What makes Titan so interesting is that it has an atmosphere and is covered in organic molecules. Despite the fact that it's so cold that methane runs like water and ice is as solid as rock up there, it's actually pretty Earthlike in it's compositions. The same can be said for Venus, but that planet just doesn't have the abundance of organic molecules that Titan has.

As far as Mars goes. It's probably the only other inhabitable planet in our solar system other than Earth with resources that could be exploited and used to sustain life. We should learn as much about it as possible. Also, there is SOME economic gain that can come from planetary exploration. They're always discovering new things about chemistry and physics from studying compounds and penomenon on other planets. A lot of these discoveries CAN have economic benefit, maybe not NOW, but in the long run, probably. Too many people think of the short term. "Where is my cash NOW !!" "How does this help me TODAY ?"
It seems that the corporate minded don't think too much about anything beyond next years financial outlook. :nope:

Going to mars has little to do with economics as it is dealing with population growth.

7 billion people will become 10 in a blink of an eye. 10 will become 20 in another and shortly afterwards there will be chaos because even with advanced technology you simply cant get enough food to sustain such without crazed things like screwing with plant genes.

Colonizing Mars is important because almost every part of it can be refined to grow and support.

The chain goes like this.

Ship, Shelther, Robot factory, Refineries/mines, lots of factories, dome buildings, Dome cities, Dome states, etc...

Obviously humans will not build these domes. Doing anything in a spacesuit (even a skintight one) is much harder than on earth so this will be a robot thing.

The impotant thing is you don't have to worry about "Ruining the environment" on mars because you wont waste anything and also whatever envrionment will be in domes not on the outside.

Also important is that you have all the materials you need on Mars. Steel? No problem! Glass? Easy! Rocket fuel? Are you kidding? dig a few feet and you got it. Silica? Plenty!

Maybe we can talk Saturn into a swap. Their promising moon for our dead and airless one. ;)

Once transport matters have been brought to a reasonable level of reliability, colonization of Mars is simply a matter of critical mass on site. Get enough material and people in the right spot with the ability to function with some level of self sufficiency, and matters take care of themselves.

The biggest hurdle in the long run is going to be to create something more there than a glorified Antarctic research outpost. Colonization doesn't do anyone any good if it's a constant money drain. The people on the colony will eventually need to dabble in more than meteorology and geology to grow and justify the expensive supply line from Earth. I do think future taxpayers would eventually get weary of throwing people into space just to create an extraterrestrial welfare state. The flow has to be both ways, so wherever we go, sooner or later something we find there needs to be of value back home. Mining has been mentioned for the Moon, maybe some minerals that can't be found commonly on Earth. I personally put money on the first economically viable mining operations on asteroids will be for iridium. Its a pretty useful metal, and its rarity on Earth limits its applications.

Putting footprints on other worlds will happen again in our lifetimes. Putting down roots and raising families, I can see that taking another century or so.

Do you have any idea what it would cost to move billions of people from the Earth to Mars? Don't get me wrong, i wholeheartedly support the colonization of space but I don't believe it can ever be an answer to overpopulation.

It is the only answer besides the elephant in the room...

As for cost. Trillions.. And that is assuming they develop a super high ISP and thrust engine so you can carry 777 sized human cargo into space.

It is not going to be cheap. And nobody is going to develop the stuff to do it for free. That is why there has to be incentive. Like agreements to give mineral rights to many asteroids containing precious metals.

I'd say trillions would be more like 10's of trillions at least and it'd still take way too long to avoid overpopulation critical mass.

Now I can think of a much simpler and easier solution, get the human race to reign it's pregnancy rate. That can't be any more difficult than what you're proposing.

And how do we do it?

China style? What if a mother wants to have 5 kids? Extra taxes?

Well negative population growth, not including the "old school" methods like war, genocide, starvation and disease, etc, does seem to happen on it's own upon occasion so i'd expect the solution might be found in that direction.

But to answer your question, yeah I suppose it's only fair that if someone really wants a big family and we aren't as a society prepared to forcibly prevent them from having it, then they ought to have to pay in some way for the extra worlds resources they will consume don't you think?

In any case there is no way that solar system colonization can be a solution to unchecked population growth. Even with a worldwide 100% effort, highly unlikely i'm sure you'd agree, I believe human population would have already reached critical mass, and crashed the old school way, long before the project could begin to operate.

Ok say we make some kind of "law" saying that those who say have more than 4 children lose all assistance and have to pay more taxes.

What will happen? The networks will go crazy over "Child Deaths from starvation" And "Garbage Can" incidents and what will happen. The opposition party will run a "No tax on many child families" or whatever plan that will surely mean the reinstating of welfare and all that back to the way it was. Nobody will care about how it will mean loss later.

There is NO such thing as population reduction in most democracies the ones with supposed population decline are mainly due to local conditions or other things that do not reflect on the rest of the world.

Maybe I am wrong to believe in the saving grace from space but what else can I do? Population reaching critical mass will mean one thing. Loss

Loss of freedom

Loss of life from constant war

Loss of the environment as environmentalism dies and everyone does whatever they can to get resources

I am not going to think about those things.

Hell have you stopped to think about how terrible going critical can be? 15-20 or so BILLION going nuts for food and resources?

You can stop holding it forth as a solution to the problem for one thing. All it does is give people a false sense of security and keeps folks from seeing the necessity of controlling population growth.

I have and that's why i see an effort to limit world pregnancy rate, regardless of how draconian, as the lesser evil by far.

We could just steal it! Just get a few asteroids redirected to ever so gently tug with their gravaty Titan out of Saturn orbit and over here. Heck while we are at it why don't we swap the orbits of Venus and Mars and move Europa and make it the new moon of Mars it could be a touristy water park while stablizing Mars's rotation and getting the old planet core spinning again. Now what about a moon for Venus? Anyone got an idea? ;)

Launches could be done cheaply if in place of a rocket a magnetic catapult was used. Think Railgun with human cargo. Fling it in to LEO and have a trans-lunar shuttle pick it up. Then use a cycler to send the people to Mars. BTW a cycler is basicly a space station in a perabolic orbit that goes between Earth and Mars orbit. If we ever get a space elevator working off loading people from Earth would be dirt cheap, they could even live on the elevator much like in Clarke's 3001 and The Fountians of Paradise.

Interesting. Do you think these things could be invented and built before the latter half of this century and the critical mass that Zachstar and I have been talking about?

I say no.

Anything other than a constant thrust to orbit is pointless to even discuss right now and that includes space elevator.

The only MAJOR problem we have right now is the base problem of fuel it takes to get into Orbit. Everything else is easily fixed with research and robots.

An aircraft engine has extremely HIGH ISP but requires access to air. As air gets thinner it loses thrust and thus is no good to get into orbit. But if it maintained the thrust it has on the ground and the ISP it could theoretically take a craft into orbit.

So this is what you need. an engine about the size of a 777 engine that can convert fuel or mass into energy at extremely high ISP all the way into Orbit.

VASIMR has that ISP in space but space does not matter cause even ion engines have plenty of ISP. You need VASIMR ISP with 777 thust at sea level.

I suspect it will be some VASIMR like thing connected to a reactor. and a few normal engines to assist for takeoff and climb to 40k ft. It will take a few hours to get into orbit but it surely can carry 500 people a flight.

This is why I think that regardless of the consequences or the unintended effects it's just got to be easier to learn to regulate our population at sustainable levels.

Think "crushing G-forces killing everyone on board and destroying most of the cargo". You could use a railgun to launch payloads from orbit at sufficiently low velocities, but not from the ground. The speed required to escape Earth's gravity is too great. Rockets are punishing enough, and they have a constant source of thrust.
It might be wiser to invest in an aerodynamic vehicle that flies as close to space as possible before using rocket propulsion. Very simple, very effective, and we have the technology to do it relatively cheaply right now.


As far as the overpopulation thing goes, it's best to start with this misconception. While democracies do not neccessarily have negative population growth (if indeed one exsisted, anywhere, but that's nitpicking) first-world nations do. Any positive growth is generally due to immigration. The U.S. is a good example. Most net population growth in the U.S. is from immigration and the families of first-generation citizens. Even then, the birth rate is about 2.1 children per woman or less. Hardly enough to cause a population crisis. Since each child replaces a parent that eventually dies, the net effect is not that drastic.
However, poor countries, which almost always have high birth rates, contribute the most to global overpopulation. They also consume fewer resources, in every instance I am aware of. They also have a lot of famines and wars.

The cruel reality is that there will not be a need to introduce population-control measures or export people to space in the forseeable future. The "excess" population will simply die off. It's certainly a terrible fate, but it is one that will happen nonetheless. Eventually, we will come to the point where first-world nations are no longer willing to increase foreign aid to poor countries because of economic stress or production shortfalls. At that point, their high birth rates will be offset to at least an equal degree by high death rates and infant mortality rates.

In a worst-case scenario, like say, a bunch of idiots demanding that we transform our agricultural products into expensive and inefficient petroleum supplements, the supply of agricultural products to third-world nations will reach its' apex much more quickly, resulting in mass starvation and war. It's happening right now, and getting worse evey day. Of course, every third-world nation is also a primarily autocratic state, with very limiting trade policies.

Overpopulation is going to happen and space exploration isn't going to solve it. A government that simply has the ability to blow a bunch of money on space exploration, or any other dubious enterprise, is going to blow a lot of money. That money has to come from somewhere. If it is from taxation, it destroys market incentive and creates a market-government complex, and we all know what that does. It also removes currency from efficient use.
The much more common example involves the state borrowing or printing money, which artificially inflates the currency.
The result of either policy is that a nation is made less wealthy. Obviously, if people don't have disposable income to spend or invest, the economy suffers, yes?

If the economy suffers, the tax base and the supply of investment capital suffer. When an economy is suffering, the people that comprise it aren't very inclined to worry about overpopulation or space exploration or anything other than making ends meet.

The means to solving the problem of overpopulation is not in space. It is on this planet, and it involves economic freedom and prosperity, not taxing a suffering economy with wasteful expenditures on space travel/exploration/colonization. Those will come when the time is right.