When all the planets are explored in the solar system

In message , Midnighter
writes

"Jonathan Silverlight" wrote
in message ...
In message , Midnighter
writes

"Wayne Throop" wrote in message
...
:: What does mars, or the moon, have that you can't get on earth easier?

: "
: Land. According to reputable authorities, it isn't being made around
: here any more. (Give or take sea reclamation projects. I think the
: Star Trek movie novelisation established they drained the
: Mediterranean.)
:
: However, it mostly can be bought more cheaply than a space rocket.
And
: there isn't much terrific farming land elsewhere in the solar system.

Right; don't compare prices for land in manhattan, or even prime
farming land. Compare prices for land in the gobi desert, or
antarctica,
or death valley, or subsea habs, or whatever.

The notion that you can obtain land by terraforming mars much more
easily
than you can by terraforming the moon is fine... but it's much easier
to terraform earth.

One might say, "a second basket to put some of the species' eggs in".
But that's so long term, it's much like "we should stop burning fossil
fuels". Plus, what has the species done for me *lately*? Sure, yeah,
we should. But eh, shrug. (Mind you, the "eh, shrug" is not how *I*
feel about these issues; it's how they are going to be treated by most.)


the thing is, what happens when the earth and moon are used? for them to
drain the Med, that is pretty severe, even in the 24th century a la Picard
they were trying to raise a continent. Land was on a premium on earth in
star trek.

Was it? All the pictures we see show a green and pleasant land with a
remarkably high standard of living. I've never understood why a redshirt
would risk a very unpleasant end given Star Trek's social setting, either.

In the episode after the Enterprise E fought the Borg. Picard went home to
France. In that ep he was offered teh job as an administrator or something
else of a project where they were raising the seafloor somewhere to create a
new continent. Land was at a premium, people don't create continents on a
whim.

It's that sort of wild inconsistency that is Star Trek's biggest
problem. We know they still have room to grow grapes in France, for
instance. There's none of the crowding that's already a problem in
Southern England, for instance - we are going to run out of water quite
soon!


I wonder how relative lifestyles are? To us someone who can't afford the
latest toy or education is just surviving. So with replicators equalize
food and what not, so I'm guessing other things are seen as the "it" things.
Generic ring? worthless, clay pot made by some kid in third grade?
Priceless? Replicators would be a major singulatiry event. If anyone were
to ever invent one they would very quickly fidn themselves and their
designes at the bottom of the bay.

I dunno. There's a short story ("Business As Usual, During Alterations")
where aliens try and wreck our society by giving us one. The plan fails
miserably.

John F. Eldredge wrote:

The Federation was shown as having a Socialist economic system. We
only saw a small number of private business people, as opposed to
government employees of one sort or another, and the private business
people tended to be borderline criminals. So, it would be logical
that private ownership of spacecraft would be frowned upon, although
evidently not banned altogether. Historically speaking, Socialist
governments tend to like to have their populace stay in the assigned
places and work at the assigned jobs, and thus limit individual
travel.

That's definitely true of Next Generation and later series. It was far
less evident in the original series. Next Generation and later tried to
introduce the hilariously preposterous concept that human didn't even
have a system of currency. Psst, Roddenberry, that's not what socialism
means ...

--
Erik Max Francis && && http://www.alcyone.com/max/
San Jose, CA, USA && 37 20 N 121 53 W && AIM erikmaxfrancis
Fear is an emotion indispensible for survival.
-- Hannah Arendt

Charles Gilman wrote:
Melting icecaps isn't what any of us are talking about. The places that
could be terraformed are the dry, hot deserts.

And you manage, magnificently, to miss the ENTIRE point of the post.
Melting icecaps is an extreme example that happens to have a clear,
direct, and inarguable effect and can demonstrate the overall issue
clearly, but the point is that if you terraform any large portion of
Earth into a different climatic regime, you have no way of knowing how
it may affect OTHER areas of the Earth. What if making, oh,the Gobi
desert into a stretch of fertile,green farmland happens to shift
climate patterns enough to turn Kansas into a desert?

The POINT, to reassert it, is that on Mars you can do anything you
WANT to try and make it livable. No one else is going to be hurt by
something not working quite right. Any large-scale experimentation ON
Earth may have large-scale side effects which are not only
undesirable, but harmful to some extremely large number of people and
established ecosystems.


--
Sea Wasp
/^\
;;;
Live Journal: http://www.livejournal.com/users/seawasp/

"Sea Wasp" wrote in message
...
desert?

The POINT, to reassert it, is that on Mars you can do anything you WANT to
try and make it livable. No one else is going to be hurt by something not
working quite right.

Go ahead, **** off the Old Ones.

Mike Schilling wrote:
"Sea Wasp" wrote in message
...
desert?

The POINT, to reassert it, is that on Mars you can do anything you WANT to
try and make it livable. No one else is going to be hurt by something not
working quite right.


Go ahead, **** off the Old Ones.



But there's Old Ones HERE, too, so I wouldn't do any better in that
case. I mean, really, they're all over the place like roaches.

--
Sea Wasp
/^\
;;;
Live Journal: http://www.livejournal.com/users/seawasp/

"Sea Wasp" wrote in message
...
Mike Schilling wrote:
"Sea Wasp" wrote in message
...
desert?

The POINT, to reassert it, is that on Mars you can do anything you WANT
to try and make it livable. No one else is going to be hurt by something
not working quite right.


Go ahead, **** off the Old Ones.

But there's Old Ones HERE, too, so I wouldn't do any better in that case.
I mean, really, they're all over the place like roaches.

OK, as long as you treat them with respect.

Sea Wasp wrote:

Mike Schilling wrote:
"Sea Wasp" wrote in message
...
desert?

The POINT, to reassert it, is that on Mars you can do anything
you WANT to try and make it livable. No one else is going to be
hurt by something not working quite right.


Go ahead, **** off the Old Ones.

But there's Old Ones HERE, too, so I wouldn't do any better in that
case. I mean, really, they're all over the place like roaches.

Do the Old Ones post to usenet? If so, what're their favorite groups?



Brian

--
If televison's a babysitter, the Internet is a drunk librarian who
won't shut up.
-- Dorothy Gambrell (http://catandgirl.com)

"Mike Schilling" wrote in message
. com...

"Sea Wasp" wrote in message
...
desert?

The POINT, to reassert it, is that on Mars you can do anything you WANT
to try and make it livable. No one else is going to be hurt by something
not working quite right.

Go ahead, **** off the Old Ones.


They pretty much come pre ****ed off.

"Midnighter" wrote in message
...

They don't seem socialist to me, well, they have their tendencies. So,
having people stay where they are, or assigning them colony worlds, based
on
ethnic lines (all the worlds we have seen had a particularly ethnic bend
to
it.) Hmmm.. not so ideal a world.



Do we know that they were "assigned" woerlds on that basis, rather than
choosing them?

Assuming that colonists are volunteers, they probably have a tendency to
attach themselves to groups of their own kind, which will, in a lot of
cases, mean (or iat least nclude) their own ethnicity. Looking at the
make-up of most cities in the Western world suggests that attitude won't go
away in a hurry.

--
Mike Stone - Peterborough, England


It is so stupid of modern civilisation to have given up believing in the
Devil, when he is its only explanation.

Ronald Knox.

wrote in message
ups.com...

Wayne Throop wrote:
: Sea Wasp
: Well, since you'll have to be building everything on the Moon
: completely sealed, completely self contained, etc., barring a
: discovery of some hidden water stash or something, what's the real
: advantage of building it on the Moon rather than in orbit, where it's
: NOT at the bottom of that gravity well?

Mass to hide under wrt solar flares etc, and to supply some of the heavy
bits to construction projects.

However, yes, if it were me, I wouldn't go to either the moon or mars as
a *goal* in the near term, except insofar as the moon might have things
you could catapult to construction projects elsewhere instead of lugging
from earth. But that's just me.

What does mars, or the moon, have that you can't get on earth easier?

Land. According to reputable authorities, it isn't being made around
here any more. (Give or take sea reclamation projects. I think the
Star Trek movie novelisation established they drained the
Mediterranean.)

Well, maybe the people of the Trek universe are desperate enough, but I
certainly wouldn't want to live in the former Mediterranean. Hot, dry, high
pressure... although the salt might do wonders for my sinuses.
The view from a mansion on the edge of the Nile or Rhone gorges ought to be
quite spectacular, too.

-l.
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