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Old July 20th, 2004, 12:20 PM
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Default Re: Semi-OT: We will go to Stars.

Quote:
Really? But what can you say about Antarctida? It's much more human friendly than Mars (plenty of air and water) but it's not colonized. Where are whose famous pioneers you're reffering to?
Another example - ocean bottom: whole new Earth to explore.
Antartctica is protected by loads of treaties and various international (dis)agreements, otherwise governments would have had people living there by the thousand and exploiting the resources decades ago, but point taken, and the same could be said of various deserts and other inhospitable places around the planet.

However there are plenty of dispossessed, persecuted, oppressed, evacuated or just plain unhappy people in the world who'd love to set up their own little societies in those places, given the opportunity- it's just that they are all too damn poor to (a) get there and (b) buy the equipment they'd need to survive once they do. Those people who could afford (a) and (b) are quite comfortable where they are, thanks very much. After all, if you can afford to colonise Antarctica, you can afford a cosy little house in the first world somewhere.

However this will change. The "richer" populations of the world are fragmenting into lots and lots of little subcultures and subsets of subcultures. As populations increase and with improved communications to bring like-minded folk together, even fairly obscure subGroups can number in the thousands and actually look and behave like real communities. What I'm getting around to is that some of these Groups will inevitably splinter from 'mainstream' society, being dissatisfied with the politics or economics they live under or whatever. And these are people from the rich parts of the world, so as the prices of space/ Antarctic colonisation come down they will actually have the money to go off and try to set up their own societies here and there.
I remember reading about one internet community a while back that was raising money to build an artificial island in the middle of some ocean and set up their own nation. I don't think they got very far, but they had a lot of members and it shows that the intent is there.

Hell, if you won the lottery, wouldn't you
be tempted to found your own little city-state of like-minded people somewhere? (Do a google for the "The World" project- a kind of real-life Magrathea off the coast of Dubai, where they are building designer paradise islands for celebrities.)

Quote:
I don't belive into the exploring nature of humanity anymore. It's exhausted.
No it isn't, it's just that we don't have much left unexplored on this planet, so that instinct doesn't have much of an outlet now.
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