Kim Stanley Robinson presented a pretty level-headed terraforming scenario in the Mars Trilogy IMO. This article reflects a false "Green vs. Expert" dichotomy that is, sadly, all too common on the Left. Being green and anti-capitalist means, ipso facto, being at least a primativist lite. On Tue, Sep 29, 2015 at 7:53 PM, Eric Hunting <[email protected]> wrote:
What Musk was describing in this interview is a concept sometimes called 'ballistic terraforming' and which can be achieved in a variety of ways. Musk chose to refer to a method that sounds more realistic to most people; nuclear bombs. The easier and more practical way more commonly proposed is steering small comets or icy objects from the outer solar system into collision with Mars. As inconceivable as that sounds, that's relatively simple through the use of automated spacecraft as 'gravity tugs' to coax planned changes in orbit, though it may take decades to move an object into the desired path. The point of all this is simple; triggering an atmospheric thermal cascade by putting enough water vapor into the atmosphere at once so that, by the greenhouse effect, it raises temperature and causes more water in the Mars crust globally to evaporate into the atmosphere and progressively increases the temperature and atmosphere density to where the surface might be colonized by very hardy plants like lichens--if they can be adapted to tolerate the large amounts of toxic perchlorate salts in the water and soil. In this way enough atmosphere might be built up to where humans can operate on the surface without space suits--though still requiring supplemental oxygen. This 'fast' process is still a process that would take many generations to accomplish, as opposed to the very many centuries pumping synthetic greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere would using the other more commonly suggested method. Realistically, it may take generations of research from the present day before we even know enough about Mars to say whether or not these methods would work and it remains an open question of whether it would be worthwhile given that Mars, lacking an active planetary core, cannot produce its own magnetosphere to help hold an atmosphere sustainably--which is why it lost it's formerly dense atmosphere in the first place. And, of course, we don't even know if long term living under Mars' reduced gravity is safe or if a clinical solution to that problem is possible. By the time any of that matters, the technology proposed may be made completely moot by nanotechnology and the 'human race' may be long supplanted by transhumans who would need none of these elaborate machinations to live in that environment.
So, basically, the author of this piece, triggered by the 'N word', is complaining about something that is, at best, pure speculation if not retrofuturist SciFi. What personally annoys me is the playing to the old argument of; "why should we go to space just to export our terrestrial madness?" This is rooted in a notion that the human race is ultimately a mistake that needs to be contained, that all works of man are inherently profane, and that we need to 'grow up' more and get our terrestrial house in order to be worthy of doing things in the sacrosanct heavenly realms beyond Earth. It never occurs to proponents of this notion that the act of going to space might be a necessary part of that process of growing up. That we might need the challenge of the space environment to ultimately learn the craft of sustainability because Mother Earth molly-coddles us with a too-benign environment that make its too easy to cheat. That we might need frontiers on which to experiment in new ways of life when every single part of the Old World is now owned and ruled-over by someone with vested interests in doing things old ways.
There is a fundamental lack of understanding of the concept of space settlement here which relates to preconceptions about space activity and its relationship to the military industrial complex and exploitation for nationalist prestige. It is assumed to be some expression of militaristic or corporatist culture--understandable given that the outpost architecture commonly illustrated is always militaristic in character. But in practice every plausible space settlement must--of necessity--be a cohabitation eco-village seeking an ideal sustainability. (on pain of death) The ultimate space settler will not see themselves as a 'conqueror' of space but a gardener of the universe and an experimenter in alternative lifestyle. The garden is the essential functional and cultural core of any truly plausible space settlement concept. The bottom-line of space development is that learning to live in space means learning to go from dirt, rocks, and sunlight to a sustainable middle-class standard of living using tools and systems on the scale of home appliances--and there is nothing about life on Earth and the way civilization here works that such capability will not radically change. If one wished to make a valid argument here, argue about the largely disingenuous and retrofuturist nature of contemporary proposals for so-called space settlement coming from governments who are, ultimately, not in the business of inventing new places for people to go and not pay taxes and from corporations who are fully aware that the only sustainable ROI from space not based on exploiting government bankrolls cannot realize that ROI in banks on Earth but only in infrastructure out there. Complain about the root corruption of priorities in national space agencies that must pander to the vanities of opposing political interests to survive as venues for pork-barrel politics. Complain about the continued elitism and militarism of the contemporary space development vision when the technology emerging and already at hand points to a near future where the settlement of any body in space is soon to become a community project akin to Linux.
On 9/29/15 2:35 AM, [email protected] wrote:
1. Fwd: [NetworkedLabour] Fwd: [Debate-List] (Fwd) Elon Musk's bourgeois Mars (Michel Bauwens)
-- Eric Hunting [email protected]
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