'd put it at 100˚ west and 0˚ North. (on the equator) See the map? This is right between two major land features. Pavonis Mons and Valles Marineris.