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I also want to remind you that launching up to L1 from the Moon requires about as much fuel just to launch back to Earth or to other planets directly; going up to L1 and getting a push from there doesn't make much sense. The notion that you could somehow time and direct a stream of objects from L1 tward Earth with sufficent accuracy to pass through a particular flight corridor for an Earth-launched suborbiter is nonsense. Because they aren't fired simultainiously, they will never experience precisely the same gravitational pull.
You'd have to give these things a push from L1 to Earth first of all, second the projectiles must be launched before the suborbiter by days nessesitating a super-tight launch schedule, and finally you just couldn't prevent them from spreading out away from the meter-accurate trajectory you need to hit.
Just one point I want to make here. L1 remains in a fixed position relative to the Moon more or less. You can collect all the pellets at L1 in a way that O'Neill envisioned, then you can string the pellets together and let them all fall to earth together play it out and then seperate right before the encounter with the suborbiter then they all come in a stream quite close together. You could make it so the bulk of each pellet is oxygen gas processed from lunar materials all containe in easily vaporized hollow spheres. A puff of oxygen hits the impact shield and pushes on the suborbiter. I imagine the oxygen at such high velocities would tend to erode the shield, but that is replaceable.
How about North American? Australia takes the name of the continent it occupies, the same would apply to any country that takes the whole of North America. it is just an offer by the way, not an invasion. I otherwise feel we should enforce our border with Mexico. I see no reason to give illegal Aliens the benefit of citizenship and many liberals and business republicans seem to want. I would accept all the Mexicans as a whole country, but not any who managed to sneak across the border. If they really like the idea of open borders, then they should apply as a country to join the United States of America, those are my conditions, and I think they are quite fair. If Mexicans have any pride in their country, they wouldn't come over to our country by the millions and steal our jobs. if they really want to come and go as they please, then they should join our country, other wise the borders whould be strictly enforced.
I don’t know how you don’t get that it undermines the legitimacy if the US appears to be doing the same things as the people they fight again. It smells of hypocrisy. The intensions my be good but you must accept that the United States will win over a lot less harts and minds this way. To win the peace a large part of the harts and minds must be won.
That's just the point, we aren't doing the same thing. putting underwear on someone's head and threatening someone with torture isn't the same thing as carrying it out. One can threaten to shove someone out of the airplane, and to tell you the truth if we actually did it, we wouldn't get anymore information out of him. The idea is to make that person afraid without actually harming him or inflicting physical pain. Mental anguish is a different story, but we need some tools to work with. if the prisoner thinks he is going to be tortured or executed, that is not the same thing as him actually being tortured or executed. There are many ways to make someone think he may be tortured if he does not give out information without actually torturing him. What if the prisoner has a cell mate that he does not actually know. What if that cell mate is not actually a prisoner at all but a spy/actor who pretends not to cooperate, and then is dragged into a separate room where all sorts of sound effects indicating that the person is being tortured is heard, the snap of a whip, a scream, a flickering of the lights as the prisoner "screams in agony" followed by the sound of a machinegun. the bloodied figure of the actor's body is dragged off, the actual prisoner doesn't get a good look at him, but gets the impression that he has just been executed for not cooperating. After the actor and guards are well out of earshot he gets up and after taking a day off or two for a job well done, he gets assigned a new prisoner for a cell mate and goes through that same act of being the uncooperative prisoner who is tortured and executed all over again. A nice touch would be to have a pet lion kept in one of the cells, no one is actually fed to the lion, but the prisoners don't know that. And every once in a while a prisoner is taken up in an airplane for an interogation session and perhaps a breath of fresh air if he is not cooperative. Under none of those exercises is the prisoner actually tortured or harmed. If you send enough prisoners through this some of them may well break and may well provide useful information that could save innocent lives, which is what this routine would be all about.
You wait for FTL and your going to wait a long time if not forever. FTL depends on the Universe being just so, I don't think you can count on that.
I still think the world expect the United States to fight with both hands tied behind its back and lose. I think some people are too sensitive to psychological interrogation techniques, and not sensitive enough to the brutal forms of coersion that evil dictators use, they give them a pass on ethnic cleansing and on rape camps too.
I think you can't expect us to be paragons of goodness and fairplay and still expect us to win. The United States certainly didn't win World War Two by being chivalrous knights. It is just as important who wins as to how the good guys fight. You take it for granted that the good guys will always win, just like in those old Saturday morning He-Man cartoons. In the He-Man cartoon, there was this reoccuring villain called Skeletor. Skeletor was always ploting to take over the world or some other bad thing, and then He-Man and his allies would always foil this plot, of course Skeletor would always get away and all the pieces of the game would be reset for the next exciting episode of He-Man, and then there would be a morality lesson at the end.
I do not believe that the real world is like a Saturday morning cartoon serial. I think its not a good idea to have Saddam Hussein as a reoccuring villian like Skeletor. During the Persian Gulf War on another exciting episode, Saddam's Army invaded Kuwait and threatened Saudi Arabia and the United States and its allies had to stop him and Americans were killed and wives and children were widowed and orphaned because of this entertainment. Now the leftists wanted to reset the board so they could watch another exciting episode of Saddam and him minions killing American Soldiers, but George W. Bush cancelled the series.
Pellets can't slow you down, but the interstellar medium and stellar winds can!
Ever hear of a magsail? A magsail is a magnetic field which contains plasma and can be pushed by the Solar wind. A magsail craft is limited to the speed of the solar wind that pushes it, so it can't get very close the the speed of light, but their is nothing that says pellets can't push faster, the relative speed of the solar wind would then be as fast a the ship that moves through it, and can thus slow it down from relativistic velocities.
I am not going to comment on weather Bush’s attempt to better define the interrogation rules is a positive or negative step for international law. Rather I am pointing out that he should clearly consider it’s impact in the propaganda war before moving forward with it. Some will use it as an example to say America is worse then Sadam and challenge the legitimacy of the war. It is fine to say it is others fault if they buy into the propaganda of the terrorists but assigning blame is called scapegoating and is not helpful in addressing the real problem.
I care little for propaganda when it involves influencing a biased audience, an audience which automatically gives all the evil dictators of this world a break because their evil, "so of course they torture American Hostages", but cuts the United States no slack when fighting them.
That's a neat map, but how come its all jagged around the edges? What do you expect the climate to be like with a 1 bar atmosphere?
Except your proposal requires the launch vehicle to carry enough reaction mass to reach orbit, mine doesn't. The reaction mass to reach orbit in my case comes from the Moon and that reaction mass comes with its own kinetic energy from falling toward Earth, you reaction mass must be heated by a beam of light to have the necessary kinetic energy to reach orbit. Also my pellet beam would put us on a track for reaching the stars, since the limiting factor for reacing reletavistic velocity is the limitations on reaction mass that can be carried on a starship. Besides I'm not convinced that smart pellets would be all that hideously expensive. The smart part of the pellets guidance system could be but a small fraction of the pellets entire mass and it might thus be economically transported to the Moon. What we need are microthrusters on each pellet. Most of the umph that goes into the pellet's trajectory would come from the mass driver. But perhaps if each pellet were heated to a plasma, then the ship could use a magsail to intercept the resulting pellets. Although magsails are pretty far out technology right now, so it might be easier to have a guidance system on each target so it can be vaporized and hit a solid target on the spaceship.
You see Mr Creighton, I like to give people choices rather than just say no to them. If they really want to come here and compete with American Citizens for jobs, then there is a price to be paid for that, the Mexicans become US citizens and the Mexican States get added to our union and then they can compete with us freely for our work and we in return get the added territory of Mexico, of course in the bargain the problems of 90 million Mexicans become our problems as well. The politics of this country would shift to the left somewhat because of the 90 million new citizens, but we would have then just expanded our borders. I'd consider that a fair exchange. We pay a price in having to compete with all those low skilled workers and the Mexicans pay the price in giving up their national independence in exchange for becoming US citizens, it is their choice to make if we make the offer. This is not an invasion mind you, I just don't happen to think that we should give our jobs away for free, this is the price I'm willing to pay for the expansion of my country. In principle it is no different from the US buying Alaska from Russia. The addition of Mexico would make the US more compeditive with China as they have a vast pool of low skilled workers to draw on. The addition of Mexico would mean more things would be made in the USA instead of imported from places like China.
Other advanced industrialized countries like to stay small, they don't like the competition with new citizens and they follow the short term interests of avoidi9ng foreign competition, and these countries stay small, while the third world countries develop and become the world's next set of superpowers overshadowing the advanced industrialized countries that stay small. The United States has something to offer, I think we can afford to expand, bring the new citizens standard of living up to our own and then expand some more, this isn't imperialism, and I think it may be a good policy to compete with China and India.
Many conservatives warn us about Imperial overstretch, but the United States has't expanded its borders since the admission of Hawaii and Alaska into the Union. The last big piece of territory we got was from Russia when we bnought Alaska from the Czar, the US has stayed the about same size for about 100 years more or less. We've had a long pause. There are alot of developing countries out there. We could make an offer like I just outlined to many of them, the most valuable for us however would be either Mexico or Cuba. I know ole Castro isn't going to live forever, sooner or later the communist government is going to be overthrown and when that happens the Cuban people are going to need alot of help. Cuba was once a US territory aqcuired during the Spanish-American war. We could simply offer statehood to Cuba once more like we did before when they chose to be an independent nation. If they say no, then its their choice, we've made the offer, and as a post communist nation, Cuba may face the danger of falling back into dictatorship as Russia has done. Many Cubans come anyway, if they can get across the Florida Straight and reach US soil, they can stay, they are not even illegals. Once Cuba is no longer communist, many Cubans will still want to come to the US for economic reasons, but any more that come will be considered illegal aliens and be deportable unless they come through the proper channels with a visa, but we can make it alot easier for them by offering statehood to Cuba and then the US can come to them instead of the other way around. Canada could do the same by the way, it could offer to make the Mexican states into Canadian Provinces, and then Canada would have a warm place to go to without leaving the country, I think by this process though, Canada would become an extension of Mexico rather than the other way around, the next Canadian prime minister would likely be a Mexican. The United States with 300 million people is more capable of absorbing Mexico than Canada is.
I don't know if the US would ever make this offer, but there is something called "Manifest Destiny" and we did serve ourselves a large helping of Northern Mexico previously and California, Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona are not doing too badly.
How many American lives do you think Bush’s refusal to fight the propaganda war cost. Speaking of the propaganda war he is not doing good on the torture front. Might not be in America’s best interest. Now think how many people thought the leaders of Iran and Venezuela gave good speeches. Bush has to learn to address the world and not just America.
If the world judges the terrorists to be the good guys, then that's their problem because they'll have us for enemies! How does what the United Statesdoes with its prisoners compare to what the terrorists do with their hostages?
We don't force them to convert to Christianity.
We don't chop their heads off.
We don't beat them.
We don't summarily execute them etc.
Our interrogators have to be more creative because of these restrictions. Now in our arsenal of interrogation techniques, since we can't use direct physical force, we may use psycology instead, read humiliation.
I'll give you an example:
What if the interrogators have an uncooperative prisoner? They know he has some vital information about the next terrorist attack, but they can't get him to talk, so they tie him up and put him in a cargo airplane, they take him up still tied up, and then they ask him some questions once more. Once again he refuses, so the lead interrogator say, "Perhaps you could use some fresh air to help clear your mind." He opens the door of the cargo plane, the prisoner is helpless and four guards move toward him, and the prisoner goes, "Wait! I'll tell you what I know!" The interrogator closes the door to the air plane and the prisoner talks. Sometimes the enemy so demonizes the "Imperialist America Facists" etc that he'll believe the worst of us, and if that is the case, he might very well believe that those guards might shove him out the airplane door, that might cause him to break and reveal vital information that could save lives. Meanwhile the interrogation did the detainee no physical harm.
What is the logical outcome of America bashing? If a politician benefits from it, he's going to do more of it. Bash America enough and America is no longer going to be a friend and the some of our politicians will try some bashing right back. unlike the old Cold War there is nothing behind this other than politicians trying to advance themselves by attempting to look brave in the face of a big power. "Oh look, he defied the United States! Oh want a brave man! It must take a brave man to face down a superpower which could unleash thousands of nuclear warheads down on top of him." Then the brave politician says, "I refuse to hand over these terrorists we've caught trying to kill Americans because I defy you! Oh and you know that serial rapist that raped and murdered several young American girls, well I'm letting him go too, giving him a pardon in fact, and I don't care how many nuclear warheads you have America, you are not going to scare me into handing over this rapist, I defy you!"
Some politicians receve some benefit from defing the United States and being uncooperative. If someone wants to show some independence, he defies the United States, some people make the calculation that always doing the opposite of what the US government wants accomplished is the best way into public office. Hugo Chavez seems to be a creature of that sort.
Address what is false and try to work on what is fair. The first casualty of war is the truth. Remember that dividing NATO is part of Alkida’s plan. The propaganda way which bush doesn’t seem very good at fighting.
The idea of propaganda assumes that the people listening are stupid with moldable opinions that are easily memorised by a clever turn of phrase. Have you ever heard the term, "Actions speak louder than words"? George Bush believes in acting, not so much in talking. People who are swayed by a fine speech uttered by a terrorist who murders women and children with suicide bombers are still responsible for their own actions. I'm not going to accept the excuse from our supposed allies that the Iranians mesmorized them into hating Jews and Americans. Evil is evil, anyone who can be convinced that evil is good is a fool.
I keep the basic facts in my head and ignore the speeches, basically the Iranians, Lebanese and the Syrians started the War with Israel, and no amount of talking and propaganda is going to make me believe that the Israelis are responsible for that war. The Muslims have the Jews outnumbered by a considerable amount, hence the Israelis first priority is toward survival, with sparing the civilian lives of their attacking enemies being a distant second. The Israelis certainly cannot afford to lose one soldier for every terrorist they kill, it is simple mathmatics, hence they will want to use weapons that keep their enemy at a distance, these weapons unfortunately also kill some civilians, but Israel didn't start this war.
The United States was also attacked on 9/11 and we did not do anything prior to that attack which could provoke such action, and certainly none of the people who died in that attack deserved to die because of what they did. The liberals in my country always try to find the reason behind the attack, and they'll never accept answers such as the enemy was evil or that he hated us because we weren't muslims. Liberals always try to find reasons that justify the actions of the enemy.
Yeah Hitler AKA the president of IRAN is certainly alive and understands diplomacy much better then Bush.
Was Hitler smart or were the people who fell for his silver tongue stupid? I prefer to believe the later, I think Hitler was surrounded by a bunch of dumb people who he took advantage of. People tried to negotiate with Hitler when all he really needed was a bullet right between the eyes.
The Railgun is not aiming for the ship because the ship it not there yet when it fires the pellets off. The pellets have to be aimed for above the Earth's atmosphere, and its the ships worry to get in front of them as they pass above the Earth, much like the way a surfer gets in front of a wave. The wave doesn't aim for the surfer. Where ever the pellets end up, the suborbiter has to be in front of. All that is required is for the suborbiter to detect the incoming stream of pellets. There is no question of the mass driver aiming for something that isn't there yet. Your sunbeam on the other hand has to be aimed. The suborbiter has to get into orbit, doesn't matter which particular orbit, any orbit will do and from their it fine adjust to the right orbit, but the main push into orbit is achieved by the pellets.
Chavez can't run for president of the United States, and I don't know what he thinks George Bush has ever done to him or his country. Clearly, he is a hate politician. If we have to attack Iran to prevent it from aqcuiring nuclear weapons, its none of his business.
It might make for an interesting shipwreck for space suited tourists to explore, and you could have the real space hotel nearby. People dive underwater and explore shipwrecks all the time. The ISS, even if it doesn't work, still provides a place for astronaut tourists to go to and explore in their space suits. Deorbiting it, just robs them of a place to visit.
The next democratic communist country I see will be the first. The problem is, under communism, the state controls all employment, it is illegal to start a business or to hire workers if you are not the government, this doesn't present an independent base for the opposition to run against those who are in government. The Soviet Union had elections and so does Cuba. If you are a Cuban who plans to run against Fidel Castro or his brother in the next Cuban Presidential election, you can expect to lose your job as Castro will fire you, you can expect your campaign to get no coverage or negative coverage from the government run Cuban press, and people will be afraid to donate to your campaign because they are afraid they might lose their jobs too. It is very hard to run in a campaign against your employer and in a communist system, your only legal employer is the government your running against, this does not make for a very democratic situation.
I heard of the standing ovation Hugo Chavez got at the General Assembly. Sometimes, I would just love to evict the UN that does nothing but cause traffic jams and bash Amerca. I see no use in hosting a forum for terrorist lovers in New York City. I also think we should make note of all the countries whose diplomats applauded this America bashing and break off relations with them. Maybe we should reconsider nuclear arms reductions as well. It seems that if the World wants to bash us, then it doesn't want peace. I also read some of those Canadian posts, seems they don't like us very much, I never thought that they would be suckers for such slick terrorist propaganda or murderers. America bashing is probably the reason the Iraq War has gone on for so long. Perhaps Chavez would like to call it "Bush bashing", fine, but he doesn't have a right to choose our President, we do, and he accused George Bush of Genocide and terrorism, I don't know who he thinks we exterminated, maybe his own people in the future?
I think that if the World doesn't not want peace with us, then the World is going to suffer from the lack of it, they'd better increase their defense spending. I think we may have a new Cold War on our hands if this keeps up, and for what? We aren't trying to conquer the World, but if Bashing America becomes popular, then we are going to have to mistrust the countries where it occurs. One result maybe fortifying the US/Canada border, the US/Mexico border for sure, then there is the United States evicting the UN and quiting the Organization, the US withdrawing from NATO, and maybe setting up a few bilateral alliances with our good allies such as Poland, modeled after our alliance with Israel. It would matter if the criticism of our President were fair, but this mixes in with false entirely made up accusations of the US being involved in Genocide, it all sounds like Soviet era propaganda to me, and their doing a fair bit of Jew-bashing besides. All in all, I'd say that Adolf Hitler's spirit was alive and well in the Halls of that General Assembly building I don't know why we continue with that organization, I guess George Bush is stubborn, he believes in engaging that world body, he believes that their is such a thing as a Muslim moderate despite all the evidence the Media shows to the contrary, but George Bush still believes democracy will work in Iraq, and it is up to the Iraqi people to prove him either right or wrong. If the Iraqi people prove him wrong, that says more about the Iraqi people than it does about George Bush. In the wake of a failed Iraq War, I wonder if we should let any Iraqi refugees become US citizens? I think perhaps not, if they are not ready for democracy in their own country, why should they be ready in ours? We're giving Iraq a more than fair chance, we're putting the might of our army in support of Iraqi freedom, but if the Iraqis would rather kill each other, then I think they do not belong in our country. Our patience is not unlimited, George Bush is very stubborn, but he will not always be in office.
If the US goes isolationist, then my fall back position would be to support a heavily armed isolationism, not the disarmed surrender that the Democrats seem to want. If the world is filled with enemies of the US, then we must be armed against them. I don't see any profound ideological difference between the United States and those who hate us, its more a case of them needing someone to hate in Europe for instance. I can understand the Cold War between the US and the USSR for instance, the goal then was to contain the USSR and prevent them from spreading their revolution with a balance of power. Now that the USSR is down and the Cold War has ended, all those people we have defended now want a new Cold War with us, their ideology is nothing but America bashing, and if it continues America will have to respond to it, we'll have to put our nuclear forces back on hair trigger alert, especially if Iran gets nukes with the rest of the World's help, and then millions of lives will be at stake once more, and it isn't even for a good cause, no freedoms are threatened, nobody's way of life is at stake, it is just that some people have a need for an enemy, someone to draw blame away from themselves and their own failings. I can imagine a future World where their are military bases along the US/Canada frontier much like their once were in Western Germany with the United States on one side and Canadian forces on the other with alot of help from the French, the Germans, the Russians, maybe even the British, and their all saying the President ___(fill in the blank)___ is an ogre, that he commits genocide and terrorism and that the US must be stopped and contained at all costs, and the ranks of the Armies will be led by generals that hate the United States, and calling for more short range nuclear weapons to be deployed on Canadian soil along the US border to prevent any sudden US invasions. I wonder how the local Canadians would feel about hosting French nuclear missile bases aimed at the United States, all with the professed aim of securing Canadian freedom against the Massive US military whom everybody automatically assumes is evil. This is the most pointless future Cold War I can possibly think of, and all because of the slick terrorist propaganda in the wake of 9/11. Sounds fantastic? well everything is always done in increments, never all at once. The Palestinians have successfully gotten many Europeans to hate Jews, first by presenting themselves as victims of the Israelis, and then saying their are two sides to the conflict and accusing the ISraelis of oppressing them, and now we've reached the point where the Arab terrorists can attack the Israelis and then immediately blame the Israelis for the War and the Europeans swallow the whole thing hook, line, and sinker, and this all is 60 years after the holocaust against the Jews. Sometimes I wonder if it was really us that won World War II, or was it the Germans.
I'd like to hold a mirror up to those anti-US Canadians and show them exactly what I see that the future has in store if they continue what they're doing. Maybe I am just projecting my fears, but who would have thought we'd reach this present situation, people make stuff up about us and then condemn us for it, all while receiving appause in the UN for it. I am in one of my dark moods as I write this, perhaps I exagerate the danger, I'm afraid this might not be the case, I used to buy the line about Islam being a mostly peaceful religion too, and then 9/11 happened.
10 years is all it needs, this will be an incentive to develop launch vehicles to cheaply ferry passengers to the ISS to maximise profits. once cheaper launc systems are developed, the modules can be gradually replaced with others, perhaps of the inflatable bigalow types. I think after all the trouble we went through to orbit the thing, deorbiting it is such a waste, most likely the aluminum could be recycled and recast into new modules. It is so expensive to launch the thing that deorbiting it would be such a crime, at the very least it should serve as a monument to the expensive effort. Just keep adding more modules over time, using the proceeds of space tourism to pay for them, the mass will steadily increase and provide greater stability as it grows larger and larger. The inhabited section could be just a fraction of the entire mass.
Sorry that this is at the end, I just joined, but here's my two cents. Any craft that must use megawatts of stored energy per second is inherently dangerous and ineffecent. Since failure must be kept to a minimum this adds cost and voila- 10,000 dollar per Kg. While conventional ideas like adding an air breathing first stage, reusablitiy, and small workforces can help, they are not going to provide the cost savings looked for. Rockets don't seem too complex at first glance but the exhaust velocities that are limited nessesitate all the smallest effeny increases possible, light weght tanks and so on to keep the rocket a reasonable size. This is what makes small rockets expensive. As for big dumb boosters, they may be a bit of an improvment, but the specail facilities needed to make them and launch them, along with the cost of raw materials and labour drive the cost up. Therefore what is needed is way of providing those raw megawatts safelly and cheap enough so that it can get by with a 20% effentcy. Chemical rockets are not going to provide that kind of power, though not expensive in themselves, the tanks and engines are. The only possiblity I see that is reasonable is beamed power, or accelorating slowly so you don't need megawatts a second. My views on slow acceloration are posted on "airship to orbit" thread, but here I'll discuss beamed power. Microwaves spread out too much and are expensive and inneficent to genorate. Lasers are way too expensive, however there is no reason one has to use a laser to beam light. Given a resonably large reciver, ordinary light from the sun should be able to be focused on spacecraft. I advocate building stationary large variable focus mirrors and using cheap (read free) solar power. How might this be done economically? Baloons, 30 km up with clear tops and reflective bottoms filled with hydrogen could collect large amouts of light given a large enough diamiter and a hard ring. If the baloon material was streachy the foucus could be ajusted by changing the internal pressure. It could be aimed with small electric propellers. Maybe this is radicall enough to be cheap. At least there is low start up costs. The spacecraft it's self could use the light to heat hydrogen to nuculer rocket temperatures.
The hydrogen kind of has to be outside the ship for you to focus the Sun's light on it with the baloon's mirror. Also hydrogen is a clear, colorless glass, the concentrated sunlight would mostly pass right through it without heating it. Also the ship would be moving rapidly, the baloon would have to track it, it would have to be pointed halfway between the Sun and the ship at all times, which means it would have to rotate as the ship moves farther and farther away, and with increasing distance, it would have to change its focal length quiet rapidly especially as the ship accelerates faster and faster to orbital velocities. Another complicating factor is that the air the baloon is in, is not likely to be still, the baloon will likely be blowing around with the air currents. So the baloon will have to constantly be changing its focal length, be tracking the receeding spaceship all the while it is taking the air currents in to account. At least the Mass drive on the Moon does not move, it stays precisely on the spot on the moon where it is place. The Moon itself moves along a predicatble path around the Earth, governed almost entirely by its motion and gravity, the pellets also move in a predictable path courtesy of Sir Isaac Newton, there are no random air currents blowing the pellets around.
The conservatives don’t like big government but this will only lead to more spending on the prison system. I don’t know what his love affair is with America. Perhaps he should move there. Wasn’t he the one that said, “I stood up for Canada”. The second sad thing is I might vote for him anyway because there might not be a good alternative.
I just herd the word Caliphate today on the news. Apparently spoken by some member of alkida. So I guess these people are actually calling for a Caliphate and it is not some religious right accusation.
Why do you think he is obliged to not like America? Is it just because we're a different country? I think it is just good economics to get along with your neighbor to the south. The Iranian Government is composed of right-wing religious conservatives, Al Quada is composed of Right Wing religious conservatives, the Insurgents in Iraq are mostly right wing religious conservatives. As a liberal, I would think you would be opposed to so much right-wing religious conservatism in the Middle East, and thus firmly on the side of George Bush in fighting it. After all, it you want liberal reforms in the Middle East, it would work best if the United States would defeat the forces of violent right-wing religious conservatism. If it is just because you oppose George Bush, then you only have to wait too more years and he won't be in office, in the meantime you can swallow the bitter pill of being on the same side as George W. Bush in fighting the forces of violent right wing religious conservatism in the middle east, because in two years, the left-wing anti-bush crowd will be without a compass. If the United States is defeated by liberal opposition at home and thus a victory for the violent right-wing religious conservatives in the middle east, then the cause of world wide liberalism will be set back substantially. If the name of the game is always making sure that a Democrat is always in the White House no matter what, I think you would be doing the World and the liberal cause a disservice world-wide.
I think you are missing Roberts, point and it is a decent one. The Hubble is not needed for simple detection of NEA, our conventional systems on the ground can do that quite well currently, but it might be well suited for doing spetroscopic analysis of nearby asteriods to determine their composition. I'll grant that this might be a very valid reason for a Hubble like telescope. Asteroid mining concurns aside, the data is probably valuable in and of itself.
However, that doesn't necessarily mean that we need the Hubble to accomplish this. Those asteroid aren't going anywhere. They will still be in orbit 10, 20, 30 or 100+ years from now. It's not a time critical issue. The Hubble, on the other hand, is not likely to be around for the next 10~15 years new service mission or not. So for a prolonged study of the compositoin of NEA Hubble is still not the best investment. A purpouse built device, placed in an appropriate orbit would no doubt both last longer, give better results, and would likely be less expensive.
I understand the anxiety people face with respect to their work. They want to get results and action today (or yesterday if possible) and not weight 5 years or so untill a better device can be built. In most fields of study human time is valuable enough that it is worth it to pay extra cost to get instruments to our people quickly. Unfortuantly, this is not the case in astronomy. The stars are not going anywhere, neither are the asteroids. Even asteroid mining is serveral decades out at best. And building telescopes, especialy space telescopes is monumently expensive. It may be painful to wait, but economicaly it is the best solution.
On the positive side, pushing to get new instruments instead of trying to recycle the old is probably a positive thing for astronomers in the new end. Congress is not going to fund a program for a new (and better) space telescope as long as we have one currently up there in orbit. In the search for new and better instruments to explore our universe, scientist should always be pushing for new toys instead of upgrades or life-extensions of the old. Happily, in this case the quest for new & better instruments and economic realities are harmonious. So by not pushing to extend the life of the old Hubble, we may end up getting new and better instruments that we never would have recieved had it stayed up in Orbit.
I think we need to know the composition of asteroids in order to know how to best divert them if they are on a collision course with Earth, I think this should be part of the defense budget and not count toward space science in general, and since the Air Force would be learning to divert asteroids in case the need should ever arise, it may as well push technologies that can be used for profitable asteroid mining operations, perhaps it can start as a partnership between the Air force and business. Perhaps a prize should be offered for anyone who can divert the course of an asteroid byu a certain amount. The Air Force can then pony up this money out of its annual budget and it doesn't pay out this money until someone meets the conditions of this prize. There doesn't have to be gold or platinum or something else valuable in this asteroid, the winner will only have to demonstrate that it can change its orbit, and once this technology is demostrated, we have a defense system against potentially dangerous asteroids and will have a plan on what to do if an asteroid should someday be found on a colision course with Earth. You know procrastination is easy, and one can always procrastinate a little further by saying the technology of tomorrow will be better than the technology of today and that we should wait for it.
Well technology doesn't just happen, somebody has to develop it. We have a reason for developing this technology that doesn't have to do with mining the asteroids or whether valuable material can be extracted from them vis-a-vis mining the planets or bringing stuff from Earth. The reason we must learn to move asteroids is for self-presurvation. We must detect all the asteroids orbits of significant size, and we must develop the technology to move them so we have a plan on what to do should a dangerous asteroid be found. It shouldn't be that we find a dangerous asteroid and then develop the technology to divert it, because then we won't know what technology to develop and the technology might not work right for the first time when we need it, and their might not be a later, in addition the closer the asteroid gets to collision the harder it is to divert. I think there is a defense reason for dealing with asteroids, and the expenditure of government money to do this is well justified, and if there is an opportunity for profitable asteroid mining, then that's just icing on the cake. Certainly the ability to move asteroids will bring us closer to mining them.
And there you throw up your hands and say it can't be done, while you yourself provide no solutions to solving this Earth to LEO problem. Staying the course doesn't solve the problem, building Ares rockets doesn't solve the problem either. The problem is we can only send a few astronauts into space. Space travel is a spectator sport because we haven't provided space travel to the masses. The suborbital space busness is essentially an expensive zero-gee ride with a momentary view of the Earth from space, where the sorts of people who roll up thousand dollar bills and smoke them, pay top dollar for a few moments of thrills. I'd like to turn these suborbitals into something more useful.
I really don't know whether the pellets need to be self-guided, I only presented that as a wose case scenario. It may be possible to take all the gravitational forces into account with a super computer and aim the pellet stream very precisely with a super computer so that the pellets come out at exactly the right speed and in the right direction so that they are in the right place at the right time to propel the space craft into orbit. The suborbiter may have on onboard radar system to detect the incoming stream of dumb pellets and relay information of the pellets position relative to itself, and the suborbiter's GPS system will tell its exact position, such that the ground lasers know exactly where the pellets are in order to vaporise them. The lasw of gravity and motion are extremely predictable, so maybe the pellets themselves don't need to self-correct their course. You just have to make sure the suborbiter is positioned right and the laser is targeted right. The pellets could be hollow aluminum spheres filled with oxygen, the laser wil ignite them turning each one into an expanding cloud of aluminum oxide gas. I believe a clever solution will get us into space, not a stay the course with expendibles or infrequently used shuttles. Its best if the suborbiters don't have to use liquified cryogenic fuels, we need a simple rocket engine thats easy to reuse and is capable of getting above the atmosphere, then the pellets and laser can do the rest. There is also the matter of putting a Mass Driver on the Moon, pointing it in the right direction and sighting it right, the velocity of the pellets should be variable. As we are planning on building a Moon base anyway, I figure a Mass drive would be just the sort of thing to build. Yes it is a one time big expense, but if we can lift alot of suborbiters into orbit with that thing, we can amortize its cost.
I would think interplanetary missions with pellets would be harder, as planets move substantially more in relation to each other than does the Moon in relation to the Earth. Besides the problem that needs solving is that of getting the launch vehicle into orbit. Unlike in interplanetary space, you can't use ion drives, or solar sails to get into orbit, but once you are in orbit more options become available. What you need to get into orbit is something that's high thrust that will rapidly accelerate your vehicle to orbital velocity, if its too slow then it falls back to Earth.
As for the pellet stream being too expensive, what's more expensive building a car by hand or building a factory that makes cars? The factory is more expensive of course, but the per unit cost of each car it produces is lower than the cost of a hand built car. What we need to do is reduce the per unit coat of each trip into space, if we keep using the Shuttle or expendible boosters produced essentially by hand one at a time, we're not going to do that. It is much easier to mass produce reusable suborbital vehicles like Space Ship One, and we just need some extra outside infrastructure to get those into orbit.
For example, I've never heard of a school in any country which would teach children how to protect themselves from manipulation.
I was taught about rhetoric and manipulation in gradeschool. We were even required to practice these arts ourselves, however most people fail to pay attention in school.
What does this have to do with Communism?
Communism places alot of trust and power in the hands of a few people, of whom it is assumed will make the right decisions, and if that trust is misplaced there is no way of removing these leaders from office as these leaders have all the levers of power and there are no real checks and balances on him since all power radiates from him, he controls the press, he controls the education, he controls who gets a job and who doesn't, practically everyone in the country is working for him, this is pretty much the structure of society in Castro's Cuba.
What about all the Mexicans living in Northern Mexico when we made it part of our Southwest, didn't we absorb those cultures? I think we did since many of our cities their have retained their spanish names, we didn't anglicise them.
Rejecting the absorption of other cultures sort of limits the extent to which we can expand. The Roman Empire didn't consider that, they gladly grabbed as much as they could.
Ever thought about that the cultures about to be absorbed perhaps might not agree to being absorbed? Your notion of expanding US territory at this point in time is no different from Hitler's ideas about enlarging Germany at the expense of Russia.
You see the Mexicans coming here and leaving their home country, what does that say? And its not just a small number of them, they are coming in by the millions. It appears the Mexican economy just isn't working for them. If Mexico was a part of the United States, those Mexican workers could go where ever the jobs were and would not have to worry about crossing borders. Since they cross the borders so freely one would imagine that they would be happy if that border did not exist and they weren't harrassed by INS agents as they migrate in search of work, but annexing Mexico works both ways, if they can come here, we can go there, and as long as we accept the burden of all these poor people, we might as well partake of Mexicos oil fields and natural resources as well, doesn't that seem fair to you? If Mexicans valued their own country they wouldn't leave it so readily and they wouldn't want open borders with us. So the choice is fairly clear, if you want open borders, then we have one country instead of two. What's wrong with that trade off?