Well my point is that creating a new branch of humanity is worth the effort. The society that colonist would build (and there could be several such experiments) could provide remarkable working models for earth. There are too many sunk costs in our current setup to allow for social experimentation. Mars, like the Americas and Australia/New Zealand allow for new methods and approaches.
I mention above I could see several new “nations” emerging, but I could also equally see a single planetary government emerge. The challenges, approaches and social obligations/rights that that would entail could provide to earth societies working models that they likely could not have, begun on their own. No one can build a Utopia, but new approaches can move us further along the path. Mars/Earth relations would no more be parasitic than the North America/European relationship has been.
Now if you believe that social problems on earth should be fixed before w go anywhere, then where will you begin (or stop for that matter)? Is it food? Personal liberty? Personal wealth? Disease perhaps? Most modern nations have those issues under control and the rest of the world is slowly catching up. If all nations had living standards equivalent to say Canada could we go then? If you’re looking for a complete elimination of human problems and complaints here, then you are looking for Utopia in the most unlikely of places.
Besides, I want to see what an Earth morning star looks like.
I get the impression that a certain portion of the population that’s really frightened of space exploration and against human progress generally, thinks they can get away with holding space exploration hostage to unsolved problems on Earth.
“No going out in space to play until you’ve cleaned up the environment and fed every starving person on Earth, young man!”
They never stop to think that the effort of space exploration could well have side effects that could solve the aforementioned problems, or that, as you say, colonizing space means we aren’t working on them. Sad, really.
It doesn’t hold in the atmosphere at all- Venus has a thick atmosphere, is closer to the sun, but has no magnetosphere-
so obviously lack of magnetic field does not mean loss of atmosphere.
However the Earth’s magnetosphere does deflect charged particles from the Sun- sometimes toward the poles, mostly away from the Earth altogether.
As I understand it this is a significant effect.
Better stop driving your car and stop using electricity. I always hated Star Trek because I could never humans going along with anything like the Prime Directive or Starfleet in general. Whatever life is on other planets is probably gonna have to take one for the team, anything and everything that ever got in humanity’s way has been ground under. Aliens will be no exception. And what’s wrong with that? In a universe this big, there is no doubt some other intelligent space-faring race with the same attitude. Better they die than us.
I used to feel like you, but I sat down and realized that basically the options were to become Amish or a Jain or something, or else keep revving the war machine and grinding everything under.
Notice to all Extra-Terrestrials; We have never known peace. We are incapable of understanding peace. We come to dominate. We have come to destroy. Don’t be so vain to think technological superiority would save you from us. We’ll reverse-engineer it, improve on it, and kill you with your own inventions. We do it to each other for fun.
u no, thats funny n all, but the freaky thing is i think ur right :rolleyes:
which brings up a possible reason y no intelligent life has visited us. they are intelligent, and we’re too dangerous, lol.
oh btw, u werent sposed to tell the ET’s that yet!
P.S. to ETs: we’re joking. really. we’re all very peaceful. in fact we’ll prove it: just bring all ur technologies here and i promise we won’t touch em. sniggers
I see your point, but I can’t imagine that it would work out that way. We would have to send Earthlings to do this. People are flawed. They will still be flawed on Mars. They will be jealous, and cunning, and devious, and ignorant, and everything else that people on Earth are. I think your rationale is complete hubris and/or naivete. It’s worth destroying another planet for a social experiment? It would just be another reality series on Fox. “Watch what happens when we put 1037 people on Mars to create a new civilization! Whichever one can shed human nature and actually act altruistically will win ONE MILLION DOLLARS!”
This seems to be the dominant viable reason to have a manned space program anyway. The Master seems to dismiss the importance of coolness, and he’s got a good point (as always). Still, living on Mars. Cool.
I once spent four hours playing SimEarth, trying to terraform Mars. Nothing I did took. I got a small forest to live for about 100 years, but that was it. Frustrating as hell. I kept meaning to rent that game again after reading the Kim Stanley Robinson books and reproduce those methods, but I never got around to it. Possible hijack topic: anybody ever try that?
Destroying a planet? Lets leave aside the question of how do you destroy a rock? We could no more wipe out Martian microbes than we can get rid of the ones we’ve got here. You’ll notice our success with say smallpox, e-coli, or the back of my fridge for that matter.
As for my view on human nature lets simply say that I’m cynically optimistic. I m not advocating shipping 10 Million people to Mars, raise a Red flag and weep for joy as human nature changes. I see a slow steady trickle of immigrants agumenting native born Martians building a society that is required to completely recycle vast amounts of materials, steward the development of a less hostile environment and struggle to deal with limited energy resources. I see people meeting these challenges and overcoming them and in the process spreading the resulting experience back to Earth. A vibrant expanding society acting as a challenge to all. The fact that it would be populated with your “jealous and cunning and devious and ignorant” humans seems critical if its to be of any value back here.
i admit my car does damage the enviroment. as does my use of electricity. however instead of of just giving up and driving some gas hog, i bought the most fuel efficiant car i could. i have been saving up for a solar array for my house. i recycle. i am working to minimize my impact on the envirment.
i think the only hope we have for the future is changing from that “anyone/thing that gets in my way is gonna die” attiuide.
it’s not us killing martion microbes i am worried about. it’s the microbes we bring along with us driving martion microbes to extinction that gives me worries. assuming their is microbes their of course.
If there are Martian microbes they’ve spent the past 100s of millions or years getting use to their environment and potentially being visited by rocks from Earth.
Earth based microbes may not have a chance until the environment becomes more earth like. That however would give native “bugs” lead time to adapt.