New Member

Steve Long wrote:

"But I liked the book [Red Mars" by Kim Stanley
Robinson]; and you'll notice (if you read it all) that
Earth sent undesirables there to relieve population pressure at home,
and that eventually there was both a local civil war AND a battle
between Earth and Mars, as Martians rebelled against being treated as
a second-class garbage dump."

I understand the analogy to the penal colonies England set up in Georgia and
Australia, but isn't it rather expensive to ship convicts to Mars? As I've
mentioned on another message board, during a discussion of high-tech means
to handle the criminal element, why bother with expensive and time-consuming
high-tech solutions when a low-tech solution, like a rope thrown over a tree
branch, can be just as effective?

Also, in the case of Georgia, it was a private citizen, James Ogelthorpe
(did I spell that correctly?), who came up with the idea of emptying British
prisons to found the colony. He probably convinced the government that it'd
be cheaper to ship the prisoners across the ocean than to maintaint he
prisons.