You do know the $1.25/day number is the same as it was in 1990.

You could be pulling down a cool $2/day and now be above the poverty line, yet have less purchasing power that the $1.25 in 1990

The World Bank definition of poverty changes in proportion to changes in purchasing power and multiple other assumptions.

They specifically note that: "As a result of revisions in PPP (purchasing power parity) exchange rates, poverty rates for individual countries cannot be compared with poverty rates reported in earlier editions." The 1990-2010 edition, as such, can not be compared to ones prior to 1990.

This is the methodology used: http://iresearch.worldbank.org/PovcalNet/index.htm

It takes into account various assumptions, such as changes in purchasing power.

LOL they have even a documentary about it; (but this is even worse)

Masque, you officially have a spot reserved in one of my buried schoolbus prepper shelters. Can you skin a rabbit?

We will have to retrofit with a fusion reactor and that 1.21GW flux capacitor thing. Where we are going there are rabbits but nobody skins them anymore. Their meat is replicated using their DNA and then after a few days of culture its ready as muscle parts for your traditional http://www.food.com/recipe/rabbit-stifado-106996 dish. Now make sure the date is November 5, 2155 rather than November 5, 1855 which would take us back to the old west instead and get in trouble due to missing key parts of the DeLorian gadget.

Just build a bunch of these.

I think this is where the problem lies. The vast majority of individuals won't be intelligent enough or able to make a relevant enough contribution to the project or society for them to make a case for themselves to go to Mars, and that thought would eventually wear them down.

I also have some doubts about how so many spaceships would be constructed in that time frame. I would expect backlogs at some specialty parts manufacturers, huge delays while waiting for new factories to be constructed, and material shortages. And a large portion of this work would supposedly be getting done by people who have pretty much no chance of going to Mars.

Engineering schools would see enrollment skyrocket with intelligent people looking to earn a spot on the ship. Salaries in aero/chem/mech/electrical engineering fields would also explode as they become more valued by society than doctors.

I would guess 10,000-25,000 people make it to Mars, but they would ultimately be doomed by some accident or lack of resources within the next 20 years. Slim chance humans last beyond 50 years unless Earth becomes inhabitable again.

Masque you're totally and utterly doolally.

If the timescale was 100 years, we might be able to achieve what you're talking about, but 20 years, no chance.

I mostly agree with this; the power of money, imo, will decrease fairly steadily, though, meaning that those who make it onto the launches will be the most powerful and influential rather than rich.

Yeah the idea that the 99.99% selflessly work themselves to the ground for 20 years so that .01 get to live on Mars and being shot for disagreeing is just about the most ridiculous thing posted in this forum.

Including any references to tasty cockroaches and the like

Oh yes what a joke indeed to think that its the ultimate meaning of a human being's life to prevent the end of life/intelligent life/civilization (everything all previous generations lived and died for) in the known universe! How against the essence of life itself indeed! Because life doesn't try to find a way. It didnt try it without even realizing it in the 4-5 prior mega extinctions. It just gave up.


I pity (but i trust you can recover and rally) those of you that dont get it that this is the essence of being human to go for the impossible and die trying to change everything. Are you sure (for the Americans) you are the kids of the greatest generation or the moon generation?

And for any hot headed fighter of the rights of losers that want to die and keep all others dead too, that thinks i said some elite goes there, realize that i said first lets start with a plan to get as many as possible and even half the population (younger, healthier, technically educated part, maybe one kid per family if educated properly in 20 years if we can get going a proper exponential self sustainable with AI eventually process) and that i suggested a radical rise of the basic quality of life for all humans (as incentive to try to support the effort because the alternative would be a jungle with expiration). How many people worldwide right now are either poor or work all day for things they hate and cant pay their bills or are afraid to lose their jobs etc. What 70%? How bad to suggest to make all those finally secure in exchange for working for the ultimate project to save anything that ever mattered, life and civilization itself.


You need over 1 mil at Mars to make it work given the task there. Those going there early will be working hard for the others later. They wont be some idiotic billionaires or celebrities. And 1 mil is so funny small number given what we are capable to do if instead of $1.5 trillion in defense a year as planet we spent all this for Mars for 20 years. But of course we are not going to spend 1.5 trillion a year. Money is worthless then. Its just an example of scale of focus/priority. What you spend is more tangible finally, its man-hours, raw material extracted or recycled from current infrastructure and energy mostly with fusion within 5 years, fission and solar and all fossil fuels U and Th left needed extracted at record pace. We are going to spend everything other than for food and medical services and basic needs and quality entertainment and other essential processes that will make work reasonably doable and life meaningful - still better than the alternative of giving up to die in violence and in collapse of social order. No more bs economic activities competing for power, wars and divisive politics. All devoted to the effort united. People continue to work as they always did but now its secure, stable, pays for all they need and what matters.

Once safely on Mars they can resume being the idiots and draw new country borders too and build their churches and mosques again lol under 0.4g gravity hahaha, because they wont have other more important things to do there but pray and fight in the name of a loving God and for the new printed currency (not other more important tangible things that improve a world and even give religions pragmatic credit for their core ethics. I suggest to both sides religious people and atheists or scientists to read this by the way; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christ_Recrucified or watch the old movie even https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e44vBLHS-Gs for a reflection on how even religion can get it right if it removes hypocrisy from people) . (because if God ever existed he would love to have people not fight over bs and be generous, loving and cooperating, trying to save each other in crisis, the ultimate test of character.)

Actually this "transfer" is a monumental adventure and maybe not going there (where you will be be in stress and daily organized efforts for decades to support survival in order for the system to finally become stable and recover civilization in full) and dying on earth is a lot easier for many. Indeed true. But i refuse to accept a father or mother will not try for the kid to make it there, to have that chance, to decide it to be exactly 0 instead. Even if only 2-3 kids/young adults and an older person from a village/city go only, that village has won something.


If anyone ever here realized how impossibly tough going to the moon or getting the atomic bomb at the time they did it was (so fast and without errors) and that it was only a fraction of the effort of a society in just ~5 years range, how hard will it be for 4 times that period in our era with much better technology/computers/AI, devoting 90% of our focus on it, to send to Mars technology we already have and design factories there that work in light atmosphere or indoors if we have the fusion/solar power to support the needs of energy there.

You better believe it there is enough energy and resources on earth to send even 1 bil there if the exponential deployment worked. I want you to introduce yourselves here on the other side of the argument (pro death, giving up), those of you that have kids that if offered a chance that your kid would go there with a chance each of 1% all the way to 100% if it worked out in the end as planned, you would turn it down and accept death instead of fighting for your children, your legacy, your after life victory of will (oh yes but you need to be Greek or one with healthy range of classics education, to get that concept of after life fame apparently and love of something greater than yourself, what a shame, even for modern Greeks too).

Lets all sit down and die and accept that over 100 bil humans that ever lived and tried to survive under worse conditions than ours, all those that sacrificed and experienced all this pain before, they did it so that we would allow it to end it all here. They lived for nothing. How grateful of us.

The rational plan is to take everyone on Mars of proper age and health with some probability, as high as possible towards 1, to aim for that audacious target, regardless of original education and social/ethnic background and to educate all of them to be able to be productive there for the mission. If all we did in the end is 1 mil or 10 mil so be it. It would be people from all over the world with all kinds of skills and motivation to survive. And yes i will be glad to die for them to be successful at their effort there and work for nothing but what is needed to have the basic essences covered for 20 years. You can have my ticket. I will die a happy man.


As for the shot comment how little to try to attack it. WTF guys do you even realize what happened in WW1,2 to soldiers that left their units or refused to fight etc? And that was so lol in comparison to the end of everything. That is the war of all wars.

Ideally a civilized society will avoid being nasty that way and allow people to choose to try to work for it and have meaning in their lives or find meaning in peaceful resignation. Even in such crisis one can afford to be decent and not a dictator but if some idiots want to destroy the effort they are part of the problem. They can step out and not affect negatively the process (after all over 30% easily would love to try) or face death yes, you better believe it if they inhibited the efforts. Sometime logic must prevail so that someone out there will be saved instead of nobody. I would gladly die trying so that all the Mars people would be Taliban if there was no other choice. So be it. No problem. They can recover from their bs hardcore culture 100 years later. I am super confident of it. I will die for even them to have a chance if nobody else could. I will consider myself well represented by human hope and spirit even then. It is that important.

A strong society goes for as many as possible but begins with a safe number of 1 mil just in case. The first leave as soon as 2-3 years from now even. You can then have a launch every day with 100 in each ship eventually, initially 10-20 only. At the very end even 1000 per ship. The resources to do that do exist and can be extracted if we devote all infrastructure there. (Musk claims he can have, as it is, Mars missions with less than $10 mil per ton delivered - Current NASA cost is like 100 mil per ton anyway)


You guys do not understand that capitalism is the enemy of progress very often (even if still better than other bs systems in the absence of a reasonably free scientific society) because it will never allow a process to accelerate to its theoretical maximum because it will collapse prices and its against the self interest of the companies preferring selling the goods at top prices and controlling the pace of progress to remain in power (often even colluding to do that if not a monopoly, effectively having the same result as one). This is why fusion will never be provided by eg oil companies research efforts ie by investing 30-50% of their profits each year to the research to obtain it. Like hell they want that! They will only embrace it if they can instantly corner the market on Deuterium, He3, Li, etc, the new oil replacement.

masque,

life is going to eventually end some day, its all ultimately meaningless man *puff* *puff*

Alobar or Dereds, Nitchka'sDad, Wazz and other friends in general debating me here, first of all recognize that i know how outrageously optimistic i sound. But i have done the calcs guys already before saying these crazy things, even on the energy cost thing and i already showed you how fusion will allow us to use our oceans for fuel to get there and carry from 2 to 20% of the initial launch mass in water even (final useful cargo). Space elevators (with nanontubes) can even change that to better results by a factor of 2-3. These things are not done today (Going to Mars in style, building space elevators, fusion , new manufacturing methods for space colonies, solar, electric everywhere, ion propulsion etc) not because we cant but because our structure of economy and priorities and endless infighting (defense budgets and other things) doesnt allow the luxury in budgets. Nobody invests in such expensive in resources and man power projects today because there is no money to be made from it right away and all progress would even collapse the economy by making everything very cheap and bankrupting the majority of the society which is not ready for that rapid transition of progress in terms of other metrics and not money, as designed now.

Our culture is not designed with objective to improve what we can do as fast as possible. This is almost accidental byproduct instead and inevitable result of the fact that science and technology often help people make money in some ways (improve efficiency, open new heavy consumerism focus markets, generate new jobs up to a point etc) so they (technological projects) are developed to a point based on narrow self interests, instead of greater united self interests. And we have a ton of cultural differences too and waste a ton on defense and stupid competitive waste issues. Of course, science being so great and unstoppable, eventually even this stupid design works and delivers progress. But the pace is insanely depressing based on what we could do if focused on common good and we controlled population and education and research priorities better. It is all designed now in order for people to fight each other and make money while in the process pretty much accidentally delivering progress whenever they can make someone money because of it(or win wars/domination etc ) or they can adapt fast enough to make money in new markets killing older ones gradually. If a process doesnt make money fast or costs a ton to produce it will not be attempted (we do not go for barrier penetration miracles, we are too narrow short range quick profit minded) and the politicians will never aim for it under the immense corrupted stress of power centers and the naive public that doesnt know better to revolt.

Never underestimate the power of a society though that has decided to do one core thing and only the other survival essentials and do all of them finally perfectly and united without political friction. It is only a matter of working on these projects instead of the rest of the peripheral economy (what do you need all kinds of businesses in that terminal environment really? You do not force people to work on the project, you turn their jobs/employment to serving the project and they keep as if nothing changed but the scope/purpose of their daily jobs). I have studied Mars a lot to know what it takes and how close we are to sending anything we like in terms of heavy equipment there for 10-100 mil per mission (or assembling it there) and even redesigning smelting and chemical factories within 10-20 years if needed, insanely invest in 3d printing and spartan energy expensive chip manufacturing procedures, so that they can use local resources on Mars, which are very similar to earth ones, minus the water that we will have to take with us in the form of Hydrogen.

Your effort to convince me its all (life etc) meaningless already gives it a meaning!

How can the rise of complexity be meaningless? It is the only process with which the universe can understand itself/develop math and introduce even new phenomena never before possible.

If this universe is a project of a higher intelligence i can assure you we are very meaningful to them.

If mankind was to perish anyway you better believe it our last effort would be to spread life (even genetically modified bacteria) to Titan, Enceladus, Mars, Europa, Io etc and the atmosphere of Venus even and leave instructions behind for future life (many ways to do that and last 1-2-3 bil years) to know where it came from lol. We can at least do that (we have already evidence some bacteria can survive in tough environments like Mars and elsewhere and if life can survive it will evolve to unreal results eventually and even alter the planets/moons in the process- as it did with Earth- if we engineer it properly to have some early edge based on the chemistry of each system, as our last quick choice of action.

Respectfully masque your calcs have delivered results that vary from 10m to 1bn which is a pretty wide range.

I'm not trying to convince anyone life doesn't have meaning, mine does to me and to the people I matter to, I may argue that we should all recognise the meaning others lives have to a greater extent than we do. I may even, if I were a utilitarian, assign meaning to the lives of those not born but this does not compel me to advocate that each person sacrifice their choices to those not yet born and certainly not to the lives of a miniscule % of those currently alive.

You have a much better grasp of the size of the universe and the probability it contains other intelligent life than I do, us going the way of the dodo on those scales doesn't really seem that significant an event.

We can pop some stuff in a capsule or two and hope it lands on some populated shore.

The range is wide because one cannot speculate properly about the pace of innovation under stress and the commitment of a society that tries to defeat death united or the possibility of a destabilized broken society doing 2 different things with jungle emerging in many places.

We do have the energy to go places with fusion available. It is however another unknown, hence the uncertainty, if can be secured within 5 years (or not) of intense efforts which will make or break the project, because then energy becomes very cheap and exponentially growing if so needed. With fusion you can do anything on Earth and Mars that takes plenty energy to do otherwise (eg extracting raw material, having a very active industry etc) and was impossible before because of constraints, you can grow exponentially also the access to other resources that way ie build many ships faster. World energy consumption has been rather near flat lately in past decade or so for most advanced countries and the small growth of the planet's total pales in comparison to a true faster exponential that is possible with cheap energy and unlimited fuel reserves. This is why then it becomes possible to talk about 1 bil. So you take 1 bil people to Mars and see if they can survive there long enough to pick up everything with indoors civilization structures, access to local resources, reproducing earth society under more intense protection, a more sheltered existence with more focus on daily functions to secure stability and self sufficiency all cooperating for decades and obviously reducing population in time until this happens instead of having kids etc avoiding stupid things in tough times. Also the project is to return to 1g within 100-200 years anyway through space colonies. Mars is only the first step. The true future of mankind is in massive colonies that create artificial gravity and can travel to distant systems also. Mining the Gas giants and sacrificing a big satellite or asteroids or even Mercury in order to have building material is what will allow us to become a truly solar system level 2 civilization.

Since a human likely needs over 1 ton of material even with full recycling each year (water/food), just to survive, we need to build fast a massive structure of a society on Mars under adverse conditions. But it is doable because the technology exists basically and will be further developed within 15 years and implemented heavily the last 5-10 etc, its just that it was never a priority to go for it very fast (budgets and focus). If its the main thing we are doing every day as a society the sky is the limit. But to avoid sounding ridiculous i keep it at 1mil to 10 mil and aim for as much above that as i can and present it as a promise to all to fight for that number to be very high and ask of them to prepare to pass health and competency tests for the new home.


I think you will find that most older societies on earth value culture and its survival a lot and have dealt with sacrifices before to know to fight for this if the time comes. If 100 mil people died in ww2 and another 5x that experienced enormous sacrifices for a stupid war what can they do for the war of all wars?

The most selfish thing one can do is to be globally selfish and ambitious!

Whatever goes down I believe you will be fine as you're already on a different planet to the rest of us

Even 1 million is ridiculous in 20 years.

It would probably be 3-4 years before we put the first ship on Mars, with at most a few dozen humans. Then we need major leaps in technology and manufacturing to carry hundreds at a time on frequent launches. To do 1 million is 1000 ships carrying 1000 humans. That's a new launch every 10 days for 15 years, assuming we can create a rocket with enough volume in it to hold 1000 humans and the systems and supplies to keep them alive for 1 year or more. And that we can produce such a ship every 15 days.

I think you are smoking crack. And I say this knowing you are a very bright individual.

But you have the entire bloody planet designing/building the ships come on now!!! Hundreds of millions of workers in thousands of mega factories. Ie they stopped building new private cars or airplanes/ships/military equipment etc they build only cars and planes needed for the project and rockets, all other consumer industry is reduced big time to essentials only. If we really had to put 5 men on Mars we can do it in 1 year as it is right now and the trip can last very little time and we can send them supplies every week actually until they build everything they need there to start even growing food inside. It is just not a priority. Its not that we cant do it properly if we wanted for the life of it. Build a bloody big rocket thats all that is needed and accelerate it faster using ion propulsion because the ship has a nuclear reactor in it even. Even submarines have these. Building a rocket and life preservation systems (if for space station) takes months or weeks because only 0.00001% of the planet is working on it. How much does it take with 5% working on it? Even without ion propulsion just Moon style technology, 3x bigger, its possible to be there within 1 year and the trip doesnt have to last long either. Make the rocket bigger or send 2 to join outside earth low orbit say if it proves a bit better.


Over time if we have fusion the size of a big room (as recently suggested even if i dont buy it 100%) it can be put on a spaceship too and then using ion propulsion we can go to Mars real fast within weeks. But we dont care about those first few trips to be super-fast. We care to learn to do things properly. If we really wanted to say we did it, all we need is 1 year. To be precise i need to study radiation protection requirements to be more accurate but its solvable if its a priority. Go ahead and waste a lot of fuel in the first mission no problem. The real final ships will be much better and bigger a decade later if they work on it 24/7.

I promise to read everything, but if it hasn't been mentioned already I think the ultra smart and powerful would find a way to dupe the rest into thinking their was a way to actually prevent the catastrophe, which would get them to work hard on the technology to save the 10,000 - 10MM or so who got the ticket to ride. Even though I most likely wouldn't make it on the boat, I hope I'm fooled too. I'll work to save the best of us like Masque, BruceZ and MrWookie.

Trains.

Shoot your ion drive/ reactor/flight deck up(locomotive)

Shoot a supply module or 2 up and a passenger module (cars) that can land on Mars.

locomotive returns back to earth to refuel and pick up more cars, then back to Mars.

Most of the launches would just be beer cans with people and supplies.

Sweet! We could communicate with one of those cool tin can wax string phones to avoid long distance fees!

Dudes even if I make the ship just kill me couple days after we get there. I have a feeling the novelty wears off quick. There's probably no three-tittied mutants like in all the movies, I'm guessing not much oxygen, oil, or other very useful natural resources available to keep up my exciting comfortable western lifestyle of eating and internet whacking. That planet shed any flees it may have had eons before earth apparently figured it out, and my guess is we wouldn't be welcome either.

We arent welcomed even in most places on earth without our technology and civilization. How long can we last in dense rainforest or a desert or some cold north island without access to technology if left there alone or in a group of 3 people lol ?

We arent welcomed under water either, submarines are doing a hell of a tough job but they are motivated by our insane idiocy regarding war and domination of each other. We spend unlimited amounts of effort in stupid things. Apply the same drive to produce controlled environments on Mars and you have the same type of tough problems to solve and victory within reach.

What you need though is to be sustainable not just capable to live. To achieve that you need a new type of manufacturing process. You need to have chemical factories that operate in closed environments if they require water and O2 to function or design their parts better. You feed these the same raw material you do on earth (eg ore) and recover with Chemistry the same elements and compounds to then use as first level material to build other technology elsewhere. Mars has the same range of elements we have on earth in its crust. All you need to master is how to do what we do on earth but in pressurized environment when needed, in a bit higher temperature (need to warm things i mean) and protected from radiation. All those are provided by fusion energy if we have it and are tremendous tough at first sight but not really if you have the proper design and energy is not an issue for you.

Being on Mars it will feel a bit like being in prison as you cant get outside just for fun and do things without caring for consequences, things that are natural on earth taken for granted.


But in time we will build domes and inside these we can have natural environment using plants and animals and water and we can construct the dome from such thick transparent material that it will allow natural light in even. We can use EM fields to even control the reduction of radiation.


I am telling you all is possible if you have plenty of cheap energy. This is the constraint.


Solve food production indoors, having water that is never lost/recycled, organic matter/waste that is also recycled and chemical manufacturing using local resources. It is not unthinkably prohibitive. It is all very doable. It was never a priority though (to show how to do it fast and easy) because people are morons. You do not go to live on Mars as it is today because its such a great place. Its a stupid desert. You do it in order to develop superior technology that will then find unreal applications on earth. You do it also to learn how to manipulate tough environments so that one day you can build space colonies using that technology that will top the earth experience!

The bottom line is that our societies are screwed up in how they are designed. They do not respect themselves enough to have the right priorities. We care about a lot of stupid things and ignore the important. A tough environment simply pushes your ingenuity far. Having to solve problems that are complex is exactly what makes your technology unbelievably effective. Our money culture is extremely prohibitive in terms of our development. We do not operate as society with tangible global benefits in mind. We are super idiots if you ask me in what our priorities are in terms of how ridiculous is the game theory we end up playing. We have all kinds of stupid teams we will die for (even sport teams imagine that, what did a sport team ever do for you lol - go Giants!- but only superficial ego entertainment or an illusion of unity and belonging when you know all these rich guys play for their careers lol not you) and not a team planet, a team humans, a team for all of us and our improvement in what we can do. Our fights over limited resources and our irrational population growth , greed and stupid cultures and divisive politics is what keeps us at bay lol. Instead of fighting over crap if we took a break and solved our common problems we would then be able to fight over more important more powerful more spectacular things. We are that stupid. We love to fight but are unable to even improve in what we fight for lol, blinded by near term stupidity. We are not even good at being bad!

This is a bit interesting in a sideways sort of way.

Most people say that they would rather be killed than severely maimed (lose appendages and/or become mentally ****ed). Most people who have become severely maimed just keep on carrying on and enjoy themselves.

Interesting to ponder that we may not actually end up sending a mass volume of humans as it wouldn't be necessary, simply pour money into technology that fertilizes and spawn humans on site and take only a few elites to carry the job out (or alternatively just send the technology and machinery there unmanned, which raises the question of how a bunch of babies will survive on mars, but you could also invest in machinery that nurtures and educates them, or alternatively just send a small group of talented people who are likely to naturally live >25 years to raise them). This seems more plausible than transporting mass numbers of humans, and has less risk involved too, as you could have a catastrophe in flight that wipes out the humans given how vulnerable we are to space conditions, but simply sending eggs and sperm in some sort of protective container, that likely stands a better chance.

Not really a biology nut but i think that reducing the entire population of humanity to a relatively small number will weaken our biological ability to overcome environmental problems, given less diversity in the gene pool, this may be another issue which needs to be addressed.

Yeah, I'm aware I'd cling to whatever sad existence fate has granted me, like so many have before. I'll even choose to think of that as a precious and inspirational human trait!