On Thu, 17 Oct 2002 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> I shall rise to that challenge, Robert. I'm not a scientist per se, but I do > like to tell myself that I am at times, rational. On my better days, I can make that claim too! :-) > Dismantling Mars is not going to happen, ever. This is more a political > question than a scientific one. Well that may be true. But I'd anticipate that a trend might develop that would alter the political landscape. First you dismantle a small NEO (nobody is going to object to that if you come up with a "safe" way to do it). Then you dismantle other asteroids in the asteroid belt, then Mercury (really what good is it anyway?), then the moons of Jupiter (oops, guess that means the end of this list), then at some point Mars and Venus. I'll freely admit these are likely to generate the most political resistance. > 1) We do not have a robust nanotechnology, Agreed. Not yet -- but the single government program, other than perhaps defenses against terrorism, getting the largest budget increases is the National Nanotechnology Initiative. > and likely, will not have one for another 20 years, at best. Perhaps. There are a couple of "breakthrough" developments I anticipate as "possible". If those were to happen the pace might be picked up a little. > With the current rate of progress on frontier > sciences such as nanotech and genetic technologies (and in particular, the > strong public reluctance to develop such technologies, due to a general > mistrust of genetic manipulation and by extension, nanotechnology) it could > be even more time until such technologies are actually employed, even if they > are developed. I'll call this the "Bill Joy" argument. It doesn't seem to be gathering much support. When push comes to shove people care about their safety and their wallets -- and to protect those you are going to need these technologies. > People around the world have at the very least, a sentimental attachment to > Mars far beyond its utilization for resources. This point I will grant but I noted how it might play out above. > 3) Lifting Mars out of its gravity well is not something I would ever, ever, > ever recommend, robust nanotechnology or not. There are some things that it > is just best not to mess with, and a 3000 diameter chunk of iron floating > relatively close to planet Earth is one of them. But we are already doing this. Everytime you get NASA to hurl a satellite into the far reaches of the solar system you are dismantling the Earth. For the most part we haven't "wrecked" anything yet. > Have you, for instance, truly considered what impact the loss of Mars' > gravitational pull would do on Earth's orbital pattern? I'm under the impression that the sun's gravity well is so deep that the planet's orbits are almost universally independent of each other. The only exception I can think of is Pluto and Neptune. Someone please correct me if this is a misimpression. > In a worst case scenario, of course, something > would go wrong, and planet Mars could conceivably go flying off into high > orbit, or intersect with Earth's orbit... goodbye Earth, and goodbye nanotech > scientists. Allright -- fine. Lets dismantle the Earth at the same time. But that seems likely to *really* upset the folks leaning in the green direction. > 4) Theory is NOT enough to justify such a risk. Theoretical analysis also > suggests that we could have colonies on the bottom of the ocean, or put solar > stations on the Moon. They are not there... why is that? The bottom of the ocean isn't a natural habitat for humans and it is expensive to live down there. I'll note that our oceanic exploration capabilities continue to expand (one could cite a large number of shipwrecks and underwater archeological cites found in recent years). The solar stations on the moon idea continues to be promoted -- primarily now by David Criswell I think. The real problem there is what its always been -- launch costs. > To achieve this, however, you must have people > literally walking on Mars. Probes won't cut it, and neither will trillions > of little nanotechs. They lack romance, and romance is necessary to get > public acceptance and support for such a concept. You are still thinking in terms of "traditional" technology development. You need the "romance" so you can justify the expense of developing the means to send "humans" to Mars. It doesn't cost billions of dollars to send something the size of a bacteria to Mars. You don't even have to do it reliably because you can send billions of them. In fact you would have to populate Mars with its own defense system to prevent it from being dismantled. Better start donating your pennies to the "Save Mars" defense fund. Yes, I am a bit ahead of my time -- but not so much as most people think. Who would have thought a decade ago that we would have a 2Kx2K IR array camera on the 200 inch Palomar telescope? Now if they would simply use it for something useful like looking for Dyson spheres I'd be a happy man. Robert == You are subscribed to the Europa Icepick mailing list: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Project information and list (un)subscribe info: http://klx.com/europa/
