[extropy-chat] MARS: Because it is hard

Mike Lorrey mlorrey at yahoo.com
Mon Apr 12 01:18:56 UTC 2004


--- Harvey Newstrom <mail at harveynewstrom.com> wrote:
> 
> On Sunday, April 11, 2004, at 01:12 pm, Robert J. Bradbury wrote:
> 
> > For the younger list members -- you may have had to
> > be there watching the Moon landings (I was 12 at the time)
> > to feel this.
> 
> I was six years old.  My father worked on the Apollo program.  I grew
> up knowing the astronauts as family friends, seeing the launches 
> on-site at NASA, and watching the moon landings live.  Now I live in
> a world 35 years later where manned vehicles can't reach the moon 
> anymore.  I really miss the future.

So do I. I want my futurama, but, alas, it got wasted on Great Society
programs from the get-go, with Senators Mondale and Proxmire
complaining about "wasting all that money in space", as if there are
malls in orbit to blow vast wads in, rather than "here on Earth".

> 
> > Note: I am not suggesting that Mars should be colonized.
> > It is simply too easy to dismantle once we have robust
> > nanotechnology.  But for now exploration is a reasonable
> > thing to be doing.
> 
> Shouldn't we explore first, before dismantling?  You could be 
> destroying the fossil record of an early branch of life in the solar 
> system.  I really would hate to see any planet destroyed before it
> was completely explored.

A very good point. Why can't a mass of nanogoo record every molecule's
placement as they are disassembled? A virtual planet accurate down to
the molecule is just as explorable....

That being said, I'd prefer to go an even more destructive route and
terraform Mars. Make lots of erosion and destructive organic processes.

=====
Mike Lorrey
Chairman, Free Town Land Development
"Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils."
                                       - Gen. John Stark
Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com

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