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YES! I would sign up immediately

22 (19.3%)

Yes. I would go, but only after a successful colony already exists

20 (17.5%)

No, it's too expensive, even if I had the money

14 (12.3%)

No, I don't think it would ever be safe enough to travel there

5 (4.4%)

No, for other reasons.

21 (18.4%)

[Kobold Noises]

32 (28.1%)

Total Members Voted: 113

[Flare]

Do recall this part:

Nominally, getting a little bit far from the earth is all that's needed to completely eliminate earth's gravitational pull in any meaningful sense.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I'm not going to stop. You have entered into a semantics debate with MetalSlimeHunt, Emperor help you.

[Flare]

But haven't you stopped there?

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Physics! Gravity! Clouds!

* MetalSlimeHunt's head explodes in a shower of sparks!

[Sirus]

Sign me up. Like, now. I don't have much here on Earth to keep me grounded.

[SalmonGod]

I'm suspicious of the cheesecake and John Galt potential.  I haven't read up on this outside of this thread, but the introduction here sounded a lot like "Hey rich people!  How about it?"

I imagine the group is large enough and enough of the funding would be coming from public sources that there would be some filtering to prevent excess cheesecake.  I don't think you'd get Paris Hilton naively signing up for a fabulous vacation.

But I do think there would be demographic-related problems. 

First, you'd get John Galt wannabes.  They may be competent and fit enough to qualify as a productive member, but they'd also be going into it with a shitload of pretentious baggage and something to prove.  I'm willing to bet enough people like this would get through to cause serious problems.

Second, and more importantly, the culture shock for these people would be intensely traumatic.  These people would all be accustomed to being treated like royalty.  The one common factor among almost anyone with $500k down payment in the bank is that every single day of their lives they are surrounded by people poorer than them who are literally begging to be their servants in some capacity.  Put 80,000 such people together in an isolated desert wasteland with incredibly limited resources and no one around begging to see to their needs.  I would not want to be there, but I would love to watch from a distance.

If this actually happened and produced a stable and friendly community, I would absolutely be on board the first colony expansion ship.  I'm just not optimistic about that, even if this unlikely project did ever happen.

[Darvi]

First, you'd get John Galt wannabes.  They may be competent and fit enough to qualify as a productive member, but they'd also be going into it with a shitload of pretentious baggage and something to prove.  I'm willing to bet enough people like this would get through to cause serious problems.

Second, and more importantly, the culture shock for these people would be intensely traumatic.  These people would all be accustomed to being treated like royalty.  The one common factor among almost anyone with $500k down payment in the bank is that every single day of their lives they are surrounded by people poorer than them who are literally begging to be their servants in some capacity.  Put 80,000 such people together in an isolated desert wasteland with incredibly limited resources and no one around begging to see to their needs.  I would not want to be there, but I would love to watch from a distance.

Well they'd all leave the rest of us alone so they'd eventually do us a favour by flying into their DOOM. But yeah, this.

[werty892]

-snip

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Edit: 30% of the poll are Kobolds

[Loud Whispers]

The issue is that atoms all exhibit gravity individually but in force this produces a greater field of gravity. We are contributing to Earth's gravity even as it acts upon us.

That is true, but I think you know what I mean when I said beyond earth's gravity, I do not count mine as a part of it. You have to make distinctions between objects beyond their base materials. The moon was once part of the earth, but we do not say that it is the earth. It is the moon now, which we recognize it as an entity apart from earth. It exerts its own gravity. You have to respect the distinctions of individual objects, if not you might as well count the entire universe as part of earth since everything was at one point at one point.

That's philosophy not physics. If you subscribe to Eastern philosophy and not more Occidental philosophy; then yes, you would say that, and would not see everything as individual objects down to individual atoms, but rather everything as continuous matter.

Do recall this part:

Nominally, getting a little bit far from the earth is all that's needed to completely eliminate earth's gravitational pull in any meaningful sense.

Never, ever will you escape its gravity though. Regardless of how much meaning it has to you. Groovy Gravy Gravity Grovel.

[Flare]

That's philosophy not physics. If you subscribe to Eastern philosophy and not more Occidental philosophy; then yes, you would say that, and would not see everything as individual objects down to individual atoms, but rather everything as continuous matter.

Actually, I'm accusing him on not distinguishing earth's gravity and the gravity of the parts of earth though, and indeed, the gravity of everything else as that was the most charitable interpretation I could give to his words.

Do recall this part:

Nominally, getting a little bit far from the earth is all that's needed to completely eliminate earth's gravitational pull in any meaningful sense.

Never, ever will you escape its gravity though. Regardless of how much meaning it has to you. Groovy Gravy Gravity Grovel.

Well, if we want to be anal about it, gravity moves at about the speed of light, and earth's only been in existence for around 4 billion years to the universe's 14. It doesn't seem accurate to me to say that someone can't escape earth's gravity no matter what. In this case I've qualified the gravity in this case, the gravity that comes about from the mass of the earth.
Normally speaking, I don't think we refer to being in earth's gravity when we do not feel the pull of earth's gravity even though we technically are. One does not need to get that far from earth, relatively speaking, until the effects of gravity are immeasurable. Look, I specifically said earth's gravity, not the gravity of my house, or my chair, or my water bottle for this very specific reason.

[RedWarrior0]

Well, if we want to be anal about it, gravity moves at about the speed of light, and earth's only been in existence for around 4 billion years to the universe's 14. It doesn't seem accurate to me to say that someone can't escape earth's gravity no matter what.

It does to me. If you're escaping earth's gravity, that means you're in it. By the time you get to the edge of earth's gravity now, it'll be at least another 4 billion light-years away.

[PTTG??]

It actually turns out that instead of being clever, being pedantic is in fact trivial and annoying.

[FearfulJesuit]

More seriously, it is true, and a bit of a consideration, that it's much cheaper to escape Mars' gravity well than it is Earth's. (Yet another reason why defending Mars from terrestrial invaders will be pretty easy to do. Any terrestrial nation that wants to attack Mars will have to deal with the fact that the Martians will be able to send a larger counterforce to Earth for cheaper.)

By the way, what do we want to do about terraforming? Seems to me that by the time we get plants all over the surface, we'll be able to do all sorts of cool things with genetic engineering. It would certainly be neat to recreate the woodlands of the Eastern US or even the jungles of the Amazon (though Mars will perpetually have a charming American West look to it, thanks to the windswept red rocks), but why stop there? Let's create giant fern swamps not seen since the Carboniferous! The conifer jungles of the Jurassic! (I suspect you'll be able to have even bigger trees, this go around, because of gravity.)

[10ebbor10]

Mars terraforming estimation was 1500 years. If we continue at the current progress we should have the technological capability to start terraforming within a hundred years.

[10ebbor10]

However, we run into the old problem of the atmosphere being blown away.

And how do you get the atmosphere there in the first place?

There might be enough athmosphere stuck into the ice/soil.