New Mars Forums

Hm... the EU countries may not be able to afford it much longer. Don't know how much Canada values it's free health system and if it's up to attempts to change things from south of theirborder.
Although Eastern Europe technically has free healthcare, as far as I am aware, it will keep you alive if you are lucky, and take care of common conditions. No guarantees to live forever! Same goes for the NHS in the UK where I live at the moment.

It would certainly be cool if this awesome vision came true, but if anyone truly thinks it's their ticket to eternal life, they should start working at getting incredibly rich, asap. Another consideration is; how desirable is it to live forever inside with a digital brain in an avatar body?

I love that you brought up this cool idea. Just don't want to get my hopes up about something that a few rich people from the Gulf, software millionaires and oligarchs + their brats might get to enjoy while it passes me and my likes by....

Remember the Kim Stanley Robinson trilogy on Mars? One of the benefits of a really long life is that people can take on much larger and more ambitious projects.

Haha, Upload, like in the book Skinned. Yes - definnitely, let's hope so!

But say that this treatment is achievable within the extended lifetime of somebody born in the 1970s: How RICH would a person have to be to get all the life extending treatments and finally the upload into some kind of artificial body?

Nobody will offer these treatments for free to billions, or even millions. It would probably be only a very small part of humanity who would could afford it. Although I am not poor, I am not rich either, and I don't think I ever will be. It's never even been a goal of mine. Or even, in the event of the world revolution taking place; the same scarcity of resources would exist, simply differently distributed. I'd hardly be such an elite individual that I'd qualify.

Hope I am wrong about this gloomy predictions. We still should focus on Mars though.
An international mission to Mars is the next logical step in space travel followed by establishing an international colony.

I am just really shocked by what I am reading in this thread and I am not even going to bother commenting.

I just want to encourage people to consider:

—Do I have both sides to this argument, or am I only getting one side, and a very heavily angled one at that?
—In hindsight, how reliable were the news stories and intelligence in American and Western European press about Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Egypt. Vietnam, Panama, etc, etc. Is it possible that I am being mislead here too?
—Have you actually made an effort to get the other side of the story before you jump to conclusions and start expressing opinions?
—How much do you know about culture, history, geography, social and economic factors?

If you are smart, visionary and open minded enough to support colonization of Mars - how can you let your mind be filled with Western propaganda and think in terms of outdated Cold War cliches? IMHO, Western propaganda is usually not even in the interest of regular, normal Americans and Europeans. Just the rich elites and the large corporations. Why would an intelligent person swallow and regurgitate that false and slanderous propaganda?

I am NOT ethnically Russian, and NOT an admirer of Putin. I have family in another ex Soviet republic and grew up mainly in Northern Europe. I speak Russian. I am perfectly aware of the issues with Putin and the Edinnaia Rossia party. Under normal circumstances Russia has no business meddling in ex Soviet republics.  I have plenty of concerns about various internal problems in Russia that are partly spilling over into other ex Soviet countries.

However, in the issue of Ukraine specifically, Russia is NOT at fault. Krim was a clearcut case of an historically Russian area with Russian speaking people whose identities were tied to the USSR, and in the absence of that, Russia. What happened was long overdue, and Ukraine/the West triggered it by supporting and allowing an undemocratic coup d'etat that was really only supported by a minority of the population. Ukraine had 20 years to find a solution that worked for the population on Krim, but failed miserably.

If you knew anything about Ukraine, you'd see thousands of signs of how little the new regime actually represents most people in Ukraine. In the city of Kiev, for instance, normal people do not communicate in Ukrainian, very rarely at any rate. Yet all the coup makers did. They were from Western Ukraine and radicals. And the rumours of fascists and nazis was not exaggerated but sadly, true. The most radical and open Nazis on the European continent today are in Ukraine and the Baltic states. Sadly.

The revolts in Eastern Ukraine is NOT masterminded from Russia.  You have to understand that this area is a completely "different ballgame" than Crimea. It's not really of interest to the Russian Federation if you are being cynical about it. The economic needs are HUGE. Mining towns and mid-sized industrial towns... Russia has more of those than it knows what to do with, and does not need or want more.

However the PEOPLE of Russia would love to see for the Eastern Ukrainians to become Russian because many regular Russians have family there - people moved there from all of the ex-USSR. That's why you are seeing so many Soviet flags in the crowd shots. People moved to these cities from Russia and all over the ex USSR. Specialists, workers and misc. people. Nobody could have guessed that one day they'd be required to dance to the tune of Ukrainian right wing extremists, and have Ukrainian language and NATO forced  upon them. The exact same thing befell the Pridnestrovie area that ended up in modern Moldova despite few people there even speaking Moldovans. This is causing problems to this day.

—The population in Eastern Ukraine, not all, but most - want their language (Russian) to be 100% official in their region.
—They consider the new regime in Kiev to be illegitimate and are tempted by citizenship in the Russian Federation because they are fed up with the circus of Ukrainian politics with constant revolutions, incompetence and poverty.

Russia to them represents more freedom in terms of how to better themselves, much better economic prospects, jobs and national dignity. The area belonged to Russia up until the 1920s when it was transferred over to the Ukrainian SSSR for a rather silly ideological/administrative reason. This was not really very important in Soviet times, but now it's suddenly a big problem for those who live there. The unrest is triggered by events in Kiev, not anything that Moscow does.

Odessa and several other cities on the Black Sea coast (i.e. Southern Ukraine) are essentially completely Russian speaking. Walking around on town you only hear Russian spoken. Not sure the percentage but many are Jewish and identify neither as Russian, nor Ukrainian - they do not speak any Ukrainian, only Russian. Others are neither particularly Ukrainian, nor Russian - but they speak Russian, NOT Ukrainian. The maps of language usage that are circulating in English speaking media are not realistic. I have spent lots of time in Kiev, Odessa and Crimea and have only very rarely heard people speaking Ukrainian. You literally have to turn on the TV to hear people speak Ukrainian. 

People in Eastern and Southern Ukraine identify mostly just as Soviet or "Russian speaking" and feel strongly about Russian culture and language. I.e. "the smartest  man in Russia" is actually a Jew from Odessa in Ukraine and he is literally spitting on the new regime in Kiev.

It's not impossible that the unrest will spread along the South Cost too.

Nobody in Russia expects Moscow to lift a finger for Eastern  Ukraine unless there is essentially civil war. Please get this! Russia is not trying to provoke anything in Eastern Ukraine. Putin is telling the truth. Russia simply doesn't want that area, and is not actually into opportunistic land-grabbing - if it was, there are several much more ripe areas it could have incorporated a long time ago. If you know Russian politics you know which ones I am talking about.

Crimea was a special case, implementation of the will of the people and a very special area to Russia.

I love Ukraine and I think all this is extremely tragic. It was shameless of the USA and the EU to meddle and they will NOT come through for Ukraine economically which is essentially what this is about in the end. Somebody needs to cough up some very large sums, very fast. Russia was about to do it, but in light of what happened, it wont.

I have never felt so strongly before about Russia actually being right in what they are saying, and Putin showing integrity as I do now.

I am not going to get into any quarrels with people who grew up with hatred of Russia in their mother's milk, or people who are blinded by only being able to see the world through the Western lens. So in terms of what I said, take it or leave it.

According to Russian Wiki, re "Buran 1.02"
1) One of the models is on display in the Gorkovo Park in Moscow.
2) The other one survived the crashed roof of Baikonur and was bought in June 2005 to a Russian-Kazakh company called "Aelita" based in Almaty in Kazakhstan. As of 2009 it was still physically in the MZK hangar. 

According to this page http://www.buran.ru/htm/1-02.htm (many engineering pics of the dissection of this model, if you are interested + anything else about it)

Vadim, the site owner, did a bit of digging on this in 2009 and found that the Aelita company has strong links to a South African organisation called SAK Universal Consulting and Project Management (PTY) Ltd. On their page, he found the that they stated their activities as among others "Creating a legal framework for the sale of land on the Moon and Mars" (!!!)

As of 2011, no further news, and the South African company website isn't active anymore. The URL for the info was http://www.sakuniversal.com/site/ru/spa … tinfo.html

So after checking this to answer your question, seems it's yet another tragic and unnecessary casualty of the dissolution of the USSR.

Random picture from inside the 1.02

Hm, I see what you are getting at. Well maybe that's what will happen.

But I would prefer if it was a sort of America style melting pot where all languages and cultures were equal and well mixed, not the groups living in little cliques next to each other, and white Western, English speaking being the norm, and anything else being "Chinatown" or the like. 

Ideally, "when you arrive at Mars you leave your nationality behind, and become a "Martian".
A new start for a new kind of human; scientific, ethical, fair and compassionate. Not a narrowminded person who thinks in terms of nation states, ethnicity, profitability and egoistical concerns.

I am thinking that the first few settlers would be some of the best and brightest from Earth. Extremely smart and well educated (you'd have to be, to join a science program, wouldn't you), adventurous, curious and hopefully idealistic.
I think some of the emigrants to North America had some of those qualities and perhaps that explains parts of how the US grew successful.

But to continue with the language of British imperialism, or the US and its various endeavours over the last few decades.. Well just seems like extending the same system of society to a new planet. 

I hope Mars will become something better and more enlightened. Perhaps that's a pipedream, and Mars could never be any more than a scientific research station or some kind of mining community. But one can dream!

I am not going to get into any debate about this. It would be a huge waste of time, and I am in a minority here. I would only end up making enemies. I simply want to present the reality from the Eastern perspective. Take it or leave it.

The Crimeans are happy and Crimea is back where it belongs. I've friends and family who lived there and I speak Russian - there is no doubt in my mind whatsoever. There is nothing surprising about the figures if you take all factors into considerations, including the fact that at least half of the only group against it refrained from voting. Observers from EU countries were there and vouched for the legitimacy and the counting of the votes were broadcast on TV. 

This has got nothing to do with the USA or the EU. Ukraine was the victim of a partly foreign backed coup d'etat and this was one of the (for the West unexpected) outcome of that. Ukraine was aware of the risk. Crimeans might have reluctantly stayed put in Ukraine given status quo, but the coup d'etat was the last straw.

Currently Ukraine is in a state of total chaos with some extremely questionable individuals "in charge" and the economy in tatters. The constitution is overthrown and the referendum may not have been perfect but adequate under the circumstances.

For the USA to complain about any aspect of this, is like the pot calling the kettle black, or even worse. Unfortunately, the USA has lost any moral high ground.  It has decades of history of double standards and fiascos and has proven that it cannot be trusted to stand up for anything other than the interests of its big corporations.
I do not recognize any criticism of this coming from the USA as legitimate or relevant in the least. The EU in regards to foreign policy is nothing but the knee dog of the USA, so ditto that for the EU. 

Sanctions against Russia for this will only backfire and not change anything and the EU is not really in a position to join any sanctions anyway.

The answers to any further comments about this are in my previous post or in this one. I really don't want to get drawn into this - but I couldn't just leave the thread be, when it was bursting with incorrect info, propaganda and self righteousness.

Please understand that if you are only following English speaking media, all you have is propaganda and poor translations. If you don't mind swallowing propaganda, and you secretly miss the Cold War, then by all means, go ahead and believe the lies and misinformation that you are being served.

Sure there are many faults with Russia and with Putin. But in this case Russia did not do anything wrong.

Esperanto is really popular in Asia nevertheless. That's where it's growing the fastest. China, Central Asia, Vietnam, Korea (both) according to the Esperanto mag recently.

Learning Esperanto is 1/5 of the effort of learning English, for the same level of fluency.
There is a LOT of effort wasted towards learning English, then perfecting it. A natively English speaking scientist never has to waste all that effort but can get straight at writing his scientific paper and read whatever material without the effort.

English has irregular grammar, peculiar expressions and completely inconsistent spelling rules.

And I am certainly not supporting Russian, Chinese, French, German or any other existing language because each of these have their drawback too.

I know it's a pipe dream, but Esperanto would have been a much better choice. And it's a breeze to learn compared with English, trust me.

I think it's great that people are at least trying!
I wouldn't pay for any other content, hardly, but for this I'd pay big. I don't watch reality TV, but this I'd watch.

So say that it's going to be a reality show on the main network across most of the world. And streaming online.

If they could come up with a concrete funding plans, for example sell "shares" in the project for example, guaranteeing your name to be immortalized as a sponsor of the first manned Mars mission for all eternity.

Then up with a big counter that everybody can display on their social media pages, blogs or whatever.
Big celebration of every milestone met, to keep the momentum going.
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For example:
10  Diamond private (individual) sponsors who commit with 1,000,000 EUR each
100  Platinum private (individual) sponsors who commit with 100,000 EUR each
1000   Gold  private (individual) sponsors who commit with 10,000 EUR each
10,000 Silver private (individual) sponsors who commit with 1000 EUR each
100,000 Bronze private (individual) sponsors who commit with 100 EUR each

+ 1,000,000 donations of 10 EUR
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So this would be the fundraising goal for regular individuals.
Now hit social media, traditional media and every space geek in the known universe!

The Bitcoin millionaire community probably overlaps quite a fair bit with the space loving community.
What could be a worthier cause to use Bitcoin wealth for, for those who have more than they need, and in light of the fact that nobody quite knows whether it's a bubble or real. Also the IT community probably overlaps as well. Getting 10 IT leaders to cough up a million each is doable, I think.

Then tell them that as soon as things are up & running on Mars, a memorial will be raised  with everybody's name listed from the main sponsor groups. And it would be there for all times, as one of the first proper buildings on Mars. Their name, their picture and a bio about them. They'd be immortal on Mars!

There is a place a bit like what I thought in Washington DC, there are all the various "Heroes" monuments in the ex USSR which list the names of heroes whether they are dead or alive, and often with a depiction of the person.
Every town in the UK has memorials. So, something along those lines. A combination of the best we have in terms of memorials on Earth, to really honour those who are willing to shell out to make Mars happen.

First on the  list, would be the first to donate. Maybe a painting of them or something. This would make good media, so get the momentum going.

Whatever is likely to get people enthusiastic about being a sponsor. Perhaps some prefer to remain completely anonymous, or would rather buy the right to have the first Martian hospital named after them!

Then once the social media campaign goes viral, corporations will want to tag on.
So a similar scheme for them but with larger sums, to make up the difference.
But less recognition - I would be against Mars turning into a corporate play pen. Mars must not be yet another planet that is destroyed by greed. Yet the project needs sponsors, but getting the momentum going among real people first is crucial I think.