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So all the Hi-Tech Terraforming work has been done. Should Mars then be a Lo-Tech agricultural one or and Industrialised Hi-Tech one? Or maybe a mix of both?
Use what is abundant and build to last
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How about a mix? That is, combining hi-tech computing into lo-tech materials. Sort of, using wood as a building material.
Use what is abundant and build to last
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I don't see the option Hi-Tech in the poll....
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The forum made a mistake (not me, I'm never to blame.) It placed hi-tech as the question, not an answer. I tried to add it but it wouldn't let me.
Use what is abundant and build to last
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But, High tech was the answer that I wanted to vote for. The reason for going high tech and a high energy economy is that it will generally be a low labor economy as a general rule. But, if we go low tech and low energy economy will generally be a high labor economy. So we would choose to generate very large amounts of energy or electricity vs having a very large number of people having to do that work. If we intend to colonize Mars, we need a very labor efficient system so that we can survive on Mars when we get there.
Larry,
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Read my first post. What your saying is asumming Mars hasn't been Terraformed. I'm assuming it has by then.
Use what is abundant and build to last
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Read my first post. What your saying is asumming Mars hasn't been Terraformed. I'm assuming it has by then.
It doesn't matter if it already been high tech terraformed or not, if you go low tech agriculture, it will be too labor intensive to be able to maintain a Mars colony at all. This idea that your going to go low tech in space for any colony that you might setup is pure nuts and it won't work. I have gotten into an argument with someone in the Red Colony forum over nuclear vs solar panels. I took the nuclear rout and he picked the solar panel rout, but he going to generate chemical fuels to generate power when there no sun light. He wants to use burning wood and other bio masses for the night time energy needs. That would be bamboo and not regular wood which he says can be grown in three months or so. He wants to use methane and/or batteries to supplement the energy needs at night time. It requiring hundred of time the area that you need to grow food for the colony population, to grow just the bio mass to supply the energy for you would needs on Mars and because of the man hours that you have to invest to produce it, you will need several time as many people than you have on the whole planet to produce that energy. Some of the other subject that he started was to have a lake o Mars and let the water drain down and power a generator and in the day time pump the water back into the lake so we can power the generator the next night. He going to go through all these labor intensive system so he doesn't have to have a nuclear power plant on mars. Another example would be to compare the farms of the 1870 to the farms of the 2007 in the United States. In 1870 the percentage of the farmers to the rest of the US Population was 50% of three million people. Today we only need 2% to 3% of three hundred million people being farmers or about three million people. This is the difference between low technology of yesterday and high technology of today.
I said all that to say this:
Using a low tech and high labor system of anything that we do on Mars, will reduce the viability of any colony that we have on Mars.
Larry,
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The forum made a mistake (not me, I'm never to blame.) It placed hi-tech as the question, not an answer. I tried to add it but it wouldn't let me.
I added the option "Hi-Tech".
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Without high tech on Mars, you die! I don't think you could have many things made out of wood on Mars unless you had a forest, and they spaces you'd use to grow that forest would be less space for growing your food crops.
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So? Unless you're expecting to support a population in the 100s of billions, that's not a problem.
Use what is abundant and build to last
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I don't think you could support a Stone Age society on Mars.
I don't think you could support a Bronze Age society on Mars.
I don't think you can support an Iron Age Society on Mars.
I don't think you can support a Middle Age Society on Mars
I don't think you can support a Renaissance Age Society on Mars.
I don't think you can support an early gunpowder age society on Mars.
I don't think you can support an early Industrial Age society on Mars.
You need electronics, you need computers and all sorts of high tech just so you can breathe while living on Mars.
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*sigh* Go read the opening post...
Use what is abundant and build to last
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So all the Hi-Tech Terraforming work has been done. Should Mars then be a Lo-Tech agricultural one or and Industrialised Hi-Tech one? Or maybe a mix of both?
Ok, I get it now, you want to decide whether after terraforming if Mars is going to be a luddite agricultural colony or a high tech one. My feeling is if you want a luddite colony, your going to have to find someway to prevent all the high tech people from landing on the planet and ruining it.
Now for one thing terraforming a planet is not low tech, so after that is accomplished, you have to send all the high tech terraforming equipment away and post a "sign" that says, "All high tech not welcome!"
Well in a sense terraforming may be housing for people who wish to remain in human bodies as opposed to uploading into a computer, now if humans are obsolete and replaced by robots, they may need a low tech setting in order to thrive, so all the high tech robots terraform Mars and Venus and then remove all the high tech items from the surface so low tech humans may inhabit it, and begin farming with ox, plow and horse., high tech beings stay invisible within their computer networks in the sky and so aren't seen by low tech flesh and bloods.
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I tend to agree with that- it's pretty hard to give up technology once you have it. High Tech is implicitly better for people than low tech. Luddites are a nice handwavium for reasons to terraform but not really a realistic one.
-Josh
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Its kind of like the analogy that exercise is good for the human body, it is better to walk to work than to drive a car, but if you walk to work, you will arrive late and possibly lose your job. Modern tech requires us to use it rather than human muscle, though using our muscles keeps us more fit, that's why we have gyms and exercise rooms, but for an 18th century farmer, there was no need to exercise as the work that was required was exercise enough. Ludditism works so long as you can isolate it from high tech society, or is backed up by a religion such as the case among the Amish. I think people who don't trust high tech might use the high tech to create worlds that isolate themselves from a lifestyle that includes high tech in their daily lives. For instance High tech is used only were it has to be used to get something accomplished, and not used to do things that humans can do for themselves.
I think Mars and Venus could be terraformed as trial runs for what lies further out among the stars. One particular colonization mission is one that integrates terraforming.
Step 1: An Earthlike planet is discovered orbiting a distant star, the planet is "Earthlike" the way Venus is "Earthlike" it has the approximate mass of the Earth and is not too far away from the habitable zone such that it may be corrected by mirror sollettas. Most Earthlike planets are not likely to be the right distance from the star, or have the right rotation rates and axial tilts for humans, so what we would focus on would be searching for planets that are similar to Earth in Mass, Composition and Gravity, everything else can be corrected by terraforming.
Step 2: Build two starships a fast starship and a slower starship, the fast starship has terraforming robots and equipment and is smaller than the slower starships carrying the colonists.
Step 3: The fast starship arrives first, robots begin terraforming the target planet.
Step 4: The terraforming is complete at the time the colonists arrive.
The slow starship can be a generation ship or it can be a ship with frozen humans ready to be revived when they arrive or when the planet is terraformed, or is can hold frozen human embryos that are gestated in artificial wombs and raised by robot parents to adulthood by the time the ship arrives at the terraformed planet.
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