[P2P-F] Elon Musk's bourgeois Mars

Wed Sep 30 02:59:38 CEST 2015

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 <erichunting at gmail.com> 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, p2p-foundation-request at lists.ourproject.org wrote:
>
>    1. Fwd: [NetworkedLabour] Fwd: [Debate-List] (Fwd) Elon Musk's
>       bourgeois Mars (Michel Bauwens)
>
>
> --
> Eric Hunting
> erichunting at gmail.com
>
>
>
>
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