NahnCee said:

“Why can’t you send normal smart women AND breeding stock women?”

Obviously the breeding stock would have to be smart women otherwise they wouldn’t be breeding stock.

“Do you really think the Pilgrims would have succeeded if all they had brought with them were mommy Pilgrims?”

The Pilgrims would have done just fine as a “girls only thing” if they brought along lots of semen in liquid nitrogen dewars and if the Indians didn’t wipe them out and if they could farm well enough to survive the first winter (plowing requires a fair amount of upper body strength). Obviously the Indian problem required sending enough men to defend the colony (men are good at killing things). Since there’s nothing to kill on Mars, initially bringing along hunter/killers (men) is not obligatory. The main reason to initially bring (old) men to Mars as colonists is they are less sensitive to radiation, have better upper body strength and could serve as grandparents after the colony got rolling. The main reason why having the colony initially as women only is a bad idea is because children should have fathers if they are to develop properly. The plain old boring 50/50 mix of the sexes is probably the best formula due to the requirements of nurturing children.

NahnCee also said:

“But I’m not sure a newly-created colony would be able to support such creatures [queen bee women] — surely you’d want multi-disciplined people.”

Secondary cosmic radiation is a big problem with a Mars colony. Children and breeding adults need to be shielded from it. Once a person was past 45 years of age, their main role would be as surface workers, i.e. work in unshielded radiation environments until killed by an industrial accident. Work on the Martian surface would be very dangerous. Imagine working in a pressure suit with a pneumatic drill. The drill bit breaks, punctures the pressure suit and the worker is dead within seconds due to explosive decompression.

NahnCee said:

“I also think there should be some sort of selection for adventure or pushing the envelope or SOMEthing to weed out the types who think that “peace” and “stability” are the two most important goals of a society.”

The American frontier in the 1880s was remarkably free of moonbats. Imagine how long a moonbat would have survived in Wichita criticizing Wyatt Earp’s methods towards justice (keep honking, I’m reloading). Moonbats tend to accumulate in safe urban environments after people like Wyatt Earp have gone west (or to Mars). America started dying after our frontier went away.

““Note: Hydrogen Sulfide Gas, H^2S, is the most deadly Gas known, it will kill you instantly Brain Dead at concentrations above 5 Parts/Billion (smells llike Rotten Eggs).”

Just a little hyperbole there?”

Entirely possible, because the figures I’m quoting are from “Safety Bulletins” passed out in Safety Meetings, from El Palito, Venezuela to Bontang, Selatan, Kalimantan (Borneo), Indonesia. Lot of propaganda gets handed out in Safety Meetings, and, it spreads worldwide, following wherever you go. Like most things of this nature, you hear it so many times it takes on a “lot of Truthiness.” But, I still do a fast exit everytime I smell “Rotten Eggs,” and, have no doubt it will kill you.

In Baghdad, our whole lives are regulated by “Safety Bulletins” based on “Global Warming,” and, “Second Hand Smoke” type statistics (the original “Second Hand Smoke Study” did not exist, only an Advertising Campaign produced by Anti-Smoking CDC employees with money they stole from Congress…to do a study).

(I’m remembering vaguely some sf book predicated upon a separate class of citizens (females) who were breeders, like queens in a hive of bees. They *liked* lounging about being tended to and spawning. But I’m not sure a newly-created colony would be able to support such creatures — surely you’d want multi-disciplined people.)

I also think there should be some sort of selection for adventure or pushing the envelope or SOMEthing to weed out the types who think that “peace” and “stability” are the two most important goals of a society. I can’t decide if an Olympic athlete would be good because of the discipline involved in getting there … or bad because of the discipline involved in getting there.

I love it that you mention IQ, however. Seriously. One is never allowed in polite society any more to point out the differences between people which can partially be measured by their IQ scores.

“Some of our best and brightest should go to another world and allow Charles Darwin to work his magic.”

NahnCee asked:

“What would be the definition / qualifications of “best and brightest”, do you suppose?”

Again, I think the opportunity to colonize Mars has come-and-gone (our descendants are doomed to die with the Earth’s destruction). The method for selecting the best candidates for a Mars colony is not something one discusses with casual company (it’s not a politically correct topic). The stupid tactic would be to send a bell curve distribution of people, e.g. include people with known genetic defects, etc. The correct way is to select Olympic athletes with I.Q.s over 150 with no known genetic problems in their families. This is obvious eugenics stuff and would make moonbats jump up and down. Why must it be this way? Simple math. The cost for a Mars colony would be on the order of $800 billion. Only between 500-1000 people could be sent for that price tag (say 800 for easy math). That means it’s $1 billion for each colonist. It’s obvious that you’re not sending congenital idiots to Mars at $1 billion a pop. Only Uebermenschen need apply. However it’s also obvious that the group should be as genetically/racially diverse as possible to minimize problems with inbreeding. Also there’s the interesting question of male/female ratio. One could argue (incorrectly) that the colonists should be all female with lots of frozen semen in liquid nitrogen (abortion/infanticide of mutated children would be an obvious ethical issue). A counter argument is that lots a kids are undesirable in the early phases of the colony before there’s an infrastructure. In the beginning send only men over 50 years old because they’re less sensitive to radiation damage. As the infrastructure builds up, start sending very young men and women who are carefully protected from radiation (they would serve as breeding stock). This is definitely not a conversation topic to held within earshot of the easily offended.

The long term consequences of a successful Mars colony would be interesting. Try to imagine the colonist’s attitudes towards the Earth after they developed the capability of returning. Add to this the likelihood that the Earth would probably have reverted back to barbarism and lost much of its technology. Lots of interesting science fiction novels could be written around this.

What would be the definition / qualifications of “best and brightest”, do you suppose? Would it be the same sort of winnowing process as we saw in “The Right Stuff”, leading decades later to a lady astronaut in an adult diaper? Or would we give priority to educated people with tenure, or Wall Street Masters of the Universe who make a certain amount of money in bonuses every year?

What about diversity? Would we allow an almost-best-&-brightest 10% to make up for years of cultural and educational deprivation?

The original pilgrims self-selected. That is how the exodus off the planet should also occur, but I think rather than that it will be seen as a status symbol where you’ll have people like Rod Blog selling seats on whatever ship it is to the highest bidder.

“The Earth will survive everything except the Sun going Nova in several billions years.”

It is my understanding that we’ll go into a run away greenhouse effect before the Sun becomes a red giant (the Sun is too small to go nova). Stars tend to burn hotter and gain intensity as they age. Supposably the Sun was about 15% less intense a couple billion years ago (the Earth had a much thicker atmosphere back then). It has been theorized that Venus was much more earthlike during this early period and had oceans similar to what the Earth currently has. There has been some speculation that there might have been primitive biology on Venus before its run away greenhouse effect sterilized the planet. Unfortunately almost all traces of that earlier Venus would have been buried under eons of volcanic activity.

Hydrogen sulfide notwithstanding, I’m with the “Drill Baby! Drill!” camp.

A sobering topic, both terrifying and fascinating.
I agree that our confidence as a species comes from our brevity, rather like a brash teenager, whose hormones swamp any awareness of self-mortality.
If we consider why our history is hard to trace back within the relatively short span of 10,000 years since the last Ice Age receded, we find alarming indications of disasters which interrupted civilizational development suddenly and ruthlessly.
Minoan civilisation may have begun as many as 8,000 years ago, around the time when the chicken was being domesticated in SE Asia, and when the Clovis people might have been domesticating horses in N America, had they not been wiped out by the Great Lakes comet and it’s aftermath some 2,000 years earlier. What might the Minoans have achieved if they had been spared volcanic calamity ? Would the two great civilisations of the Mediterranean been just Minos and Egypt ? Would Greece and Rome ever have emerged ? Would Minoan survival have changed the history of the world for the better ?
A monotheistic view of all this might be that God, being jealous and zealous, trashes entire civilisations as and when it pleases him to do so, regardless of the beauty of their art and architecture, or their earnest searches into the meaning of life. However, the Old Testament concedes “that time and chance happen to all men”, or as I think Tolkien put it, “not all who deserve life will live”.
And so it is today. The Islamists may yet get a chance to dance in the streets when calamity strikes a peaceful infidel land which has endeavoured to be nice to them and not to get caught up in GWOT. Or maybe a stray comet will end the Middle East conflict by bursting over Arabia, igniting the holy cities, the oilfields and any stray street dancers, and casting the rest of the world into a new struggle for survival. Perhaps it is all be in the lap of the rocks…

The yeast example begs the question. It is an isolated population and does not affect the larger yeast population which continues to thrive. The Earth is not a glass of grapefruit juice. My point, which is why I quoted Michael Crichton earlier in this string, is we blow these mega-catastrophes way out of proportion and act like they are imminent threats. The Earth will survive everything except the Sun going Nova in several billions years. And we humans are a very tenacious species with technology and knowledge that allows us to manipulate Mother Nature almost as we see fit.

If it’s off by 10,000 years, or 100,000, it’s not even close to “late” on a geologic time scale but that much of a difference obviously matters greatly on a human time scale.