"Mining the Sky", John S. Lewis.

Perhaps, if the business world made money,
via mining satellites -- or, even the moon (new treaties worked out) -- then
science, et al, could follow. Rockets, to Mars, where-ever, built on the
moon, and funded by the Chinese (don't laugh -- they have our money, anyway).

And, they know a bit about high-tech (our companies, in part) manufacturing.

Greed is okay, if it's properly monitored by governments/appointed
organizations. Let's face it -- there are jobs, in space, folks (ultimately).

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I agree about the treaty. It was one of those feel good agreements that, at the time, had no impact on anything. The moon isn't the earth as it has no ecology to damage.

I don't think those treaties were made in order to protect and preserve the moons ecology. It was more a way to prevent the Russians and Americans from waging war over who would own the resources on the moon.

Don't forget China.

International Laws, or in the future - Extraterrestrial Laws, like Treaty's, only have Authority, when Both Sides Agree To Continue with its Provisions.

They are basically 'Gentlemen's Agreements'.

For now that is certainly true. Personally I do hope that once space exploration really kicks off (or we find reliable evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence) we are smart enough to create an overarching body that handles space exploration. It would make sense to, given that the high costs of space exploration will be a significant deterrence for individual countries to get things rolling.

Ahh... but sodium fluoride (NaF) is an IONIC compound (as opposed to a COVALENT compound), that disassociates in aqueous solution, much as sodium chloride (NaCl -- Table Salt) does.

So you dump sodium fluoride in water, you get a bunch of Sodium Ions (Na⁺) and Fluoride Ions (F⁻) in solution in the water.

So, yes, fluorine IS added to water.

Edit: Chloramines... nasty stuff. Mutagen, and toxic to aquatic life. I hear the EPA is moving to ban their use in drinking water systems.

Nope.
Fluoride is added, not fluorine, you said it yourself.
That little electron makes a big difference!

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Life on earth is the global equivalent of not storing things in the fridge.

Ahh... but sodium fluoride (NaF) is an IONIC compound (as opposed to a COVALENT compound), that disassociates in aqueous solution, much as sodium chloride (NaCl -- Table Salt) does.

So you dump sodium fluoride in water, you get a bunch of Sodium Ions (Na⁺) and Fluoride Ions (F⁻) in solution in the water.

So, yes, fluorine IS added to water.

Edit: Chloramines... nasty stuff. Mutagen, and toxic to aquatic life. I hear the EPA is moving to ban their use in drinking water systems.

Nope.
Fluoride is added, not fluorine, you said it yourself.
That little electron makes a big difference!

But fluoride is still fluorine.

Per IUPAC nomenclature, a single atom anion (negative ion) is named with an -ide suffix.

Fluoride is merely the name of a single atom of fluorine... that has picked up an extra electron. Picking up that extra electron does NOT mean it is no longer fluorine. For it to be no longer fluorine, it would have to have undergone either a nuclear fission or fusion reaction, or a radioactive decay, so that the number of protons in the nucleus changes. But then the atom in question would no longer have the Fluor- base name, now would it?

No, I stand by my statement:

When one adds sodium fluoride to water, you are adding fluorine to the water. (You are also adding sodium to the water, but that is not the subject here).

*tiptoeing into thread, looking at thread title* Something political alright... *tiptoeing out of thread*

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rOZZ
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(You are also adding sodium to the water, but that is not the subject here).

The subject here is chemistry, not particle physics.

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(You are also adding sodium to the water, but that is not the subject here).

The subject here is chemistry, not particle physics.

Without 'particle physics', as you term it, the fluorine remains fluorine.

Governments will never get man further that it has already. Big Business alone has the willing and the resources to achieve a success in Space for humanity, and they will only do that if there are economic arguments for doing so.

The idea of a ban on mining the Moon is laughable. It may exist on paper, but in reality it has already been broken by the return of rocks to Earth by Apollo Astronauts. There are plenty of science excuses that companies could use to mine the Moon and then go .."But what should be do with the spoil?"

Tp stop it is criminal in my humble opinion. Governments should be investing heavily in finding resources of NEA's etc and encouraging companies to do the same. Only when we start to move large parts of our infrascrutcture and population off world will we start to perhaps see improvments in thing down here as we will be forced to view things differently.

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These Colony's, after a few Decades or more, will demand Independence from 'The Mother World'. The Mother World will not accept this, and Wars of Independence will happen.

Just Human Nature and History. Nothing changes.

That will likely happen, but their claim of independence will have more merit than any other colony in human history to date. Will it result in warfare..unlikely, the implications of armed conflict in controlled environments are simply too dangerous.

As time goes by the Earth would become dependent on these colonies for resources, giving them a very real bargaining chip in their negotiations. The arguments would be had of that there is no doubt, there may even be violent protests, perhaps the odd act of terrorism even, but open war, unlikely unless the colony was on another planet and had the ability to make a stand.

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That will likely happen, but their claim of independence will have more merit than any other colony in human history to date. Will it result in warfare..unlikely, the implications of armed conflict in controlled environments are simply too dangerous.

As time goes by the Earth would become dependent on these colonies for resources, giving them a very real bargaining chip in their negotiations. The arguments would be had of that there is no doubt, there may even be violent protests, perhaps the odd act of terrorism even, but open war, unlikely unless the colony was on another planet and had the ability to make a stand.

While we want and need the resources those colonies would provide, to say that they have a bargaining chip would be a stupid mistake on their side. Yeah sure, they provide us with valuable minerals. But everything they need to survive still comes from earth. The moon and Mars don't have breathable atmospheres, and you can only grow a limited range of food in green houses. Not to mention the fact that they need to import water (you can only recycle so much of it) as well as every other manufactured product. They can stop giving us the minerals, but we can stop giving them everything else. See which one lasts longer.

And then there is warfare. Say they want to wage war. Again, good luck to them, its gonna be Earth that has all the spaceships and its gonna be Earth that has the destructive capability to wipe them out with a few shots from orbit. They wouldn't stand a chance.

On top of that, it might very well be that the first off world colonies are not gonna set up under the flag of any nation. The way its now, with the total lack of investment going into space exploration by governments, its more likely that those first colonies are going to be set up under the banner of some corporation. And the people off world are all going to be employees of said corporation. That would make a fight for independence even more difficult.

That will likely happen, but their claim of independence will have more merit than any other colony in human history to date. Will it result in warfare..unlikely, the implications of armed conflict in controlled environments are simply too dangerous.

As time goes by the Earth would become dependent on these colonies for resources, giving them a very real bargaining chip in their negotiations. The arguments would be had of that there is no doubt, there may even be violent protests, perhaps the odd act of terrorism even, but open war, unlikely unless the colony was on another planet and had the ability to make a stand.

While we want and need the resources those colonies would provide, to say that they have a bargaining chip would be a stupid mistake on their side. Yeah sure, they provide us with valuable minerals. But everything they need to survive still comes from earth. The moon and Mars don't have breathable atmospheres, and you can only grow a limited range of food in green houses. Not to mention the fact that they need to import water (you can only recycle so much of it) as well as every other manufactured product. They can stop giving us the minerals, but we can stop giving them everything else. See which one lasts longer.

And then there is warfare. Say they want to wage war. Again, good luck to them, its gonna be Earth that has all the spaceships and its gonna be Earth that has the destructive capability to wipe them out with a few shots from orbit. They wouldn't stand a chance.

On top of that, it might very well be that the first off world colonies are not gonna set up under the flag of any nation. The way its now, with the total lack of investment going into space exploration by governments, its more likely that those first colonies are going to be set up under the banner of some corporation. And the people off world are all going to be employees of said corporation. That would make a fight for independence even more difficult.

Niaivety rules I see.

You think that a colony on an Asteroid has no power? Whilst a colony may be set up under no specific flag, there will come a time, as the coloniy grows that there will be a requirement to regulate it, that would need a system of control.

With Laws there are anarchy. No nation would have an jurisdiction in space, in theory under no flag you could commit murder and literally be beyond prosecution because there is no law there.

I would suggest you look at human history and look at economics.

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Niaivety rules I see.

You think that a colony on an Asteroid has no power? Whilst a colony may be set up under no specific flag, there will come a time, as the coloniy grows that there will be a requirement to regulate it, that would need a system of control.

Yeah so what? I'm not the one arguing that Earth can have no control over its off world colonies because those colonies have such a strong bargaining position.

With Laws there are anarchy. No nation would have an jurisdiction in space, in theory under no flag you could commit murder and literally be beyond prosecution because there is no law there.

Again, so what? You don't have a point. Youre just saying stuff. Okay, again, so how does any of what you said make me naive and wrong about my argument that those colonies do not have a great bargaining position.

I would suggest you look at human history and look at economics.

First I suggest you re read your posts before you actually post them because the spelling and grammar was atrocious. Secondly, I suggest you come up with an actual point or argument that refutes my argument. Thirdly, drawing on historical lessons is great and all, but you have to understand that there are certain differences between now and then. Simply put, some parallels aren't there or relevant.

I would suggest you look at human history and look at economics.

Of course there will be Wars of Independence. Don't think Logically, nor Sanely. When have Humans acted that way?

When they can Self-Subsist, as Human History has shown: They will resist ANY Control from The Mother World. They may have Power Mad Leaders. Why not? It has, and will always happen.

Saturn for Saturnians!

But thats the thing. Its pretty difficult to self subsist on an off world colony, especially if that off world lacks the capacity to sustain advanced life naturally. Colonies on the Moon and Mars or really any other planet in our solar system would for the most part be entirely dependent on Earth for pretty much everything.

And what if we ever get to completely different solar systems that happen to have worlds capable of sustaining human life naturally? Well at that point I don't think history applies to humanity anymore. At that point we have either gone past the singularity or the journey takes so long that any colony would simply never be under any Earth bound government control to begin with. But there is just no way that we reach faster than light travel and communication methods while retaining the current sort of civilization 'with more advanced tech'.

If one has drinkable water (possibly inside Jupiter's and Saturn's Moons). Minerals to build things. Ability to extract Oxygen. The FUTURE Colony's may be self-sustainable. Think FUTURE technology.

Yeah no. Water and air only prevent everyone from dying real quickly. And while Im sure you can recycle a lot of stuff and feed everyone a lot of high nutrition bars, you only really reached the level of subsistence living. Its self sustainable, but it would be miserable and poor. And being independent from any Earth based government is not much of a substitute for living a life that lacks any kind of basic luxury.

And yes, minerals to build things. Think about, Earth is relatively rich in minerals. There is a pretty decent variety of it. But still, those minerals aren't all neatly located in one big pile. They are spread out across the world and the only reason we can so effectively utilize them is because humanity is spread out all across the world. Now if you want to start a colony on say one of Jupiters moons, and say there is the same variety of useful minerals located on that moon, Im again sure that they won't all be neatly located in one area where its easy to extract them. It will be spread out across the planet, so extracting them for the colony would not be possible with one big base, it would require numerous bases scattered all across the planet, all linked by some neat transport network in order to extract them, get them to a factory and use them to build something. Now, if you give a colony enough time to develop that will eventually happen. But it would take centuries of carefully planned development before humanity has spread out enough across the surface of the planet and developed a sufficiently advanced infrastructure to do that.

And the more a colony grows on say one of Jupiter's moons, the bigger its dependency on earth becomes. Again, food. Its pretty expensive and difficult to grow food on a place like that, and its getting even more difficult the more people the colony gets. Again, you can give everyone nutrition bars, but who wants to live their entire life on nutrition bars? They will need to import food from Earth and the more people there are on the colony, the bigger the need for that.

And that is only in the most positive scenario where we assume that there is indeed a relatively rich variety of minerals to be found there. But what if there is only an abundance of one specific resource? Say some rare earth metal. Those things are great for the use in some very specific applications, but useless for use as general construction mineral.

And again, by the time those colonies have grown large enough and are actually capable of becoming independent we are talking about a time when humanity has advanced so far that it becomes relatively easy for a central Earth based organization to keep off world colonies linked to earth.