Feed all the starving babies or send a man to Mars ?

Rabidlamb

It's Mars for me & by some margin.
We've been fighting famine all my lifetime & I expect lifetime's to come.
If you overpopulate an area with fragile resources the consequences are inevitable.
Traveling to another planet will be a major step for us as a species & could be achieved within 20 years if time & money were prioritised.

It's in our nature to explore, I believe that should become our biggest focus as a people.

davet82

send all the starving babies to mars, problem sorted :cool:

CodyJarrett

Nah, fcuk space exploration: give Mars to the kids instead - fair compromise.

smash

Rabidlamb wrote: »

We've been fighting famine all my lifetime & I expect lifetime's to come.

Do you live in Africa?

Rabidlamb

smash wrote: »

Do you live in Africa?

Hardly, with an attitude like mine.

seamus

Money in the form of direct aid is of fnck all use to Africa anyway. It would be better spent on a Mars project rather than simply lining the pockets of charity executives, arms dealers and warlords.

DrumSteve

give the kids a mars bar.

Captain Chaos

Which is more realistic to happen. Africa needs to get itself sorted first, otherwise trying to keep everyone fed would be like the EU bailout packages, throwing money into a black hole that you can't fix because it is not the real problem.

smash

seamus wrote: »

Money in the form of direct aid is of fnck all use to Africa anyway. It would be better spent on a Mars project rather than simply lining the pockets of charity executives, arms dealers and warlords.

But then where will the rappers get their bling?

Wibbs

Mars. Sooner or later we'll need to leave earth if we're to survive as a species. Better sooner.

smash

Wibbs wrote: »

Mars. Sooner or later we'll need to leave earth if we're to survive as a species. Better sooner.

But most of the planet's surface isn't even populated! We just need to manage and grow more resources.

Funglegunk

If you reduced world defense budgets by half, we could send all the babies to Proxima Centauri. Space program budgets are a hell of a lot smaller than people think.

mickgotsick

DrumSteve wrote: »

give the kids a mars bar.

Give a kid a mars bar and he'll work, rest and play, for a day...

Give the kid a chocolate factory and he can live on mars bars the rest of his days.

kfallon

There's only one Mars that I'm interested in, c'mon you little beauty!!!

http://aidanobrienfansite.dinstudio.com/files/mars.png

J Cheever Loophole

Rabidlamb wrote: »

smash wrote: »

Do you live in Africa?

Hardly, with an attitude like mine.

Sounds like a tacit admission by yourself that your own attitude sucks!! :rolleyes:

Captain Chaos

smash wrote: »

But most of the planet's surface isn't even populated! We just need to manage and grow more resources.

All we need is one major natural disaster and we are all fecked. A random asteroid strike or a super volcano erupting will make an all out nuclear war look like skyfest.

PizzamanIRL

Feed the babies.

smash

All we need is one major natural disaster and we are all fecked. A random asteroid strike or a super volcano erupting will make an all out nuclear war look like skyfest.

Yea, but Hollywood has thought me that stuff always happens in the states so we're ok!

P.S. Uranus! Just cos nobody said it yet.

mars

TeddyTedson

Mars is boring. Let's go to Saturn. I can guarantee we'll find life there. And lots of gas...

Nailz

CodyJarrett wrote: »

Nah, fcuk space exploration: give Mars to the kids instead - fair compromise.

What if they prefer Twix instead?

foxyboxer

Now, this is the plan. Get your ass to Mars!

JohnMarston

foxyboxer wrote: »

Now, this is the plan. Get your ass to Mars!

Duggy747

Mars, and then I could say "I don't want to live on this planet anymore" and actually mean it when I hop on a ship and give earth the finger as I head off into space.

Throwing money at Africa without any viable solution as to how the countries can help themselves is a waste of money as it gets dispersed all over the place from executives to those in power, leaving the ground staff with pittens to work with.

foxyboxer

Send Bob Geldof and Bono to Mars on a one way trip?

SEPT 23 1989

Feed the chiselers

Benny_Cake

It's a false dilemma, there is no reason as to why both can't be done given the vast resources spent on weapons which will never be used and so forth. Strange how it's never "stealth bombers or Mars".

Cianos

Rabidlamb wrote: »

It's Mars for me & by some margin.
We've been fighting famine all my lifetime & I expect lifetime's to come.
If you overpopulate an area with fragile resources the consequences are inevitable.
Traveling to another planet will be a major step for us as a species & could be achieved within 20 years if time & money were prioritised.

It's in our nature to explore, I believe that should become our biggest focus as a people.

High population density is a good thing, part of Africa's problem is its low population density.

New York has close to zero resources, but a very dense population, and works brilliantly. See what I'm getting at ?

Toby Take a Bow

Captain Chaos wrote: »

All we need is one major natural disaster and we are all fecked. A random asteroid strike or a super volcano erupting will make an all out nuclear war look like skyfest.

Probably more chance of surviving a natural disaster on a planet that we know intimately rather than taking our chances on a new world.

Also, I'm not sure why it's an either/or option. We can afford to feed the babies AND go to Mars.

the groutch

TeddyTedson wrote: »

Mars is boring. Let's go to Saturn. I can guarantee we'll find life there. And lots of gas...

just once we don't have to go near Uranus

Stark

I don't want to go to Uranus. Too much methane in the atmosphere.

iamstop

Captain Chaos wrote: »

Africa needs to get itself sorted first.

Africa has been deliberately held back the Western world in order to exploit their resources. This has been happening for decades and evidence shows it is still happening. The money and science exists to completely change Africa in to a self sustaining continent and even become a net exporter. What is lacking is the will to do so.

carlmango11

Feed the babies
"Babies" hit puberty
Exponential baby production.

Non merci.

Not to sound like an evil bástard but that's what will happen. The country needs to develop in other ways than just feed the babies.

DarkJager

iamstop wrote: »

Africa has been deliberately held back the Western world in order to exploit their resources. This has been happening for decades and evidence shows it is still happening. The money and science exists to completely change Africa in to a self sustaining continent and even become a net exporter. What is lacking is the will to do so.

Held back by the Western world? You're joking right?

2 "Live" concerts to raise funds, decades of donations to assist them, fundraisers for Africa, the list goes on and on. Billions have been raised and yet here we are in 2012 still watching TV adverts of children with flies all over them and more appeals for help. Where is the all aid gone to? Warlords and countless corrupt individuals in that country.

The western world has done all it can to help the situation in Africa. Its about time Africa sorts itself out or falls trying to do so. It should no longer be our problem.

Toby Take a Bow

DarkJager wrote: »

The western world has done all it can to help the situation in Africa. Its about time Africa sorts itself out or falls trying to do so. It should no longer be our problem.

Look into how organisations like the IMF enforced 'free trade' agendas on a lot of countries in Africa. Up until then, some of these countries were experiencing growth, but since adopting a neo-liberal agenda, as dictated to by the IMF, they've run into serious problems. This agenda leads to incredible difficulties in developing sustainable industries, and the countries become ever more dependent on supplying raw materials to the 'developed' world.

The 'charity' aspect glosses over this issue and allows us to say 'we've done what we can'. Which isn't true.

europa11

iamstop wrote: »

Africa has been deliberately held back the Western world in order to exploit their resources. This has been happening for decades and evidence shows it is still happening. The money and science exists to completely change Africa in to a self sustaining continent and even become a net exporter. What is lacking is the will to do so.

And I guess the Chinese are just there for the good of their health...if anyone is exploiting Africa they are.

What has been really holding Africa back are Africans, not some mythical "western" conspiracy, they have hardly helped their own cause by first of all consistently putting one corrupt regime after the other in charge of their states, and secondly, in creating countries based solely in most cases on old colonial dividing lines and failing to go back to the tribal based dividing lines that would have saved tens of millions of lives imo (not that we can criticise too heavily on that score with our "loyalty":rolleyes: to British made county boundaries stymieing proper regional government here, not to mention the crazy Northern ireland border).

If there was such a Western conspired scheme at keeping post-colonial nations from developing then explain how Southeast Asian economies who like their African counterparts, gained independence some 50 to 60 years ago have blossomed.

goose2005

I don't see the point in sending a human anywhere, really. For the cost of sending one astronaut to Mars we could send probes to every planet, moon, major comet, minor planet and major asteroid in the Solar System. There's nothing a guy (or girl) in a suit can do that a robot could do for a fraction of the cost.

Toby Take a Bow

europa11 wrote: »

If there was such a Western conspired scheme at keeping post-colonial nations from developing then explain how Southeast Asian economies, who, like their African counterparts, gained independence some 50 to 60 years ago. Yet SE Asia has blossomed.

Two completely different geographic areas with different histories, so not comparing like with like.

In addition to this, I think you may be forgetting some painful economic hardships experienced by SE Asian countries up to quite recently (again by introducing a more liberal economic agenda).

Cú Giobach

goose2005 wrote: »

I don't see the point in sending a human anywhere, really. For the cost of sending one astronaut to Mars we could send probes to every planet, moon, major comet, minor planet and major asteroid in the Solar System. There's nothing a guy (or girl) in a suit can do that a robot could do for a fraction of the cost.

Robots can only do what they are programmed and built to do, we can only program and build for the expected, humans can deal with the unexpected. There will be a hell of a lot of "unexpected" out there.
Though it's not really a "one or the other" situation, an intelligent combination of both will be the way forward.

Irish Guitarist

Humans have screwed up one planet. I don't see why we should screw up another.

Ri_Nollaig

Cianos wrote: »

High population density is a good thing, part of Africa's problem is its low population density.

New York has close to zero resources, but a very dense population, and works brilliantly. See what I'm getting at ?

No?

What about that huge country New York is attached to? I think they have a few resources alright.

KenSwee

No Need to debate, we can do both. Both challenges can be used for mutual benefit.
A Mars mission would also kick start failing economies and industries.
Drop defensive budgets by 10% in all the major countries around the world and we could easily afford a trip and an end to world poverty. A joint international effort in both cases would see a massive increase in technology and biology development; both needed for the solving of both issues in the OP. Assuming that we are going to Mars to see if it is able to be colonised, we would need a massive increase in the development of GM crops, designed to grow in inhospitable environments. This work would be massively advantageous for poor countries with failed crops and bad infrastructure. From a technology point of view, we would see great advances in day to day uses. The Space/Moon programme saw the invention of velcro, for example. The Mars mission would have a more technology based set up and would see great advances in medical, longevity of life, deep sleep programs, cancer research, Ion power plants, cold fusion, electro magnetic research, solar power and hydrogen fuel replacement. The list is endless and once the technology was made commercial, which would be very fast given that companies like Nokia, Google and Honda would probably be involved in the funding and development, the benefit would spread out across many industries and areas.

pickarooney

Feed the babies and in exchange they sign their lives over to advancing the space program.

Capt'n Midnight

If when the next big meteor hits it will wipe out most if not all human life on this planet.

Even the regular supervolcanos like Yellowstone or Tomba will be a difficult crisis.

We need to have a breeding colony off world.

Oddly enough the energy needed to get to Mars isn't a lot more than getting to the moon. Getting back is a tad trickier though.

Actually several asteroid colonies would be handy too.

Re. Kids in Africa, trade not aid. Replace Aid / debt forgiveness with trade and change rules for lending money to dictatorships so that democracies can't be burdened with their debts.

All the aid to Africa is only a fraction of the interest paid on what they owe.

Lord of the Bongs

Sell all the starving babies to the Martians and through inter galactic laws because of our stupid government get only 10% of their entire value back to fund the space programme

Sea Filly

Wibbs wrote: »

Mars. Sooner or later we'll need to leave earth if we're to survive as a species. Better sooner.

I happy to stick my neck out and say we will never live en masse in deep space.

ScumLord

I say go to mars. We're already more than capable of feeding everybody on earth, there's more than enough food to go around we just don't want to share it. Until people change that attitude there's no point trying to save the babies. To mars!

smash wrote: »

But most of the planet's surface isn't even populated! We just need to manage and grow more resources.

You can't grow more helium, we're running out of helium damnit! We also won't be able to make use of bigger power sources effectively on earth.

Moving into space takes away many many restrictions, while it may seem that doing things in space is more difficult from down here, living up there could become second nature, all you have to do is have a generation born and raised in space. Manufacturing would be much simpler if we could park our factories next to the asteroid belt. Overpopulation space issue would be a thing of the past and obviously we could finally put a heritage order on planet earth and take the pressure off it trying to support the human race.

carlmango11

Cianos wrote: »

High population density is a good thing, part of Africa's problem is its low population density.

New York has close to zero resources, but a very dense population, and works brilliantly. See what I'm getting at ?

Overpopulation doesn't necessarily relate to density. When we use the word overpopulation in this context it means in relation to resources and sustainability. A lot of African countries are considered overpopulated because they cannot support the population with the resources it has.

New York is densely populated but that doesn't mean it's overpopulated. Its economy can support its entire population.

--Kaiser--

Irish Guitarist wrote: »

Humans have screwed up one planet. I don't see why we should screw up another.

I refer you to

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eScDfYzMEEw

Diapason

This thread wasn't what I was expecting. Where the hell are the bleeding hearts that normally patrol the internet?

Mars all the way.

Lapin

Why send a man to Mars?

Send a woman instead.

At least the place will be nice and tidy by the time the men get there !