Nicely put.

[kickaha]

By way of boingboing: http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/007092.html

Synopsis: the biggest win for us as a species for investigating terraforming or colonizing other planets? Learning how to colonize our own.

Comments

[badger.livejournal.com]

The Worldchanging blog is on my regular reading list - more so these days than boingboing, at least in time I spend on it. I can recommend the big huge _Worldchanging_ book that I read last month. I saw Charlie Stross' original post, and my friend David of the Eluminati made a similar argument recently, at least in the terraforming Earth is easier than terraforming Mars. I like the idea from the approach of refining the technology here before trying it at the end of a very long and unidirectional supply line.

[kickaha.livejournal.com]

Agreed.

OTOH, if it's high-risk, you can't do anything half-assed or lowest-bidder shoddy... :P See the TED07 talk by the spelunking/diving geologist who is proposing a moon shot... *one-way*? They'll make their own fuel on site for the return trip. Now *THAT* is ballsy.

Another site you might like: medgadget.com

[badger.livejournal.com]

OTOH, if it's high-risk, you can't do anything half-assed or lowest-bidder shoddy...

I am so not arguing against that, which is exactly why I like the idea of development in an environment where failure does not equal death. I look at medgadget sometimes, I should more often. Thanks for the reminder.

[georgmi.livejournal.com]

Huh. It's a good concept. How does it get funded?

I mean, you can develop the technology as part of the "let's go to Mars" effort, but what about actually leveraging the technology on Earth? How does that get paid for?

Colonizing Mars is glamorous. Lots of people would give their eyeteeth to live on Mars. I would. Nobody wants to live in the Gobi. (OK, I'd love to spend six months or so there, but I've been a fan of Roy Chapman Andrews since I was about six.)

I'm not asking this in an attempt to say, "It'll never work"; this is a question that *has* to be answered for such a project to happen.

[georgmi.livejournal.com]

Oh, by the way--the photo in the article is of "The Wave" down near Page, Arizona. It's in a very limited-access area managed by the BLM--last I heard, they were only giving 10 people a day permits to make the 6-mile round trip cross-country hike to get out there.

Here are some other pictures. Wish I could point you at my shots, but I didn't know about it last time I was in the Page area. Next time for sure.

http://www.pbase.com/cwphoto/coyote_buttes

[kickaha.livejournal.com]

*VERY* nice. And I think I now know where my work-account desktop pic was taken. I've been looking at it for months now, trying to decide if it were a macro-lens closeup of finegrain structure, such as twisted cedar, or a largish f-stop on a larger piece of rock. :)