New Mars Forums

We are all under false hope if we think that if we save the yearly budget over a period of time that we can do anything.

But the facts of the past have been that as each year were to go by that the congress would cut the budgets of nasa as for it would be seeing nothing has come from the money given there reaction would be to continue lowering it as each year progressed until we have no space programs at all.

So we can not wait to accumilate the funds before investing them into designing of what we need for the moon or mars or for that fact into colonization of space.

And you put your finger on the problem and in a nutshell. So we need either a short range goal that congress can see the accomplishment of the NASA projects or we need a new mission goal of what we want to do in space and then go after it. Within the budget we got, that would leave Mars out and even going back to the moon might be a problem. Then we need to start peddling the idea that we need the Helium 3 as a replacement power source for oil to push new moon mission to the moon.

Larry,

Concerning Cobra's avatar, flamboyantly wrapped in the red, white and blue. . .

Some folks are more expressive of their pride and love.

Not speaking for Cobra here...just responding.

Some folks just mock everything, even if we do have pride and love for it. 

America has a great many things to be insecure about when you get down to it. At present we have a mythology that doesn't jive with our reality. Americans are supposed to be industrious, self-reliant and independent people, hard work will bring success and wealth and you're free to live as you see fit.

The modern nation-state dates more or less from the Peace at Westphalia, as I recall. I do not believe the contemporary nation-state is the proper entity to undertake space settlement.

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Subgroups of humanity formed around religion or culture might pay lip service to being multi-national and inclusive of all nations on Earth with the demographic reality being very different.

There has been more to nationhood than just the westphalian peace treaty. What westphalian did was to really acknowledge the status quo. The holy Roman Empire still remained a country dominated by local princes and this did lead to its dissolvement simply as it had no real power central power. And that 30 years war for all its horror was a manipulated war with almost all other European powers playing and manipulating events, The tensions where there before its just the other countries used what is Germany to play it out.

What really described modern states is the loss of power of the local lords to a drive to a more centralised power and an eventual lead to democracy from monarchism and an enfranchisement of the populace.

And the main players in the thirty year wars where countries we can easily recognise in existence now, this was correct before the War and afterwards.

But for that to happen Bill it would require a population on Mars counted in the minimum of millions. For that to happen a nation would need a really tremendous space transportation system a decent amount of space knowledge and a lot of political and financial will. It also would likely not be alone on the planet.

Still for a country to deny a whole planet to other nations it would need to be in control of a real majority of that planet. And it would have to be a very large majority too. Still there is the ability to control certain areas of the solar system that give a form of bottleneck situation and a real benefit to the nation that controls it.

But I really do not believe that any country will have the power to control Mars and to actually completely dominate space to that degree.

I actually beliewe this latest idea by Sr. Mean-ey as rather interesting. You see, when someone has bought up a great portion of land of Mars from the people, he will have added incentive to promote space travelling technology and terraforming and exoterestrial colonisation technology to get some returns for his initial investment. Most likely someone that is allready in that genre will start buying up shares of Mars to get better and save revenues for his inital investment in space faring technology.

But space faring investment depends hugely on one thing, continuing growth of human, but that has in fact gone into recess in way to many countries, due to social engineering of feminism and socialdemocratism. We need more resources, and the human resource is the ultimate resource, the best investment of them all. Growing population will need more land, so the worth of property on Mars will grow, thus creating incentives for initial investment in Martian settlement. The Earth can supply enough of people for us to grow much more than we are today, but we should not just be fixeted on the Earth, we have also the Moon, Mars, hopefully Venus one day and even beyond.

'Tis a pity I will not likely survive to watch the real fireworks many, many decades from now as humans dispute who owns what, out there. But its going to make a great and tragic story.

If history is any guide, the humans who dispute who owns what out there, the price will be paid by those who live down here.

Sounds like Bill is speaking for the Liberation Front of Martain Exiles Free People CommonWealth. We hate them, they are traitors, swine!

BWhite mentions the use of tethers to impart momentum to taxis. I've played around with cycler mass-drivers to help send the taxis on their way. Either of these would change the cycler's momentum and make course correction necessary as White notes.

Ion engines may be a good way to do this. The continuous thrust trajectories are not the conics I've become accustomed to, so, sorry, I can't do the math on those.

One thing that worries me about Aldrin's Cyclers is the abort mode for the Taxi's if they miss their redevous.  Most designs I have seen call for dispisable high energy chemical stages to reach the necessary delta-V to catchup up to the cycler.  But what if for some reason they miss, it's not exactly an easy operation by any means.  The taxi may lack the means to return their crew to Earth or even Earth orbit.

It's even scarier for the Mars taxi trip. The Aldrin path is almost 90 degrees to the Martian path. The delta vee between Mars and castle is 12 km/sec. So if you don't make it to Mars, you're up the creek with no paddle. This is my major objection to the Aldrin cyclers. Other cyclers have much nicer delta vees.

If there is no colonization, there is no need for a manned space program.

Untrue, space has atoms that we need on Earth that aren't available anywhere on this planet in sufficent quantity. And yes, there is the good ol' zero-g manufacturing thing.