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#251 2021-11-02 17:07:46

kbd512
Administrator
Registered: 2015-01-02
Posts: 7,361

Re: Corporate Government

RobertDyck,

What is the magnitude of the losses?  Scale matters.

I'm talking about Lead / Cadmium / Mercury / Thorium when referring to "heavy metal", not Iron.  If there is a lot of Arsenic or Perchlorates or other little nasties, then what?  What's the backup plan?  The Iron is not a show stopper.  As you noted, some plants grow quite well in Iron-rich soils.  If there's low Potassium and zero Nitrogen, then what else are you expecting there?  I'm sure there's Sodium and some other required elements and minerals, but how much and where and is it close to a major buried glacier or only indicative of regolith from the specific sample site?

Since nobody has grown anything in actual Martian regolith, even if you had to extract or hydrate minerals from the regolith to spray the root systems of the plants in an aeroponic farm, when you need 95% to 99% less land area, doesn't that make the entire process a lot easier to manage?  Also, why would there be no essential minerals trapped in the buried glaciers?

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#252 2021-11-02 17:29:06

RobertDyck
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From: Winnipeg, Canada
Registered: 2002-08-20
Posts: 7,781
Website

Re: Corporate Government

Soil analysis by the APXS instrument on Sojourner as well as Opportunity and Spirit: several elements. The elements themselves were measured, but are presented here as oxides.
Na2O, MgO, Al2O3, SiO2, P2O5, SO3, Cl, K2O, CaO, TiO2, Cr2O3, MnO, Fe2O3

The following were in parts per million (ppm), measured by Opportunity and Spirit, but not Sojourner:
Ni: 590 - 1090
Zn: 280 - 470
Br: 20 - 290

Do you want me to post the full table? One column per soil sample? I don't see any lead, cadmium, mercury, or thorium. Or arsenic.

Before the Great Crash I had posted the exact procedure to make ammonium nitrate fertilizer from air, water, electricity, and equipment you can buy at a hardware store. I'm not going to post it again, some government type would get upset. Just let it suffice that I know how to do it, and we can do it on Mars.

Potassium is more difficult. You would have to process a lot of Mars dirt to extract potassium fertilizer. There's some in the soil, but idea top soil needs more. Potassium salts are found where a large salt lake or salt sea evaporated dry. There are deposits beneath the Great Lakes and beneath the Mediterranean. Some other places. There should be deposits under the dried ocean bed of the northern hemisphere of Mars. Exactly where will take prospecting.

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#253 2021-11-02 18:27:09

kbd512
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Registered: 2015-01-02
Posts: 7,361

Re: Corporate Government

Was there any ability to detect heavy metals or chemicals like Arsenic?

Posting how to make fertilizer to grow crops makes the government upset?  Hmm...  Okay.  What a bunch of nutters.

What is the grand total number of regolith samples we have taken, and are they anywhere near these buried glaciers?

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#254 2021-11-02 18:28:25

SpaceNut
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From: New Hampshire
Registered: 2004-07-22
Posts: 28,747

Re: Corporate Government

A corporate profit implies one is bringing back goods of any form to the corporate head quarters and that is not settlement.

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#255 2021-11-02 18:43:21

RobertDyck
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From: Winnipeg, Canada
Registered: 2002-08-20
Posts: 7,781
Website

Re: Corporate Government

SpaceNut: you don't need to bring back goods to make profit. As I said, the basis was charge passengers in Earth currency, but operate the ship from the Mars economy. Once set up, there's large profit.

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#256 2021-11-02 18:49:06

RobertDyck
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From: Winnipeg, Canada
Registered: 2002-08-20
Posts: 7,781
Website

Re: Corporate Government

kbd512: Ever since the Oklahoma bombing, government bureaucrats have restricted access to nitrogen fertilizer. Even though a bombing like that required very specific knowledge and training: how to create ammonium nitrate / fuel oil explosive, how to create a shaped charge, vulnerabilities of the building structure, exact size and shape and position of an explosive deliberately designed to cause an office tower building to collapse. The criminal who did that was a US army veteran, trained as a special force operative to use available resources to create an improvised explosive device to take down large buildings. Access to fertilizer is not nearly enough, it required very specific training. Rather than restrict access to fertilizer, they should be careful who they recruit into the military, and keep very careful track of individuals with such specific skills.

But, they have restricted access to fertilizer. So I won't say more.

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#257 2021-11-02 18:59:25

RobertDyck
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From: Winnipeg, Canada
Registered: 2002-08-20
Posts: 7,781
Website

Re: Corporate Government

Soil samples. Yea, technically the surface of Mars is not regolith, because that term means pulverized igneous rock. The surface of Mars has sedimentary minerals as well as hydrated material such as clay. Geologists have taken to calling the loose non-aggregated surface material "soil". However, according to agricultural science it must have organic material to be called soil. There is a technical term for loose material that does not have organic material: dirt. Yup, dirt is a technical term. Mars has dirt.

I have results of 6 "soil" samples from Sojourner, and 8 "soil" samples from Opportunity/Spirit. They've taken a lot more, but finding access to data is getting harder all the time. News releases tends to get dummied down. None of the samples were near a glacier.

NASA: Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS)

The APXS instrument has 3 modes: Alpha, Proton, X-ray Spectrometer. Unfortunately the Proton mode didn't work, so they don't have a measure of hydrogen. It would definitely be useful to discern the difference between feldspar rock vs clay. X-ray fluorescence is used for heavier elements, from sodium on up. Here's the website:
X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF)

X-Ray fluorescence is particularly well-suited for investigations that involve

  • bulk chemical analyses of major elements (Si, Ti, Al, Fe, Mn, Mg, Ca, Na, K, P) in rock and sediment

  • bulk chemical analyses of trace elements (in abundances >1 ppm; Ba, Ce, Co, Cr, Cu, Ga, La, Nb, Ni, Rb, Sc, Sr, Rh, U, V, Y, Zr, Zn) in rock and sediment - detection limits for trace elements are typically on the order of a few parts per million

A more serious consideration was early results from Mars Global Surveyor. The Thermal Emission Spectrometer detected spectra and thermal momentum consistent with serpentine and actinolite. When crushed they form asbestos. However, none of the rovers detected these minerals on the ground. So perhaps interpretation of the data from orbit was incorrect.

Last edited by RobertDyck (2021-11-02 19:20:35)

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#258 2021-11-02 19:50:06

louis
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From: UK
Registered: 2008-03-24
Posts: 7,208

Re: Corporate Government

Your definition of regolith  is not the generally accepted definition which is along the lines of this from the Collins dictionary: "the layer of loose material covering the bedrock of the earth and moon, etc, comprising soil, sand, rock fragments, volcanic ash, glacial drift, etc "

I agree that using the word soil for regolith with no organic material is unscientific. Soil by definition must mean stuff with organic material in it - both live and dead.

RobertDyck wrote:

Soil samples. Yea, technically the surface of Mars is not regolith, because that term means pulverized igneous rock. The surface of Mars has sedimentary minerals as well as hydrated material such as clay. Geologists have taken to calling the loose non-aggregated surface material "soil". However, according to agricultural science it must have organic material to be called soil. There is a technical term for loose material that does not have organic material: dirt. Yup, dirt is a technical term. Mars has dirt.

I have results of 6 "soil" samples from Sojourner, and 8 "soil" samples from Opportunity/Spirit. They've taken a lot more, but finding access to data is getting harder all the time. News releases tends to get dummied down. None of the samples were near a glacier.

NASA: Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS)

The APXS instrument has 3 modes: Alpha, Proton, X-ray Spectrometer. Unfortunately the Proton mode didn't work, so they don't have a measure of hydrogen. It would definitely be useful to discern the difference between feldspar rock vs clay. X-ray fluorescence is used for heavier elements, from sodium on up. Here's the website:
X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF)

X-Ray fluorescence is particularly well-suited for investigations that involve

  • bulk chemical analyses of major elements (Si, Ti, Al, Fe, Mn, Mg, Ca, Na, K, P) in rock and sediment

  • bulk chemical analyses of trace elements (in abundances >1 ppm; Ba, Ce, Co, Cr, Cu, Ga, La, Nb, Ni, Rb, Sc, Sr, Rh, U, V, Y, Zr, Zn) in rock and sediment - detection limits for trace elements are typically on the order of a few parts per million

A more serious consideration was early results from Mars Global Surveyor. The Thermal Emission Spectrometer detected spectra and thermal momentum consistent with serpentine and actinolite. When crushed they form asbestos. However, none of the rovers detected these minerals on the ground. So perhaps interpretation of the data from orbit was incorrect.

Last edited by louis (2021-11-02 19:50:34)


Let's Go to Mars...Google on: Fast Track to Mars blogspot.com

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#259 2021-11-02 21:08:45

RobertDyck
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From: Winnipeg, Canada
Registered: 2002-08-20
Posts: 7,781
Website

Re: Corporate Government

louis wrote:

Your definition of regolith  is not the generally accepted definition which is along the lines of this from the Collins dictionary: "the layer of loose material covering the bedrock of the earth and moon, etc, comprising soil, sand, rock fragments, volcanic ash, glacial drift, etc "

I agree that using the word soil for regolith with no organic material is unscientific. Soil by definition must mean stuff with organic material in it - both live and dead.

That is the other definition of regolith. By that definition, regolith includes everything. When you lie on a towel at the beach, your body is part of the regolith. Your towel is. Your house is, the trees, grass, flowers, everything. That definition is unhelpful, it's so broad that by including everything it means nothing.

The word was originally created to refer to the surface material on the Moon. That is pulverized igneous rock.

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#260 2021-11-03 03:14:40

Terraformer
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From: Ceres
Registered: 2007-08-27
Posts: 3,800
Website

Re: Corporate Government

RobertDyck wrote:

SpaceNut: you don't need to bring back goods to make profit. As I said, the basis was charge passengers in Earth currency, but operate the ship from the Mars economy. Once set up, there's large profit.

"Build it, and they will come."

Of course, the plan to rely on ticket revenues creates the biggest selection criteria of all, bigger than intelligence or health or personality - you're relying on the small number of people who are wealthy enough to afford a ticket to sell everything they have and bet it all on Mars. But most of those people will have commitments here. They'll also skew older, which is not what you want if your plan is to *colonise* someplace. And eventually you will run out of immigrants and the company will fold.


"I'm gonna die surrounded by the biggest idiots in the galaxy." - If this forum was a Mars Colony

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#261 2021-11-03 05:06:05

RobertDyck
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From: Winnipeg, Canada
Registered: 2002-08-20
Posts: 7,781
Website

Re: Corporate Government

I ran the numbers for a simple example. A tradesman living in Toronto. He bought a simple townhouse, advertised to have a view of the lakefront, but the photograph of the front shows it has a view of a wall. The sidewalk between wall and stairs to front doors of this row of townhouses (in the UK called rowhouses) has a view of downtown buildings. Over the top of these buildings can be seen the CN Tower. This particular townhouse is 670 square feet, 1 bedroom, 1 bathroom. Assume the tradesman purchased the house at the asking price that this particular townhouse is actually listed. Also assume the minimum down payment under Canadian law, mortgage insurance that is required under Canadian law for a mortgage with less than 25% down payment. Also assume 30 year amortization, which is typical in Canada. After 10 years the tradesman wants to sell his home and move to Mars. He sells his home, deducted real estate agent fee and lawyer fees for closing. Using current foreign exchange rate, that gives him $102,845 in US funds. If a ticket is $100k in US funds, then he gets a bunk in a cabin with 5 strangers. That is 6 people in the cabin including himself.

I estimate it will cost $500k for such a bunk for the first mission to Mars. Or $2.5 million for the whole standard cabin. (Buy 5 bunks, get one free!) After a settlement is established on Mars so all food and propellant is provided from Mars, not Earth, then the ticket price will drop to 1/5. So yes, that does mean $100k for a bunk, or $500k for a whole cabin.

Our example tradesman is in his mid-30s, single, no children. He would also have a used car or used pickup truck or motorcycle, sports equipment, or other hobby equipment, and tools. He would have to sell bulky equipment, after all most sports will not work on Mars. He would keep the tools of his trade, so he could ply his trade on Mars. Tools would be stored in the ship cargo hold during transit. His bunk would have storage for clothing: under mattress storage 10cm deep, plus one row of drawers under the lower bunk. All storage in his cabin can be locked.

6e1083eb1242697571291ea08e321ec4f0d83f77.gifv

A new life awaits you in the Off-World colonies. The chance to begin again in a golden land of opportunity and adventure. New...-- A new life awaits you in the Off-World colonies. The chance to begin again in a golden land of opportunity and adventure. New climate, recreational facilities.....absolutely free.

Hmm... The Blade Runner blimp promised recreational facilities. I guess the Company will have to provide that too. Racket ball court? Basket ball in 38% gravity? Definitely off-road quad driving outdoors with 4-wheel ATVs. Outdoors golf on red soil in a spacesuit? Here in Winnipeg one golf course tried to advertise winter golf using orange tennis balls instead of golf balls. Large orange balls stand out on white snow. Mars has red soil, so tennis ball size white balls? How far can you drive a ball in 38% gravity?

Swimming pool would be easy, that could be used as water storage. Filtration equipment capable of processing urine into potable water would definitely be able to remove chlorine and body... um... odour into potable water. Hot tub and gym as well.

Last edited by RobertDyck (2021-11-03 05:18:58)

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#262 2021-11-03 13:59:21

kbd512
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Registered: 2015-01-02
Posts: 7,361

Re: Corporate Government

Let's call whatever that stuff is that covers the surface of Mars, "dirt", as RobertDyck suggested, because that's an apt description.  All the equipment that we send there, that's coated with the stuff, is in fact "dirty".

Again, I'll ask the simple question:

How many Mars dirt samples have we taken from around the glacial area we think we're going to colonize?

Is it 1, 10, 100, or is it 0?

If it's zero, then we essentially know nothing about the local dirt and its suitability for agriculture.

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#263 2021-11-03 14:33:16

RobertDyck
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From: Winnipeg, Canada
Registered: 2002-08-20
Posts: 7,781
Website

Re: Corporate Government

Again, from Sojourner we have "soil" samples A-2, A-4, A-5, A-9, A-10, A-1. That's a total of 6 samples. Sojourner was the little rover carried by Mars Pathfinder. It landed September 27, 1997, and operated for 3 Mars solar days (sols). To quote Wikipedia:

The landing site was an ancient flood plain in Mars's northern hemisphere called "Ares Vallis" ("the valley of Ares", the ancient Greek equivalent of the ancient Roman deity Mars) and is among the rockiest parts of Mars. Scientists chose it because they found it to be a relatively safe surface to land on and one that contained a wide variety of rocks deposited during a catastrophic flood. After the landing, at 19.13°N 33.22°W Coordinates: 19.13°N 33.22°W, succeeded, the lander received the name The Carl Sagan Memorial Station in honor of the astronomer.

I have data from 8 "soil" samples from Opportunity and Spirit. They're named Tarmac, Hema2, trench1, tranchwall2, Les Haunches, Jack Russell, Beagle Burrow, Nougat.
If you could provide additional "soil" samples, that would be appreciated. I use the term "soil" since that's what it's called in published data.
Opportunity landed in Meridiani Planum. Spirit landed in Elysium Planetia, although not at the specific site of the frozen pack ice.

We haven't agreed on a location to colonize, so don't have dirt samples from that specific location, where ever that may be.

Last edited by RobertDyck (2021-11-03 14:34:42)

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#264 2021-11-03 17:13:07

RobertDyck
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From: Winnipeg, Canada
Registered: 2002-08-20
Posts: 7,781
Website

Re: Corporate Government

kbd512, I'm sure you think you won something. This started when you claimed that hydroponics was fundamentally better than soil agriculture. The problem with hydroponics is you have to get nutrient solutions from somewhere. If the source of nutrients is Mars dirt, then you have to process Mars dirt anyway. Processing required to extract and concentrate nutrients is much greater than that required to create arable soil. Any talk about total pressurized volume must include industrial processes to process that Mars dirt to create nutrient solutions for hydroponics. Aeroponics is the same as hydroponics, except instead of plant roots in some sort of support medium such as expanded clay pellets with nutrient solution flooding, aeroponics suspends plant roots so they dangle in mid-air. Plant roots are periodically sprayed with nutrient solution. So the same nutrient solution is required. Processing Mars dirt to get those nutrients is required either way.

And processing human waste to create nutrient solution will never ever provide what is necessary to grow the settlement. Processing human waste is more involved than you think. Aquaponics is integration of hydroponics with aquaculture. That can produce some food and will be a significant part of food production on Mars. No, it cannot provide everything. And will never be able to produce food to allow population growth. For that, you need an input from outside the closed system. So the system isn't really closed. For that you're back to processing Mars dirt. The method of minimizing processing required is soil agriculture. Mars will have a combination of soil agriculture and aquaponics.

And you mentioned arsenic. There are no samples of Mars dirt that includes any arsenic. Mars surface dirt is wind blown across the entire planet. There are only two types of Mars surface dirt: red and black. This surface material is homogeneous across the planet. Yes, if you dig down then you get local variations. But before you start another line of argument, I have to point out that relying on aeroponics alone will result in settler starvation. Period.

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#265 2021-11-03 18:05:11

louis
Member
From: UK
Registered: 2008-03-24
Posts: 7,208

Re: Corporate Government

The wealthiest people on Earth tend to be the most satisfied with their lives on Earth.  I've made that point many times before.  I am sure Musk would like to get highly skilled software managers to move to Mars...but they are going to have excellent salaries on Earth, nice homes, most likely have families with children in schools and their own friendship networks...plus parents who perhaps are beginning to age...but are also good with the grandkids. They'll not doubt have a very rich social life - a wide friendship network - and a lively involvement in the local cultural scene.

It will be very difficult to get such people to emigrate to Mars on a permanent basis.

I have suggested before that your best bet is to establish university post-grad campuses on Mars where you will attract young people before they get involved in established partnerships. The young people who go there to study, research and explore will have a great time and begin to associate being happy with being on Mars - they will also naturally hook up with people of their own age.  If you can then further lure them to stay on Mars with excellent salaries, free accommodation and health care etc you might be able to get them to stay on a longer term basis which might then become a permanent basis.


Terraformer wrote:
RobertDyck wrote:

SpaceNut: you don't need to bring back goods to make profit. As I said, the basis was charge passengers in Earth currency, but operate the ship from the Mars economy. Once set up, there's large profit.

"Build it, and they will come."

Of course, the plan to rely on ticket revenues creates the biggest selection criteria of all, bigger than intelligence or health or personality - you're relying on the small number of people who are wealthy enough to afford a ticket to sell everything they have and bet it all on Mars. But most of those people will have commitments here. They'll also skew older, which is not what you want if your plan is to *colonise* someplace. And eventually you will run out of immigrants and the company will fold.


Let's Go to Mars...Google on: Fast Track to Mars blogspot.com

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#266 2021-11-03 18:40:34

kbd512
Administrator
Registered: 2015-01-02
Posts: 7,361

Re: Corporate Government

RobertDyck,

Is that what this is really about to you?  I've never won or lost anything in an internet debate.  Have you?  I wasn't even aware that anyone was "keeping score".  I guess that's my own naivety showing there.  Maybe you have, but ideas are just ideas for me.  It's not a point of pride or fancy.  I want to see a functional thriving society on Mars before I kick the bucket.  The best way I can think of to accomplish that is to collect the most well-thought-out ideas, ones with hard data behind them, and challenge every preconceived notion to ensure that that happens.

From what little I know about actually planting and eating food grown at home, some ideas work better than others and it's not a matter of what I want, it's a matter of what actually works.  For example, no matter what I want, corn doesn't grow particularly well in Austin unless you truck in high quality top soil and water the living hell out of it.  Sure, you can do it, but it definitely isn't worth the effort.  I came from Omaha, where you could practically throw corn on the ground and it would grow.  That didn't work nearly as well in Austin.  Rather than try to squeeze blood from stone to mindlessly satisfy Cornhusker ideology, we grew tomatoes and other vegetables instead, because that actually worked, and bought corn in the store.

Do you really think I care in the slightest if food is grown in the ground versus atop a little piece of plastic?

Do you really care about it that much?

I had no clue that I was upsetting your ego by doing so.  Growing food has never been something I ever imagined would be tied to anyone's ego.  Seriously.

I see the results we're getting with aeroponics here on Earth, I see the stupendous cost and power requirements for any pressurized space, so I thought to myself, "If that works so well here, then why not use it on Mars?"

I asked you for one silly data point regarding a potential colony location because I thought you already had something in mind that had data behind it.  I thought you'd broke out the maps and already had the perfect spot picked out for the colony, we'd already sent a rover there to analyze the dirt, the works, basically.

To my way of thinking, this is simply another annoying but important problem that has to be solved to attain the goal.

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#267 2021-11-03 19:20:09

RobertDyck
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From: Winnipeg, Canada
Registered: 2002-08-20
Posts: 7,781
Website

Re: Corporate Government

Mars is never going to happen unless it's profitable. Government never will do anything. They will send unmanned rovers, that's all. The only way to get humans to Mars is commercial business. For that to happen it must be profitable. This is the only way to make Mars profitable.

Maybe current real life is bleeding in here. The government established vaccine mandates. You can't go to a restaurant unless you have a QR code on your smartphone proving you are double vaccinated, and photo-ID. Starting last week, there are certain buildings that do not allow you to enter the building unless you have that. My employer just required all employees and contractors to be double vaccinated. This means I'm now unemployed. The Premier of the province resigned. He badly mishandled COVID, was universally hated. The party held a leadership race to replace him. A couple candidates dropped out, only two left for the vote. One is a cabinet minister of the previous Premier, and supports all the same policies. The other was the only individual who supported freedom. The vote was manipulated, many ballots were mailed out late, too late to be sent back and counted in the vote. The count was very close, if those discarded ballots were counted the result would probably be different. I sent an email the Lieutenant Governor asking her to require all ballots to be counted. Turns out the losing candidate had her lawyer send such a letter. The party ignored everything, swore in the former cabinet minister. The province has an election authority to ensure elections are fair with no manipulation. That authority was not involved. Now we have a new Premier who has not been elected by voters in this province, and will rule as Premier for 2 years. What's next? Will people like me be required to sew a yellow star on my clothing, like Jews in Nazi Germany or Nazi occupied Poland?

So yes, I do care. I need to get off this planet. The federal government has ordered end of the entire oil industry. They want to ban sale of gasoline powered cars. Taxes have drastically increased. Basically, the Canada is under attack by it's own government. How far are they going to push it? Do they really want a revolutionary war? Who is controlling the government? No dystopian story could ever have predicted what's happening now.

So yea, we need a way out.

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#268 2021-11-03 19:25:52

SpaceNut
Administrator
From: New Hampshire
Registered: 2004-07-22
Posts: 28,747

Re: Corporate Government

The only samples that were taken for ice areas of mars was the Phoenix which survive long enough to sample the dirt before becoming ice encased by winter at the pole.
Soil on Earth has micro-nutrients which is the broken down elements that move more easily in water into the plants root system.

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#269 2021-11-03 19:43:10

RobertDyck
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From: Winnipeg, Canada
Registered: 2002-08-20
Posts: 7,781
Website

Re: Corporate Government

Ok, you want a specific location. I have suggested the frozen pack ice of Elysium Planetia. For some reason, JPL and ESA both refuse to send anything there. Spirit did collect data in Elysium Planetia, but it wasn't in Cerberus Fossae. Some people have suggested other locations, at mid-latitudes with a glacier in the side of a valley. I prefer something flat, smooth, and close to the equator.

Hydroponics vs soil in a greenhouse is something we've studied since the Mars Society was founded in 1998. Gary Fisher developed a sophisticated greenhouse that integrated sewage processing. Not complete but very good. That greenhouse was destroyed in fire. Gary Fisher quit working at MDRS, now we have something a lot less sophisticated. We keep falling backward. But this hydroponic issue is something I worked on with people who are actually qualified. We didn't know about perchlorates back then, but still.

And yes, I do have some small experience. My parents grew a large vegetable garden in the house where I grew up. Top soil over Manitoba gumbo. I lived in Toronto for 3 years in the late 1980s, rented a house the last year with my then fiancée. The house was an older couple's retirement house until they had to move to a nursing home. It had 14 fruit trees and 6 grape vines, and they were Italian wine grapes. And they left their wine making equipment behind. I'm afraid I never figured out how to assemble their right to protect the rosemary from winter cold. The yard also had several varieties of rose. Was quite beautiful. When I moved to Winnipeg, I bought a house and planted a Goodland apple tree. The house in Toronto had Red Delicious, McIntosh, Granny Smith, but those trees won't survive a Winnipeg winter. Goodland will survive here and produces full-size apples. Muscat Blanc grapes won't grow here, but Valiant does. I had a small vegetable garden, until the apple tree grew so large it shades the garden. I can't pick apples from the top of a 34-foot tree so really need to cut it down. A website for a nursery sells dwarf trees that produce the same variety and same size apples, but the tree only grows 8-feet tall.

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#270 2021-11-04 08:48:13

Terraformer
Member
From: Ceres
Registered: 2007-08-27
Posts: 3,800
Website

Re: Corporate Government

I need to get off this planet.

I feel that your desire to go to Mars may be leading you to try and come up with a plan that is skewed in favour of someone like you being able to move to Mars, whether or not the plan is actually viable...

Government never will do anything.

They will if it's cheap enough. The US spends $350 million on maintaining Antarctic bases. NASA receives $22 billion. It is not implausible that they would be willing to spend 10x as much on Mars as they do on Antarctica ($3.5 billion, ESAs budget in 2005!), in order to have a permanent presence there. Especially if China and Russia and India and Brazil and Europe are also there. The world budget for space exploration in 2005 was $25 billion.. It is not implausible that 20% of this could end up being spent on supporting manned bases. Flags and footprints, not so much. But I think the money is there to get governments to pay for putting in the infrastructure and learning how to live there, making things far easier for the real colonies.


"I'm gonna die surrounded by the biggest idiots in the galaxy." - If this forum was a Mars Colony

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#271 2021-11-04 09:48:38

kbd512
Administrator
Registered: 2015-01-02
Posts: 7,361

Re: Corporate Government

RobertDyck,

Yes, there are some people in this world (socialists / communists / nihilists) who want absolute dictatorial authority over the lives of other people, from cradle to grave.  They will stop at nothing to get it.  That is why we must stop them.  They will endlessly torment any who think differently.  That's a defining characteristic of people who sincerely believe that what they're doing is justified.  A garden variety warlord or oligarch's wrath or lust for money may eventually be satiated, whereas the wrath of a true believer never will be.  Did the nazis ever pause to ask themselves if murdering six million of their fellow Germans was justifiable?  Clearly not, because they all sincerely believed that what they were doing was correct.  Now in our time, that's what we see happening again.

After returning from the Korean War to start a family, my grandfather asked his college professor when there would be another world war.  His college professor thought about it for a minute, then responded, "There will be another world war when there are too few people left alive who remember the last one."  Well, the very last WWII veterans are disappearing now.

What do we see happening now?

The rise of totalitarianism within our own societies, the very ones that fought against the last rise of totalitarianism.  Nobody is coming to save us from ourselves.  Everyone who could has the exact same totalitarian ideas.  If we don't solve our own problems, nobody else ever will.  We can accept a slow descent into chaos and anarchy, the vehicle for that movement being totalitarianism, or we can accept that we have a problem we need to solve.  There's nowhere to escape to.  If you go to Mars, all the bad ideas will follow you there.

Mars should be a celebration of human technological and social achievement, a reflection of our successes as humans here on Earth, not an escape plan for avoiding the rest of humanity.  Sometimes you have to stand up and fight for what you believe in, because you can never run far enough to escape evil people.  Going to Mars doesn't make Canada less important to humanity, for example.  I see this latest wave of bad ideas as something we need to defeat, in order to achieve our goal of colonizing Mars.

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#272 2021-11-04 10:27:40

RobertDyck
Moderator
From: Winnipeg, Canada
Registered: 2002-08-20
Posts: 7,781
Website

Re: Corporate Government

Terraformer,
It will never be cheap enough. Military contractors who are the traditional contractors for NASA expect to get paid hundreds of billions of dollars to send humans to Mars. They have already deliberately increased prices of everything they do. The 90-Day Report of 1989 had a price tag of $450 billion in 1989 dollars. That report included a space station in LEO, a capsule similar to Apollo that could carry 4 astronauts, and a heavy lift launch vehicle capable of lifting as much as Saturn V. It also included a second space station. Sound like anything? Even though Congress rejected the 90-Day Report in 1989, military contractors and certain people in NASA are determined to do it anyway. Congress said in no uncertain terms that they would never approve a second space station, they they moved the second station to Lunar orbit. It's being built. They expect and demand hundreds of billions of dollars for a single human science mission. They are already manipulating prices to accomplish that.

Antarctica is not a settlement where humans can move. It's a science base where access is restricted to "elite" individuals who have special contacts within the government. Average are not allowed at bases in Antarctica, and will not be allowed on Mars. But as I said, military contractors for NASA have already worked to increase the cost to what they think they should get paid. And Congress has already said they will not pay that price.

Last edited by RobertDyck (2021-11-04 10:30:31)

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#273 2021-11-04 11:03:06

RobertDyck
Moderator
From: Winnipeg, Canada
Registered: 2002-08-20
Posts: 7,781
Website

Re: Corporate Government

I live in the city of Winnipeg. This is the location of the Red River Uprising, sometimes called the Red River Rebellion. In 1869 the government of Canada purchased Rupertsland from the Hudson's Bay Company. That company had held the rights to a vast tract of North America interior land, with exclusive rights granted by the British crown to extract resources and manage the land, including construction of military forts and maintaining armies to defend those forts and their resource extraction business. When the Canadian government took over, they treated the land as if it was empty. They declared farms owned by white people were no longer owned, and settlers from Ontario could just move in to those houses and assume ownership. Of course they also claimed indigenous and Métis were meaningless as well. Métis were half indigenous, half French. Not accepted by either indigenous or white people, but they were separate for over a century by that time so had established their own identity, their own culture. The result was armed rebellion, citizens kicked out the government, defended their homes, farms, lands. After revolutionary war, an agreement was reached. However, the government failed to live up to their side of the agreement. That resulted in the Northwest Rebellion in 1885. The first rebellion was just people from what is now Manitoba. The second included people from all of Canada's west: Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, BC, and northern territories. I think that even included people from northwestern Ontario, west of Lake Superior.

Soldiers of the Canadian military won. Leader of both rebellions was Louis Riel. He was hung for treason. Agreement after that was all white people get to keep their farms. They signed treaties with indigenous people. That's another long discussion. And Métis were granted land sufficient to raise the bison (buffalo) herd they were ranching. However, government still couldn't stick to their agreement. The land granted to Métis was broken up into tiny little pieces, each far too small to ranch bison. Individual land owners were pressured to sell at fire-sale prices until they owned nothing.

You didn't know that Canada had a civil war, did you?

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#274 2022-05-09 02:47:07

Mars_B4_Moon
Member
Registered: 2006-03-23
Posts: 8,892

Re: Corporate Government

Does Branson or Amazon want to govern Mars?

Off Shore Money Laundering on Earth seems to be profitable, in Year 2022 City of London Corporation, its own Private City within a city, with its own different laws, its own separate police, it had an election took place in March 2022 to elect members of the Court of Common Council in the City of London Corporation, an old part of French Roman Saxon Civitas Londinium or Cité de Londres England, the election was postponed for a year due fears of these old money laundering farts dying of Covid, they do not fear British Law but old dinosaur types utterly feared the Corona pandemic, Temple & Farringdon Together Corporation got seats, the British Labour Party got seats but most were unloyal independents, One of the victorious independent candidates was Emily Benn, Honourable Emily Benn socially, is an English Labour politician. She is the eldest child and only daughter of Royal Duke Baroness Highness 3rd Viscount Stansgate and Nita Clarke née Bowes, she is part of that old elite Ivy masonic girls club at Harvard University, also University of Oxford and links with UBS Group AG an entity banker group? Co-headquartered in the cities of Zürich and Basel northwestern Switzerland, she sometimes will dress up like a Hindu mystic woman because she is quarter-Indian on her mother's side and the granddaughter of the late Labour politician Tony Benn, 51 seats are needed for a old Londinium majority.

NestleMars, Incorporated...draining the Lakes and IceCaps of Mars? selling addictive confectionery and animal foods?

Corporate musketeers ... or millions of humans make predictions all the time and most turn out wrong?

In 1953 a Scientist Predicted a Man Titled 'Elon'
https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-s … 021-6?IR=T

Here’s how government will work on Mars, according to Elon
https://www.vox.com/2016/6/3/11852148

They guard the Vatican, Switzerland Large Hadron Collider, outside the EU but they are inside the ESA, Geneva Summit again Switzerland, Japan surrendering at the end of WW2 again some Swiss link they transmitted orders to its embassy in Switzerland to accept the Allied terms of surrender , the International Telecommunication Union that's Geneva, Switzerland, Geneva Conventions Switzerland, a lot of wealth from WW2 was hidden away there yes again Switzerland, Russian money hidden in foreign banks?

US commission accuses Switzerland of hiding Russian assets
https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/politics/u … s/47570650

Last edited by Mars_B4_Moon (2022-05-09 03:06:32)

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#275 2022-05-11 14:09:48

Mars_B4_Moon
Member
Registered: 2006-03-23
Posts: 8,892

Re: Corporate Government

Wikipedia removes U.S. Senate candidate's page ahead of Pennsylvania primary
https://justthenews.com/politics-policy … nnsylvania

Jeff Bezos is worth $160bn – yet Congress might bail out his space company
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr … ie-sanders

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