New Mars Forums

I have to qualify my often hostile comments about environmentalism. I support clean air and water legislation, and favor harsh punishments for corporate executives and their underlings who seek to illegally dispose of their companies' hazardous waste. I guess for the reasons you've just stated, I have felt alienated from the mainstream environmental movement for a while.

I should know. I always pick through the building at the local dump where people leave things they don't want, but are still in decent condition. I've found several perfectly good bookcases that way!

They don't match, but I'm a man...so those things don't matter to me, anyway. My wife says that I sometimes leave the landfill with more trash than I entered with. LOL

Shaun, I don't believe that it would be difficult to establish a balance of trade between Martians and denizens of the outer solar system. Colonists on worlds near Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune could (hypothetically, anyway) export Helium-3 and volatile-rich comets (for terraforming) to Mars.

Maybe the Martians could build an empire of their own by establishing settlements out there, to supply a need for the outer solar system's virtually unlimited natural resources.

My most compelling reason to support the colonization of Mars is that people like NovaMarsollia seem to have an almost religious belief in the unworthiness of human civilization to exist on Mars...or anywhere else. "Apologize" to the non-human living things which perish to sustain your own life? You're nuts.

Repeat after me. Life on Mars, IF IT EXISTS, is simply life. Like the bacteria in your feces, or the fleas that bite you. Mars is not Heaven, nor is it the Garden Of Eden. It is simply a place.

I want to see humanity establish a new branch of civilization there, like my ancestors who landed in New England centuries ago from Germany and Britain. The motto of my home state of Connecticut is, "Qui Transtulit Sustinet"...That Which Is Transplanted, Is Sustained.

My "dirty American footprints", indeed.

Here's a news flash, NovaMarsollia. The "techno-imperialists" who share my dream will someday leave you and your Luddite confederates behind. Then you'll be free to force the Terrans to adopt your "Eco-friendly" proposals at gunpoint. It's what you people secretly want, anyway...even if you don't have the guts to say it.

My apologies for the mild sarcasm. I just believe that the scientific value gleaned from studying an eternally Red Mars pales in comparison to the benefits which could be enjoyed by the billions of citizens a partially terraformed world could support.

Geology IS important. But to me, studying rocks is only a means to an end. At the point which preserving Martian geological strata becomes more important than improving economic opportunity for the ordinary citizens of Mars, it really does become "playing with rocks".

But I have to agree with the preceding poster. Any idea of settling the outer solar system is probably a long way off.

I agree. I abhor the wanton destruction of the natural environment, or anything else. But a balance must be struck between the needs of an advanced technological civilization, and the needs of the ecosystem which sustains its denizens. I simply disagree with the more extremist elements of the environmental movement, who seem to value plants and animals more highly than people. The fascist undertones, combined with the misanthropic sentiments voiced by some of its rank and file, are big turn-offs to me.

I support the use of artificial gravity as well. I think Zubrin's idea of using the spent rocket booster as a counterweight was a good one.

As much as the occasionally Luddite opinions of radical environmentalists annoy me, I have grave reservations about using Orion-class propulsion systems anywhere this side of the Asteroid Belt. The electromagnetic pulse would surely wreck havoc on satellite constellations. The EM pulses would also cause temporary damage to the ozone layer, just as gamma ray bursts (GRBs) from distant galaxies do (but worse). As I understand it, 'pure' (nuclear fallout-free) fission bomblets are physically impossible to make. There will always be other, 'side' reactions that generate neutrons.

I totally support the use of other nuclear power and propulsion systems, though. Most people who are adamantly opposed to any use of nuclear power tend to rely on irrational arguments...nuclear energy is like black magic to them, and we're on the side of the mages.

Maybe you guys could just lease part of Christmas Island from the Australians. I hear the Russians are building a spaceport there. If members of the Earth Liberation Front chain themselves to the rocket, please give them the middle finger for me...right before you press the big red 'LAUNCH' button.     

I don't believe that NMD is a misguided program at all. Perhaps you never saw the photos of Russian Navy wives hanging laundry off the conning towers of nuclear submarines. They and their families were living out of the submarines, because housing conditions were so bad. There is a very real issue with the security of the world's nuclear arsenals. Sure, terrorists could try to smuggle the parts of nuclear warhead into the USA...but a nation-state wouldn't attempt it because of the catastrophic consequences if the plan is discovered before completion. And nuclear materials are not as easy to carry around as some people seem to think. Terrorists could just as easily hijack some nuclear weapon delivery system. And what would America do if New York becomes a smoking pile of radioactive ash? People would be screaming 'genocide' if we nuked the country of origin. Millions of innocent civilians would obviously die.

That's not even considering the possibility of accidental launch, as nearly happened in 1995, when Russian Strategic Rocket Forces officers loaded a training program into the early warning computers and inadvertently neglected to tell anyone else. Yeltsin had authorized a nuclear strike against America...and the whole world came within 15 minutes of nuclear Holocaust before the mistake was identified.

No one should be forced to die of starvation (or thirst, radiation sickness, et cetera) on an alien planet. Grim though the possibility might be, I'd hope they discreetly take the pills along.

Shaun, you once said that you often agree with my posts.

Allow me to return the favor and tell you honestly that I often agree with yours. 

I think NASA might be trying to over-engineer MD in an attempt to 'improve' safety, but I think Zubrin addressed their 'improvements' quite effectively in "Case For Mars".