Who will be the next Space Power?

So you want to solve hunger and overpopulation by spending trillions of dollars just to get a few people to another planet possibly decades, maybe centuries from now rather than using the myriad of incredibly more realistic and faster approaches you could think of.

I know you people are in love with Star Trek and whatnot but get a grip.

Its the first step. No technological progress ever occured without trial. And quite simply put, as it is [considering our current system and human tendancies] our world is rapidly losing the ability to adequitly support our booming population. Spreading to space is less a want for more ground to cover and more a neccessity at this point. And even if you can prove that it is unnecessary in the short run, in the long run we have no choice.

currently there are real way to set up large completely self sufficient colonys on the moon and mars, the dust on the moon can be converted into water and O2 cheaply, thus allowing a colonys to grow there without help if needed.

on mars we know of many underground water deposits along with ice on the poles that could be used to again allow self sufficiency. a moon base could be in place in 10 years with the right amount of backing, and a mars base in 20.
so in fact i think it is You who must get a grip.

Space is a favorable to alternative to destroying millions of hectares of forest, polluting water, and killing many species of animals.

We don't KNOW of water flows on Mars, we are still at the stage where they are theories supported by what looks like land shifts on the surface. To make sure that niether colonies become more of a burden than a way to the furture, we would need to not just verify the EXISTANCE of water on Mars and the moon [yes, I know that we know there is water on the moon] , but also that there is ENOUGH water. We also would have to be able to guarentee some kind of substancial return for spending the amount of currency needed, even if it amounted to only .50 cents. And water is not the only problem, the colonists would have to become essencially self-sufficient as getting supplies to a colony on the moon alone could take months of planning and preparation to get the supplies together, get permission for a shuttle launch, launch the shuttle, etc. Lastly is what most people don't think about: how the lives of the people would change. We don't have anti-gravataional plates, and even with centrifugal forces [by far the most popular theory] it would be difficult for the people to grow and grow as a population. We would essecially be looking at a seperate species of humanity, a sub-species that grew in lesser amount of gravity. That is IF they could survive in the first place.

This is preposterous!

You don't need to do any of that, just provide incentive to stop population growth.
We need to go to the root of the problem, not make it worse. Even if it was possible and cheap, just increasing our food supply by somehow colonizing other planets would just give us a few more years before the problem is just as bad if not worse.
You know nothing about population growth.

Spending tens of trillions of dollars to "maybe" get a scientific colony on Mars withing the next 100 years isn't going to solve anything.

but shooting lasers down from a satellite sounds so cool

We need to solve the population increase problem by educating people but that can't happen overnight so we need to find alternative methods to provide food for the people who are living now and even if we don't use the colonies for food we can use them for other purposes.

MayorEmanuel's Shoe will be the next space power.

Yes, because TERRAFORMING FUCKING MARS is going to happen overnight.

it would take hundreds of years.

and it seems you know very little about current goals for colonys.


Terra-forming is the ultimate long term goal but not one needed for a colony. a colony could be build and made and livable in under 20 years, a moon colony in under ten.

Sure it won't happen overnight and if it doesn't happen before the population goes down we can grow plants there instead of cutting forests and all the other bad things that will happen.

You're not going to feed the people without terraforming, which is what we were talking about. This whole thing is stupid anyway, what are you going to do? Grow food on mars and burn hundreds of tons of fuel to ship it back? Oh I know, ship the people to mars using the cost of fifty times their entire lifetime of food supplies!

Look, instead of spending an astronomical amount of time and money on this silly nonsense, spend it on earth to fix this hellish population problem and it will become a non-issue. Then you can have your stupid space ship crap.

in fact no you do not need terraforming to grow food. and again with current tech you found need no rockets or fuel to ship it. also i didn't not purpose shipping the resources back, i support a full growing colony not one thats only goal is to ship things back here, that would be very stupid.

It would be pretty stupid since there is no need for it, it would cost an astronomical amount of money and people are dying for 50c worth of medicine.

yes and that is a shame but that doesn't help your side of the debate when you seem to not know anything about this subject. returns on a colony would happen about 5-8 years after it was settled, allowing for a new out let for people to go, a new planet to place people from over populated areas. new resources to be mined and shipped back, etc. if we stay here we do nothing but stay here with the same problems with shrinking resources to work with.

What resources does Mars have that we're in desperate need of and how profitable would it be to mine them and have them shipped back?
I'm not advocating doing nothing, I'm advocating going to the root of the problem instead.

you seem to think shipping it back would be very hard and cost alot of money, it would not.

Provide some evidence for that. Right now it costs at least $22,000/kg to send stuff into space.

In other words:
Is to!