137 réponses à ce sujet

[Kaiser Arian XVII]

You mean constructing huge spaceships that can carry over 1 million people to far away and can maintain their food with artificial agricultural system?

[Sylvius the Mad]

simfamSP wrote...

Are we talking about third-world countires, now? If so, I think you underestimate the sociological factors here. Most girls want to get married and pregnant at an early age, and if they don't, patriarchy is dominant and so a girl's options become null and void if the social enviroment looks the other way if a guy just decides to take things into his own hands. That's why I feel educating boys would increase the chances of lower-birth rates.

The evidence suggests that educating girls is more effective.  Educated women resist patriarchy.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Look at the numbers. Educating boys has a much smaller effect on birth rate.

Modifié par Sylvius the Mad, 25 décembre 2013 - 06:05 .

[ME123insanity]

Wow this Earth over population thing took over this topic fast... huh whatever.

[Fortlowe]

Fast Jimmy wrote...

I'll go ahead and stop people really quick on the "space exploration is now way to alleviate overpopulation" and the tangent about sex ed that followed it...

When Columbus first made his trip to the West Indies, it required financing by Spain's Queen to get going. A huge investment of ships, crew and supplies, unheard of before in that time.

Yet, less than 250 years later, the potato famine allowed huge segments of the Irish population to mass migrate in the millions out of the depressed economic state. Point being, we can't imagine space exploration alleviating population woes because only because we can't imagine cheap space travel.

Yet, if it follows any other form of transportation in our history, it stands to reason that it will become cheaper, more widely accessible and frequent. Once that tipping point is reached, then who is to say it won't be more economically viable for a family to hop on a spaceship to a a are colony where they are guaranteed work rather than go on unemployment?

Once that happens, then overpopulation doesn't become an issue, simply because people will naturally migrate to where it benefits them most. If resources are scarcer, money is tighter, meaning a guaranteed job is more important than history or roots. If disease is rampant, them people will want to leave the area for a safer place... including a place off the planet.

Once the cost of dealing with existing problems becomes more than the cost of a rocket ship ticket (or whatever more of transportation that emerges as the most economical), then you don't need a plan or schedule to move people... people will move on their own.

The Americas are a perfect example of why the focus should be on exploration and development. Give people the means to leave reasonably cheap and a reason for leaving and they will, in the right numbers and the right pace.

I applaud your optimism and truly hope your expectation is more accurate than my own. However, I just can't see it being that easy without a world changing leap in power production. Traveling across water withe free power through and to a hospitable environment is one thing. Traveling through vacuum to a hostile environment with no atmosphere, food, or water is ver much another. 

This mission is too soon. Without fusion power, it will be a one way trip. A one time trip. And I fear a very short stay.

Modifié par Fortlowe, 25 décembre 2013 - 07:32 .

[Red Panda]

Fortlowe wrote...

Fast Jimmy wrote...

I'll go ahead and stop people really quick on the "space exploration is now way to alleviate overpopulation" and the tangent about sex ed that followed it...

When Columbus first made his trip to the West Indies, it required financing by Spain's Queen to get going. A huge investment of ships, crew and supplies, unheard of before in that time.

Yet, less than 250 years later, the potato famine allowed huge segments of the Irish population to mass migrate in the millions out of the depressed economic state. Point being, we can't imagine space exploration alleviating population woes because only because we can't imagine cheap space travel.

Yet, if it follows any other form of transportation in our history, it stands to reason that it will become cheaper, more widely accessible and frequent. Once that tipping point is reached, then who is to say it won't be more economically viable for a family to hop on a spaceship to a a are colony where they are guaranteed work rather than go on unemployment?

Once that happens, then overpopulation doesn't become an issue, simply because people will naturally migrate to where it benefits them most. If resources are scarcer, money is tighter, meaning a guaranteed job is more important than history or roots. If disease is rampant, them people will want to leave the area for a safer place... including a place off the planet.

Once the cost of dealing with existing problems becomes more than the cost of a rocket ship ticket (or whatever more of transportation that emerges as the most economical), then you don't need a plan or schedule to move people... people will move on their own.

The Americas are a perfect example of why the focus should be on exploration and development. Give people the means to leave reasonably cheap and a reason for leaving and they will, in the right numbers and the right pace.

I applaud your optimism and truly hope your expectation is more accurate than my own. However, I just can't see it being that easy without a world changing leap in power production. Traveling across water withe free power through and to a hospitable environment is one thing. Traveling through vacuum to a hostile environment with no atmosphere, food, or water is ver much another. 

This mission is too soon. Without fusion power, it will be a one way trip. A one time trip. And I fear a very short stay.

There are plans to deliver the supplies and resources necessary to Mars long before anyone will have an opportunity to set foot on it.

Besides Mars isn't that inhospitable. It can actually be temperate enough during the day and only freezing during the night, asides from sandstorms.

There will be habitats and hydroponics available. Resource management will be the challenge that will face these volunteers.

[Red Panda]

Volus Warlord wrote...

ME123insanity wrote...

Volus Warlord wrote...

EntropicAngel wrote...

The earth is already overpopulated.

Indeed. We need a good war, famine, and/or plague to thin out the herd.

No. A bunch of us just need to leave.

Mass death would be far more expedient.

Bold words. But for that you'd have to be brave.

Would you start with yourself? It's easy to condemn people to death with words, other people, but when you consider yourr role in it, it gets difficult doesn't it? Don't you want to live?

Maybe, no one needs to die.  Perhaps, you are too reactionary to such an extent that your view has poisoned itself and you.

Did you know that the total population of mankind could fit on the nation of Australia? And that if we used land the size of China that we could feed every last person? I bet not. You misunderstand the issue as a whole.

The problem is not overpopulation per se, but that of resource management. Overpopulation to you is simply the misattribution of resources. Why do you think that there is such a disparity between devloping nations where people live and bathe in mud, and that of developed nations where people type away such radical and unhelpful ideas on a keyboard?

Improper distribution of resources has always been the actual problem. Such is the challenge that the settlers of the red planet will face. This will go forward, for those who take mankind into the future must be strong enough to propel forward the weak and the timid, those who would shun the methods involved in doing so. Such is the way of all things.

Modifié par OperatingWookie, 25 décembre 2013 - 05:23 .

[modjospinnin]

simfamSP wrote...

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

simfamSP wrote...

Are we talking about third-world countires, now? If so, I think you underestimate the sociological factors here. Most girls want to get married and pregnant at an early age, and if they don't, patriarchy is dominant and so a girl's options become null and void if the social enviroment looks the other way if a guy just decides to take things into his own hands. That's why I feel educating boys would increase the chances of lower-birth rates.

The evidence suggests that educating girls is more effective.  Educated women resist patriarchy.

Fair enough, they can resist as much as they want, but in a world dominated by it, resisting could lead to deaths. Look at what happened to those arabic women who protested publicly. They were taken away and probably raped.

Though the evidence my suggest that, it's safer to educate the entire generation. Of course, in countries were patriarchy's influence is no where near as strong, it's necessity diminishes.

I would have to agree with educating women. I think women are irrational when they let their emotions decide their actions, but when they are thinking clearly their decisions I feel are more practical and utilitarian. I actually wrote a paper on women's suffrage, and it is intersting to see how much their arguments still resonate today.

However I think its more then just education. Its attitude and perception. However, it does all come back to being a patriarchal and capitalist society. I have a couple of thoughts on this, but it would be too much work just to conclude that things will remain status quo.

On inter-planetary colonization: too soon. We don't have anywhere near the kind of technology to colonize another planet. Mars might be a possibility, but its not hospitable to humans. However, there might be some Prothean technology to be found on Mars.

[ME_Fan]

OperatingWookie wrote...

Bold words. But for that you'd have to be brave.

Would you start with yourself? It's easy to condemn people to death with words, other people, but when you consider yourr role in it, it gets difficult doesn't it? Don't you want to live?

Maybe, no one needs to die.  Perhaps, you are too reactionary to such an extent that your view has poisoned itself and you.

Did you know that the total population of mankind could fit on the nation of Australia? And that if we used land the size of China that we could feed every last person? I bet not. You misunderstand the issue as a whole.

The problem is not overpopulation per se, but that of resource management. Overpopulation to you is simply the misattribution of resources. Why do you think that there is such a disparity between devloping nations where people live and bathe in mud, and that of developed nations where people type away such radical and unhelpful ideas on a keyboard?

Improper distribution of resources has always been the actual problem. Such is the challenge that the settlers of the red planet will face. This will go forward, for those who take mankind into the future must be strong enough to propel forward the weak and the timid, those who would shun the methods involved in doing so. Such is the way of all things.

HEAR HEAR.

Whenever some Malthusian spews out some idiotic nonsense about overpopulation, they often bring up issues like food and people starving in africa, etc. Well I should point out the vast quantities of food that are wasted in the western world all the time; food that expires and then dumped, or just food that people throw out. As wookie said, if all of this food was distributed fairly, then famine and starvation would mostly be a thing of the past.

The world is not overpopulated, and it won't be for awhile yet. I'm staring to get sick of hearing this left wing, environmentalist, Malthusian rubbish. The main things humanity should be doing right now are; finding a clean, powerful source of energy, (the best bet is nuclear fusion), developing and improving food production and distribution, educating ourselves to be more tolerant of each other and building a more rationality-based society, as opposed to a 'multicultural' (pfft) one that clearly doesn't function. Those should be our goals, as far as I'm concerned.

Modifié par ME_Fan, 26 décembre 2013 - 03:46 .

[Fast Jimmy]

OperatingWookie wrote...

Fortlowe wrote...

Fast Jimmy wrote...

I'll go ahead and stop people really quick on the "space exploration is now way to alleviate overpopulation" and the tangent about sex ed that followed it...

When Columbus first made his trip to the West Indies, it required financing by Spain's Queen to get going. A huge investment of ships, crew and supplies, unheard of before in that time.

Yet, less than 250 years later, the potato famine allowed huge segments of the Irish population to mass migrate in the millions out of the depressed economic state. Point being, we can't imagine space exploration alleviating population woes because only because we can't imagine cheap space travel.

Yet, if it follows any other form of transportation in our history, it stands to reason that it will become cheaper, more widely accessible and frequent. Once that tipping point is reached, then who is to say it won't be more economically viable for a family to hop on a spaceship to a a are colony where they are guaranteed work rather than go on unemployment?

Once that happens, then overpopulation doesn't become an issue, simply because people will naturally migrate to where it benefits them most. If resources are scarcer, money is tighter, meaning a guaranteed job is more important than history or roots. If disease is rampant, them people will want to leave the area for a safer place... including a place off the planet.

Once the cost of dealing with existing problems becomes more than the cost of a rocket ship ticket (or whatever more of transportation that emerges as the most economical), then you don't need a plan or schedule to move people... people will move on their own.

The Americas are a perfect example of why the focus should be on exploration and development. Give people the means to leave reasonably cheap and a reason for leaving and they will, in the right numbers and the right pace.

I applaud your optimism and truly hope your expectation is more accurate than my own. However, I just can't see it being that easy without a world changing leap in power production. Traveling across water withe free power through and to a hospitable environment is one thing. Traveling through vacuum to a hostile environment with no atmosphere, food, or water is ver much another. 

This mission is too soon. Without fusion power, it will be a one way trip. A one time trip. And I fear a very short stay.

There are plans to deliver the supplies and resources necessary to Mars long before anyone will have an opportunity to set foot on it.

Besides Mars isn't that inhospitable. It can actually be temperate enough during the day and only freezing during the night, asides from sandstorms.

There will be habitats and hydroponics available. Resource management will be the challenge that will face these volunteers.

One thing I also see people fail to take into consideration is not just the advancement of space travel technology, or energy production... but also of biology and genetics.

Right now, it would take a large amount of resources creating the right atmosphere for humans to breathe. Existence could only be maintained in contained capsules and environmental suits. And food would have to be entirely grown in artificial greenhouses. Or through insanely resource intensive terraforming projects.

But 100, 200, 300 years from now? Our ability to modify our own genome and create entirely new levels of self-sustaining abilities may completely revoke the need for any of that. What if we had much more adaptable means of dealing with temperatures outside of our own temperate climates? What if our bodies had ways of pulling the neccessary chemicals out of not just our air mixture, but of multiple ones? Or where breathing wasn't even a neccessity for our form of energy break down? What if our bodies were better able to deal with huge differences in air pressure, or could withstand much higher levels of gravity?



The human race didn't leave to explore other areas of the globe just because they couldn't build a big enough ship... it was that they could not properly navigate consistently without sunlight or celestial navigation. And even when those tools were developed, they didn't know where they were going, so they could be sailing in a direction and miss land entirely, simply because the ocean was a huge, unknowable length.

Once they overcame the limitations of navigation and found a location to go to, migration to the New World and other areas of the globe happened at a rate of centuries what took millenia to even do a handful of times. 

We say "well, the difference between crossing the Atlantic via ship and building colonies on another planet is night and day." And you'd be right - just like sailing across the Atlantic was night and day from sailing around the entire world (once sailing across the Atlantic was made easy), or how sailing across the world was night and day from flying across the ocean (when sailing around the world was made easy) or how flying across one ocean was night and day from flying across the entire world (once flying across an ocean was made simple), just like flying to the moon was night and day different from flying across our own planet (once that was made easy).

It's easy to say "well, doing what was done in the past was easy, they just needed to take the plunge and they would have seen how easy it could become" when we are offering the same type of excuses and fears. Being the first to do something is very risky, it doesn't always have very tangible rewards, it always seems like there is better money and resources to spend... until 100 years later, when the course of human history was changed by that move, then people look back and say "why in the world did those idiots not try this sooner?"

Modifié par Fast Jimmy, 30 décembre 2013 - 01:02 .

[Kaiser Arian XVII]

I find this both hilarious and absurd:

Humankind in year 3000:

[mybudgee]

OperatingWookie wrote...




Bold words. But for that you'd have to be brave.

Would you start with yourself? It's easy to condemn people to death with words, other people, but when you consider yourr role in it, it gets difficult doesn't it? Don't you want to live?

Maybe, no one needs to die.  Perhaps, you are too reactionary to such an extent that your view has poisoned itself and you.

Did you know that the total population of mankind could fit on the nation of Australia? And that if we used land the size of China that we could feed every last person? I bet not. You misunderstand the issue as a whole.

The problem is not overpopulation per se, but that of resource management. Overpopulation to you is simply the misattribution of resources. Why do you think that there is such a disparity between devloping nations where people live and bathe in mud, and that of developed nations where people type away such radical and unhelpful ideas on a keyboard?

Improper distribution of resources has always been the actual problem. Such is the challenge that the settlers of the red planet will face. This will go forward, for those who take mankind into the future must be strong enough to propel forward the weak and the timid, those who would shun the methods involved in doing so. Such is the way of all things.

+1

This is one of the most intelligent posts I have ever read on the BSN. Cheers!

[Sylvius the Mad]

Fortlowe wrote...

This mission is too soon. Without fusion power, it will be a one way trip. A one time trip. And I fear a very short stay.

That said, no one on Earth will have as strong an incentive to develop fusion power as the Martian settlers would.

[Fortlowe]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Fortlowe wrote...

This mission is too soon. Without fusion power, it will be a one way trip. A one time trip. And I fear a very short stay.

That said, no one on Earth will have as strong an incentive to develop fusion power as the Martian settlers would.

Incentive, yes. Resources, no. Or the time. They will be spending every waking moment on the task of survival. Research and exploration will not be possible without massive amounts of self sustaining power. They need power to grow food, make air, and condition the environment. Not to mention all the daily maintenance that will be needed to keep the habitat in working order. You may say most of these necessities will be automated, but that brings it back around to my point. Automation requires power. 

[Naughty Bear]

Kaiser Arian wrote...

I find this both hilarious and absurd:

Humankind in year 3000:

I hope the scouting corps exists by then.

[Fast Jimmy]

Fortlowe wrote...

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Fortlowe wrote...

This mission is too soon. Without fusion power, it will be a one way trip. A one time trip. And I fear a very short stay.

That said, no one on Earth will have as strong an incentive to develop fusion power as the Martian settlers would.

Incentive, yes. Resources, no. Or the time. They will be spending every waking moment on the task of survival. Research and exploration will not be possible without massive amounts of self sustaining power. They need power to grow food, make air, and condition the environment. Not to mention all the daily maintenance that will be needed to keep the habitat in working order. You may say most of these necessities will be automated, but that brings it back around to my point. Automation requires power. 

Who would have thought that the Americas would have developed some of the most advanced farming technology breakthroughs when they didn't even have farms when they first arrived ? Who would have thought they would lead the industrial revolution when they didn't even have cities?

I side with Sylvius on this one... Mars bases will hinge their lives, literally, on improving their technology. You haven't met so done dedicated to doing something until their comfort in being able to breathe is on the line. 

[Sylvius the Mad]

Necessity is the mother of invention.

[Fortlowe]

Necessity, is that, true enough. However, I've still not heard of the individual that has managed to squeeze blood from a stone or turn lead into gold. This amounts to what the colonists would be tasked with doing and if they are bright enough to manage creating fusion power on Mars, with little or no time or resources, why send them away? There's plenty enough need for cheap plentiful power here and now.

Modifié par Fortlowe, 30 décembre 2013 - 06:50 .

[Sylvius the Mad]

Fortlowe wrote...

Necessity, is that, true enough. However, I've still not heard of the individual that has managed to squeeze blood from a stone or turn lead into gold. This amounts to what the colonists would be tasked with doing and if they are bright enough to manage creating fusion power on Mars, with little or no time or resources, why send them away? There's plenty enough need for cheap plentiful power here and now.

We have lots of cheap and plentiful power on earth.  We have coal.

[Fast Jimmy]

Fortlowe wrote...

Necessity, is that, true enough. However, I've still not heard of the individual that has managed to squeeze blood from a stone or turn lead into gold. This amounts to what the colonists would be tasked with doing and if they are bright enough to manage creating fusion power on Mars, with little or no time or resources, why send them away? There's plenty enough need for cheap plentiful power here and now.

For the record, you can turn lead into gold. It involves particle collisions and would take an enormous amount of resources to even get a few hundred molecules of lead into gold, let alone enough to actually cash in at a pawn store... but you CAN do it.

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

We have lots of cheap and plentiful power on earth.  We have coal.

Agreed. Coal is extremely plentiful. And the development of much more efficient scrubbers means that coal that was previously thought to be too impure to burn due to health and environmental risks is now free to be used (much to the chagrin of the low sulfur and phosphorous coal areas of the world, like my home state of Kentucky, who are now being outbid by cheaper coal markets).

Also, does NASA have any interest in converting their satellite communications to use insanely less energy? Maybe slightly... but Mars colonists? They DEFINITELY do. They may tweak their transmission method to be much more efficient in a way that would allow more usage due to being more energy efficient. If the option was talk to your family once a month or come up with a more energy efficient model for your satellite, I think many people would be pretty focused on developing a more energy efficient configuration.

Just as a small example.

[Fortlowe]

True enough. Coal is cheap and plentiful. Here. On Earth. On Mars it's nonexistent and insanely expensive to import. And it's not as though the colonies will be able to mine some more if they run out. Not to mention how volatile and polluting it is. I'm no tree hugger but I don't see why we should be in a rush to trash a new rock.

[Fast Jimmy]

Fortlowe wrote...

True enough. Coal is cheap and plentiful. Here. On Earth. On Mars it's nonexistent and insanely expensive to import. And it's not as though the colonies will be able to mine some more if they run out. Not to mention how volatile and polluting it is. I'm no tree hugger but I don't see why we should be in a rush to trash a new rock.

We don't know there isn't coal there, to be frank. But even if there was, there isn't really an atmosphere to burn coal... so I'm not sure if there would be oxygen limitation problems there. Or if polluting a planet with fumes that doesn't have an atmosphere is really a concern...? I'd need to be more of an astrophysicist than I currently am to even begin answering that question.

Point being is that there isn't a ton of motivation today for Earthlings to develop cheap, long-lasting energy sources. We can fall back on coal, or nuclear, or fossil fules. But people on Mars would be in a position where they would want to work on advancing solar to the point of capitalizing on being able to net more than one electron charge per photon captured even further than where we are today. 

The base technology is there for new energy paradigm shifts... its just the implementation that isn't there yet. It isn't viable for a company to make 1 million+ of a breakthrough technology, so it usually doesn't get made. If, instead, there is a market to order or recreate such technology to keep people on Mars alive, it would definitely get made.

Predicting these situations and breakthroughs are going to be just as speculative as predicting the unforeseen snags and roadblocks these colonies will face - pure guesswork, more often than not. But point being, when you have an entirely new scenario that demands a lot of focus and neccessity, things you don't expect, both good and bad, wind up happening and changing the landscape in which we operate.

[ME123insanity]

The colonists wont need fusion power to survive, they are going to use solar.