New Mars Forums

Blah. France supported Saddam until the bitter end, and profited from him being in power, no less.

I thought it was a good piece. It vaguely sounded like what I wrote in my op-ed about focusing on realistic goals first, like materials research and scramjets. (both are progressing and of keen interest to the military)

DARPA scramjet test:
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/scramjet-01a.html

Australian scramjet test:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2160502.stm

NASA hyper-x
http://oea.larc.nasa.gov/PAIS/Hyper-X.html

Reagan's Orient Express:
http://www.fas.org/irp/mystery/nasp.htm

Yes, all the illegals are being rounded up and being told to register. Is it your position that enforcing immigration laws is somehow illegal? (Yes, I realize we are only now beginning to enforce laws that are on the books, and only for some groups and it is open for potential abuse).

If you're in the crowd that says Bush staged the 9/11 attacks to grab power, you're out to lunch and cannot be reasoned with. Bush ran on a platform of withdrawing from the world, and even cutting the military as part of a transformation.

I am open to the possibility that some elements of the government deliberately turned a blind eye to the coming attacks, but it's more likely they were all too busy handing out pork and tax cuts to their friends, and going on vacation. Most likely, they were asleep at the switch and fucked up big time, IMHO.

If there is a deliberate high-level conspiracy to "allow" terrorist attacks, why wouldn't the democrats make hay out of this? From what I can tell, they had all the same intelligence and were equally asleep at the switch.

You continue to propagate the myth that Bush is illegitimate and appointed by conservative judges. Several recounts have been done and every single one showed bush winning. Now, I believe he would not have won if all the stupid old folks in FL had filled out their ballots right, but if you're too stupid to fill out a ballot should your vote count anyway?

At the risk of sounding as if I support excessive adventures in the middle east, I will say you're nuts if you think any of the gov'ts there are self-determined, let alone in Iraq. None of the governments there were "installed" by the US.

This perpetuates the myth that it is just "us" supporting these governments. In fact France and Russia were saddam's biggest supporters and Japan and Europe are far more dependent on the middle east than we are.

We are the biggest target, of course, not that we are doing anything that's different than a dozen other countries as far as relations in this region. This is a common farcical belief that the US alone supports these governments and therefore we deserve to be terrorized. Bullshit.

This is the common Euro-lefty clap-trap of saying that we "support dictators" while also railing against us because we don't support Iran and Cuba and others.

Also, if "oppression" is the root of terrorism, why aren't cubans, north koreans, etc etc etc all a bunch of terrorists? Oppression has nothing to do with it - it's politics mixed with a terrorist culture.

I haven't nonchalantly accepted anything. Since 9/11 I spend almost all of my time reading worldwide news to get a better understanding of what's going on and why. The vast majority of people do not have the time that I do to undertake this task.

I believe my reading has given me a very good perspective, and it's difficult to get too alarmed when you find out that, indeed, things are worse elsewhere in most cases. For example, I am very much against running the kinds of deficits Bush proposes, but when I find out we're better off than most, it's hard to get violently upset about it.

I agree 100% with you on the issue of the president being able to declare that someone can be held without trial and in secrecy. This, and the unprecedented attack on Iraq, is what has caused me to turn from a normally hardcore republican into someone who sends money to left-wing-fanatic organizations. Traditionally, democrats are the war-starters, not republicans.

I read the constitution a year ago and I'm pretty sure I saw a clause in there about suspending writ of habeus corpus during times of invasion. To my knowledge, only 1 US citizen has had this happen (the alleged dirty-bomber suspect).

The constitution, to my understanding, also separates non-citizens from citizens in terms of what rights you have. To my knowledge, only non-citizens have been deported in secrecy, and supposedly all of these have VISA violations. (IMHO this should all be done under a glaring light rather than in secrecy)

Yes, I am watching this particular stuff, and the TIA system that was proposed, very carefully. From what I can tell so far, they are in-line with clauses in the constitution for 220-some years.

I also believe that we have a virtually unmatched level of liberty in this country which most others don't have, despite their ranting. We have constitutionally-guaranteed liberties and a mechanism for protecting them from congressional and executive infringment (the court system).

I believe that several of the activities taking place now will be struck down by the supreme court, strengthening precedent in favor of liberty and having a net-positive effect. I also believe that Bush's far-right policies are going to cause him problems in 2004. If right-of-center people like me are rejecting Bush, I think he's in big trouble.

Oooh, mystery man. I'm impressed.

As opposed to your attack on my character in the previous message? Normally, I'm impressed by your knowledge of world affairs (and geopolitics) and have said so in the past, so I can't figure out why you suddenly take such a hostile tone to the "mild attack on liberties" statement. Why not explain yourself? Have you been personally under attack by Bush?

You're the one who ripped me for saying Bush was launching a relatively "mild attack" on civil liberties. Come to find out, you're not doing anything about it.

Break out your checkbook and write a few checks, or go and volunteer some time for some democrats. If you say you can't afford it or don't have the time, you won't have anyone to blame but yourself when your freedoms shrink or disappear.

Translation: no you are not supporting any of the organizations like ACLU or EFF or Judicial Watch.

Have you volunteered your time for any of the democratic presidential candidates? Contributed money to their campaigns?

I'm just guessing that you have not. (I have not either, although I have written to my Senator Charles Grassley and thanked him for standing up against the TIA system)

So the question is, what are you doing except ranting about it? Have you sent cash or volunteered time for any of the numerous organizations that provide a check against government expansion? I certainly have.

With such a low gravity well, Clark is right that you could deliver fuel and replacement satellites easily to orbit. Also think about having a NORAD-type command bunker buried deep in the moon. It would provide a great fall-back in case all earth-based assets are taken out.

But to build up this infrastructure on the moon would cost so much with such a marginal benefit, it would be outlandish if they actually did it. For security, we have military bases all over the world, including right up against the borders of our so-called "enemies". If nukes were to fly, they'd have to nuke right on their own borders in order to take out our command-and-control facilities.

Rather than an outrageously expensive moon bases, it's more likely that the air force will invest the money in building a first-class space plane (or bringing one out of the black world) so that we can easily accomplish the same thing from here on earth.

I don't see why weapons in space is any worse than ballistic missiles or even cruise missiles. Yes, they have a shorter launch time, assuming they are in LEO and are over the desired location at the instant you want to launch.

I have no problem with space-based offensive weapons, but I have not seen any mention of the US building them. I have seen plenty of talk about building anti-missile lasers and kinetic interceptors. Who cares? Especially if it pours cash into the space industry.

Well, if you believe what's written in the space elevator book, and that "Going Up" newsletter that mentioned the 1-km fibers, we are on the verge of having this sorted out in a couple years. If you can make 1-km, you can make 62,000 km - it's just a difference in money.

As far as "abandoning" all other forms of space travel, it looks like the military is working on a deeply-classified Mach-12 cruise missile, and they did not rule out that they could be working on a hypersonic strike bomber, which would make an excellent technological base for a space plane:

http://www.spacewar.com/2003/030427070525.iyei5463.html

Also, I wrote an editorial which is published on SpaceDaily today:

http://www.spacedaily.com/news/oped-03zf.html

I advocate that, instead of lobbying for pie-in-the-sky mars trips, we should instead lobby for materials and propulsion R&D, which could lead to cheap access to space in the future.

I misused "demand" - it should have been quantity. Quantity is a bell shaped curve. The gist of it is, you may not have any increase in quantity of riders at $50 as opposed to the quantity of riders at $100, for example.

According to the elasticity models on the highlift site, quantity will flatten out around $600 or so. Once you have lowered costs below $600/pd you don't have that much of an increase in quantity as you lower costs further.

http://www.highliftsystems.com/convert....ket.htm