Whoa! Do my eyes deceive me? Can it be? Have you truly so blatantly revealed your ignorance of US economics, or economics at all?
Behold, enlightenment.
Oh, really? er.... *cough-ahem* O RLY?

Even though I've destroyed your credibility completely, I'll go ahead.
Aight, the only reason the US can keep going in moderate economic wealth is because of the power of our dollar. That's because everybody uses our dollar. This is because we are the standard, more or less. However, 10 Euros is a lot better than ten USD. It's only a matter of time before our dollar becomes weak enough for other nations to pull out. Then, well, we get anything from economic recession (very, very bad) to economic depression (starvation and rampant death bad).
If you still think "gathering supplies" for colonies is possible, or that bringing anything back to earth is feasible, please, go read the topic.

Uh, destroyed their credibility from a single link? Lmfao, alright, cool. If you think that America would care about money when it comes to Space Exploration, then fine.

Too bad America already doesn't care about money, that's why we're trillions of dollars in debt and we are continually rising that debt, everday.

Too bad its not even real money.

And besides. We're already in an Economic Recession, and our Dollar isn't even worth a fucking dollar anymore. Its already weak enough for other nations to pull out, they've been doing it for years.

Just because you can Google something about Economics, doesn't mean you know anything about it Frazz.

The dollar is weak because banks had to close down because they were loaning people house loans when they didnt really have the ability to pay back what they loaned out.

If you think O RLY and a single link when just 4 or 5 yearly collection of taxes can pay all of those debts destroys my credibility, then you jokingly debate. Learn how to debate. Or don't at all.

I don't care how much you want to emulate Kellimus, BD.
The fact is you said something INCREDIBLY stupid.
If you dispute the link, go look anywhere else you want to. I'm not a redundant person. I don't see the need to give you more than one link to prove a single point.

I'm done arguing with you BD, as almost all of your arguments have been pretty well defeated in the topic. As always, I refuse to debate with Kellimus because
a) He isn't bringing anything new to the topic,
b) He's using this as an excuse to attempt to make me look stupid, not to really debate the issue and
c) He said Frazz at the end of his sentence =þ

In conclusion, I'm done with this topic because it's become an endless loop of repetitive (and very poor) points.

Wait wait wait wait wait.

So because I've proven your argument to not be a solid one, I'm attempting to make you look stupid and not really debate the issue?

Okay Frazz. Care to point out where I have not discussed the topic at hand, within the following quote?


Your claims of "America caring about Economics in going to Space" are opinions, and not facts. I rebutted your claim with another opinion of mine that has the basis of: "We're trillions of dollars in debt already, so I doubt America would care"


How is that not debating the topic Frazz?

And if you really want me to "use this as an excuse to make you look stupid" then here you go:

You should just leave this whole forum because every topic you get into, you ruin with your Circular Reasoning logical fallacy.

This quote, proves it:


The only "very poor points" within this thread, are the ones you've tried to establish. Bedazed and others have clearly given prime examples of their side of the debate with reliable proof. And all you've done is ignored them, called them stupid, and have made false claims and accusations.


Does that make you look "stupid" enough for you Frazz? Cause if pointing out to someone why they suck at debate and why they should leave is 'flaming', 'trolling', or 'making them look stupid', then everyone here is at fault.


Anyways, I'm done, and you're right Frazz. I haven't broughten anything to this discussion.


Within this post anyways.

frazz, what you're doing is highly hypocritical. I am not emulating what kellimus is doing. I am only resorting to stating out what you're currently doing and it's ruining a perfectly good topic.

The idea of space colonization is ridiculous. In theory, it would be done to combat overpopulation and lack of adequate resources (and maybe poor atmospheric conditions). Why not just keep those problems from worsening now, which would take MUCH less time and money to do. Space colonization is way far-fetched and impractical at this point.
And no, our economy cannot support this idea of rushed advances to space colonization.

I really haven't seen one good argument yet to this conclusion.

Yeah... it'll be easier to impose laws to put the earth back in shape then start space colonization right now. We need maybe 300 years worth of technology (at the rate we're going - car to landing on moon in 100 years) before that becomes an option.

Problems?
Overpopulation - 2 children per couple. Having a third child is illegal.
Energy - Continue exploiting fission, and there may be a new power source soon: Fusion reactions. http://www.iter.org/
Water - Not actually a earth-wide problem. Countries like Russia and the US will profit from this, as they have a large supply of water. A large portion will suffer, though, and who knows? Huge filters?
Pollution - Is it really that hard? There are already electric cars. Impose some laws. The problem is that people are greedy and forcing them to kill their current cars might cause a revolution... but we have nukes.

Generally I agree with you but I'll review Overpopulation for clarification of what I think you meant but I feel I'm fairly certain what you meant.

On to Overpopulation then, When you said '2 children per couple. Having a third id illegal' do you mean two children maximum per couple or are you using it in an absolute? As I said I'm pretty sure I know the answer but I'd rather check it up anyway. Moving on if I'm correct then I agree with you, most people these days have hard times caring for one child anyway, for the average family with the average salary so this will also help people in the future taking a load off of that 3 third or more children they might have had if the law wasn't in place. So I believe in the greater good in that.

I have no problem with your energy point, I'd gamble on it being a good chance as well but I don't know much about energy and such can't give any professional or evident opinion on it.

Water - Here's where we go our separate ways. I feel that water is a lot more scarce then people believe, I'm sure almost everyone here is aware that our earth is made up of 97% salt water and 3% fresh water(out of all the water in the world) and that a good sum of it is in the polar ice caps as well. If mankind keeps abusing water as we have been the past 30 years or so our small problem can very well turn into a world crisis very quickly and become very deadly. I'm not 100% sure on this and I'm not about to look it up this very moment but I remember hearing on a movie that a family uses up to 10 liters of water a day, if you add up how many families there are in the world that is a HUGE amount of water being used daily. So I think water is much more of an issue then your giving it.

Pollution - My only observation on this is people are lazy. It's harder then people think, but if people start thinking more like you, my friend, then the task can start to be fulfilled piece by piece.

This really isn't the thread to talk about this, I didn't mean for us to get off topic.

Well, now that we have resolved your topic, we're discussing if it's a viable option and what can we do to avoid doing it because it's so expensive (and, currently, impossible).

For Overpopulation, I meant 2 people maximum, not a static two children. Since some won't have children at all, population will lower fairly quickly. If the law is enforced.

Water... it will be a crisis, but it won't hurt the entire human race. Prices for it will rise, and southern countries will likely be forced to buy it, which will be catastrophic for them - but people will adapt. Collecting rain water, maybe even making giant filters to use sea water, which will likely be less expensive than buying the water from northern countries. It's a crisis and will effect mankind badly, but I don't think it's a mankind-threatening problem.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Dec 2 2007, 3:54 pm by Centreri.

Or we could bring an asteroid or comet into Earth orbit and supply the entire planet for decades. Fighting wars over the remaining water is so much more effective.

So, how do you propose we get a large asteroid to nicely land in orbit, knowing what catastrophe awaits if one miscalculation or freak accident occurs, including (but not limited to) simple lack of knowledge of asteroid mass? An asteroid capable of supplying water on earth for decades would have to be like a tiny moon - how do you propose we pick one out from the asteroid belt and bring it close, get it going at the precise velocity needed to stop it from bashing into the earth or go outward into space? For the matter, how are we to carry the water from orbit to earth? No, my friend, wars are much more effective .

Putting anything of great mass into orbit would distrupt the earths tides. Not only from its own gravity, but from altering the moons orbit as well. Needless to say it would do more harm than good.

Although I have said this SEVERAL times in my last posts, you people do not seem to grasp the fact that we have everything we need right here on earth. It would be cheaper and more practicle to just use the abundant sea water and filter it. Looking to space to solve our every problem is not a very good answer.

Uhm. It isn't ridiculous, as depletion of resources and overpopulation is an inevitable doing. Our population isn't decreasing because of low wage america. It's actually increasing, just at a slower rate then china and india. Just those two reasons are good enough for space colonization.
Are you going to make a huge space ship to get off earth when resource ACTUALLY depletes? How much of the resources and money do you think is going to be available when resource depletes, and there is no goods out of resources to trade, to keep the money flowing?
Earth cannot hold out forever. We need to prepare now. We're not talking about a few generations to the future, but we may talk about the eventual survivability of the human race. Humans are not animals. We're tool users. We're dependant on natural resources, and to gain more access to it- other planets even in our solar system will work. Also, a colony ship wouldn't have to be big. Just enough it could orbit around a planet and serve as a port. ( Around 20~25m in width, 70~80m in length ) I assure you, that will NOT disrupt the gravitic balance- and you know well how much mass and force is required to do that in a planetary scale when even changing a asteroid's trajectory is hard as it is. Construction will NOT be taken aplace inside Earth, ( if you have thought it would be, don't even talk about it. ) And that ship will NOT land on any planet. ( people will be transferred with dropships going on and off. This is cheaper and safer, and more logical that a big ship will not enter any atmosphere. )
If you cannot connect two things between another, then it is at your own fault. Increase in population means increase in demand. We have two things that make us spend more.

Life in this solar system has an expiration date as well, about 5 B years from now.

I wholly disagree. 1) We cannot deplete our resources any time soon, only things such as oil. 2) Overpopulation has already happened. But these are HARDLY reasons to look towards space for solutions. It is SO UNREASONABLE to think that we could possibly go to any planet that has resources for exploitation. It takes years to get anywhere. How can a ship hold the fuel? How is it economically feasible? What planet has anything we need? (Ill answer that one: NONE, we need more sense, not more resources) Think of the uncertainties and trouble that could be made from such an endeavor.
Again, space colonization at this point would only INCREASE our problems. Best solutions to our problems are on Earth, though not seen by the majority of Americans... Here is a little example of problems of solutions: My teacher explained to us two mirrors he set up in his old school, one saying "Problem" above it, the other said "Solution" above it. Analyze that.

Addition/Edit: Earth does not need to hold out forever, it just needs to sustain the human race for awhile, which it can do if we GET SMART and make change. I don't know why people think we have to keep growing.. That is so impractical to me, things can't keep growing. We should know that once we are large enough we will collapse, we would be better off sustaining what we have and trying to renew the environment.

I assure you that you're wrong. It will disrupt the gravitational* balance, but it will probably be negligible. Do you have a phD in rocket science and space colonization? Don't try to pretend you know what a colonizing ship would be like and what it would have to do.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Dec 3 2007, 2:33 am by yenku.

You would not need a PhD in rocket science and space colonization. You can always read up sources and take classes to give your opinion. Ships don't need to be large from start, and it wouldn't take years to get us from Earth to Mars.

Stop growing then. In my perspective, growth is hope- without it is failure beyond measure.


1) The sooner we prepare, the better we can handle things thrown at us. Also, the big problem why oil is such a big fuss is because its product is for power, materials for road, materials for types of plastic, and medicines.
2) So does your solution include mass genocide? That would be a good solution Mr.
3) It doesn't take years. It takes a year to get us to Jupiter. If you mean outside of our solar system, then that wouldn't be feasible for another few centuries- which I doubt by the current system we are running in will hold us that long with just Earth.
4) A ship only needs enough fuel to stop, and change trajectories. Once it is in motion, it won't stop until it reaches its destination- that is space. You do not need your engine running constantly. There is no friction to stop motion.
5) Humans don't live off of just environment by itself. Running out of oil without an alternate energy source will lead to massive chaos, where places need pumps to be supplied water- it will suffer of draught. Where people require constant transportation of goods and food, it will cause starvation, lack of support, and disease.

But you must admit if we actualy used our money wisely instead of waging war and writing off IOUs to every country in the world we would have new power sources and stuff like that.

Right, because Mars holds all the solutions to our problems.
You're right. I never said we should exhaust it though.
Yes. I love genocide.
Come on man... Do you think that linearly?
I don't see any planet in our solar system doing us any good.
I know how forces work in the absence of friction, thank you.
Oh yeah? Tell me how we aren't living off of our environment.
That's a great reason of why I believe we need another source, among many other reasons.

Again, you do not argue why we cannot solve our problems on our own planet, which is what I argued.