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Destination Phobos: humanity's next giant leap

 

PHOBOS is a name you are going to hear a lot in the coming years. It may be little more than an asteroid - just two-billionths of the mass of our planet, with no atmosphere and hardly any gravity - yet the largest of Mars's two moons is poised to become our next outpost in space, our second home.

 

Destination Phobos: humanity's next giant leap - space - 27 January 2010 - New Scientist

Posted

All I want for next Christmas...

1. World government and world currency for efficiency gains.

2. Get Africa and other developing nations up to scratch with basic food, nutrition, education, health care, and security and mandatory English (the language of international business anyway).

3. World Federal government allows cutting of military spending by the largest nations, as the WORLD Federation can combine 'police' forces to send to trouble spots. Imagine China's manpower with the USA's technology, but united together instead of against each other. Would the planet need any more military than that to sort out trouble spots?

4. Nations combine in weaning off fossil fuels ASAP and solving global warming and peak oil through a combination of New Urbanist ecocities, public transport, and electric vehicles where necessary. Create world standards for fast-train gauges, Electric car road rules, charging points, etc as peak oil bites and the airlines start to go bankrupt.

5. We increase 'cradle to cradle' manufacturing standards globally, increase Federal World parks projects internationally, save biodiversity.

6: FINALLY.... as a World Federal government with a World Currency, the human species would finally have the sheer economic efficiency to band together to get serious about space colonies. Then we'd set up a moon base to rail-gun mass transit rock into orbit around the earth for our O'Neil colonies. One of these could be kitted out for the big, one way trip to terraform Mars, another could drift off to the asteroid belt to start constructing more ONeil colonies... you get the drift. We'd be out there.

7. One space colony rebels and heads for the next star system. Independent hot heads might take my great-granddaughter, but hey? That's the price of progress. (And spreading your DNA out across the galaxy).

 

That's all Santa.

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