New Mars Forums

Tell me Larry, when JFK attempted to overthrow Castro at the Bay of Pigs, was he being a republican thinker, or and Imperial thinker? What about when he said that we would bear any burden, or face any foe for the cause of human freedom? Or when he declared himself a member of the besieged and oppressed people of Berlin? Or when he risked everything to deny the Soviets a first strike capability in Cuba? Is the idea that human freedom is the single greatest resource born of republican, or imperial thought?

You see you can have the greatest public infrastructure on Earth, but unless you have principles and willing to stand up for them, it won't mean a thing. The Roman empire had a nice infrastucture. For centuries they used it to enforce the glory of Rome on the Mediterranean basin and beyond. In the end they compromised, were compromised, and destroyed. Hitler too had the Autobahn, and all it did was give his foes a smoother road to the heart of the Third Reich. Infrastructure is means to an end. If that end is right and true that road is blessed, if not it is cursed. Our founding fathers gave us the right end, but the road to it often difficult. JFK knew this by learning it the hard way. He failed to give the Free Cuban forces the support they needed. As a result he found himself in a position of risking a nuclear exchange that would have destroyed civilization as we know it. We took the easy way out, hoping the situation would improve on it own. We are still paying the price for that as Castro inspires a new generation communist dictators in South America. There are many similar examples following WW2. President Bush is dealing with them, not in the most effective way possible to be sure, but stubbornly facing the uphill fight none the less. Which is more than his political opponents can say. You, and they, might say that such uphill battles are expensive, and get in the way of the many wonderful services we can provide our people and in some ways your right. But if you continue to take the cheap way out on international disputes they will not be solved, and they will pile up until are in a peril we can not yet imagine. And it won't matter how shiny our trains are. I do know history, and all these things have happened before, and they will happen again if we fail to heed them.

Don't get me wrong, I agree that our public infrastructure has been ignored too long and the a reinvestment into it would work wonders economically, but I also know that it ain't worth a hill of beans unless America stays free, and the same freedoms are not taken back by oppressed people the world over. You can have the nicest medical, transportation, or education system in the world, but unless its people have the liberty to build their lives within it as they see fit, or even try and fail, such a society will rot out and die.

If you want to argue the best monetary system to get there and the specific infrastructure improvements that should be made go right ahead. But don't mistake it for "imperial thought".

How are you going to get the gas to stay in geo orbit at any bars?

I thought the only interests the Brits had in spreading propaganda in the Colonies was to convince us the Huns where bayoneting babies so we'd bail them out of the world wars. 

Back on topic, I don't think anyone is going to dispute that an overwhelming amount of the prosperity the US enjoys is due to investment of public funds into public infrastructure, and the economy is built on that foundation.

The trouble begins when the government trys to use the same kind of government infrastucture in the social sphere to change behavior, create dependance, and thus creating a captive voting block to preserve power. This conflict, the fight over the public treasury for social programs vs. "fiscal responsibility" and political distraction it has caused has taken a toll on our infrastructure. Settle that issue, and the focus will shift back where it belongs.

The fuel crisis is largely a myth. Theres more than enough oil around if we were only allowed to drill for it. Brazil just fund the 8th largest reserve just off shore. Theres also far to many blends of fuel mandated by various states,  artificially limiting supply. Taxes are also sky high.

The only real technology that really need development is fusion for grid power. The future of mobile fuel is hydrogen, and we already know how to use it. The limiting factor is the lack of infrastructure investment on production and distribution, and the fact that consumers can't afford the technology while paying $3 for gas.

Biofuels will never take off as a mainstream fuel because its food or fuel, not both. Its already driving up the cost of food because of backwards government mandates. Until all produce is grown exclusively in local greenhouses and all farmland is dedicated to grains and fuels, it will never be more than a bureaucratic abomination. Once that is overcome, it shows promise in limited off-road apps where its more practical to have an easily portable liquid fuel.

The government does absolutely nothing without tax revenue. The government only gets tax revenue when suitable numbers of people devote their blood, sweat, and tears to bettering themselves and their surroundings (to suit them of course). Commerce starts do to the natural uneven distribution of resources required to do this. Governments develop to facilitate commerce and ensure it doesn't devolve into simple pillaging, and taxes are needed to make a government run, so they take a little of the top of the commerce, to facilitate the facilitating.

Nations develop when pioneers go to a (more or less) empty spot of land to build a better life for themselves independently or in a sufficiently different way than those already exist. People do the best they can with the patch of land they can exploit, sell whatever extra they don't need to live for something else they want or need to get by. They decide that this would be a whole lot easier if their was a road between us and those lazy guys would stop stealing our stuff, and create and contribute to a government to facilitate those things. Fast forward 250 years, and those people decide it would be a good idea to fund missions to other far far away plots of land cause the journey would create lots of new technologies  that facilitate wonderful new things at home, plus people would do great things like pay lots of money and donate time and effort for the adventure of going to those far far away plots of land.

As for how all this applies to space, it is basically the same pattern, and is not at all unlike the public infrastucture projects mentioned above. People and governments with the fore site to do it invest in the technologies and hardware by giving out tax revenue to those who can figure it out, and launch the missions. Those on the missions get the land and resources, those companies that did the research get to sell the technology, and the government gets a slice of that commerce. With time those off world offer goods and services not available on, or more likely, provide things that can be made quicker and more conveniently than shipping from Earth to facilitate furthered expansion, or perhaps something that we don't know about that can only be had there.   

On the tactical level, after a intense study of Mars and it resources, perhaps completely from orbit, multiple bases will be established based on abundance of various resources, be they water, various gases, minerals, convenient locations for habitation or access to orbit, ect. Trade develops between them, public infrastucture is established. Labor is imported. And so on.

The key to long term, affordable lunar exploration is creating permanent masonry structures out of the local soil, and putting large numbers of these kind of cheap inflatable habs in them. This is best done with robotics.

Just think about that. How much usable interior space would a Bigelow/Transhab module built to fit into a 12m shroud provide?

It would dwarf the ISS in one shot.

And just what would those be?

Would they include a list things like the lack of action on the growing terrorist stronghold in the tribal regions of Pakistan, the lack of leadership on setting a hard deadline on Iranian uranium enrichment and support of terrorism in Iraq and Lebanon, the failure to build up to United States Military to better deal with such threats and depending third parties such as contractors who's primary concern is getting out of a firefight alive and locals who inevitably have their own agendas to push to perform vital reconstruction and security duties, the lack of leadership on energy independence, the absolute failure to to secure the border from economic parasites and terror infiltration, or a failure to reform government entitlements and reduce the overall tax burden in order to reduce taxes?

If not, then your only concerned with the little R next to his name. And replacing him with someone with a little D next to their name is extremely counter productive.

The real threat of climate change is not that the Earth will become a hot, barren desert. Its that it will disrupt the unusually (geologically) temperate climate the we have enjoyed over the the bulk of the history of human civilization. Whether this is our fault or not, or if we can even stop it either way is up for debate. Certainly there is much we can do to limit our contribution, but the Earth is more than capable of shouldering the load.

The inconvenient truth is that we may very well be on borrowed time.

The BDRM were notoriously cramped if I remember correctly. Theres also a fuel issue.

If by death you mean devoid of life as we know it, it will probably be well before that, thanks to the Moon. As it continues to drift away the Earths axis will fluctuate wildly, killing anything dependent on a stable climate, and lengthening the day. Not long after that the lack of internal friction from tidal forces will reduce the spinning of the Earths core, greatly weakening the magnetosphere, and causing the atmosphere to be blasted away. We end up as a combination of Mars and Mercury.

Whats left will be vaporized as the Sun goes red giant. I don't know if Alpha Centauri going nova can cause that kind of physical destruction. But it certainly will provide an ample dose of gamma radiation.

Mostly because the Arabs have no idea what they are fighting for.

I can't speak for all Soviet weapons, but the AK-47 and its derivatives are universally viewed as the most durable assault rifle mankind has ever produced. Thats one reason theres so many of them. The old ones are still around and work.