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First of all, I didn't say anything about the chemical booster lifting the Orion into orbit. I said it would lift the Orion into space. If the Orion didn't begin working after being liften into space, it would fall back into the Atmosphere. Wasn't it you who said their was a factor of 32 in the amount of energy required to lift something into space as compared to boosting it into orbit? This fact makes the bottom stage much more recoverable as it doesn't have to bleed off orbital velocity as it drops back into the atmosphere. What the Orion needs it to be lifted into space and be given just enough time as it is falling so it can seperate from the bottom stage and activate its nuke drive. The bottom booster will probably want to get as far away from the Orion as quickly as possible before the bombs start going off. One the Orion bombs start pushing, the spaceship can increase in altitude from their and either attempt to go into orbit or attempt an escape trajectory, it needs to accelerate at more than one earth's gravity to make progress as the thing does not start out in Earth orbit.

The Orion would need to be lifted off its pad anyway before it can start its nuke drive, if its just sitting on the pad when it drops its nuke, the nuke will just hit the ground underneathe the pusher plate and explode. The explosion between the ground and the pusher plate would destroy the launch pad, producing all kinds of shrapnel, it would be too close to the pusher plate which wouldn't be able to take it, and the Orion spaceship would simply explode leaving a debis littered crater where the launch pad and spaceship used to be. I think the original scientists who worked on the Orion project recongized that the Orion would have to be lifted some distance off the pad before it could start its nuke drive, it was never envisions that nukes would get the ship off the pad.

The main consideration is how high the bottom stage should lift the Orion before the bombs start to go off. A booster can lift it a mile and the Orion could begin there. The booster could lift it 10 miles and the Orion could begin there. Or the Booster can lift it 100 miles, 200 miles, or 400 miles and the Orion can begin after the Booster cuts off and seperates. The important thing to remember is that when the Orion starts, it is not moving laterally with relationto the Earth's surface. The booster drops straight down to the Earth's surface, and the velocity at which it enters the Earth's atmosphere depends on the maximum altitude it obtains after engin cutoff. The Orion too would fall straight down if its bombs don't explode. That is the system I'm talking about.

And what about the Pusher Plate, could it not be flipped over so that convex becomes concave and vice versa. Both sides of the plate could be covered in heat shielding for instance. Also the Orion might use some of its bombs to bleed off some of its orbital energy before entering the Earth's atmosphere and thus the atmospheric stress on the rest of the spaceship. There are many ways to use the Orion principle, in a vacuum, it doesn't matter whether its speeding up or slowing down.

The Media shouldn't be clay in the hands of propagandists, Reuters should not have allowed itself to be manipulated by Hezbollah as it was, it shouldn't have allowed Hezbollah to present its story unchecked and unfiltered, it owes a responsibility to its readys to fact check. The facts are plan an simply, Hezbollah started the war and Hezbollah and the surrounding people suffered by it. Israel has an obligation to protect its people first, as do the governments of all nations, a secondary responsibility is to minimize collateral damage to civilian populations. What Hezbollah did was make it very difficult for Israel to protect its people without inflicting collateral damage on the surrounding Lebonese, Reuters under-reported this fact, it exagerated the collateral damage cause by Israel's airstrikes by doctoring photographs and producing false reports and accepting stories from Hezbollah uncritically, this was not unbiased reporting and did not serve the readers well, those readers that wanted the truth so they could evaluate the situation properly rather than be forced to swallow terrorist propaganda.

The obligation of all governments is always to protect their own people, the Reuters reports made the Israeli government's job in this very difficult by concentrating on real and false reports of Lebonese civilian deaths and minimizing the deaths in Israel, making it look like an act of Israeli agression, when the facts still are undeniable that Hezbollah started this war and are primarily responsible for what occurs thereafter, and they still have not released those three soldiers they have so unlwafully abducted. thr Reuters reports keep deemphasiing these indisputable facts, and emphasize only the collateral damage of the Lebonese, afte all this, I really can't trust Reuters anymore, they failed in their responsibility to their readers and acted as a propaganda outlet instead. The Media relations people were only doing their jobs to get maximum military benefit from their propaganda, but for Reuters to act like clay in the hands of one side, is simply inexcusable, their responsibility is to their readers to get out the truth, not for them to help one side to win in this conflict.

51% or even 50.01% is a good idea when a leader must be chosen and decided upon quickly. If half the population wants one leader and the other half wants another, choosing the leader might as well be a coin toss, but it is better to choose a leader than not to choose a leader, the consequences of not making a choice or endless squabbling are higher. Laws require the passage by two legislative bodies and the approval of the chief executive with the possibility of the legislature overruling the chief executive's veto, I think that's a far cry from 51% approval for law passage, I think the hurdle is higher than that for My country at least.

That is something Monarchists used to say when disparaging democracy and championing the divine right of Kings to rule in the name of God.

Capitalism is the motive force, but what happens if you launch a rocket without a guidance system? Suppose you launched a rocket without fins, thrusters or anything else to stear that rocket, suppose you just trusted that rocket to know where its supposed to go, will that get you to Mars? No, but you still need the motive force of that rocket to get you there. if you have a rocket that is all guidance systems but no rocket motor, you are just going to sit on the launch pad and not go anywhere. Capitalism requires, guidance, direction, and regulation, but not too much of those. Generally speaking the market should serve the people, individual purchases should be the main driver of the economy and what is produced, not some central plan, too much regulation weighs down an economy, just like too much payload weighs down a rocket and may prevent it from reaching Mars. You need to have respect for all parts of the rocket, the motor the guidance system, the engines must be sufficient to get you there and the payload must not be too taxing. Everything must be in balance for things to work right and for the mission to be accomplished, capitalistic economies are much the same in that respect. Capitalism is the prime motive force in an economy, you don't get that same motive force under socialism. Socialism is all controls and very little pep. I don't expect Capitalism to know where its going, but I do respect the power Capitalism has to drive an economy in whatever direction it is steered in. If you abolish capitalism because your expect it to do something it wasn't designed for, then your going to end up with a stagnant economy. You tax the capitalistic economy a little so you have resources to work with to solve societies other problems that Capitalism won't solve, you don't have the government take over the economy and attempt to replace capitalism with itself, the problems in society don't require that, and that is an overkill solution and you'd be strangling the goose that lays the golden eggs. That goose is not responsible for how its gold is spend, that is how I view Capitalism, you mustn't over tax it, and if you don't it will yield greater resources for you to spend on societies problems later on. Socialists don't have patience for this, they want all the economic pie now, and they don't care about growing the economy, sacrificing the future to solve the problems of the present.

Beware of new ideas though, the Russians were not properly cautious during their revolution and look what happened. The American Founding Fathers were very much afraid of the revolution they were fostering, they rebelled because they were backed into a corner by Great Britian, but they were very suspicious of a central authority and very much distrustful to giving too much power to General Washington, because of that distrust, they designed a constitution that provided for the balance of powers between the branches of government and as a result we have a long lasting successful republic. The Russians attitide was that anything was better than their Czar, they got "anything" and look what happened.

Economically Devastating eh? You think their will be no return on the investment which allows easier access to the Solar System. You know the Orion, can not only reach the Moon and Mars, it can also reach Titan, it would open up the whole Solar System more or less! There is alot of material in the Whole Solar System. Investing in a way to get off of Earth is not money down the drain. I don't see those timid steps into space as sure footed, I just seem them as a lack of progress. I think the way to get into space has been before our eyes all along, but we just refused to look at it because of the anti-nuclear taboo. Instead of trying to deal with the problems that nuclear propulsive systems would cause and try to solve them, se simply refuse to deal with them period and have been using the much more expensive throw-away high performance chemical rockets instead. The Venture Star was to be made out of Carbon Composites, so 90% of its mass could be fuel, and we ran into problems with making fuel tanks out of such composites to hold liquid oxygen. By contrast, the upperstage of the Orion wouldn't hold cryogentic liquid fuels, but would hold a magazine of minature atomic bombs instead in the 1 kiloton range of explosive yield. The Orion would have been made out of ordinary steel.