Talk:Colonising Mars

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Contents 1 Ideas 2 Should we colonize Mars? 3 Interesting topic... but be careful 4 Reasons for the wikibook 5 Latest Deletion

[edit] Ideas

The magazine WIRED had an issue dealing with exploration. I believe it featured James Cameron on the cover. It had what I would call speculation on how to prepare Mars for colonization.

Another idea is to talk about the fiction (and non-fiction) dealing with Mars, such as Ray Bradbury's Martian Chronicles.

OMouse 15:48, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Should we colonize Mars?

It would be appropriate in this book for a discussion of why *NOT* to colonize Mars. Many people will cite cost and lack of a compelling reason. But personally, my own top reason not to go to Mars is the possibility of life. It is appearing more and more that if there is life on Mars it is small, delicate and localized. We could easily wipe it out before we even know it is there. Studying such alien life could be an invaluable source of knowledge to us. That is apart from the moral issue of xenocide.

The Viking landers were the only successful landers that carried experiments for the express purpose of looking for life. The only other probe with such an experiment, the Beagle II, was lost on entry to the Martian atmosphere.

Each Viking lander carried three experiments designed to look for life. These experiments involved mixing martian soil with nutrients from Earth and looking for the byproducts of metabolism. If life as we know it exists on Mars, all three experiments should have shown it. If the soil was steril, all three experiments should have shown that, too. Instead, two experiments showed the nutrients being metabolized and one did not (same results for both landers).

These results are highly ambiguous. There is complex chemistry going there that we do not understand. That chemistry could be a by product of life, or it may not be. Until we understand that chemistry and have ruled out the possibility of life, we should not send humans there who might accidently contaminate the soil and wipe out any life.

More recent observations have shown areas where methane gas is accumulating, and areas where there is abundant water ice. Water is believed to be necessary for life, and it is there.

Methane gas has two possible sources: volcanism and life. Mars is not supposed to be volcanically active. So where is the methane coming from?

Nothing here is conclusive -- at this time we can still only say there is a possibility of life. That possibility needs to be studied using carefully sterilized robots until we understand what is there, and that we will not cause harm to any living thing by going there.

• If there is life on Mars, it is likely subterranean, near a source of volcanic warmth. I am not saying that life on Mars is is not a possibility, but that the surface is not a very likley habitat for life. Thus, Neither

Viking probes nor Beagle 2 would have detected anything, and the positive detected by the Viking probes was likely not anything alive. So, colonization of Mars would not be very likely to kill out the life very easily. Another motive for colonization is life, which would be easier to study in situ. 16:00, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Interesting topic... but be careful

I want to strongly point to this page here on Wikibooks before you get too far with this book: Wikibooks:What is Wikibooks. It is very important to try and document everything that you have done here, and that Wikibooks is not a source of "Original Research".

There are a number of reasons for this restriction, most notably because we are here trying to write textbooks, which usually implies that we are trying to teach something to somebody. Wikibooks is not a soapbox where you can spout off your personal political views.

To that end, we also have what is called a Neutral Point of View. This is also a general philosophy that much be followed. That means you can talk about something, but you must present what you are writing in a neutral tone. For example, writing about George W. Bush should be talking about factual things he did while President or governor of Texas. Suggesting that he is a lying creep that should be assinated is a point of view that is unacceptable. Writing about public individuals who have said that, like "opposition to President Bush's tenure in office took many forms. One vocal critic, the Rev. Al Schweitzer, has called President Bush 'a creep that should be assinated'." It also make for better writing all around, and is harder to dispute if you stick to the facts. In this case it would also save you from legal troubles because that same Rev. Schweitzer would be the one who could go to jail for plotting to kill the President of the USA, not you. All you are doing is just reporting factual statements. While this is extreme in example, there are many disputes in content that if they keep the neutral attitude rather than constantly change political viewpoints over one another can save everybody quite a few headaches.

If you want to see an existing Wikibook that is covering some of what you are doing here, look at Making an Island. This Wikibook does have a political tone as well, but it has been written mainly as a "How to" guide for building Islands and technical issues for building new cities away from existing infrastructure. I would strongly suggest that this Wikibook about colonizing Mars try to follow the example of this other Wikibook and try to stick to the technical and environmental issues of trying to get a group to live permanently on Mars. Political issues like what a Martian constitution might look like are so far in the future that we really can't say what that might be like. If, on the other hand, you have factual information regarding colonization of Mars like the Space Treaty and other international agreements and UN resolutions regarding the exploration of space, those are fair game to include in this Wikibook. NPOV sections about who actually owns Mars right now and legal viability of groups like the Lunar Embassy who claim ownership of Mars would also reasonable.

Regarding the constitution of Mars: This needs to be deleted. I'm not going to force a vote, but obviously nobody currently lives on Mars and this constitution is but one person's opinion on what some future government on Mars might be light. If and when people actually get to Mars and come up with a constitution, reporting factual details about that document would be useful and valuable. From my own POV (this is a talk page, so I'm giving opinion here), if there are any legal environments that are imposed on a group of settlers living on Mars that they don't come up with on their own while they are living on Mars, they will be ignored and the "laws" and "consitition" will be made irrelevant and meaningless. That is the beauty of documents like the Mayflower Compact, because it was decided upon and agreed by the orginal settlers as the community was being established. Considering how far away Mars is from the Earth, no Earthly government is going to even have the capability of enforcing its laws on Mars, even it the colonists are officers of an Earth government, especially during the first initial steps to colonization. It is also going to be a very pragmatic environment, where social structures will be orientated to survival and not some high minded political goals and ideals.

This is a neat subject, and I might even contribute some content here myself it it looks interesting. Try to avoid the blatant politcal issues and instead deal with the incredible challenges of simply building infrastructre for a whole civilization from scratch. How many people is it going to take to make a viable population that is independent from the Earth? What materials are going to be needed to start with? How can people "live off the land" and extract the resources they need to live independently? What should the gender makeup of the first crews be like and why? What lessons can be learned from the research bases in Antarctica and what aspects apply to Martian colonization? How can you cheaply and effeciently transport goods and materials to Mars from Earth to begin colonization? What kinds of skills and experience should the first astronauts to Mars have?

All of these questions are the sort IMHO this Wikibook should cover and more along similar lines of thought. There are also litterally hundreds of research papers on this subject that you can quote and reference, as well as science fiction authors who have written about this subject in depth. Many of these research papers can even be found on-line for web reference links. If you think I am out of line here, feel free to comment below as well. --Rob Horning 05:41, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

I agree wholeheartedly. There is certainly alot of information on this topic that could be discussed in wikibook-format, but we need to be careful that we don't pepper the entire document with original research. If the author wants to write original materials, we should have this page transwikied to wikisource or wikicities, whichever is more appropriate. --Whiteknight _TC^E 13:48, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

The temptation to throw in your own thoughts and feelings on these things is certainly immense. I've just posted some stuff on time units which, on second thought, probably doesn't belong here. I'm gonna leave it for now, however, in case this article gets moved to somewhere where it might be appropriate ... I do think it is good stuff, but not as a textbook. There are no textbooks on the colonization of Mars, only theory. I think that this should probably be relocated, because I'd be surprised if we could maintain the kind of quality we're looking for.

On the other hand, if you think we can do it, go for it (start by reviewing and/or deleting my time units entry).--Alex.pedwysocki 22:15, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Reasons for the wikibook

First, I should say that I have created other wikibooks before, like the movie making manual, for instance. I do understand the rules and the parameters and accept that this book does push the boundaries, however it does not break them. This book comes as a direct spinoff of a discussion list that has existed for some years with the specific job of debating the topics surrounding the civil and cultural development of Mars. The discussion list remains part of the Mars Society, a large international community of laymen, professors, ex&current-NASA and ESA engineers and many other people interested in all aspects of colonising Mars. The Mars Society runs practical experiments like the bio-dome projects in the Arctic regions as well as conferences to discuss the intellectual issues. I created this book specifically to document the "how to" of creating Mars society. The debates remain on the list while the results arrive on these pages. The issues include such practical issues as how a clock will tell time on Mars, i.e. do we use a standard Earth second and have a longer day, or do we replace the second and create a more univeral small measure of time; or even create a universal clock that all local clocks can covert to, much like internet time works here. Other issues remain more esoteric, like the word of the Law, and yes, the constitution. What appears on that wiki-page however reflects a lot of debate that has already happened about a neutral constitution, not a point for debate. I put forth that the book should remain active for a while and see if it stays true to its intent as a "how to" of setting up Mars civilisation (not as far off as you alluded to, but actually relatively soon if we listen to the engineers). If it does not and becomes a forum for debate I will move the pages elsewhere. cauri 19:23, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

If it is previously published data, then you run into another pitfall of releasing into the public domain writings of other people who may retain certain rights over the initial publication. At the very least you should provide links to your sources. If it does turn into a case of copyright infringment, wikibooks itself could be in a lot of trouble. Although, if you do skirt the copyright issues, and you keep the work "unoriginal", then i have no complaints, and you have my blessings (for what they are worth). --Whiteknight _TC^E 20:30, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

If this is an archive of existing material that has been published elsewhere, that should go to Wikisource. Political diatribes like the Martian Constitution, which has been ratified by nobody and not recognized by any governmental organization, much less any group of geeks planning on going to Mars, is also not something that should be in Wikibooks at all. Like I said, be careful and document the sources for everything that you put in here. By publishing on Wikibooks, you are suggesting that anybody can change the document to however you want it. With the constitition, I can put in the clause "Robert Horning and his decendents will be the supreme hereditary ruler of Mars for all time and eternity. His decisions are final and cannot be appealed, and is vested with executive, legislative, and judicial powers governing all inhabitants of Mars. All hail Emperor Robert I of Mars!" and there is no reasonable way you can argue that shouldn't be there except to point out previous discussions or put your own name in there instead. That is the Neutral Point of View and the slippery slope that you get into with documents of that nature. Anything can be put in there and there is no reason to remove it other than it doesn't conform with previous documentation. That means it shouldn't be in Wikibooks in the first place either.

On the other hand, if you posted links to several proposed constititions of Mars with benefits and problems of each governmental form and did a scholarly critic of each constitiion, that would be acceptable. Note here that we are talking about references to previously published data, and that this is not the forum to write the constitition. That should be done elsewhere. You may even want to try http://www.wikicities.com where they are much more tolerant of such political discussions if you want to provide a wiki forum for writing a constitution like this.

I'm not trying to kick you off here, but I do expect that participants on Wikibooks understand the goals and aims of this project. If you think I'm being harsh now, just wait if I threw up a VfD discussion on this. I think a Wikibook that discusses issues of the Colonization of Mars is a neat topic, but if you are going to publish material here we are going to ask that you "raise the bar" and make this a genuine scholarly publication, not some random musings from mailing lists that reflect personal opinions. If you want this material to be taken seriously by groups like NASA and the ESA when they send astronauts to Mars, these standards and even higher quality requirements are going to have to be met. Otherwise this is some good background material for a future Science Fiction novel and nothing else. Sorry to be blunt here, but I'm trying to make this proposed Wikibook into something that would be a first class resource book about going to Mars, not some cheap geeky collection of politcial musings. --Rob Horning 03:12, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

Not harsh at all. I agree, however I cannot tell which way this will go until I see it happen. I have promoted the wikibook on a list and through communities of people actually involved in all aspects of colonising mars, from spaceship engineering to bio-survival to social science, I expect these professionals to use this book to further the goal of getting to Mars. To use it as a repository to comment on the many papers that exist (and have been published) on all aspects of off-Earth colonisation.

In the end if you do not think the Constitution should exist in this wikibook, then feel free to remove it. After all it's a wiki and its public domain for anyone to edit, right? --cauri 19:16, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

I'm commenting here because I want you to know why I'm thinking of deleting the pages and to give you a chance to respond back. Perhaps you didn't understand what the policies were or understand what Wikibooks was all about. Deleting content, especially with the power of permanently deleting content as if it were never there, is something I don't take lightly. We really do need more participants here on Wikibooks, so I'm trying to find out what is going on first before I take more drastic actions. As I said, this is something I am interested in as well, and I've read quite a bit of scholarly research on this topic of going to Mars. The worst thing I can do is throw my weight around and get into an edit war where I delete the content and then you go and add the content back, resulting in a bunch of hard feelings all around. That is why venting your spleen on talk pages first is usually preferable to messing around with other people's content before they understand what is happening. --Rob Horning 01:34, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Latest Deletion

I just reverted this deletion because I think if it does occur, it should be on the VfD forum. Yes, I did object to some of the content that was added here, but this is a resource book to Martian colonization, and indeed the subject of some classroom topics. I even had a 3 credit college course on this very topic, BTW. The POV stuff should have been deleted, including a proposed constitution to Mars that bordered on original research. The rest of the material was mainly factual with citable sources (even it if wasn't all very well put together in this regard).

There is no reason to speedy delete this content at all. --Rob Horning 16:41, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

Please respone here if you think this needs to be deleted... or put it up for a VfD! This should not be speedy deleted!!!! --Rob Horning 15:20, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Why bother? --71.132.139.161 22:59, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

I guess so much is now being deleted with hardly anybody complaining now that it really is of no use to fight this. I am resigned that the "powers that be" don't care and don't care if something indeed could even become a "textbook", much less simply a "book". The admin "delete" button is just too strong of an urge to use if you don't think something belongs. --Rob Horning 23:18, 8 May 2006 (UTC)