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When I read about the plans for the future colonization of Mars by humans, I was really interested/excited. Now, after some thinking about Earth and how careless and ignorant humans can be, I'm really unsure if humans are ready to make the jump.
In my opinion, we humans haven't shown ourselves to be the most responsible beings in taking care of the planet we live on NOW, how can we expect that to magically change on Mars. Couple that with war, hatred between nations, greed, and other negatives seen in everyday life on Earth and you have Earth problems on Mars. There is absolutely no getting around that in my opinion.
Oh and by the way, why has the idea of stretching out to Mars became an issue? Foreseen Earth destruction helped along by humans?? If so why are we planning on moving to Mars? To further planetary destruction?...We might want to learn to take care of the planet we live on now, along with learning to live along side our fellow man peacefully before "abandoning ship" so to speak.
But in the end there is good and bad in all things. Lets hope that if there is a Mars jump, we humans will do things right this time around.
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jbest865, you've got it backwards. The important question to consider is the survival of the human race, survival of the Planet Earth or Mars is secondary to that question. Now the question I ask is it better for the survival of humanity if we stay on one planet or if we move into space?
I think the idea of leaving all our eggs in one basket or whether we spread them is the pertinent idea here. I think if humanity spreads to the stars, we can survive the potential destruction of our homeworld whether we are the cause of that destruction or not. It is clear that of we wait long enough, our planet will eventually get hit by another asteroid, it wouldn't matter then if we lived in harmony with our fellow human being or not.
Humans aren't perfect, therefore I look for solutions that don't require the perfection of humanity.
It seems to me that we as a species can survive better if we had more space from one another and especially our enemies. There is a country called Iran, for instance, whose whole identity and rational is their hatred of the United States, such hatred is their ideology, it is the reason their leaders use to hold power over their subjects, that is to fight the "Great Satan" that is the United States, and they are developing Nuclear Weapons, this of course puts us in conflict with them, and if we ever foolishly allow them to develop these weapons, alot of people will die. Because we live in such a confined space on this planet, we have to expend disproportionate resources dealing with existential threats such as this. You see the Iranians get in our face, and we get in their cross hairs. If we could have some space and perhaps some isolation from our neighbors who tend to use us as their scapegoats, perhaps we'd get into these conflicts less often, and that would increase our chances of survival as a species.
Saying we are not worthy of colonizing Mars because of our poor stewardship of the Earth is a bogus issue. We will never be perfect, and waiting for such perfection is a sure path to our extinction!
To me the Earth and other places are a means to our survival as a species. Without us, Mars is just another unimportant speck in the universe. There are many other such objects in our Universe that go on unobserved and unappreciated because their are no intelligence species their to appreciate it. My priority is the protection of the human species. Preservation of Earth's environment is instrumental to that purpose, but we shouldn't sacrifice ourselves in an attempt to preserve our planet because that would defeat the purpose of preserving our planet. By that logic, moving to other planets can only help us, no matter how well or how badly we take care of our own planet, the point is to allow us to survive our mistakes. Mars is pretty fool proof when compared to Earth, it is a simple body without a complex ecosystem for us to damage, ut we can make improvements to it in the long run, such as terraforming, and learn important things essential to our survival in the process. I think we can make Mars a second home to humanity, and their is colonizing space as well.
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Thank you for your view point on this. I somewhat agree and disagree with you, but this is exactly the kind of response I wanted to get from my statement. If anyone else wants to share their view points, please do.
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Hello Jbest welcome to NewMars.
The point of moving to Mars and into space is that it opens to mankind resources that we consider scarce here and in the process make them available to all.
There are just under 7 billion people on this planet and the majority live in conditions which are poor and struggle to have access to basics like clean water and food. They all aspire to the dream of two cars in the driveway of there own house and simple things we take for granted like TVs and refrigerators. There are tensions between the haves and have nots and there are not enough resources available easily in the world to bring these people up to standards of living I consider reasonable.
So should we in the west cut back to the point we radically reduce our standards of living to try to bring everyones else up just a little bit. Frankly not going to happen.
So we access space and not only can we now grow but we have access to the unlimited resources of the Universe. These resources will give mankind the ability to grow and of course improve ourselves
Chan eil mi aig a bheil ùidh ann an gleidheadh an status quo; Tha mi airson cur às e.
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Human behavior on Mars is dependent on the who gets there first, and who is allowed there, and under what circumstances.
If the free countries get there first and preserve the sovereignty of the planet for the colonists and view it's inhabitants as equal members of a greater human family, and the peoples of the planets share the lessons of the journey and ultimately work with each other with mutual respect, then we can expect relative peace despite the inherent hardships for the inhabitants of Mars, and greater prosperity by their sponsors on Earth, and by extension all of humanity.
If totalitarian regimes manage to occupy space, you can expect them to use this ultimate high ground to wage war on free countries and free minded peoples. Any accomplishments by either will be paid for with a tremendous amount of human lives. Colonists will use their isolation as a shield, and as time goes on we risk creating generations of hatred between Martians and Earthlings, and interplanetary war.
If we have a real horse race, we can expect battles for survival in space and battles for supremacy on Earth involving the worlds superpowers and worst weapons. Colonists fed up with the conflict will seek neutrality, isolation, and we will lose all the fruits of our labors.
"Yes, I was going to give this astronaut selection my best shot, I was determined when the NASA proctologist looked up my ass, he would see pipes so dazzling he would ask the nurse to get his sunglasses."
---Shuttle Astronaut Mike Mullane
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Human behavior on Mars is dependent on the who gets there first, and who is allowed there, and under what circumstances.
The cirumstances are that the exploration of space is open to all and access to the colonisation of Mars/Moon is the same. The first there does not get any more rights than the next or the next after that as long as they dont interfere with each other.
Another point though is that it is not who has the first bases but who actually populates the planet. If the western countries send twenty people a year and a totalitarian regime sends a thousand then eventually Mars will belonging to that regime
If the free countries get there first
Immaterial first has no more rights than the last see above.
and preserve the sovereignty of the planet for the colonists and view it's inhabitants as equal members of a greater human family, and the peoples of the planets share the lessons of the journey and ultimately work with each other with mutual respect, then we can expect relative peace despite the inherent hardships for the inhabitants of Mars, and greater prosperity by their sponsors on Earth, and by extension all of humanity.
Sovereignty is curretnly not allowed to any base or object since international law has more or less decried that they remain the property of the sender nation forever.
If totalitarian regimes manage to occupy space, you can expect them to use this ultimate high ground to wage war on free countries and free minded peoples. Any accomplishments by either will be paid for with a tremendous amount of human lives. Colonists will use their isolation as a shield, and as time goes on we risk creating generations of hatred between Martians and Earthlings, and interplanetary war.
If we have a real horse race, we can expect battles for survival in space and battles for supremacy on Earth involving the worlds superpowers and worst weapons. Colonists fed up with the conflict will seek neutrality, isolation, and we will lose all the fruits of our labors.
I wish we had universal love and peace but im doubtful if such a thing could exist. Will the Martian colonies ever become an independent nation possibly but that is a situation far in the future.
Chan eil mi aig a bheil ùidh ann an gleidheadh an status quo; Tha mi airson cur às e.
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Dictators are always spoiling everything, but it would help if some masses of people wouldn't be so easily manipulated by them. What's with the idiots who wear the Che Guevera T-Shirts anyway? There are certainly a subset of people who think dictators are cool and who want to take your rights away. After all dictators are only single people, surely the minds of the many can outweight the mind of the one, but we don't see that happening, instead we see the stupid masses jumping through hoops at the behest of the dictator, while he goes about starting wars and initiating violence against the innocent. It boggles the mind how many dim-witted people are willing to blow themselves up for some such dictator, in my opinion such people are second rate and inferior specimens of humanity, and if we can only seperate out this scum, we'd stand a better chance to have a lasting peace.
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What's with the idiots who wear the Che Guevera T-Shirts anyway? There are certainly a subset of people who think dictators are cool and who want to take your rights away. After all dictators are only single people, surely the minds of the many can outweight the mind of the one, but we don't see that happening, instead we see the stupid masses jumping through hoops at the behest of the dictator, while he goes about starting wars and initiating violence against the innocent. It boggles the mind how many dim-witted people are willing to blow themselves up for some such dictator, in my opinion such people are second rate and inferior specimens of humanity, and if we can only seperate out this scum, we'd stand a better chance to have a lasting peace.
I can't believe this. This is the ignorance and bigotry that starts wars. People in those countries were conditioned from birth to do whatever anyone tells them to. Of course they will. they are not less human than you. In fact, after your post, it seems as if it may be the other way around. Once they are freed, i whichever manner they are freed, they will have unique views of the world. Not bad ones either. It is hardship that makes us human, and the west has entirely too little of that. la dee da, stuck in our own worlds
(of course they have too much, and are confined to their own world)
-Josh
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Now we are getting side tracked into a political debate.
The main thing to remember is that Mars is the first set to colonization and the mastery of our own solar system. This is this goal. Such a goal might even unite humanity.
We can only hope that it is so.
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Now we are getting side tracked into a political debate.
The main thing to remember is that Mars is the first set to colonization and the mastery of our own solar system. This is this goal. Such a goal might even unite humanity.
We can only hope that it is so.
Unfortunately, it will always get side track no matter which way that you would like to have it. Without dealing with the thought processes of the individuals and which way that you are thinking, it will make a difference in which choices that they will choose to make. It like the orbits of the planets, there a certain principle that cause that effect and they never act out side of those effects unless something else interrupts those orbits.
My personal thought on the matter is that colonizing Mars will have a more ennobling effect on all mankind, because it will cause us to look to a higher causes for our existence. We will have to change our monetary policies which stink and what we view as wealth which also stink and go back to a General Welfare for Mankind if we intend to colonize Mars. So mankind will have to go to a higher level of consciousness of who we are to be able to colonize Mars in the first place or we won't be able to do it. Which would not be a bad thing for mankind to do. My preferred choice would be to lay out a Constitution along the lines of the US Constitution to guide thing along those lines to these higher goals for all mankind. The United States of America and it colonization was used for that same purpose with the creation of the Constitutional Republic based on the General Welfare concept vs the Oligarchical Empire concept of Man.
But, as to all other choices, they will ultimately fail, because they have the wrong concept of monetary policies or what wealth is and ccould only function on only a planet like Earth, that has it own self-sustaining ecological system. The reason that that is so, is because they don't create they consume things and live off what there and so they can't live where there is no self-sustaining ecological system to work off of. The American Economic System of a Government Credit System, has the ability built right into it to rehabilitate planet like Mars that don't have no self-sustaining ecological system like the Earth does. It has a creative character to it, to modify or improve what there to sustain a larger population or to create the ability to sustain a population where one could not have existed before. An, example of this, go to my "How do you Build a physical Economy" thread.
Larry,
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We can only hope it doesn't unite mankind. Competition works better. Just look at Apollo. Once the Soviet Unions space project failed, so did Americas so-to-speak. Without competition there is no incentive to go into space. The best thing that could happen isthe Earth start heading towards the Sun, for want of a better example. Our homeworld would be destroyed, but given more than a week and humanity would be churning out an armada of spacecraft. Once at Mars humanity would be forced to develop new tech, a challange they could easily rise to. I can see potential in the human race. Don't waste it.
Use what is abundant and build to last
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Well that’s a bit bleak.
A Martian base would be an excellent show of skill and would show the world that it can be done. Once people realize that our planets are in reach, they will start thinking further and further. (One hopes). Maybe then while looking at the stars we will forget to kill each other.
There is no “Right Time” to do it. If we wait for humanity to settle down, we will be waiting forever. Why put off until tomorrow what you can do today?
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surely the minds of the many can outweight the mind of the one, but we don't see that happening, instead we see the stupid masses jumping through hoops at the behest of the dictator, while he goes about starting wars and initiating violence against the innocent. It boggles the mind how many dim-witted people are willing to blow themselves up for some such dictator, in my opinion such people are second rate and inferior specimens of humanity, and if we can only seperate out this scum, we'd stand a better chance to have a lasting peace.
I've been gone for a while, and I know this qoute kinda strayed from topic a little, but I gotta say, we need to wake up. Replace "dictator" with "president" and replace "blow themselves up" with "blow others up". Sorry, but even in America we are fed idealogy. For example, listen to Fox News or nearly any other news channel, even your president or government officials and you're finding out what country we should bomb next because that country believes this or that. Then, we go jump in the bombers and grab the guns and go kill, believing we are preventing ourselves from getting attacked in the future, or that it's the "patriotic" thing to do, or that the enemy is EVIL. Even the idea that the "enemy" is an enemy could be force fed to a country and it will be believed eventually.
I understand that getting rid of those who seem to be wrong in our eyes seems good to us, but things look different from other perspectives and upbringings. Just because we dont behead people in public like some third world countries still do, it doesn't change the fact that we did it in the past too. That doesnt make it right, but some things take time for changes to occur I guess.
Hehe..anyways..thats my opinion at this moment in life.
Thank you all for adding your opinions!! Feel free to keep adding to this.
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Feed people s*** long enough and they begin to like the taste. ~Gobel.
Use what is abundant and build to last
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