New Mars Forums

Ok I found a link from a reliable source that explains a bit about what I read once. Its]http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1270414,00.html]It's from a big UK national newspaper.

A quote:

In the 70s, the US agreed with Saudi Arabia that Opec oil should be traded in dollars. American governments have since been able to print dollars to cover huge trading deficits, with the further benefit of those dollars being placed in the US money markets. In return, the US allowed the Opec countries to operate a production and pricing cartel.

In 1999, Iran mooted pricing its oil in euros, and in late 2000 Saddam made the switch for Iraqi oil. In early 2002 Bush placed Iran and Iraq in the axis of evil. If the other Opec countries had followed Saddam's move to euros, the consequences for Bush could have been huge. Worldwide switches out of the dollar, on top of the already huge deficit, would have led to a plummeting dollar, a runaway from US markets and dramatic upheavals in the US.

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If you doubt the source (guardian) then maybe some UK people can say if the guardian is a good source of information or not.

I'm a person that thinks that Humans like dino's will rule the Earth for many millions of years. There will be tragedies and a lot of deaths but the human’s race will rebound. Now with writing going back to the Stone Age is hardly imaginable for me. As all knowledge is written down. Maybe go back to WWI level of technologies but not further then that.

As a community just needs one bible/thora/koran and someone that can read it and write in the printed languange and you can learn a lot of the ideas / technologies described in those holy books.

Perhaps like the Dino's the humans will go extinct but the dino's left us one thing: The birds. So there will always be humans as there are still (related) life forms on Earth from its earliest days.

Only way for humans to go extinct is to blow up this planet.

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About humans evolving into maybe something like Home Superior, that’s a big guess. I think by colonizing space (at least this solar system) that could happen faster, as you will get diversitation. But maybe humans are like crocodiles, insects and sharks. They will not change much even over the course of a million years. At this point of time its not needed for the Human to evolve, as it has no real natural predators, so there is no driving force. The weak and the strong humans are as strong when confronted with a wild animal (just need a gun). I think nature doesn’t change that that works.

Yes you have humans that are immune to certain diseases and will live but I don't think immunity systems drive evolutions of species.

I consider living in domes like living in Earths big cities such as NY, LA, Mexico City, London, Paris and Cairo. A lot city dwellers from those cities never leave their cities (domes) in their life time.

Myself I never leave populated zones, I like nature but prefer it on TV 

Well I'm talking about a fifthy year plan. Just look at how long it took for the Russians and Americans to develop their space plans.

However the Russians and Americans did have the advantage of German scientists they took with them after WWII.

However South American & India may have less will to do so at this moment as they are still fighting starvation and basic stuff such as flooding and a reliable powergrid. Don't know how the Chinese are with this.

Look at this what I got from the ESA site:

Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, together with Canada which is a cooperating country.

This is list of ESA members. So I think you are to late with Canada and the UK. Australia could be a swinger between the ESA and NASA.

Also English is not a problem for most educated people in Europe. The French are just stuborn. But I think almost all European rocket scienctist can read/write and talk good english. Well I think they have no choice as most high tech documentation is in English.

You have a point but also think that in this modern society distances matter less.

If you set up settlements with wireless communications and use for instance microwave to supply energy. You basically have a remote community that is fully in contact with the rest of Mars.

Also you will need to invest in public transport such as trains. What is stopping trains on Earth from going faster then 300 miles/hour is air resistance. As Mars has almost no air your can make trains go as fast as planes and it will be cheaper then air transportation on Earth. So moving people and cargo over great distances is no problem on Mars as the public transport system is very fast.

Yes almost all immigrants want to become Americans and follow the American dream. What makes immigrants in the US adapt to American ways and standards is unknown to me. As in other countries they will form a closed group and keep their native countries habits. Although Americans do accept things from their native cultures if its interesting such as food.

But America is just a country and Mars is planet. Also if you would have had a very large concentration of Spanish or French people in the US back in the days, I'm sure their native cultures would have been more influentual.

So I think its imposible to have just one culture on Mars like in the USA. That is if there are many people of the same culture there.

Sounds like what the communist used to say when asked why they didn't have free elections in their country. "The people are not able to decide for them selfs whats good."

I find that so much crap.

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Well yes it could be a problem but still doesn't mean that those cultures will dominate.

Lets say the Chinese will engage in a Sjovet, Maoist style of five year plan. Which goals is to send 10.000 Chinese to Mars to start a colony.

They will use forced labour to realize this plan and millions of Chinese will die due to this and also due to fact that all resources of the nations are diverted to this ambitious project.

They are sucessful and the Chinese on Mars live happy. But what happens after this? The country is now like in state after a huge war. They can't do anything anymore.

While the other countries were more modest and first designed cheap space vehicles that can be mass produces and eventually ship millions of people to Mars. Its like saying in 1497 that the Chinese will colonize America using rafts. Also didn't most Americans come to the US using steam powered ships while the colony was long known?

But still this isn't all. Like on Earth the culture that dominates is not really the richest (else the Saudis and Kuwaitis would) but those that in some way appeal to allot of different peoples and are advanced and have the best schools and technolgies and personal freedoms. But also just why does everyone all over the world buy American music?

I think that literacy is a developed nation such as the US will not change much. As I read once that the government of the US actually doesn't want a 0-1% unemployment rate as this will just drive up the wages, cost of living and the US will loose it competition posistion with other nations.

High School dropouts are needed as who will clean the offices of the upper middle class, who will work at the supermarkets?

You can solve this by importing people from poorer nations but if you don't want to loose your heritage as those people will make other people of another culture its not recommended. And perhaps they will also send a part of their wages to their homecountries which is a loss for the American economy.

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Actually I prefer the Chinese system of modernizing the financiel system over the Russian shock plans. Actually I kind of regret that the Russians kicked Gorbatjov out like that. Not that I surported communisme, its just that I think gradual changes are better then fast onces. I think the Russians should have had more patients but they all wanted to drink coca cola and eat a hamburger now. I think this fast change has already it negative effects and can get worse.

Agian I disagree as the French, Dutch and especially the native americans made babies.

Its more who is more advanced (can ship people the fastest and cheapest and be comfortable on the colony), has the higher birth rate, lowest infancy death rate and has overcrowded nations with bad economics and politics (mexico, india and china or old europe "like" which made your ancestors move to the new world)

Well at least it doesn't then destroy the multi million dollar costing gun each time you want to fire it during testing.

But perhaps heating the air just outside the gun, so that the air is thinner and slowly gets thicker until 1 atomosphere the farther away (talking about feet/meters). Or else ionizing the air and atrack the air with an anode and a kathode. Ultimately I think of something like a plasma gas just outside the barrel that is thinner then normal air and will also form a layer/coating) arround the moving projectile for a distance (several feet/meters) and be worn of slowly (by friction) and then the projectile hits the normal air density.

Its not Communism nor Capitalism but doing what works for the community.

Its more like federalisme taken to the extreme.