[Mars] Do we have time?

[Terry Mackintosh]

Hi all

I am normally a very up beet person that tends to look on the bright 
side, that said...

Lately thinks are happening that are very worrisome, and it is looking 
doubtful that we have enough time to establish people on Mars (or even 
the moon) before there will no longer be a window of opportunity to do so:

* Global warming: It is projected that in just another ten years this 
will be so sever that even the nay sayers will not be able to deny it, 
and that in just fifty years all hell is going to break loose weather 
wise with sea level rising around 20 feet and the start of another ice age.

* Global over population: In this same time period people will multiply 
to around 9 or 10 billion people!

* We now have a president in the US that may be willing to start a 
nuclear war. And other leaders in other lands may also be willing, even 
eager (by some accounts) to engage in nuclear war.

* The US is going to create conventional explosive war heads to go on 
the Titan missile ... how is an enemy seeing this launched at them to 
know what kind of war head is on it? and is it not more likely that such 
a launch would be made?

* The US is making hardened enemies world wide like never before!

* Debt from the ongoing wars and any future wars may bankrupt the US.

* People may totally lose faith in the government, this would mean a 
civil war. (The people versus the government.)

* Almost total disinterest on the part of the US government in making a 
mass change over to renewable energy. Locking us into dependence on oil.



I would not be overly worried about any one of these, or even maybe any 
two of them, but ALL of these things and more are coming together at the 
same time and in the near future ...

Some say that Bush will find some way to suspend the constitution and 
that there will not be any election in 2008.  This could be dismissed as 
ridicules, except that if you look at the way he operates, the total 
disregard of law, the total disregard for what the people really want, 
all combined with the purposefulness of the way he is moving forward, 
like maybe he does not intend to step down? or maybe he figures on 
getting a puppet elected to do his bidding for him?

In any event, even discarding Bush from the future picture, the rest of 
the stuff is converging, and many people will be saying old things like 
"forget mars or the moon, we need to fix our problems here first!" The 
problem with this line of reasoning is that the problems here will never 
be fixed, only exchanged for new ones at best.

So, might funding for space related things fall to near zero? might we 
loss much of our prime real estate to flooding? think about the Cap. 
going underwater ... ouch. In fact most of Florida might go under water.


Does anyone else see a problem here? or am I just freaking out?

We may not have till 2030 or beyond, we may not have till 2010.

Make it a great day.

-- 
Terry Mackintosh <terry at mackintoshweb.com>
http://www.mackintoshweb.com/mars/ Mars Society, FL chapter.
Proudly powered by ROCKLinux, Apache, PHP, PostgreSQL, etc.
"If you don't know where you are going, how can you get there?"