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Check out this spacedaily Op-Ed by John Carter McKnight. His NYTimes link is fascinating as well although registration is required.
Are all the dreams of Mars-happy libertarian farmers with anarchistic tendencies going to be squashed flat by the KBRs and Booz Allen Hamiltons of this world. Will the globalizing forces of Pax Americana come to engulf and assimiliate Mars as well?
Resistance is futile?
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Those companies will write the space-property laws, not the academics, futurists and cranks (whether those are three categories or one I leave to readers' interpretation).
the only crank is McKnight.
The sky is falling, the sky is falling... bleh!
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Heh! The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one.
Anyway - hiring KBR to build a Mars settlement seems like a fairly sensible thing to do, if you have the money.
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Now this NY times piece is something...
KBR may very vell build the first Mars outpost.
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Not Deseret Space, a KBR wannabe?
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Here's what I think,
The libertarian idealism of the frontier is a dim-fantasy at best, based on a romanticized version of the past.
Space, in all her infinite glory, becomes a nice metaphor for the empty 'other' that holds so much more promise than what is here and now.
The grass is always greener on the other side because you haven't had to mow it yet.
My father grew up playing cowboy and Indian?s, I astronaut and aliens.
Old West, New Space. Ying and Yang. Abbot and Costello.
Well, enough of that.
So, where are we, or where are we going?
The very same idealism engendered by the libertarian fantasy of space, is also mimicked by the dark musings of the opposite end of the spectrum.
Enter the next favorite fantasy, that of the Tyrants and the choking sputtering death of oppressive beau racy. How will we ever leave that behind?!
Please. Yet another fantasy, yet another ill conceived delusion.
Space, in all her limiting glory, will change us for no other reason than she changes the rules on us.
There won't be tyrants for the same reason you can't smoke in a crowded elevator. Your bad habits, or your neglect of others will make the situation even more crowded. And a crowd of upset people on an elevator is not pleasant, for anyone.
So where does that leave us?
It will leave us with a world of socially competent people who have become that way out of sheer necessity. Sure, some will be more selfish than others, just as some will be more sharing than others. But the spectrum will be different. It has to be. You ask why?
Because space, put simply, is different.
No matter what metaphor is used.
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