I don't think so, and that's because there are people out there (dictators, totalitarianists) who want to take control of one very valuable resource.... people. Having lots of people living in space colonies will only incite more war as these leaders will try to control as many people as possible. (I think this because while China has a lot of land and resources at its disposal it refuses to let its people go)...

Well, as you can see I'm not great at debates. Please discuss your opinions without trying to light a flame

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Verily, Pesco doth proclaim:
People cant work together because people think differently.

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Just look at Mac. Proof that thinking differently doesn't work.

Or something.

Let's say you've got space colonies A and B. SC-A finds an astroid with lots of rare metals in it, and becomes rich. SC-B doesn't. So, SC-B will be tempted to take away the stuff from SC-A. If there's enough money at stake, it may become a viable tactic to attack them and take it. Therefore, war.

Let's say that you also have SC-C and SC-D. They find another such astroid, but it's in the area between them. Each claims it as belonging to them. Now, surely they could divide it between them, but why give up something that you think belongs to you? Arguments become violence, and war comes again.

Finally, let's look at SC-E and SC-F. SC-E is built by hard line "christians", and SC-F is built by people that believe that humans should modify their DNA to evolve themselves. A group of people in SC-F have their DNA modified to make themselves into "furries". Some people in SC-E see this, and say that the "furries" are sub-human and usable as slaves (the whole 'God gave man dominion over the beasts' thing). I don't know about you, but I would get pissed off if there was some religious person telling me that I'm less than human, and that I don't have a soul and am no better than a slave in God's great plan. In fact, I would want to show them the thrill of hard vacume.

People will fight, and for many of the same reasons as they do now. Greed, religion, racism, pride. It will all still be there, it will just be fought out on a much different battlefield.

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Empress Eisuye spewed forth this undeniable truth:
Space colonies will simply be spreading what problems exist on earth out into space. New problems will crop up (resources?!), and old ones will disappear (more non-renewable resources?), but fundamentally, we'll be the same.

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Theoretically, resources shouldn't be a problem. There'd be complete water recycling. Food can be grown and power can be generated because the sun's power is in abundance. Building materials should be plentiful too because asteroids and even the moon can be mined for metals to build with... well, that's pretty much what he said.

unles we are moving all our trash there

And there are other things to fight about than resources. We'll have all we need to survive, we'll HAVE to, if we move out into space, but other things WILL pop up. We'll be just like we always were, but with a new backdrop.

At least I might be able to get a laser pistol

Though spatial seperation often coincides with cultural seperation, I highly doubt this would be the case with space colonies. Assuming we have the propulsion systems nesscessary to construct a space colony in the first place, they colonies would have too many channels of communication and interaction to diversify much. Given that each colony started out as a relative cross section of our current population, it would remain that way.

Socioeconomic issues aside, I really don't see space colonization - spatial seperation of groups of our earthly population, in other words - as impacting any of the tensions we have today at all, for better or worse.

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Empress Eisuye impressed everyone with:
Find some planet that's basically a rock. Either close to or far away from the sun, and lob all refuse there =

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Why not into the sun?

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Kennatsu's unholy Backstreet Boys obsession manifested in:
Okay. My coworker tells me that if we build space colonies that are self sufficient in resources that humans will live together more easily; currently the only way one nation can live is if it takes resources from another. If people didn't have to do that, we'd live peacefully (or so he says).

I don't think so, and that's because there are people out there (dictators, totalitarianists) who want to take control of one very valuable resource.... people. Having lots of people living in space colonies will only incite more war as these leaders will try to control as many people as possible. (I think this because while China has a lot of land and resources at its disposal it refuses to let its people go)...

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No offense intended, but I don't think either you or your coworker have very valid points.

The statement that the only way one nation can live is by taking resources from another is false. Civilized nations have never outright coveted the resources of another, they barter the resources they have in trade for those they need. In a space colony situation this is just as applicable, if not moreso.

Your point in regards to totalitarianistic types is a valid one, but one that hardly pertains specifically to a space colony situation. Why would the desires of some to rule over vast amounts of human resources be any worse a problem in a space colony situation than it is here on earth?

However, that's only assuming that you're talking about idealized, arbitrarily large space colonies. In the reality of the forseeable future, any space colonies we will build will actually be relatively small. I doubt we could concievably create a space colony larger than a small town without some stunning scientific revolutions.

When there are only a few hundred, maybe a thousand, people the politics change a bit. It's hard to have wars when your population is that small and anyone can see and talk to the other group due to proximity. Not to mention on a space colony there's going to be a lot of specialized labor, there will be quite a few people you couldn't afford to kill off even if you wanted to. So in that case, I imagine there would be very little in the way of conflict within colonies, though internal problems like crime could still be common, and all bets are off when it comes to cross-colony relationships. It's too easy to vilify a faceless enemy.

[ 06-20-2002: Message edited by: Chalesm ]

Nw, you'd expect them to have a very chaotic lifestyle, but instead, they are the politest, nicest society that the human race ever experienced, because of their location, and their past.

There was also a huge imbalance in the sexes (10 men to 1 woman) and if you touched a woman in a way that she did not like, a lynch mob was gathered and you were escorted out the nearest airlock.

The same treatment was given for most serious infractions. Death, quick, ruthless, and absolutely final. You learned extremely quickly to be polite, and not to break the rules society imposed upon itself, or you were dead and it did not matter anyway.

This is one viewpoint. It is also a very good novel, worth a read.

One might also surmise that war would be even more suicidal between space colonies, because of their precarious nature, and there would be a better political nature between the colonies.

However, if a station is self sufficient, here will be people of higher and lower status (it can be inferred from the class system humans have alwasy adopted throughout history) and there will be rivalries between the classes, and among the members of a class t advance. So war would be replaced by social unrest and more dopestic violence. It would be replacing wholesale violence with retail violence.

hmmm, i'm tired of typing now, si i'll stop, i don't think i'll even finish this sente

[ 06-20-2002: Message edited by: The_Mac ]

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From the book of Chalesm, chapter 3, verse 16:
It's too easy to vilify a faceless enemy.

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My point is that a colony wouldn't have a chance to remove the face of another colony.

Now, I'm assuming that there have been technological advances that facilitate colonization of space, because frankly those are the only circumstances that it will happen under - colonization is simply impractical given our present technology.

Given that, one of the first advances of colonial space would certainly be some sort of interplanetary internet. I mean, we're practically a hair away with current technology what with quantum tunneling experiments yielding faster than light information transfer and things of that nature.

In any case, it's a primal human need to contact other humans. They will continue to do so in a colonial era, and I'm extremely doubtful that it will degenerate to a state where it's "Our colony" versus "Everyone else"

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Maradön² probably says this to all the girls:
A bunch of good points

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The only thing i find fault with is that you seem to feel we would need a great improvement in technology to colonize space...

I must disagree... I feel that the human race could easily colonize the moon, to the point of having several thousand permanent residents.

The problems involved:
Transportation: Use linear accelerators to launch things into orbit, and small shuttle rockets to get them down.
Construction: Create tunels in the lunar bedrock, and airseal them with plastic.
Energy: Solar from the surface.
Food: hydroponic gardens and a vegetarian living style.
Finances: well, that's the only real problem... Finding someone stupid and rich enough to spend the money.

Starts writing letter to George Bush

To start, no massive space stations would be civilian. Period. They'd be military ventures like they are today (okay NASA isn't strictly military but it draws from the best pilots, yadda yadda yadda). This means you're responding to orders and controls from a higher echelon of command who have all sorts of greasy-talking goobers out there to smooth things over.

Next up, most of the nations or power blocks in the world who are capable of space travel work peacefully together. Russians, us, Euro Space Agency, Japan, etc. We all work well together for the most part. Dictators aren't invited into space because they won't play by a team effort. That and most dictators in the world don't have anything to offer us. They can't even really shoot things down because the only country with nukes or whatever outside the ones controlled by treaties and such are India and Pakistan and as far as I know it's not like India OR Pakistan can lob nukes into orbit.

And I don't see why, outside of some angsty science fiction need for a stimulus for adventure, that would change.

Likewise, there are certain fallacies to living in space. Even on the moon. For one thing, hope you like it up there for good if you're planning on being independent. Why? No artificial gravity. Your body weakens and eventually it becomes a very dangerous prospect to return to Earth gravity. That's why we don't leave people up there beyond a certain length of time, remember? So most people in space until THAT problem is worked out (and it could in non-lunar space stations by having the stations spin a la 2001: A Space Odyssey) would be coming back to Earth anyway.

So even if we have the technology, money, and impetus to build it, we've still got practical considerations to work out. And you'd be damned sure that if you're spending the billions or trillions of dollars necessary to make something like this, that you're going to be happy, that all the other investors are going to be happy, and that everyone's on the same page.

But let's say for the sake of argument that you get passed that. Let's say we colonize Mars. Mining, farming, all sorts of stuff for self-sufficiency.

Who you going to sell this stuff to? Colony B has something Colony A needs...are they going to wage war? Can they afford to in terms of people not working? Colonies will balance themselves out.

So who will they send their mined products to? Well they can't wage war on Earth. That would be stupid. Earth has a much better setup than Mars and likely always will. So they can't get snippy with us til there's another option.

Say what you like about human nature, but remember that every time you up the scale, you have to up everything else to the same scale. What you do on one side of the equation has to be done to the other. Yes if humans are crowded we tend to get pissy with one another. But if we're rapidly colonizing space like the example allows for, how crowded can we really be?

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Maradön² probably says this to all the girls:
My point is that a colony wouldn't have a chance to remove the face of another colony.

Now, I'm assuming that there have been technological advances that facilitate colonization of space, because frankly those are the only circumstances that it will happen under - colonization is simply impractical given our present technology.

Given that, one of the first advances of colonial space would certainly be some sort of interplanetary internet. I mean, we're practically a hair away with current technology what with quantum tunneling experiments yielding faster than light information transfer and things of that nature.

In any case, it's a primal human need to contact other humans. They will continue to do so in a colonial era, and I'm extremely doubtful that it will degenerate to a state where it's "Our colony" versus "Everyone else"

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Well, when I say "forseeable" space colonies and not idealized ones, I just mean not thinking past 500 to few thousand years or so from now. I'm still assuming huge technological advances, enough to make colonization feasable and desireable. However, I think it simply isn't practical to think about "nation-sized" space colonies. I mean, the sheer amount of metal required to build that much acreage ...

Probably some day we'll find a way, but long, long before we get ones that can hold hundreds of millions of people, we're going to have smaller, town/city sized ones. With this issue, we need to take into account that city-sized politics would be far more important on any time-scale but the largest. That's what I mean.

As for the idea that internet-type communications could keep away the "Us vs. them" mentality, I've got to wonder. Yes, it helps, but I still see plenty of animosity between many 1st world nations with internet. It breaks some barriers, but I don't think it's enough to prevent conflicts, or even wars.

I realize that's just a personal judgment, but looking at what the internet has and hasn't changed in the past decade, one thing I haven't seen is much dissolving of animosity between nations. Politicians seem just as willing to antagonize other nations, and are just as willing to threaten violence over small issues. I seriously doubt colonies would be much better off in that respect, regardless of communication between them. Assumming no co-juristiction between colonies (aka. each colony is either totally under it's own juristiction, or directly under the control of individual contries), I don't see any reason for the colonies to be any better off than terrestrial nations, which have plenty of wars.

There will always be war, until the basest human being is born without a hint of malice.