I would like to see the international community press that issue, because to do that I think they'll have to recognize the mars colony as a nation (or at least some kind of sovereign subject like the order of malta)
Conversation
Replying to
Without nukes, Mars wouldn't have much to bargain with. So maybe they need a nuclear program for defense against Terran treachery
1
2
Replying to
earth cannot really plausibly nuke mars, what they can do is embargo critical tech such as semiconductor fabs, or trojan it
2
2
besides I think mars can play at that nuke game without having nukes, first of all they have orbital superiority (and favorable orbital mechanics), second their mere existence is a threat to the system of MAD
Quote Tweet
Replying to @allgebrah
Completely serious btw. The alternative is the people at the buttons waking up and realizing that they don't need to preserve Earth to win
2
6
if earth govts are smart they will never allow any kind of independent high tech industrial base to develop on mars, and instead make them depend on shipments of high value density tech such as CPUs, which you can plausibly ship by the rocketful
2
2
7
not wholly clear they can prevent it, idk if there's a subset of tech to ship over which is clearly sufficient to maintain the colony but also categorically incapable of becoming self-sustaining
1
3
I think there's a whole lot of materials science that exists only as institutionally bound knowledge and may also be largely invalid on mars because the raw materials are so different (where does one find large amounts of mars carbon for steelmaking anyway)
3
4
broader point is valid, but carbon is dead easy -- whole atmosphere is CO2
1
1
yes and no, you can technically sequester carbon out of the atmosphere, the question is whether that's the best approach (you need really bulk amounts of the stuff for steelmaking) or if you should maybe just choose other materials
1
2
with the amount of energy you need to sequester carbon, you might as well smelter aluminum and come away cheaper
1
2
though there's probably oddball steel making approaches that don't need coal and for those it's fine to use atmospheric carbon because that isn't your fuel, it's just an additive
I wonder what happens when you melt iron ore with electricity and blast CO2 through it
1
3
