However, you have not established that it's true. Space travel could be more like hovercraft travel. There rare cases where hovercraft are the most appropriate means of transport.
Or to be more generous, it could be like air travel. The air cargo and passenger industry is huge, yes. But it's dwarfed by ship, train, and road transportation.
Nor have I established that it's a false analogy. I've only pointed out many counter-examples of how the premises you've given don't necessarily lead to the conclusion you've reached.
But let's assume that you are correct. South Africa is a resource-rich country with good ports. How come economics doesn't "favor industry controlled by" South Africa, while it will favor Mars that way?
Kenneth Burke gives an example of gradatio, a rhetorical technique: "Who controls Berlin, controls Germany; who controls Germany controls Europe; who controls Europe controls the world". That construct is well-enough known that a Google search for "who controls * controls the world" finds dozens of different examples in the first few pages of hits. Here's a baker's dozen of them:
- He who controls food, controls the world
- He who controls information, controls the world.
- Who controls the moon controls the World
- Whoever Controls Princess Diana, Controls the World
- He who controls the water controls the world
- Who controls Eurasia, controls the world
- He who controls the internet controls the world
- He who controls the branding controls the world
- Who controls money, controls the world
- who controls Jerusalem controls the world's memory.
- He who controls the calendar, controls the world
- he who controls the seas controls the world
- The person who controls the oil controls the world
Your argument so far is essentially "Who controls Mars controls the industry of the Solar System." I believe that's highly speculative and not reasonable.
I can be wrong. How is it likely that Mars will be the center of industry within the next, say, 200 years? What is the process of getting to that point?
You suggest that it's easier access to "most of the resources in the Solar System". How does the economics of that work out? And I don't just mean nickel mining of asteroids, since there's plenty of historical examples - again, South Africa - where raw ore extraction does not lead to overall market control.
Uh, no. You posited a kind of analysis based on the analogy (implied by your invocation of various examples) and I poked a hole in it. Now you are trying to pass it off as mine. No analogies are required. Just look at energy/transportation costs.
I don't know if that was some kind of inefficient reverse-troll or an honest mistake.
> Your argument so far is essentially "Who controls Mars controls the industry of the Solar System."
...based on energy/transportation costs. You seem to have missed that there, then substituted a lot of fluffy logic in its place.
How do energy/transportation costs make Mars the natural industrial hub of the Solar System? You have made a hypothesis, now justify it.
I can come up with no scenario where that's possible in the next 200 years. Indeed, the only way I can do it is to have a sizable population on Mars first, so it builds upon its own internal economy rather than through any sort of trade. It's expensive to get people from Earth to Mars, and there needs to be a big enough population to be self-supporting, even in terms of education and training, so we're talking generations to get to that point.
And if we can put a nucleus of 10,000 people on Mars, to start that colony, then we'll have developed Earth-to-orbit technologies a lot better than we have now.
The explanation you gave - "based on energy/transportation costs" - has not a good predictor of industrial control in world history. Why should it be a given in the Solar System's future history? What is the essential difference between space and ground?
At the very least, you have to show that life-support costs do not dominate the equation. Why wouldn't we have automated mines on Mars, with at most a skeleton oversight crew? Why is it economically more feasible to have a self-supporting colony instead?
Over and over again, in reading about asteroid mining and Lunar and Martian colonization, the answer I read is at best "we have no idea if it's economically feasible" and more often "not economically feasible". While you posit that the answer is obviously weighted in favor of Mars, and not in need of further explanation.
Give me at least a vaguely reasonable scenario for how Mars becomes the natural industrial hub of the Solar System. Otherwise you're handwaving your religion at me.
And for any argument you give, explain why the Moon isn't a better choice.
> And if we can put a nucleus of 10,000 people on Mars, to start that colony, then we'll have developed Earth-to-orbit technologies a lot better than we have now.
If your argument depends on this, it is already flawed.
> The explanation you gave - "based on energy/transportation costs" - has not a good predictor of industrial control in world history.
Actually, it was quite a good predictor up to the earlier part of the industrial revolution. It does a nice job of explaining where the industrial centers of the northeastern US appeared. Technologies developed in the industrial revolution are the very ones that changed this situation.
> ...the answer is obviously weighted in favor of Mars
Read The Case for Mars. I don't have the time or desire to discuss this with you in particular.
You believe it's a natural mapping from "ocean travel" to "space travel." This is frequent enough to be a trope at http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SpaceIsAnOcean .
However, you have not established that it's true. Space travel could be more like hovercraft travel. There rare cases where hovercraft are the most appropriate means of transport.
Or to be more generous, it could be like air travel. The air cargo and passenger industry is huge, yes. But it's dwarfed by ship, train, and road transportation.
Nor have I established that it's a false analogy. I've only pointed out many counter-examples of how the premises you've given don't necessarily lead to the conclusion you've reached.
But let's assume that you are correct. South Africa is a resource-rich country with good ports. How come economics doesn't "favor industry controlled by" South Africa, while it will favor Mars that way?
Kenneth Burke gives an example of gradatio, a rhetorical technique: "Who controls Berlin, controls Germany; who controls Germany controls Europe; who controls Europe controls the world". That construct is well-enough known that a Google search for "who controls * controls the world" finds dozens of different examples in the first few pages of hits. Here's a baker's dozen of them:
Your argument so far is essentially "Who controls Mars controls the industry of the Solar System." I believe that's highly speculative and not reasonable.I can be wrong. How is it likely that Mars will be the center of industry within the next, say, 200 years? What is the process of getting to that point?
You suggest that it's easier access to "most of the resources in the Solar System". How does the economics of that work out? And I don't just mean nickel mining of asteroids, since there's plenty of historical examples - again, South Africa - where raw ore extraction does not lead to overall market control.