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ego-maniac writes:
> You are completely missing my overall point
No, I wasn't sure at first, but I think I got it after all. You're an unabashed ego-maniac with a chip on your shoulder and an axe to grind, completely incapable of planning your way out of a paper sack. Someone knocked you down a few steps some years back, and you bring out your full load of resentment whenever someone raises the slightest issue with your reasoning. Oh well, proceed.
> we need to find a way to sustain the species, off Earth, as quickly as possible
See, right here you display your own weak, defeatist attitude that you'll accuse me of later in the post. Rather than figure out how to make Earth a reasonably safe, sustainable habitat for humans and the myriad other life forms it supports until we really do have an alternative habitat, you want to throw in the towel and jump to the next planet over ASAP, thinking that somehow it will make us safer by being more of the same somewhere else. Bad news, it doesn't work like that. Look around the solar system and what do we see? A whole lot of very hostile environments. Pick any one you like, Mars for example, and damned if it doesn't look like Death Valley stuck in the Arctic Circle, without all that luxurious oxygen. And that's one of the "good" planets. Sure, it's an interesting place, and it has a lot to teach us, but you're talking about using it for species insurance. More about that in a bit.
> I won't address your screed
You're wrong, twice over, but it's just the start. My previous post was what's commonly called disagreement, not a screed, and you did address it -- with a marathon screed/rant/manure pile of proportions I seldom see on DU, laden with vicious personal attacks and some outrageous self-aggrandizement. Nicely done. :crazy:
> except for the following quote, it's the only part that remotely makes any sense on this topic
Odd you would say that, since you do cover (poorly, but you do) other parts of it throughout.
> The benefit is a function over time.
Maybe you want to rephrase that for future use, since a function is not itself a benefit. If someone offered to sell me "a function over time", I'd hang up the phone right away. You'll have to do better than that. Is it a linear function? A monotonic increasing function? A continuous function? A discrete function? Come on, throw your poor audience a bone now and then.
If you're trying to say it there will be an eventual return on the investment, well duh. It's not like offworld colonies are a new idea, there will be plenty of benefits as they happen. But it has to be done carefully, it has to be done right, or your ten offworld humans might as well be flushed into the cosmic sewer. Would you want to participate in the Mars equivalent of Roanoke colony?
> I'll let you imagine what specific benefits could result. Given your post,
> it's hard for me to imagine you have the imagination necessary to envision it.
Cruel trickster, promising me a "function over time", then asking me to imagine the benefits, while you doubt my abilities under your next breath. Charade you are! Trying to sell me an idea I already had by telling me I'm too stupid to use it correctly? That takes some serious gall.
> Frankly, you're wrong in just about everything you have to say as it relates to my point
Which, by the way, you have yet to demonstrate. That sort of statement is best reserved for parting words, after the facts (or at least your opinions of them) have been established. So, 100 bonus points for your amazing gall, but minus several thousand for jumping the shark.
> the Earth and our existence as a species is doomed- yes, doomed- to an end if we do not expand
And that, kgfnally, is probably the source of our disagreement. Indeed, it is this untamed urge for rapid expansion and lust for perpetual growth, along with a certain tendency to ideological rigidity, that show the greatest threat of deleting our species along with so many others in the near term. In the far term, as Lionel Mandrake points out, should our species survive and evolve over billions of years, we'll face the eventual (key word) heat-death of the universe.
It makes sense to deal with the most pressing problems first and foremost.
> Every argument you put forth in your "now" thinking post ignores the fact that this planet's resources are finite
The finiteness of our resources is nowhere near the scale that would require us to move off-planet in a panic, and that's hardly a solution anyway.
> Regardless of your very best efforts, eventually, Earth will be unlivable.
Nice word, "eventually." Eventually, in 5 billion years or so, the sun will be a white dwarf and the entire solar system will pretty much cease to be. We'll just have to leave it to our descendants to have figured out interstellar travel by then. Meanwhile, we have plenty of sunlight.
> Eventually, we will consume the Earth.
Yes, and if we don't reach 0% population growth someday, we'll consume every other planet we choose to inhabit eventually, too.
These are called eventualities. I'm still waiting for the part of your rant where we get to the immediacies that establish the necessity of offworld settlement within the next 20 years.
> We cannot, and will not be able to, live on Earth forever.
Still waiting. I know you'll get there "eventually".
> Even Hawking agrees with what I'm saying.
So? (Side note: you'd improve your credibility if you made the claim that you agreed with what Hawking says...) This isn't a matter of disagreement for me either -- hell, I said that we'll colonize other planets "eventually", the question is one of quantity: how much and how fast to meet the eventual need.
> You're the one who is "off the beam", and by a very great deal.
Again, you have yet to establish any of this in terms of what has actually been said in the thread.
> You come across as both blind and deaf to the larger threats of time
> which face our planet (I'm thinking over hundreds and thousands of years here)
Shiver me timbers! You threw in with 2025 as a drop-dead date for a "permanent Mars colony" earlier, when all along you were thinking hundreds and thousands of years ahead? What a clever ploy! Well done, kgfnally, I congratulate you on a well-placed smokescreen.
> and the necessity to expand from it as quickly as we may just so our
> great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandchildren will even have a planet to live on.
By all means, elaborate upon this driving necessity. Consumptive as we may be, I still doubt our chances of attaining permanent off-planet colonies for our great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandchildren will dim greatly if we use our short-term space program resources for developing a Lunar colony rather than a Martian colony.
> Our species cannot and will not live forever on Earth.
Redundant much?
> If we do not invest at least some resources to finding a way off this rock,
> we absolutely will be condemning future generations to a mad scramble, a
> last-gasp last-ditch effort to save our species
You might want to put down the cactus juice and step away from the crystal ball every once in a while, unless you're prepared to back up this assertion regarding "future generations" with some kind of non-hysterical reasoning.
> By the time such a threat is generally, popularly realized- either through
> lack of water, lack of resources, or lack of usable space- realization that
> the threat to our species exists will come just a tick too late to save them
OK, see, here's the problem. You've got this awful dystopian scenario playing out in your mind, but right now it's science fiction. Look around, look at the freaking OP article for goodness sakes, all kinds of countries are getting into space colonization and exploration and research, it's not like humanity doesn't take the threats seriously. We just have to balance it with servicing the problems we do face on a day-to-day basis. More on that later.
By the way, your Mars expedition itself is going to be plagued from the start with exactly the problems you prognosticate as eventualities on Earth: lack of water, lack of resources, and lack of usable space. These are compounded by lack of an extended gene pool, lack of breathable air, and lack of vacation destinations. If you were really trying to convince me of the benefits of an early start, you'd just say, "We need to start on it as soon as possible to work the problems out," maybe even use your amazing powers of precognition describe a speculative timeline for doing so. Instead, the content of your post has a very different goal.
> This is not something that is likely to happen even in the next hundred years,
> but your post is a perfect example of the hurdles we must overcome as a species
> in order to preserve ourselves. Your post is a excellent example of what is
> impeding us the most: the inability of humans to look forward beyond our own
> lifetimes, to times one hundred or one hundred fifty years or two hundred years
> out from the date of our own deaths.
Wow, yep, it sure is my kind of thinking that'll doom humanity. It's my own damn inability to think forward beyond my lifetime, two hundred years past the date of my own death which I don't even know. :crazy: So, kg, when's your death scheduled? You got the date set? Made specific funeral arrangements? What? Don't tell me you're incapable of planning even two weeks out from the date of your own death! Bummer.
You'd have to be a goddam genius to have predicted anything remotely like what the world is today a hundred years back. I'm impressed when modern futurists get something right 50 years ago, frankly. But of course that's all old-hat to you, right? You've gone way past that in your explorations of distant futures. You are the third member of Bed, Bath and Beyond. You must be the DUne Messiah.
> We are a very limited species in terms of the length of time we are able to
> reasonably look and think into the future. Obviously, you are one of those
> who are unable to do so.
Yeah, it's probably true, but try not to hold it against us when we destroy ourselves as a species because of it. :rofl:
> Equally obviously, *I* am one of those who actually ARE able to look forward,
> to see that we have a finite time here, not only in our individual lives but
> as a species and as residents of this one small planet.
:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:
Pontificate much? You really ought to reread that part a few times, oh mighty one. 100000 points for Extreme Messianic Condescension.
:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:
> You need to change your attitude regarding time and our own species to reflect
> the fact that, several generations from now, your very own great-great-great-great
> grandkids may be facing a greater global crisis, maybe even the death of the planet.
kg, you of all people telling me to adjust my attitude...
Get real. You have so far presented O(zero) rationale for superseding other space program endeavors, or even other worldy survival-oriented projects, with a permanent Mars colony. Nothing. Nix. Nil. I just want to make that perfectly clear to you. When you make such assertions, the burden of supporting them rests entirely, 100%, upon you. You cannot simply tell the other person to "imagine the benefits" and then heap scorn upon them for lacking imagination in the next sentence, and expect to make your point. Either you're insulting or you're correct, or both, and your point will probably be lost in the ensuing confusion.
> How could you possibly deny them the bedrock of a Mars program now?
And when did you stop beating your wife?
That single sentence, you could have erased the rest of the post and just put it there and it would sum up your position perfectly. Are you utterly and invincibly ignorant of the fact that there may be things that are just flat-out wrong with it?
1. I do not "deny them a Mars program", that's neither my job nor my opinion. We differed on quantity and urgency, and you went out of your way to turn that molehill into K2.
2. Said "Mars program" is hardly bedrock in the early stages, it's still topsoil. Even if I were opposed in principle, I wouldn't be denying my descendants anything but the questionable fruits of a speculative venture. Oh, and a headstart on your "function over time," whatever that is.
3. The effectiveness of a permanent Mars presence would only be enhanced by discoveries from prior Lunar colonization, which can be done comparatively quickly and cheaply. I see it as an opportunity to test processes and practices before deploying them in a situation where it will be much harder to recover from mistakes. To construe that as "denying them a Mars program" is quite the stretch. But you do seem the stretchy type, so maybe it comes naturally to you.
> YES, this will take trillions of dollars- unless, of course, people like you
> stop being involved in programs which will take us out there (in other words,
> it is naysayers such as yourself who will ultimately drive up costs and cause
> delays in an effort to prove that it cannot be done cost-effectively).
Wow. You just accused "naysayers such as (my)self" of sabotaging a Mars program in order to discredit it. That's a pretty low thing to say to someone you've only met through inference. Hey, if you think it can be done more cheaply, just say so. There's no need to call those such as myself criminals. Of course, that's probably just a misunderstanding. I mean, far be it for me to speculate that it's overeager zealots such as yourself who would dive into something half-assed with an eye to snagging some cush contracts for your business buddies while exposing unwitting volunteers to needless risks because you delivered unsafe, poorly-planned, or untested mission components. That would be a misunderstanding, right?
> Persons such as yourself can only hope to inhibit the sort of exploration and
> discovery and survival I'm talking about, and I pity you and your progeny, I really
> do, for your incredible lack of forward thinking.
Yes, I will have to avoid your kind of "exploration and discovery and survival" since my incredible lack of forward thinking that says we don't have to put a permanent manned presence on Mars by 2025 when we can achieve practically the same short-term benefits through other easier means which are more cost-effective and less risky, and go to Mars later, will only doom the human race. That's a real downer, isn't it? Oh, my poor progeny, I pity them deeply for having inherited such genetically transmitted short-sightedness. Truly, it is only through the far-minded visions of neo-futurists such as yourself that the human species has any hope of surviving the imminent holocaust 12 generations hence. I must take great pains to see that they do not mix with your adventurous, no-holds-barred progeny, who will doubtless be fearless precognitives such as yourself, for they might dilute your superior gene pool. :rofl:
> They, your children and grandchildren and great-great-great grandchildren, will not thank you.
Oh, woe is me, they will spit upon my grave for having endowed them with such inferior resources! (Fortunately, my great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren are apparently okay with it.)
:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:
> I'm both better and bigger than that.
:puffpiece: :puffpiece: :puffpiece:
Oh yes you are, for you are of the superior master race, who will inherit the stars whilst my impoverished progeny scrounge in the dust for your tablescraps.
:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:
> I envision a world in which big ideas- such as the permanent preservation
> of our species- is not a trivial woo-woo concept inhibited by cost or desire
> or what "could be spent here"- as you would inhibit it
Ah, another point of disagreement. You envision a world of species permanence, while I envision a world of species evolution. Nonetheless, our concepts of social good are probably compatible for the short term.
If you're really serious about pursuing the "big ideas", you may want to acquaint yourself at least passingly with the basic concepts of economics. There is a dry non-woo concept called "opportunity cost" that colors the benefit calculation of everything that actually gets done on a large scale in the non-command economy. It's helpful when you're a small-minded normal like me deciding whether to engage in a "big idea" or not, or figuring out what the return "function over time" might be. However, I cede that opportunity cost will not even be a factor for one so precognizant as yourself, for you are doubtless Far Beyond all that in your mighty modes of deep and distant thought.
> but a thing fueled by the contributions and ideas of the very best of the best,
> driven by private investment, public interest, public investment, private donations,
> and an overall nationwide frontier spirit we've collectively lost for more than
> fifty years.
Well, good luck with that. I'll do my best not to "inhibit" your master race in its aspirations for liebensraum.
> You are trying to argue that it must be one, or the other.
Nope. You've misread me right from the start. I'm saying it should be one before the other, not both simultaneously.
> You are wrong. Quite clearly, we have resources for both alleviating poverty, hunger,
> disease, exploitation, social abuse, political persecution, and on and on while STILL
> providing for such a project as I'm envisioning.
Do go on, I'm waiting for the part where you blame "people such as myself" for driving up the costs again.
> What we've spent in Iraq is proof of that.
Every penny we have spent for the past 6 years has been borrowed from our children and theirs. The Iraq war is the most notable in a long series of recent wasteful bloody fiascoes. Certainly the money is there, but there are many interests at odds over how to spend it. If you wish to gain their confidence, you will doubtless have to be more effective in persuading them than you were in... err... ignoring me.
> "The money we could be spending here" is a red herring, as the costs of such a mission
> pale by comparison to other things our nation spends money on which you have gleefully
> neglected to mention.
Clue zone: the lack of enumeration of every line item in our national budget should not be construed as an indication of glee on my part in its omission.
Anyway, you've already said there's enough money to engage all your big ideas, so why even bother comparing the costs at all? According to you, the permanent manned Mars colony won't cost us more than the Iraq war, so it's obviously okay. :crazy:
> Mars is the very closest realistic location we can choose for anything resembling a
> permanent offworld human settlement.
Oh man, where do you get this stuff? :eyes: How about... the moon?
> Yes, perhaps a fully-staffed, 365-a-day manned lunar colony should be the first step.
Wait, after all this ranting bullshit, you grudgingly perhaps agree with me. Well, that's anti-vindication if I've ever seen it. Pardon me while I reconsider my position on the whole moon base idea now. :sarcasm:
> In either case, the project should be bold, even extravagant, simply to prove that
> it can be done.
Fine. Do it then. But please try not to jeopardize our species' offworld future with your callous superiority while you obtain the venture capital.
> It doesn't matter that it's small and expensive and tedious and dangerous in the beginning
Obviously, such a venture will be, and that doesn't really affect it's long-term importance. However, that negates any function as effective "insurance" during its small and dangerous phase -- tedious is okay, though.
> if I had the choice, I'd be part of it, one of those early colonists, there to prove something.
If I had a choice, you'd be part of it too. :evilgrin:
> It would be the adventure of a lifetime- you would have no trouble finding volunteers,
> and in fact I am willing to wager there would be enough willing bodies on this thread
> alone to fill all the slots
I seem to recall saying something like this myself in a recent post, but it doesn't count since I'm an inhibitor.
> Competence, however, is a whole other ballpark.
Right you are. Master-race visionaries only need apply.
> We need to get off the Earth and establish a permanent colony as soon as possible, for
> both special "insurance" reasons AND to prove it can be done.
Well, I've waded through this entire post, every line, and I have yet to see where you present a single real argument in favor of an immediate effort to settle Mars. I pointed out earlier that orbital space stations and one or more Lunar bases provide adequate terrestrial insurance in the short-term, at least, as well as satisfying the need for proving ground. So far, you have said nothing that changes my position. I will take that as definite proof that I lack your... vision?
> To hell with everyone who says it isn't doable, feasible, ethical, moral, affordable,
> or responsible.
Let their pagan souls burn in the fiery apocalypse to come!
> They're woo-woo Luddites who deserve to be ignored.
Yes, you've done an admirable job ignoring us "woo-woo Luddites", much appreciated. We all deserve such ignorance as you've displayed today. :eyes:
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