Wednesday, January 4, 2017

Let’s be optimistic, really optimistic


Why not? It is the New Year and we all want to look forward to something. So why not be really optimistic? Take ideas to the extreme; come up with so much new and a promise of a future that is somewhat unbelievable, or at least at this moment in time.

Yes, this will be wild, much of it will have holes in it, more than swiss cheese. This is dreaming at its best because it offers a possibility for real ideas to develop. If you feel the dream is impossible you need to rethink how you dream. This is all in fun and all in seriousness. The holes you can shoot down or exploit to try and nix the ideas, yet if you do that you are nixing what are the real possibilities even if you cannot think of them right now. So much of this is off the top of my head and some of it is crazy ideas I have had over the years so here goes. Here is humanity’s plan for the next millennium.

And how to start? I could try and put a real-time line to this or just work through it and let the time line develop; and this latter is probably easier since I am just writing to just put the ideas all out there.

So, let’s talk about colonizing Mars first. What would happen if we tried to create global warming on Mars? There are all these theories about what is happening on Earth. Why not take what our theories are here and amplify them on Mars. Does this mean we mine the heck out of coal here and build colonies on Mars powered by coal fired power plants? We would still have to live sheltered, but the long run plan would be to start putting CO2 in the atmosphere.  Once Mars starting warming up we work on outdoor agriculture. Remember plants live off CO2 and through photosynthesis produce glucose and oxygen. (The chemical formula is 6CO2 + 6H2O + light energy = C6H12O6 + 6O2. Just in case you were curious)
Now solar power is possible on Mars which means sunlight could produce some photosynthesis. Working with the right plants or breeding new plants would allow us to create photosynthesis so over time could we create or synthesize a different atmosphere on Mars. Now we don’t want to pollute Mars, just build power based on CO2. We would of course build filters etc to trap particle and pollutant waste. Hey why not do it right for the long run.

One problem to overcome is the current problem of getting huge payloads off Earth to transport anywhere. There has been much discussion in the NASA realm about how to accomplish this task. Space X, other private firms, and even other countries are all working on this idea. Let’s presume we are going to have to develop something we don’t have in place or can nuclear power be used to shoot large payloads into space. Imagine the power of a nuclear bomb concentrated in a singular direction that pushes large bulk freighters through our stratosphere into space. Once these payloads reach a certain distance from the gravitational pull of Earth they can then be transported to the Moon’s orbit for preparation for long journeys in space. Colonies on the Moon would have the sole purpose of maintaining launch prep. From here we could use a variety of potential power sources to travel to Mars and then the asteroid belt.

Mining the asteroid belt allows us to start building multiple large space stations to orbit in between Mars and the asteroid belt. This may sound strange but all the colonies from the Moon to Mars to the asteroid belt can be protected with mesh nets that orbit around the colonies collecting space debris. And of course, collecting the debris also means we potentially are collecting more resources.

Needless to say, we have created an enormous amount of new jobs. There you go Mr. Trump, we can still use globalization, American ingenuity, American companies to make America greater. We just need you to start the process to acquire some investment here at home. Now where does this money come from? It cannot come from taxpayers. Maybe some, but not the vast majority. So why don’t you get Congress to step up and start offering incentives for companies/Wall Street to invest all the money they are hoarding or throwing away in mergers to work with inventors and entrepreneurs to start working on each step. People do not like throwing money away so public policy would need to encourage long term investing and still allow them to continue to work on actual profits. I am using the term “actual profits” meaning companies make money from products they create. They are not manufactured profits through accounting tricks or tax breaks or trading, but from real goods. Real goods, mean real trade, means real jobs, means real economic development. And by the way rich people can still be rich, they just end up being productive also.  Some people may think I am being sarcastic here and I am and at the same time being completely truthful of what we need in our country to continue to be great. And we can take the whole world with us.

People who are inspired have less time to be destructive. This goes especially for removing ignorance around the world and start educating people more profusely than we ever have before on planet Earth.

And all this is just the start.  So, we find ways to move large payloads off the Earth. Massive amounts of jobs especially high tech and manufacturing created. Now we need people to build. People in space. This is going to take large amounts of education to train these crews. So now we have high tech and low tech teaching jobs available. Where do these people come from?

Well back on Earth we have been working on solar power, desalinization, new agriculture in the deserts maybe using green houses, developing new ways to transport large amounts of people such as high speed trains, (there are some new ideas being developed already) one such idea I read was the use of tubes similar to the old drive in bank lanes where the small tubes were sent from your car to the teller. This is farfetched, but hey, that is what this is all about isn’t it? As we develop these ideas, we can then transition them to the Moon, Mars, etc…. Everything we learn from these developments we now can use to teach people to make the next steps in space. A high-speed train on Earth is now possible on Mars. Especially since nuclear and solar power would be reliable energy sources on Mars. Both have their drawbacks, yet both are possible.  Mining the asteroid belt gives us the resources to build cities and infrastructure on Mars.  (I still like my coal fired plants just a bunch of work to get coal there. If we can get the large payloads going though, it would be a great start to building more atmosphere on Mars)
And if we get started now in 2 or 3 hundred years all this is starting to come to fruition.  Boy that sounds like a long time. Just remember it whether you believe in new Earth or old Earth theory homo sapiens have been around 10,000 + years. (there is an interesting coincidence around this time frame. The Bible says more than evolutionists believe and more than New Earth people believe. How does that work? hmmmm)  In this time we have come from being hunters and gatherers to space explorers. The last 150 years have produced technological advances in leaps and bounds. There is no reason not to expect we cannot continue this development.

So here we are in the year 2400+: Mars is colonized, ships transport goods between the Moon, Mars, the Asteroid belt and Earth. Unfortunately, everything we know about Venus says we aren’t going that way. Too much to overcome.

So now what?

Well it is time to begin the plans to develop interstellar travel. Why you ask? Well because it is there to quote George Mallory. And there is a reason it is there. And with our curiosity, need to grow, and the inevitability of human growth means we need to go there. So how do we start this process. Unless we discover the worm holes of science fiction or some other types of portals we basically start the same way we colonized Mars. We start building orbiting space colonies outside of Pluto’s orbit. Once we have built the supply lines from the asteroid belt to these colonies we start building the ultra large vehicles that are needed to move large populations across the galaxy. We will be mining resources throughout the solar system as we move to the outer orbits. And isn’t that what we do well, exploit found resources and build new technologies. So, we don’t change as humans, we just become better at doing it for the benefit of all.  And everybody gets rich. (more or less)

So, there you are folks, in a thousand years the beginning of interstellar travel. So, got any better ideas for humanity for the next millennium?


https://twitter.com/MarsCuriosity

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