New Mars Forums

You may be right. Therefore, the right set of madmen can go now and accomplish the equivalent of buying IBM in 1957.

The best time to build the first city on Mars is a few decades BEFORE low cost Earth to LEO comes on line. Buy up the good real estate BEFORE the State builds the new off-ramp for the Interstate highway.

Unless you believe the real game is about selling rope; like nuclear fusion thats been "30 years away for the last 50"

100 years from now the world's cultures may well be all mixed up. Those who don't try now may never get the chance.

How do we pay for this infrastructure if it fails to make any return on investment? Spend trillions on ISS like habitats?

Who will pay for that, any why?

Retired General Mike Worden spoke in Boston and asserted that one major proponent of the "spiral development" concept is now in prison. I have yet to google for details or to verify the exact facts. He also said every military project following the "spiral development" model has had cost overruns with less than expected results.

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Some things are best done slowly. Others are best done fast. Cross the tipping point.

What if the Pilgrims had decided to anchor the Mayflower 300 miles east of Plymouth Rock, you know, to go slowly.

What is there to learn in space?

Radiation kills? Yup, true.

Micro-gravity ruins your bones? Yup, true again.

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Why would anyone want to leave Earth? Seems to me those that do not shouldn't create artificial roadblocks.

Why would anyone leave England for the wilds of Massachusetts?

Where is the VSE is there ANY money for CELSS? Or lower cost Earth to LEO lift?

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Edit: clark, you have basically said that anyone who seeks to leave this beautiful Earth "must be a madman" (my words) - - okay that may well be a legitimate point I have mixed feelings about. Life on Mars will be cold, nasty, claustrophic, brutal and often fatal.

Buit if you are correct, then will we EVER be ready to go no matter how much we spend on infastructure and research?

If we are not going to become spacefaring then I say shut down the entire program and use NASA's money for something else. This is the precise question William Langeweische raised in his January 1st essay for The Atlantic.

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What's the rush?  Many reasons. Here is one.

A drive to go "out there" can serve as a release valve for the pressures which come from too many ideologies crowded into too small a container. Not the raw numbers of people, per se, but the numbers of conflicting ideologies that have no hope of advancement except by fighting their rivals.

Low cost launchers?

Mass produce Thiokol RSRMs with RL-10 upper stages.

Increase the Thiokol RSRM mass ratio to 92.5/7.5 by using composites and plastics instead of aluminium and cost per pound should fall below $750 per pound.

RL-10s are no more complex than gas turbine helo engines which cost less than $100,000 each, not $3 million.

Separate crew and cargo and send up crew in Kliper or Elon Musk's Falcon V.

Launch costs ARE cheap today if your goal is not to buy as much rope as possible.

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Killer point, IMHO. Will anyone CARE about a go slow return to the Moon? Excetp a tiny handful of space fans?

Did funding for the VSE crack the news cycle anywhere except with Keith Cowing and Jeff Foust?

Literal? Nah.

Saint Augustine (in the year 400 or thereabouts) explained quoite nicely how Genesis should be read as allegory or metaphor. The Bible is foundational, not literal.

You got things backwards, clark. We Catholics aren't going to make the same mistake with Darwin as we did with Galileo.

Peace, Shaun.

Are you familiar with this http://trekguide.com/padd/tos66.htm]episode from Star Trek? Its from the original series.

IMHO, bin Laden and al Qaeda are like the evil entity in that episode. They feed and grow on hate. Our occuption forces create bitterness and hate.

To prevail, we must talk to moderate Muslims and if there are no moderate Muslims - - a point I deny! - - bring on the nukes.

It wasn't supposed to be this close. . .

Rxke, I agree with this 100%

I go on to say, al Qaeda wants a caliphate, not the 90% or 95% of "average Joe" Iraqis or Iranians.

Therefore, when we US-ians trample about those countries, bin Laden easily recruits the family members of those we harm.

al Qaeda sets a fire and the US throws gasoline on it.

IMHO, Bin Laden is an Islamo-fascist who desires that every Muslim country be merged into a larger caliphate ruled by clerics. And that this caliphate eventually encompass the entire world.

Read bin Laden's speeches, he actually knows a reasonable amount of European history and the rise of the "nation-state" as a unit of political organization.

Some accuse anyone proud to be Islamic of being an Islamo-fascist. I do not.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_of_Westphalia]Peace of Westphalia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nation-state]Nation-state and this quote from the first link:

Your answer, please?

And, what was Japan's excuse?

They feared the United States cutting off Japanese access to petroleum. Pearl Harbor was pre-emptive strike seeking to secure trade routes through Indonesia etc. . .

to guarantee that raw materials could continue to flow to Japan.

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Today, China is a rapidly growing user of petroleum. If the US knocks off Iran, we will be in a position to strangle Chinese access to Persian Gulf oil. Attacking Iran might well provoke a larger war with China!

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Its like a sweater. Can't pull one thread without unraveling the whole thing!

The only long term solution is to find a common "human" identity that supercedes lesser divisions.

An alien invasion fleet spotted on radar about 40 years away from Earth would be quite helpful, right about now.

This is where I stand:

Now let me be clear. We have real enemies in the world. These enemies must be found. They must be pursued and they must be defeated. John Kerry knows this. And just as Lieutenant Kerry did not hesitate to risk his life to protect the men who served with him in Vietnam, President Kerry will not hesitate one moment to use our military might to keep America safe and secure. John Kerry believes in America. And he knows it’s not enough for just some of us to prosper. For alongside our famous individualism, there’s another ingredient in the American saga.

A belief that we are connected as one people. If there’s a child on the south side of Chicago who can’t read, that matters to me, even if it’s not my child. If there’s a senior citizen somewhere who can’t pay for her prescription and has to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer, even if it’s not my grandmother. If there’s an Arab American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney or due process, that threatens my civil liberties. It’s that fundamental belief—I am my brother’s keeper, I am my sisters’ keeper—that makes this country work. It’s what allows us to pursue our individual dreams, yet still come together as a single American family. “E pluribus unum.” Out of many, one.

Yet even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters and negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes. Well, I say to them tonight, there’s not a liberal America and a conservative America—there’s the United States of America. There’s not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there’s the United States of America. The pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats. But I’ve got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the Blue States, and we don’t like federal agents poking around our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States and have gay friends in the Red States. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and patriots who supported it. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.

Barack Obama, August 2004

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On November 2, 2004 this vision for America lost the election.