Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Stormonu" data-source="post: 6115977" data-attributes="member: 52734">Just throwing in my two cents:Early on, people were latching onto believing since we had radio in the 20's, that's when we'd make contact.  Personally, I don't think that'd be likely.  I have trouble getting reception from a modern radio station less than a hundred miles away; with 20's technology, power and land-based radio stations, I don't think we'd likely have contact until we had developed directional, high-powered radio sender/receivers.  Definitely not until we had the technology to send/track radio waves with the likes of the Voyager satellites.Once we made contact though, what would follow would be based on the society(s) of the Martians as well as our own.  I think there's a lot of assumption that the societies would be American-like, wanting progressive and open relations - which would more than likely not be the case.  I think it'd more likely to be with one or more Martian regimes that would be seeking to exploit or ignore Earthlings.  I think it would be far more likely that we'd run into martian nation states of the likes of Japan, North Korea or cold-war Soviet Union than we'd be likely to run into something like the US, Great Britain or the like.As far as colonization, I don't doubt that it would have been attempted by now - by one or more individuals who saw Mars as "the greener grass".  It would have likely been Mayflower-like attempts, one way trips funded by billionaires with more curiosity than brains.  I'd suspect the number of successful launches could be counted on two hands or less and probably less than a dozen individuals would have made the trip successfully.  The converse could be true as well, a handful of Martians who left behind their world for a "new and better life" on Earth, and harrowing tales of "thousands" who left their oppressive world to die in ill-fated trips to Earth (whereas the actual number might be only 2-3 times the number who actually made it).  With enough desperation, there could even be a minor colony - something along the lines of District 9 (likely out in the South Pacific, Africa or perhaps South America on our Earth).In regards to war, I'm sure there would be all kinds of worst-case scenarios drawn up, and feasibility studies would have sunk billions into plans that never materialized.  I could see a handful of ICBM's modified to make a long trip as a "last-strike counter-attack" if something were to ever happen, but nothing really in place as a first or per-emptive strike ability.  Conspiracy groups would have a field day with things like the meteor over Russia, with photoshopped images of martians driving or hauling the asteroid into the atmosphere and "anti-martian rockets" shooting it out of the sky.  Imagine what Roswell would be like!If Martians did turn out to be friendly towards us, there'd probably be very tightly controlled transfer of technology, and possibly media (such as movies) going on.  Corporations would have special Martian patents allowing them special privileges to disseminate and recreate martian technology on Earth and possibly vice-versa.  Trade would likely only have recently increased as credit and electronic money transfers came into vogue; prior to that, trade would likely have been limited to <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />-for-tat exchanges - trading knowledge that resulted in profits on the receiving world for equally valuable knowledge on the sending planet.</blockquote>

Verification