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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. <br>
<br>
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. <br>
<br>
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. <br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 9/29/15 2:35 AM,
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:p2p-foundation-request@lists.ourproject.org">p2p-foundation-request@lists.ourproject.org</a> wrote:<br>
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cite="mid:mailman.5085.1443515731.2957.p2p-foundation@lists.ourproject.org"
type="cite">
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<pre wrap=""> 1. Fwd: [NetworkedLabour] Fwd: [Debate-List] (Fwd) Elon Musk's
bourgeois Mars (Michel Bauwens)
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<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Eric Hunting
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:erichunting@gmail.com">erichunting@gmail.com</a></pre>
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