[P2P-F] Elon Musk's bourgeois Mars

Wed Sep 30 22:13:24 CEST 2015

I've just noticed that a lot of people who are into really good stuff
like the cooperative movement, sustainable agriculture and the like --
as well as the traditional social democratic Left -- treat high
technology and networked communications as though they were synonymous
with Silicon Valley dotcom capitalism, or trojan horses for the right
wing.

On Wed, Sep 30, 2015 at 2:58 AM, Anna Harris <anna at shsh.co.uk> wrote:
> Dear Kevin,
>
> Show some love and expand a little on these cryptic remarks that leave me puzzled.
>
> Anna
>
>> On 30 Sep 2015, at 01:59, Kevin Carson <free.market.anticapitalist at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> 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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>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Kevin Carson
>> Senior Fellow, Karl Hess Scholar in Social Theory
>> Center for a Stateless Society http://c4ss.org
>>
>> "You have no authority that we are bound to respect" -- John Perry Barlow
>> "We are legion. We never forgive. We never forget. Expect us" -- Anonymous
>>
>> Homebrew Industrial Revolution:  A Low-Overhead Manifesto
>> http://homebrewindustrialrevolution.wordpress.com
>> Desktop Regulatory State http://desktopregulatorystate.wordpress.com
>>
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>
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-- 
Kevin Carson
Senior Fellow, Karl Hess Scholar in Social Theory
Center for a Stateless Society http://c4ss.org

"You have no authority that we are bound to respect" -- John Perry Barlow
"We are legion. We never forgive. We never forget. Expect us" -- Anonymous

Homebrew Industrial Revolution:  A Low-Overhead Manifesto
http://homebrewindustrialrevolution.wordpress.com
Desktop Regulatory State http://desktopregulatorystate.wordpress.com