Full spectrum dominance – attempting to be superior in every form of warfare, whether it is air combat, naval combat, etc.
Overpopulation – When an ecosystem cannot support the population that is living in it. Some people think that the Earth is overpopulated with humans, that it cannot continue to support the 6 billion that currently live there.
Assumption – an implicit statement that is accepted as true without proof
Neolithic – A period of ancient human history from approximately 9500 to 6500 BC.
Quasi religious – bordering on a religion
Catastrophe – A disastrous event causing much disruption or harm to many
Militarization – the act of assembling and readying resources for war
Physiological – the affects of something on the body
Psychosocial – the relationship between aspects of society and their affects on individual behavior
Interpersonal – communication between people
Stressor – something that causes stress
Infeasibility – something that is impossible or not feasible.
Answers To: Inherency
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[____] [____] Private companies are filling in for the government and will colonize Mars in the status quo. Discovery News, 4/23/2011, “SPACEX AIMS TO PUT MAN ON MARS IN 10-20 YEARS,” http://news.discovery.com/space/spacex-elon-musk-mars-astronauts-20-years-110423.html Private US company SpaceX hopes to put an astronaut on Mars within 10 to 20 years, the head of the firm said."We'll probably put a first man in space in about three years," Elon Musk told the Wall Street Journal Saturday. "We're going all the way to Mars, I think... best case 10 years, worst case 15 to 20 years." SpaceX is one of the two leading private space companies in the United States and has won $75 million from the US space agency NASA to help its pursuit of developing a spacecraft to replace the space shuttle.The California-based company last year completed its first successful test of an unmanned space capsule into orbit and back."Our goal is to facilitate the transfer of people and cargo to other planets, and then it will be up to people if they want to go," said Musk, who also runs the Tesla company which develops electric cars.The US space shuttle program is winding down later this year with final flights of Endeavour set for next week and Atlantis in June, ending an era of American spaceflight that began with the first space shuttle mission in 1981. When the shuttle program ends, the United States hopes private industry will be able to fill the gap by creating the next generation of spacecraft to transport astronauts into space.
Answers To: Colonization Advantage
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[____] [____] Focusing on going to space means we ignore the problems on Earth. We need to keep focusing on our own planet until technology becomes advanced enough for us to leave. Lynda Williams, Professor of Physics at San Francisco State University, 2010, “Irrational Dreams of Space Colonization,” The Peace Review; Spring 2010; http://www.scientainment.com/lwilliams_peacereview.pdf We have much to determine on planet Earth before we launch willy-nilly into another race into space and a potential environmental disaster and arms race in outer space. If we direct our intellectual and technological resources toward space exploration without consideration of the environmental and political consequences, what is left behind in the wake? The hype surrounding space exploration leaves a dangerous vacuum in the collective consciousness of solving the problems on Earth. If we accept the inevitability of Earth’s destructionand its biosphere, we are left looking toward the heavens for our solutions and resolution. Young scientists, rather than working on serious environmental challenges on Earth, dream of Moon or Martian bases to save humanity, fueling the prophesy of our planetary destruction, rather than working on solutions to solve the problems on Earth. Every space faring entity, be they governmental or corporate, will face the same challenges. Star Trek emboldened us all to dream of space, the final frontier. The reality is that our planet Earth is a perfect spaceship.We travel around our star the sun once every year, and the sun pull us with her gravitational force around the galaxy once every 250 million years through star systems, star clusters and all the possible exosolar planets that may host life or be habitable for us to colonize. The sun will be around for billions of years and we have ample time to explore the stars. It would be wise and prudent for us as a species to focus our intellectual and technological knowledge now into preserving our spaceship for the long voyage through the stars, so that once we have figured out how to make life on Earth work in an environmentally and politically sustainable way, we can then venture off the planet into the final frontier of our dreams.