New Terraforming Website

The issue isn't the worth of a newborn baby, it's which baby. From
almost every perspective Mars is a far worse target for initial
colonization than orbit. Mars has easier access to materials and that's
it. Orbit has more energy, easier resupply, easier construction,
easier servicing of Earth markets, and will be a much nicer place to
live (grav control, Og recreation, easier Earth visits, better views,
etc). It's important to note that the best place to live on Mars is
far, far worse than the worst part of Siberia.

On Wednesday, September 3, 2003, at 06:40 AM, G. Orme wrote:

> It makes me think of a famous old saying, perhaps it was Mark Twain,
> "what use is a newborn baby?" From our viewpoint Mars is barely born
> to us, it is hard to foresee how it will grow. In the fullness of time
> however I am sure it will fulfil all the faith the Mars Society has in
> it.
> From: Combs, Mike
> To: 'spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com'
> Sent: Wednesday, September 03, 2003 11:05 PM
> Subject: RE: [spacesettlers] Re: New Terraforming Website
>
> From: victoriatangoman [mailto:tango_dancer@...]
>
>> Ask Mike Combs
>> (another list member) what he encounters. I just love reading his
>> posts where he plays with the Mars people's assumptions.
>
> I'll have to admit, when I first hit the web, full of vim and vigor,
> I set
> out to prove that terraforming Mars was impossible. The very first
> draft of
> my Space Settlement FAQ
> (http://members.aol.com/oscarcombs/spacsetl.htm)
> flatly stated that terraforming was impossible. When I shared the
> first
> draft with more-knowledgeable people, I was set straight on some
> things.
> Seems like I was making the same conceptual error which others on
> this list
> have been commenting on: confusion regarding timescales, i.e.
> processes
> which are inevitable on timescales of billions of years don't
> necessarily
> ruin the situation on timescales of thousands of years. I modified
> my FAQ
> to state that even if terraforming was technically possible, it would
> involve technologies not yet in hand, and would require centuries of
> effort.
> I think that's the only argument which needs to be made to establish
> that
> High Frontier is a more practical plan than the terraformation of
> Mars.
>
> Maybe you've come up with a new wrinkle regarding the retention of
> hydrogen,
> but it would be extraordinary to me if the many thinkers in
> terraforming
> hadn't already considered this issue. One thing which aggravates me
> about
> some critics of High Frontier is that they sometimes bring up issues
> which
> first-year physics students could think of, as though the experts
> who worked
> on High Frontier could have overlooked something so basic. (For
> example, I
> just finished debating someone who had gone, "Oh yeah, but what
> about heat
> rejection in a vacuum?" as though he thought he might be the first
> person in
> history to consider such an issue.) I think it's important that we
> try to
> extend the same courtesy to the terraformers that we would appreciate
> receiving (though we don't always get it) in return: the assumption
> that
> obvious, major issues have been already thought of and worked
> through.
>
> I'll second the opinion offered by some others here: Terraformation
> may even
> be possible, but has little prospects of happening in the real
> world, and
> should be consider more an intellectual exercise.
>
> But as far as irritating Mars fans, I don't think you can beat
> asking them
> what the Martians will export in order to balance their trade. Their
> answers usually betray the bias that there are certain things you
> can do on
> a planet which you just can't do elsewhere, but they're then unable
> to
> defend their assumptions logically, because they've never before
> subjected
> their starting assumptions to critical thought.
>
> Regards,
>
> Mike Combs
>

Space tourism could be our ticket to the stars. Save your pennies,
suborbital flights for $100,000 may start in 2005! See
http://www.spaceadventures.com/suborbital for details.

Al Globus
CSC at NASA Ames Research Center
http://www.nas.nasa.gov/~globus/home.html

Views expressed in this email are only my opinions and are not the
position of any organization I'm familiar with.