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I'll admit that E.T. civilization's will probably be self-engineered but only to a degree. The only way a thing can be living is if it is uncontrolled.
I'd like to further add that Zubrin doesn't seem to know about the latest understanding's of life because he thinks molecular nanotechnological machines are life.
Consider this Mr Zubrin, you even point out the only reason exponential growth hasn't collapsed civilization under its own weight is technological development; in other words, humanity has made an irreversible move towards technological development. This can only move towards molecular nanotechnology and space colonization. Try as some may to stop it and make civilization stagnate, they cannot.
Consider each and every president. They all go in with their ideals, but they can never implement them because industrialism is bigger than they are. They try to cut taxes, they try to cut technology programs, but inevitably, they have to implement them.
Zubrin worries america and civilization is becoming stagnant. Maybe they are to a degree, but I think Jacob Bronowski in his book "Science, Magic, and Civilization" is essentially correct. Human society has made an irreverseble move towards a technological future. The space program was probably stopped dead on its tracks on purpose as Zubrin was trying to show in his first chapter of "Entering Space". But, they cannot stop it forever. The establishment of space orbiting communications and military satellites by many countries has forever forced future space development, even if it is a slow process. I believe the reason world war three hasn't happened is because of industrialism. Today in my view, industrialism is bigger than any one nation. As soon as a government tries to do something to stop industrialism, industrialism's invisible hand steps in to stop it. It is like a negative feedback loop. In previous centuries and cultures, governments have been able to start a war just on religious reasoning alone. Today, governments in the middle east have tried to rally a war against the west and hence a war against industrialism by religious reasonings. But, none of it has materialized. Why? Because the rest of the countries are industrialists. Why are the terrorists being destroyed? Why don't the religious countries side with the terrorists about the power hungry america? Becuase of the creature comforts of industrialism.
Try as environmentalists, and other people may, but technology is going to move forward irreversibly. Now, china is thinking seriously about space development, and I think hint's are that they've taken to Zubrin's mars program. They plan on making a heavy lift rocket plus a manned program. It's a short step from there to mars under Zubrin's ideas. The space race is about the commence.
Personally, I'd like to have some martian's permanently established before molecular nanotechnology arives and the fighting over that that will come about. Having a mars colony could make twichy people hesitant to push the button. Molecular nanotechnologies will be daimondoid, and the only way to stop somebody from having it is to nuke them.
It looks like another space race could be heating up. China is looking to start a manned space program. Lot's of people were excited to here china might try to establish a moon base by 2010, only for some china officials to come out and say the moon was not quite what they have in mind anymore. Something telling me the same people that convinced their leaders space is the way to go found Zubrin's books, so now china is quietly going to mars?!
Zubrin argues on page 303 of his softback edition "Case for Mars", that exponential growth won't destroy the environment and take up a finite amount of resources. He then point's out the reason why such malthusian predictions have come up short which are correct. However, unless you want to live in a world where everybody is first locked into position like a quantum dot, just an earth of humans all lined up in standing position with a tube going up there wahzhoo feeding them entertainment and food, and then secondly, see those people shrunk down to some calculated ideal height to maximize the amount of people that can theoretically be lined up and living on the earth at one time, and then thirdly, to start up the whole process again underground and then start building up stories and stories of such rows of people till the earth is one big ball of 'rows of ideal sized humans' in the worst example the orwellian nightmare, then I think exponential growth can not only sap the resources of the earth, but the solar system as well. As Eric Drexler pointed out in his book, "Engines of Creation, exponential growth can also swamp a growing resource base.
Nope, you have to institute some growth standards, or growth standards will insitute itself in the form or wars, and/or societal collapse.
All anyone can do here is say what they'd like to see happen politically on mars, so here goes my stab at it.
Zubrin's ideas are safe and dandy, which is an o.k. thing to do, and most of those principles have worked out for the better, but I'd like to introduce a few more things.
First thing is the mars society is about expanding humanities presence in the universe, and securing its future by doing so. A principle of our should be that humanity like life is about surviving. Humanity is a technological version of life; in other words, it secures its survival by technology and knowledge. The following principles follow. What physical conditions exist? What is our physical conditions? What do we need to do to secure our future?
Money is not needed. The cost of something is really the amount of material and energy needed to make something happen. We should just know what our current condition is, both our own physical condition and the outside environment condition, know that we are trying to survive, and calculate, engineer our way to the future securities.
Another principle. I think to much has been made about voting. Voting is o.k. when you have a choice, but a leader should be somebody competent. We shouldn't be voting between the competent and the incompetent. Untill there's a situation where we have two or more competent people to chose from, voting doesn't need to exist. We should be able to just follow the above principles. When new conditions come about, new knowledge is revealed, who was competent may not be anymore; those are the times when power should shift. The only thing those put in power are allowed to do is to make the decision to go through with the ideas calculated to ensure our survival. Any political manuevering for or against some individual(s), for personal reason's not involving our future survival are allowed to be made by those in power. They shouldn't get to be our parents deciding what we get to clothes we chose or whatever else.
Zubrin in his "Entering Space", tries to write off molecular nanotechnology by arguing that if it were possible, we'd see alien molecular nanotechnology by now.
He clearly doesn't understand the improbability of intelligent species as oppossed to mere bacteria. Intelligent species needs lot's of time to develop. He seems to be totally ignorant of the latest understanding's about life - stable non-equilibrium structure's, autopoiesis theory, hypercycles, and Stuwart Kauffman's complexity theory.
He thinks just because astronomers have found supergiants within the orbit's of earth no less, that those supergiants will harbor intelligent life. All in the meanwhile, he writes about how jupiters radiation belts makes intelligent life settlements impractical(for the initial stages).
Personally, I find his mars hypothesis to be a further blow to the idea of advance extraterrestrial intelligences getting very far. Not only is a moon necessary and very improbably, but a mars is to! Imagine another solar system that just happens to have an earth moon system, which is an astonomical improbability in itself as explained in the rare earth book, but that system just happens to not have a mars! Then, that E.T. society is stucker than stuck! No alien Zubrin to save that species from the puzzle of how to establish themselves on their moon that is impractical to permanently settle themselves out in space. Then again, maybe somehow, they'll get their politicians fund the moon colony for 500 billion dollars per year.
No, I think the real reason why we don't see E.T. technological life is because of the rare earth hypothesis, and even some more in the form of my social self-destruction hypothesis(it's been said a thousand times before, just most people don't understand how it can happen; i recommend Alvin Tofflers works).
It seems the real bottleneck is politicians and a public educated to think mars and space colonization is impossible. I don't know how to reach the few voters of this nation which Zubrin shows to actually be interested in space activities, but to get all the politicians on the same page, we need to organize all the space activists we can(the planetary society, nss, and so on) to write the various capital hill people pretty close to the same time, with roughly the same understanding of what needs to be done(get some of our aerospace industries to make the rockets we know they can, and fund the mars mission). All I can think of is getting Zubrin to convince those other space activist groups to reach out through their mags, e-mail lists or whatever, and get their followers to write their congressmen all at the same time.
The first thing that needs to happen there is for those space activist groups to publish an article or two outlining Zubrin's ideas. Get a vote(and hence an idea of how many of their followers understand and support Zubrin's ideas), and then if the vote is well in the majority of supporting Zubrin's ideas, then follow up with an front page editorial saying, WRITE YOUR CONGRESSMEN NOW!
I agree with just about everything Zubrin say's about space colonization except about terraforming mars. I have no problem with it on a technical level, I just really see no reason to terraform mars. I see nothing from him about a good reason why we should except some vagure philosophical talk. I think the next immediate goal for martians after becoming permanently settled is to build O'Neille colonies. Zubrin is correct about them being impractical to build from earth, but he say's nothing about doing so from mars. O'Neille colonies should be the next focus because they have advantages of mobility. One of the main reason's humanity should establish itself in more than one world is because of asteroid impacts. By having humanity on more than one world, it increases the chances of humanity surviving an impact. If an asteroid hit's one world, humanity is on another world. Even with humanity on mars and earth, we should build O'Neille colonies because they are smaller target's for asteroids to hit, and are more manueverable. Mar's is actually less same from asteroids than earth with it's 1) closer proximity to the asteroid belt, and 2) less atmosphere. The thinner atmosphere actually allows smaller pieces of space rock to be more dangerous. Earth's atmosphere protects us from most of those smaller space rocks. Mar's atmosphere makes them dangerous once more.
Terraforming mars may increase mars atmosphere and hence reduce the danger from smaller space rocks, but that takes away some of the advantages of being on mars: namelly, the moon advantages, less atmosphere means less arrowdynamics to worry about. Mar's combines the advantages of being on earth(resourses), with the moon(a perfect lauching site to the rest of the solar system).
Zubrin argues terraforming mars is our human duty; i'd say building an O'Neille colony is our destiny. Humanity is the technological animal. It looks to control every aspect of itself and the environment to ensure its survival. O'Neille colonies are the greatest reflection of that aspect of humanity.