6 ms·

> empires have exerted effective territorial control while communication one way took weeks. That's because the effective territorial control was not exercised

by pdonis 5y ago

> empires have exerted effective territorial control while communication one way took weeks. That's because the effective territorial control was not exercised by the central government of the empire, but by territorial governments that were on the spot and that had pretty much complete authority to act on their own initiative without getting permission from the central government. They only had to meet very general policy goals. So the speed of communication with the central government was not relevant to the effectiveness of the territorial control. The question is whether a territorial government on, say, Mars would have the same loyalty to the central government on Earth that, say, British territorial governors had to the British empire. Without that loyalty on the part of the territorial governments that are on the spot, there is in fact no way for the central government to effectively control territories.

pydry 5y ago
Most of the same tactics used to control colonies could be used to control Mars. Moreover, Mars would probably be utterly dependent on earth for multiple generations.
- pdonis 5y ago
  > Most of the same tactics used to control colonies could be used to control Mars. Those tactics only work when backed up by a credible threat of overwhelming force. I do not think the Earth will be in a position to bring overwhelming force to bear on a Mars colony. It's a lot harder to do that across tens of millions of miles of space than it is to do it across an ocean. And even across oceans on Earth it often doesn't work. > Mars would probably be utterly dependent on earth for multiple generations. I'm not so sure. We have barely even started exploring Mars; we have no idea what resources exist there. We are still discovering new resources here on Earth; I would expect that humans on Mars would be doing the same there.
- godelski 5y ago
  > Moreover, Mars would probably be utterly dependent on earth for multiple generations. Probably not. The reason Mars colonization is difficult is because they have to be self reliant. It isn't like expanding in the past where people could live off the land or barter or steal from the native peoples. There are no natives on Mars. There is no native vegetation nor is the land adequate for farming/cultivating. In the past colonies could rely on these things and exploit them. Mars is very different. If you aren't self sufficient on Mars you will die. Period. Astronauts visiting Mars, just visiting, will have to figure this out too because they can't just land and come back. They have to wait a full year for the planets to realign (this is also why it is difficult to subjugate Mars because it isn't just about the travel time, it is about the orbits being aligned plus the travel time).
  - pdonis 5y ago
    > They have to wait a full year for the planets to realign This actually shouldn't be true for much longer. The only reason it's true now is that we don't have spaceships that can produce constant thrust for the entire trip; our ships spend most of their time in free fall, which, as Robert Heinlein pointed out decades ago, is the equivalent of floating down the Mississippi on a raft. As he said, what we need are the equivalent of sailing ships: ships that can put out a constant thrust, even if it's small, for an entire trip. Even a thrust of 1/100 gee, which is well within our technical capability if we get serious about things like ion drives, would greatly reduce trip time to Mars (and would reduce trip times to more distant planets even more, since the advantage over free fall increases as the distance increases) and would open up a lot of options for travel that we don't currently have. Note that this doesn't change the fact that humans on Mars will have to be self-reliant; payload mass is still payload mass and a spaceship just won't be able to carry enough of it to Mars to supply life support for any length of time staying there. Sending unmanned missions in advance might help, but I don't think even that would be enough.
    - thaumasiotes 5y ago
      > our ships spend most of their time in free fall, which, as Robert Heinlein pointed out decades ago, is the equivalent of floating down the Mississippi on a raft. As he said, what we need are the equivalent of sailing ships: ships that can put out a constant thrust, even if it's small, for an entire trip. Sails don't do that. In terms of propulsion, they're exactly the same as pole-less rafts. Ever heard of being becalmed?
      - pdonis 5y ago
        > Sails don't do that. The propulsive force is not as controllable as it is for a low-thrust rocket, true. But Heinlein was not claiming an exact comparison. > they're exactly the same as pole-less rafts. No, they're not. Pole-less rafts don't have sails. > Ever heard of being becalmed? Ever hear of missing the point? Yes, sailing ships can be becalmed. But they can also not be becalmed. And sailing ships that were not becalmed created a worldwide system of trade. Pole-less rafts would not have been capable of doing that.
edgyquant 5y ago
True but the reason these territories respected the metropoles laws is because they were aware if they didn’t the metropole had the resources to overrun them if they were upset enough. The same will be true of any off world colony for the foreseeable future.
- godelski 5y ago
  I'm not convinced that's true. The New World exists for exactly this reason. The British were not able to sustain a war half a globe away with the Americans. It is incredibly expensive (hell, even the French supporting the US took a big hit). All a Martian colony would need to do is play guerilla warfare and wait it out. There's plenty of history to suggest that this is an effective strategy.
  - edgyquant 5y ago
    Sure by the time there is a huge population of basically nations on Mars that may be the case but that isn’t in the foreseeable future. The New World existed as colonies for centuries before it had the ability to become independent and even then that more to do with Napoleon for South America and the rest of the world wanting to take Britain down a peg for. The US.
    - pdonis 5y ago
      > The New World existed as colonies for centuries before it had the ability to become independent No, many of the British colonies had the ability to become independent fairly soon after being colonized. The key variable wasn't how capable the colonists were but how interested Britain was in controlling them, and that varied widely from colony to colony, depending on who in Britain had to exercise the control. Some, like the British peers who had ownership interests in New York and Virginia, were control freaks and wanted to exercise all sorts of detailed micromanagement of their colonies. Others, like Penn with Pennsylvania, basically let them do whatever they wanted and didn't bother much about it. And even in colonies like New York and Virginia, once you got away from the coastal cities or river ports that were easily accessible to British ships, the level of British control dropped drastically. The British couldn't do much at all about up-country backwoods farmers and trappers, who basically didn't care what the British or the colonial governments did since it couldn't really affect them. What didn't crystallize until the 1770s was the political unity between the colonies behind an explicit declaration of independence. Which was, in large part, a product of the British, after the end of the French and Indian War, deciding that the colonies had already gotten too independent and needed to be reminded that they were still British subjects. Which didn't work out very well. > that more to do with Napoleon for South America and the rest of the world wanting to take Britain down a peg All of which happened after the US had already become independent. So it's irrelevant when looking at how the US became independent. It is true that the British were still dealing with the French in Europe and that this limited their ability to project power in America during the US revolution. (The Americans also took full advantage of this by allying with France.) But that just illustrates my point: empires aren't omnipotent and can't just magically project power whenever and wherever they want to.
godelski 5y ago
Thank you, this is what I was trying to suggest. That these localized governments, while loyal to their empires, operated fairly independently (which should be fairly obvious for similar reasons to space. Which travel times are actually similar). Hopefully your comment has helped clear some confusion up.

by pdonis 5y ago

pydry 5y ago

Most of the same tactics used to control colonies could be used to control Mars. Moreover, Mars would probably be utterly dependent on earth for multiple generations.

pdonis 5y ago
> Most of the same tactics used to control colonies could be used to control Mars. Those tactics only work when backed up by a credible threat of overwhelming force. I do not think the Earth will be in a position to bring overwhelming force to bear on a Mars colony. It's a lot harder to do that across tens of millions of miles of space than it is to do it across an ocean. And even across oceans on Earth it often doesn't work. > Mars would probably be utterly dependent on earth for multiple generations. I'm not so sure. We have barely even started exploring Mars; we have no idea what resources exist there. We are still discovering new resources here on Earth; I would expect that humans on Mars would be doing the same there.
godelski 5y ago
> Moreover, Mars would probably be utterly dependent on earth for multiple generations. Probably not. The reason Mars colonization is difficult is because they have to be self reliant. It isn't like expanding in the past where people could live off the land or barter or steal from the native peoples. There are no natives on Mars. There is no native vegetation nor is the land adequate for farming/cultivating. In the past colonies could rely on these things and exploit them. Mars is very different. If you aren't self sufficient on Mars you will die. Period. Astronauts visiting Mars, just visiting, will have to figure this out too because they can't just land and come back. They have to wait a full year for the planets to realign (this is also why it is difficult to subjugate Mars because it isn't just about the travel time, it is about the orbits being aligned plus the travel time).
- pdonis 5y ago
  > They have to wait a full year for the planets to realign This actually shouldn't be true for much longer. The only reason it's true now is that we don't have spaceships that can produce constant thrust for the entire trip; our ships spend most of their time in free fall, which, as Robert Heinlein pointed out decades ago, is the equivalent of floating down the Mississippi on a raft. As he said, what we need are the equivalent of sailing ships: ships that can put out a constant thrust, even if it's small, for an entire trip. Even a thrust of 1/100 gee, which is well within our technical capability if we get serious about things like ion drives, would greatly reduce trip time to Mars (and would reduce trip times to more distant planets even more, since the advantage over free fall increases as the distance increases) and would open up a lot of options for travel that we don't currently have. Note that this doesn't change the fact that humans on Mars will have to be self-reliant; payload mass is still payload mass and a spaceship just won't be able to carry enough of it to Mars to supply life support for any length of time staying there. Sending unmanned missions in advance might help, but I don't think even that would be enough.
  - thaumasiotes 5y ago
    > our ships spend most of their time in free fall, which, as Robert Heinlein pointed out decades ago, is the equivalent of floating down the Mississippi on a raft. As he said, what we need are the equivalent of sailing ships: ships that can put out a constant thrust, even if it's small, for an entire trip. Sails don't do that. In terms of propulsion, they're exactly the same as pole-less rafts. Ever heard of being becalmed?
    - pdonis 5y ago
      > Sails don't do that. The propulsive force is not as controllable as it is for a low-thrust rocket, true. But Heinlein was not claiming an exact comparison. > they're exactly the same as pole-less rafts. No, they're not. Pole-less rafts don't have sails. > Ever heard of being becalmed? Ever hear of missing the point? Yes, sailing ships can be becalmed. But they can also not be becalmed. And sailing ships that were not becalmed created a worldwide system of trade. Pole-less rafts would not have been capable of doing that.

edgyquant 5y ago

True but the reason these territories respected the metropoles laws is because they were aware if they didn’t the metropole had the resources to overrun them if they were upset enough. The same will be true of any off world colony for the foreseeable future.

godelski 5y ago
I'm not convinced that's true. The New World exists for exactly this reason. The British were not able to sustain a war half a globe away with the Americans. It is incredibly expensive (hell, even the French supporting the US took a big hit). All a Martian colony would need to do is play guerilla warfare and wait it out. There's plenty of history to suggest that this is an effective strategy.
- edgyquant 5y ago
  Sure by the time there is a huge population of basically nations on Mars that may be the case but that isn’t in the foreseeable future. The New World existed as colonies for centuries before it had the ability to become independent and even then that more to do with Napoleon for South America and the rest of the world wanting to take Britain down a peg for. The US.
  - pdonis 5y ago
    > The New World existed as colonies for centuries before it had the ability to become independent No, many of the British colonies had the ability to become independent fairly soon after being colonized. The key variable wasn't how capable the colonists were but how interested Britain was in controlling them, and that varied widely from colony to colony, depending on who in Britain had to exercise the control. Some, like the British peers who had ownership interests in New York and Virginia, were control freaks and wanted to exercise all sorts of detailed micromanagement of their colonies. Others, like Penn with Pennsylvania, basically let them do whatever they wanted and didn't bother much about it. And even in colonies like New York and Virginia, once you got away from the coastal cities or river ports that were easily accessible to British ships, the level of British control dropped drastically. The British couldn't do much at all about up-country backwoods farmers and trappers, who basically didn't care what the British or the colonial governments did since it couldn't really affect them. What didn't crystallize until the 1770s was the political unity between the colonies behind an explicit declaration of independence. Which was, in large part, a product of the British, after the end of the French and Indian War, deciding that the colonies had already gotten too independent and needed to be reminded that they were still British subjects. Which didn't work out very well. > that more to do with Napoleon for South America and the rest of the world wanting to take Britain down a peg All of which happened after the US had already become independent. So it's irrelevant when looking at how the US became independent. It is true that the British were still dealing with the French in Europe and that this limited their ability to project power in America during the US revolution. (The Americans also took full advantage of this by allying with France.) But that just illustrates my point: empires aren't omnipotent and can't just magically project power whenever and wherever they want to.

godelski 5y ago

Thank you, this is what I was trying to suggest. That these localized governments, while loyal to their empires, operated fairly independently (which should be fairly obvious for similar reasons to space. Which travel times are actually similar). Hopefully your comment has helped clear some confusion up.