New Mars Forums

Well, let's test it, shall we?

How about enabling the HTML tag too? (That way big images can be sized down and stuff.)

To Bill: expansion is against the ?Red? mentality, in my humble opinion. You can only have so many domes before they become unsightly (even domes that are coloured to fit the environment, which I encourage, actually). The ?Red Building Committe? would have a hard time processing the vast requests to build domes. I would love to see such a committe (if it existed) attempt to prevent people from building domes wherever they saw fit in in Twenty Second century.

Say a dome held a thousand people (which is actually pretty cramped), it would take a million of them to hold a billion people! And there just isn't enough material on Mars to support the building of so many domes (I suppose there is, but it would be a heck of a lot harder to do than to build open air steel structures).

Persuading people to adobpt a more Red mentality is the same as telling people to acquire an air of eliteness and discourage people from immigrating.

To Alexander: At the risk of posting off topic (this is a Red views thread, anyway), I think ?quick terraformation? is totally feasible, without the aid of supertech that doesn't exist yet.

PFC/CFCs can drastically increase the Martian atmosphere, as Zubrin suggests in his Technological Requirements for Terraforming Mars paper, and once we reach a certian point (after the caps melt) I think the whole process could run away with itself until we saw fit to stop it.

And I see this happening within the oceans; but I don't see many articles about using the ocean (and plankton) to aid the terraformation process (with regards to oxygenation). Indeed, I am under the impression that plankton converts much of Earths carbon dioxide. On Mars plankton would not have the unfortunate risk of being eaten like they do on Earth, plus, genetically engineered to be more resiliant, they could thrive much more efficiently than on Earth (in regards to oxygenation and multiplication). And the atmosphere need only be thick enough to support liquid water.

We could have a living breathing ocean right under our fingertips. A slimy carbon dioxide breathing creature that could speed up the process immensely! And after a certian point, we either introduce a predator to lower their uncontrolled population growth, or we kill them off using whatever other technological means.

The best part about this is that we could use the ?oceanic soot? as soil!

Anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself.

(Edit: Aaahahah, why in the heck do I post 15 minutes after someone else does!? This is insane.)

Aaaaaaah, we did it again, Clark!

The first question is why someone would cause injustice. And what kind of injustice was caused. Then we go from there. Obviously it is up to the towns / habitats to ultimately decide. But truely, within anarchy there are few reasons except psychological problems.

This is easy enough, people can be chosen at random for  volunteer medical service. There is no requirement to actually do this job, indeed, the job would be so transparent you would not even realize that it was a ?job.? You wear no uniform, you do not occupy a hosiptal. Your only ?duty? is to be the first on the scene when something happens. You don't even have to have medical knowledge, since your wrist-pad (or whatever form of information device) tells you everything you need to know short of how to perform brain surgery. Everyone could have this job, if they wanted.

This can go for everything. We'll call ?police officers? Security Assurance Officials, only, they won't wear uniforms, and will go about daily activities, but when something happens, they will pull out their SAO identity and see if they can calm the situation.

As an incentive, we can have random elections for people, and of course, it's only voluntary.

Again, town councils. The reasoning is hard for me to understand. Without the insecure desire for property, specific ?places? don't matter. There is no argument where the ?best? places are. And anyway, zoning laws would be intuitive (as they always are), and you wouldn't have to fear pollution or any kind of disastor. We're living in the future, man!

Pretty much the same way they are now. Each town will have a council and many decisions will be made democratically.

Again, the councils in each town. Granted, this gives room for towns to be religiously fanatical in nature, and maybe we wouldn't want that, but perhaps this can be overcome. Since everything is bottom up and decenteralized, there is no chance of bigots polluting other poppulations with their rethoric.

It's not an ideal, it's a theory. Read Proudhon, the Anarcist Faq, and some of Noam Chomsky's stuff.

Proudhon said so passionately, ?If all our institutions are based upon an error in calculation, does it not follow that these institutions are so many shams? And if the entire social structure is built upon this absolute impossibility of property, is it not true that the government under which we live is a chimera, and our present society a utopia??

(Note: I edited a quote so that it would make more sense... I think more explaination is necessary, since it's contextual. But I can't elaborate now.)

Same here, John. I will try not to be too forthright with my opinions, as I know I am capable of being more blatant than Proudhon! I respect your comment on Noam Chomsky, however, I must point out that I get that a lot whenever he comes up.

The point of discussion is to create new ideas. Anarchy is not an ideology (as, if you read the FAQ, you'd know by now), it's a theory, which is constantly evolving.

Before I begin, Anarchy does not, by any means, mean lawlessness!

Proudhon argues that the requirement for property laws is because of equality. However, in the end they wind up contridicting their own existance completelty. Look at certian unconstitutional laws in the USA like the DMCA or SSSCA! They are clearly unconstitutional with regards to the freedom of speech, however, they exist because of property laws (and are even Draconion in that respect). This is why Proudhon abolishes the requirement for property law completely (indeed, he claims that property is impossible!), because property is inherently pro-inequality while existing because of equality.

I don't see any society functioning without laws, and anarchy certainly wouldn't do that. There is no rule that anarchy have no government, only the term ?anarchistic government? is an oxymoron. A government within anarchy (again, an oxymoron) would just be a communication network, truely nothing more. Anarchy is ?bottom up.? That's its beauty. There would be no ?sharing? laws, there would only need be anti-oppression laws.

I agree, and it shall not. It shall only exist by a constitution that does not allow oppression. And unlike the constitution of the USA, it will not be depreciated over time by bureaucrats. You will not be penalized for practising capitalism, but you'll soon learn that capitalism is too #### expensive in space. And not because getting into space is expensive, the technology is there. Give it to the people and we will make it useful! Oh man, how wonderful the Mars Society could be if it had the money and technology NASA has.

Here's Proudhon's final words on the subject:

Why not have a solid constitution with human rights outlined and no government except for an implied communication layer? A government of powerless ambasadors! Ah, the beauty of such a system.

BTW, Anarchy is not the abolition of private property. Which is truely a misconception among most people about socialism.

Oh, and if you want to acquire Proudhon's book, ?What is Property,? you can find it at the Project Gutenberg website. Actually, here's a direct link to it.

Don't worry, Project Gutenberg is an archive of all old books whose copyrights have expired.

Good point, they are great for enclosing large areas of land, and less susceptible to leaks than say, an underground habitat. Though getting the domes to be completely secure to the ground (or over a crater) will prove difficult initally. I remember as a kid digging fence posts with an automatic digger, and I imagine the process would be similar, only you'd have to dig a trench all the way around and fill it with Martian-made concrete (every some yards having deep penetrating posts to really secure it).

If the domes had electricity running through them they would literally deflect most radiation, other things like UV coatings could help with the rest. It's quite a wonderful concept, really. In fact, domes would make more sense on the moon than Mars, since Mars actually has weather conditions (which could jepordize the dome, though honestly I don't think by much).

I think the one real argument for domes is simply that we'd be able to achieve things without tight cumbersom space suits. Each bubble could in fact be its own eco system, having the ablity to maintain itself completely without any outside resources (except for sunlight, perhaps). Domes are truely the first cities on Mars.

How's this for an idea:

What if we put strong plastic tracks on the outside of the domes (remember, once inflated they would necessarily be as hard as steel) to hold revolving solar panels? Sure, it would mean having shade inside the dome in certain areas,  I think this could work. Would it help us much, though?  Probably, in the beginning, when we have limited solar panels and must maximize light absorption.

Here is a quote from Proudhon in his book, ?What is Property.?

(All bold emphasis mine.)

Can anyone think of any problems we would face with domes? What kind of domes should we build? How do we build them? Does anyone think domes are too grandiose for our needs? When do we start using them? When we get there initally or when the first real pioneers get there? Should we take dome material or should we create it there? Why kind of habitat would a dome be like? How big should our largest domes be? How many people can they hold? How about the smallest ones?

This, and many more. Let's discuss the pros and cons of domes. Let's discuss when they'll be used (and argue whether or not they will ever be used at all), and let's figure out exactly why so many people are hyped over domes.

I agree with Phobos.

Am I moderated or something? I keep getting a ?your post be previewed by a moderator before being posted? thing.

What a dirty joke...

You have no idea what a sigh of relief that gives me. I'm often confronted with arguing the case for anarchy, and I usually fail because I don't have the strength to argue each and every issue (especially when I have to argue the case to a bunch of bigots).

Exactly (and it takes large oceans or intersteller space to really facilitate new ideas).

If I recall correctly, Zubrin said this exact same thing during one of his NASA talks (I'm not sure which, I think it was the 40th anniversary; the poor guy had ten minutes to show a hundred billion slides... I really felt bad for him).

Note: I did a quick search. You can see Robert Zubrin's talk here, if you have Real Player. He's the third speaker in the afternoon session.

He talks so fast I can't transcribe the quote.

I know.

I am studying AI, since ultimately I think that AI will help space growth big time. If we could send robots to anywhere we wanted so that they could survey, mine, and even build building for us, we'd be way better off than we are now. If we could build a building with little or no man power we'd have unlimited growth potential.

Hey Alex, happy holidays and all that.

First, let's talk about motivation. Early Earth pioneers weren't well developed creatures. We worshiped the sun and gladly submitted to anyone who told us to, we were puppets to higher causes. Most of their actions were done for survival. Nothing more. Indeed, progress during the European period was excruciating slow, there were so many wars, so many lost civilizations. There were obviously isolated cases of Earth pioneers, but they rarely helped the progress of humanity.

In the case of American pioneers, however, primary motivation was freedom. Divergent ideologies compelled people to be pioneers despite their actual human abilities. I believe any expansion to Mars would be based on a strong political theory. It's hard for me to accept a corporate funded long term habitat on Mars. Any sane Martian colony will have to be completely self sustaining, and such a habitat would cost way too much in terms of money.

In contrast to American pioneers, Martian pioneers will have a much rougher transition. Early American pioneers basically had everything they needed when they arrived, and had the capablity to build what they didn't have. This is quite different from early Martians. We have no easy way to obatain locailized resources (as far as we know).

Look at how far Earth has come since America. The capability of free thought and expression is astounding when you look at it. And it took the Atlantic and Pacific oceans to push it forward.

I don't quite agree with that. The one difference is that Martian pioneers will have to take everything with them. They need to have a biosphere that is capable of both self sustenance and self reproducibility. Such an environment isn't too hard to envision, given our current technological ablities. This then makes frontier Mars (and indeed frontier space) as hard as, if a little harder than, frontier America.

I totally disagree. The advent of science is the result of free thought, expression, experimentation, and open-mindedness. Alexandria is a very good example of this, only it was destroyed over 2000 years ago. It was arguably the most technogically advanced place in the world. Indeed, after the city was destroyed there were no advancements in 2000 years! (Yet there were plenty of frontiers.)

As Carl Sagan once remarked, ?Imagine where humanity would be had Alexandria not been destroyed over 2000 years ago!?

Ah, this is very odd Adrian.

When I load the main index of the forum it initally recognizes me as ?Guest,? after I go into a sub category, the forum recognizes me as ?Josh Cryer.? I have to login again for the main index to recognize me as ?Josh Cryer.?

Not as annoying as before (since I can apparently make posts without logging in), but still a nuisance.

(Doing a little experiment it seems like every time I load the forum it creates a once per session cookie, which apparently overrides the permanent cookie. I'm not a totally sure about how cookies work, though, but that's my best guess.)

When you say that no posts were lost, do you mean that posts by me weren't lost? 'Cause when I load the threads my posts are completely missing. It's like the post count (not thread count) was reduced to a time before I started posting.