I have a nice sleep in today and woke up just before midday, I had a quiet day at home and then headed down to the supermarket to pick up an HDMI cable for my Blu-Ray player that I picked up. After arriving home I had some soup and fresh bread for dinner, watched a few YouTube videos and then went for a 16km walk after being lazy for around a week. It felt good getting out to have some exercise and I worked up a good sweat even with the cooler weather.
I generally like watching ‘Washington Week’ over on YouTube because it tends to have pretty good guests on and the moderator does a good job keep the conversation flowing however the most receive episode really got under my skin with one of the contributors playing the game of false equivalence:
The comparison between Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders along with the usual nonsense of the ‘horse shoe theory’. It is the usual game that the liberal establishment or more correctly the ‘enlightened centrists’ like to play because they’ve convinced themselves that if you’re in the middle it some how makes you the ‘reasonable’, ‘sensible’ and ‘the adult in the room’. There is no comparison between Trump and Sanders – Trump is a reactionary and Sanders is in the same tradition of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Trump’s politics are xenophobic and reactionary, Sanders is left wing internationalism and understands the importance of the institutions that were set up post-WWII to attempt to deal with conflicts without them descending into another war.
I’m usually pretty happy to hear alternative points of view but when you play the game of false equivalency then any respect I may have had for you and your opinion instantly disappears out the window. The reality is that the left wing politics Bernie Sanders engages in is centre left – it doesn’t upend the capitalist system but attempts to smooth the rough edges, put some sensible regulation in place and ensure that those with market dominance don’t abuse that dominance in the market. In other words, he isn’t some sort of reincarnation of Vladimir Lenin but as noted previously he is in the same tradition as Franklin D. Roosevelt. If you’re scared of tepid social democracy or equate tepid social democracy to the train wreck that is taking place under Donald Trump then I really cannot take your opinions seriously.
I think that humans will eventually colonise Mars but I don’t think it’ll be in my life time barring some sort of massive leap forward in technology. To really make it work you’d need to build a space craft in space (which would never land but remain in space permanently) with enough capacity to store all the necessary food and water, a power source to provide additional power to the solar panels along with ensuring sufficient shielding from not only cosmic radiation but also micrometeorites.
Once you get that sorted then you’ve got the matter of setting up a base on Mars which would involve creating an artificial magnetosphere (link) however the habitats would have to be inflatable along with small scale nuclear reactors for power along with solar as well. Then there is setting up hydroponic for food production while ensuring that you have enough long life food just in case there is a crop failure.
Then there is the impact of micro gravity and low gravity – the length of time travelling to Mars, how do you deal with the long term impact of micro gravity, what is the impact on health? then there is going from a micro gravity to a low gravity environment such as Mars which has only 38% of Earth’s gravity – is that enough to avoid health related issues? will there be additional exercises and/or nutrition that will be required?
Many things need to be addressed and I have a feeling that we’ll need to use the moon as a training ground because unlike the Moon, if something goes wrong on Mars you’re on your own. The benefit of starting off on the Moon is the closeness to earth incase something goes wrong along which allows trying things out, finding out what works the best before takin it from the Moon to Mars.
Matisyahu's Blog 
Leave a comment