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But if one of the two is to be lacking, tis better to cultivate might for in voctory one can define right to their choosing.
But your followers must believe that you are right. Otherwise they won't have much reason to fight for you.
Probably neither right nor might can exist alone. A righteous civilization that is weak will be destroyed by others. (Unless it somehow has now competitors, in which case it might survive.) A mighty civilization that has no principles of righteousness, on the other hand, will destroy itself.
But what is "right" anyway. We argue over it in political and other discussions and still find no conclusive answer in many areas. (Not to say that it's all completely relative; there's some black and white, but there's a lot of shades of gray.)
If they are coming here I find the following the most plausible:
-Our planet is beautiful compared to most other livable planets in the galaxy. I would bet that many planets that bear life are dark, bathed in radiation, lack water and plant life.
Or,
-There is something about us. If they are abducting humans and conducting experiments then it's likely that they are not trying to fix their DNA but ours. Why, I don't know. It's tough to guess whether this would be a good thing, or bad thing for us.
It seems likely enough to me that if they are coming here there isn't anything special about our planet. They're just the research team sent here, one of many sent to many planets as part of an attempt to explore and catalogue the out of the way planets of the galaxy. They have a mission to complete and then they can return to their homes on some more popualar world. I think the description in my signature sums up our solar system pretty well. ("Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.") Of course I doubt we're really being visited anyway.
They will simply take a bunch of Euros with them. Nice stable currency the Euro.
I don't remember seeing Mars on the map of Europe. You think the EU will let them in anyway?
I like the idea of money being all dealt with electronically, but it's too open to theft. We already have a lot of problems with credit cards. In an electronic system, if someone steals a few special numbers of yours they can spend your money. If we each carry around a little thing with some sort of electronic memory keeping track of our money, then if someone steals it they have stolen everything you have. It's like carrying your life savings around in your wallet. Also electronic memory can be tampered with.
The base unit of currency would have its value determined by an average of the trade value of the commodities backing it. Say gold, oil, wheat, beef, steel for example. This way the currency is based on something real rather than the infaltion-prone fiat currency currently in widespread use and any fluctuation in one of the commodities is absorbed by the others. A stable, real currency.
Having money backed by something real is good, but the money can still change in value as the market changes. If a big part of your currency is based on wheat, for example, and an overproduction of wheat causes prices to fall one year, your money falls in value too. You do, however, avoid a lot ot the inflation that we have so much of today.
I do believe we must choose:
(a) Geneva convention; or
(b) US criminal law
I tend to agree, but it's difficult to do because neither one really applies. US law doesn't work, because they weren't arrested in the US for disobeying US law. Calling them POWs doesn't work because there is no declared war against a declared enemy. Rather American troops have simply entered a foreign nation to depose a regime that America doesn't like without ever declaring war against it and have faced resistance from supporters of that government and other opponents of the occupation. Simply creating the terrorist class doesn't work either since it is not defined in the Constitution or standard rules of war and is not accepted by international institutions. Also I interpret the rights of Habeus Corpus and a speedy and public trial to apply to all people held by the US on US controlled territory (including the Guantanamo) whether or not they are citizens, except in the case of POWs who may be held from the formal declaration of war until the formal peace treaty. However, as earlier observed these people aren't POWs. The problem is that there is no system for dealing with people captured by the US military in foreign territory but not as part of a war against an opposing army since such a situation is not really supposed to occur.
Good comparison to the Bill of Attainder by the way. However, you don't seem to have mentioned that it is specifically banned in the US Constitution. If a court were to decide that the "terrorist" class is in effect a bill of attainder it would make it unconstitutional.
Life from elsewhere doesn't really seem that extraordinary. It's all just meat.
Which begs the question, why then would they really be interested in coming here?
For the fresh meat.
I accept the possibility of aliens. To call it a belief is giving it too much weight.
I take the same viewpoint. It drives me crazy that so often you're expected to either believe that something does exist or that it doesn't (aliens, ghosts, god, whatever). When something is neither proven nor disproven, why should you have to think you know the truth when you really don't? In my view the best course is to admit your uncertainty and, if it is sufficiently important to you to know the answer, research the topic. One can have hypotheses, one can look at what data there is and draw some preliminary conclusions, but if one wants certain truth he needs proof and there isn't enough data for that yet. And one must always admit that he may be wrong.
I can prove it the same way I can prove there are no elves.
Or fairies, or mermaids, or dogs that can talk.
For UFOs it's actually a bit harder. These things you can prove by the fact that if these things existed on Earth we would almost certainly have seen lots of them, have good pictures of them, have captured them, etc. If a few aliens drop by now and then, we might not know. It's possible that there have been a few alien spaceships visiting Earth and noone's ever seen them, while they have seen thousands of UFOs that aren't extraterrestrial. I'm sure most UFO reports are false, but there's nothing that I find inconcevable about aliens visiting Earth once in a while.
Point? That a real juicy UFO cover-up doesn't necessarilyinvolve visitors from beyond the stars brandishing anal probers. I for one get the impression that the public is getting fed excrement on this, I just happen to be among those that think the whole aliens angle is more likely part of the cover than the subject being covered up.
That theory certainly makes a lot of sense and is probably more likely than aliens. (If one explanation works for all cases anyway.) I seem to remember hearing once that the Air Force admitted to encouraging UFO reports to cover up a stealth bomber or something like that. I wonder what tech they're covering up now.
Do you really believe a ranch would kill it's own animal by using a laser powered corer (does such a thing even exist?) and then claim some ET did it?
I'm sure there's someone who would do it just for the fifteen minutes of fame. There are some pretty sick-minded people out there.
The colonization of mars will probably happen that way but what does that have to do with us? It's probably 100 years in the future at least.
All this discussion is about the future and much of it is more than 100 years away. It has to do with us because we're the first stage in it all. Colonizing space is a task for many generations and many centuries. When people first moved out of Africa they probably weren't thinking of colonizing five other continents, but ultimately that was the result of their exploration and it had everything to do with them. One day we will have a civilization spanning the solar system and ultimately an even larger one. Cities on Mars, asteroid mining, orbital hotels, gas mining of the giant planets, Moon tourism, space elevators, and many other things will probably be reality one day. And reality is quite reputable.
Maybe we should give space to both NASA and the Air Force. NASA is needed to conduct science and exploration, something that should not be handed over to the military. Thus JFK probably made the right call, since we would otherwise have more space weapons, space spies, etc. and fewer science missions and planetary probes. We might not have even gotten to the moon. However, allowing the Air Force to have its own space program would give a bigger budget and more ideas for spaceship design leading to better ways for putting people in space whatever they plan to do there. The military also has a lot more money to work with than NASA and a lot easier time getting more when it wants it. My only concern would be increased militarization of space which would probably have negative consequences, although I suppose it's bound to happen someday.
they are, after all, the only game in town.
Yes, but it would probably be best if they weren't. Thus while we must work with the large corporations in the short term, we should try to destroy the establishment in the long term by allowing more small companies to get in on the business. Stagnation is good for the big corporations since it means their products don't get outdated fast, but it will be best for space exploration if they have serious competition.
A spaceship that "undocked" from the cable would not be in much better of a position than one on the surface of the Earth; it would have to accelerate to a very high velocity very quickly or it would fall to the Earth.
There is no need to undock from the cable. A car travelling up the elevator can simply decelerate (along the "up" vector) as it approaches the station. At the station it stops, unloads, and then returns to Earth all without leaving the cable. Of course a station in GSO would probably be optimal. I only suggested the LEO possibility if the trip to GSO is deemed to take to long. However, the 5 days time given by RobertDyck isn't unreasonable at least for cargo which weighs much more than people and is thus much more expensive to transport by rockets, spaceplanes, etc. Also it is probably quite possible to achieve speeds higher than 300km/h.
A space elevator will require individual fibres several metres long; no one has been able to do that.
True, but the technology is young and advancing rapidly. Within a decade or so we will probably have this ability.
Aluminum and nickel are electrical conductors. They won't protect the CNT cable from lightning. CNT with carbon atoms arranged along the fibre are 30 times more conductive than copper, while CNT with carbon atoms arranged helically around the fibre are semiconductors. A semiconductor will create resistance to lightning, making heat and vaporize in a fraction of a second. A conductor would do better, but any conductor has a maximum current it can handle before over heating. Lightning is over 100 million volts, often several hundred million volts. Lightning current is usually between 5,000 and 20,000 amps but has been reported over 200,000 amps. That's with a lightning rod on a building; a cable running to space will get much more. Any conductor will attract lightning because of the differential charge; a conductive space elevator will attract lightning like a proverbial magnet.
Could the elevator cables be made so that they were not grounded? This way lightning wouldn't strike them. Another option is to have a lightning rod running parallel to the elevator cable, a more conductive wire that will take the lightning and that can hold more current.
The bottom line is a space elevator is farther off than an SCRAM jet
I must admit that you're probably right. Development of a SCRAM jet is certainly worthwhile and will be important in opening up space. I just think that a space elevator is not too far in the future technologically and that it would really open up space to everyone.
LEO would be too slow to detach from the cable.
Why would you need to detach from the cable? If the trip to GSO takes too long, you could have a space station along the cable somewhere in LEO where you can stop the cars to unload and reload them and then send them back down. Space ships can leave from and dock with this station and can be used to travel to the Moon, other space station, the planets, asteroids, or pretty much anywhere.
Second, the only material strong enough is carbon nanofibre. Carbon burns and an electrical conductor to space becomes the world's largest lightning rod. It would require at least an electrical insulator that protects carbon from oxygen and rain, as well as fire proof. Still, would lightning burn through the insulator? It may have to be non-conductive to prevent lightning.
Is carbon nanofibre the same as carbon nanotubes. I have read that carbon nanotubes can be made to conduct electricity and I presume they do not burn in doing so. You would of course need an insulator as you suggest.
My idea for a space elevator is to make it work something like a mag-lev train. The basic cable is made of carbon nano-tubes for strength and covered with a protective coating. Coils are attached to the cable that can be turned on and off as electromagnets that are used to pull the cars forward. Electricity is provided either through a wire or through the nanotubes themselves acting as a wire. The cars can be made to fully encircle the cable and be supported by magnetic levitation. Thus there is no friction with the cable.
Considering that Earth has been around for five and a half billion years, it's not really that unlikely that someone has been by here at some point alhtough they obviously didn't say. Extraterrestrial visitation within historical time periods is plausible although unlikely. The idea that they are frequently visiting us nowadays and kidnapping people is extremely unlikely although not theoretically impossible. It is, however, an extraordinary claim that lacks extraordinary evidence.
The problem with your basic analysis, Thomas Martianson, is that it is based on a lot of "one could say"s. There are lots of things that one could say about history. Your model is one possible version of things, but you could devise many others. Social, political, and economic systems and conflicts are always extremely complicated so any generalization falls short of the actuality and can mess up the prediction. No period of history can really be classified as the conflict between only two opposing ideas. The progress of civilization is too complex to accurately predict. You use generalizations, estimations, and simplification is in your analysis of history; as a result the data based on this analysis has a wide margin of error. Besides even if a perfect model taking all the data into account, it would still be uncertain. No one knows what new ideas people will dream up. The twentieth century alone saw the end of imperialism; the rise and fall of Communism, Fascism, and Nazism; the Cold War between Capitalism and Communism that came close to nuclear war; the rise of and conflict between Zionism and Islamic fundamentalism in the Middle East; the rise of terrorism; and an increasing divide between "liberals" and "conservatives" in US politics based largely on moral and religious issues; as well as many other things. I doubt any model based on pre-twentieth century history would have predicted all this.
It may be better to concentrate on building a space elevator than trying to develop ssto or other launch vehicles, since the elevator would render these other systems obsolete. An elevator can allow cargoes to go from Earth to orbit essentially on a train, much cheaper than any rocket-powered vehicles will ever be. Once one cable is built it will be relatively easy to build several more and greatly increase the amount of cargo that can be hauled up and down on a regular basis. More than anything else a space elevator can open up space. It can be used to transport the machinery needed for asteroid mining or interplanetary spaceships which can then be assembled in space and can bring asteroid metals, especially the valuable PGMs, and space-manufactured materials down to Earth. In addition it can carry people: tourists, workers, and Mars settlers. The ticket price will be fairly cheap as will be the cost of transporting cargo. The cars that move up and down the elevator can be powered by electricity generated either by a plant at the bottom or a solar array at the top and carried to the car through the cables rather than by expensive rocket fuels. The cars will be ready to go back up pretty much as soon as they get down, eliminating the long waits between flights of a vehicle. The space elevator will open up space to business and to average people and both will come. The initial cost of building the elevator would be high, but it could almost certainly be made up for once the elevator was in service, especially in the years while the original owner has a monopoly.
Anyway, perhaps another way to look at this is to suggest reasons why we would want to keep alien visits secret from the general population.
If there are aliens visiting Earth, which is highly doubtful and not conclusively supported by available evidence, then they clearly aren't ready to announce their presence to the general public or they would have done so whatever the government might want. This being so, they would make sure that any government that knew about them, either through military intelligence or because the aliens revealed themselves to it, did not tell the world. Clearly the aliens (I am for now working with the postulate that aliens are visiting Earth even though I greatly doubt that it is true) don'twant to be bothered in their work by curious humans at this time. Consider what would happen if the existence of these aliens was revealed. In the midst of the mass panic and unending media coverage, a number of scientists, space flight enthusiasts, and others would be trying to track down the aliens, study them, get a hand on their space ships, etc. I might even join them. The aliens, however, would consider us a nuisance -- asking constant questions, presssing random buttons on the ship's control panel, taking pictures, trying to study alien biology, while they are trying to study Earth and humans and make their mission a success so they can return to Alpha Draconis as the astronaut heros who explored Earth. Whether or not the government wants to keep the existence of the aliens secret the aliens clearly want to keep their existence secret. Or rather they would if they existed, note that I am skeptical of the idea that we are being regularly visited by extraterrestrials.
Another problem with trying to figure out if the mililtary is covering up aliens is that they are covering up alot of other things, military technology, intelligence on other countries, etc. Alot of this they need to keep secret for reasons of national security. Some of it they probably just like keeping secret. The problem is noone really knows when they're telling the truth and when they're not. They say they don't know anything about UFOs, but they also say they don't know anything about any top-secret new aircraft. Stealth for example was kept secret for at least a decade. Who know what they're hiding now. Probably not aliens, but they can never prove that they're telling the truth.
I beliewe it absolutely essential for a succesful colonization and spread of human kind (and other earth life) to the stars the competition between various peoples, nations and hopefully one day, planets.
Some types of competition, economic or just trying to have your country the leader in some field or the first to do something for instance, are often good and promote advancement. Competition that leads to military conflict, however, should be avoided if possible since it is to the detriment of all civilizations involved.
One thing I have newer understood, why is it bound to happen, as most sci-fi writers and future thinkers, that a single planet will be a single entity, a single nation with a single government? Is it not more likely, specially on the early stages of colonization (specially within the solar system) that there will be a few different nations and governments on each planet, specially within the same solar system?
You're probably right there. I think sci-fi writers just find it simpler to have planets play the role that nations play on Earth. After all if two nations on the same planet are at war you miss out on all the cool space battles. (I know I just said war between planets would be bad, and where reality is concerned I stand by that, but in fiction war is good.) As we expand into space the number of planets that we can use will increase exponentially. At first, with Mars for instance, new planets will probably have many nations on them. As single planets become less of a big thing, however, it will be more likely that groups or individuals will claim an entire planet when they settle it rather than just a portion and that others will not object to that claim. When we reach the Star Wars type civilization, which I believe we can do someday, there will probably be both planets that are just one nation and those that are multiple nations. I wonder what the situation will be like on Earth by that time...
Only when Genocide is Ethical and Right.
Genocide is by definition unethical and wrong.
I oppose the formation of any sort of galactic government or association. Let humanity drift like dandelion seeds across the galaxy in a wild, unsorted mess - it'll be for the best in the long run.
Makes sense to me. Let Democrats, Republicans, Communists, Fascists, right wing nuts, left wing nuts, and all others have their own "perfect" worlds without anyone else telling them how to run things. Hopefully there will also be a few moderate worlds where civilization can survive. I would like something to keep all the different groups from fighting, though.
If the military does decide to put weapons in space, I hope that someone high up gets stuck on the idea of large manned platforms requiring frequent resupply and crew rotation missions. This is not particularly useful from a military standpoint, but it would greatly help space exploration, a much more useful enterprise than war. Such weapons systems would require the development of cheap, reusable transportation to orbit, which would greatly move the space program forwards. The military has the money needed to develop this that NASA does not. If it actually makes the country safer in the process, so much the better.
On a side note, it might be good to find a new name for "rods from god." The name puts even more religion into war at a time when we are fighting a war already too mixed up with religion. It really promotes the idea of "god is on our side." The name doesn't particularly bother me, but it would probably offend many middle-eastern Muslims including those who are not terrorists or enemies of the US. American conservatives would of course claim that god did give us this weapons to crush the infidels, only making the situation worse. It's probably not a big deal, but I can certainly see people making an issue out of it.
The only thing they need to worry about is the possibility of their own existance.
To most of us, existence is very important. Crew survival is the top priority of most mission plans.
If strings make up us, and strings are possibility brances in the existance of life, It is entirely possible that we could wind up with life (the crew) exceeding the possibility width of the ship built by individuals of less possibility width. That means you could step from one space vehicle into another and if your possibility exceeds theirs you die in open space (but only by a little bit).
I really have no clue what you're talking about, although I don't really know much about string theory. Even dying "only by a little bit" sounds bad though.
And considering only Mars Commonwealth citizens are getting off the colony transports at mars, Tourists can take the round trip.
Are you saying tourists shouldn't even be allowed to get off the ship and wald around on Mars?!
The obvious threat now is not the insurgents/terrorists in Iraq but it is China and the armed bases where these terrorists are trained.
I suspect that the insurgency in Iraq will continue to be a problem for some time. Even when this goes away terrorism such as that of Al Quaida will continue to be an intermittent threat, and in many cases they are not trained in obvious armed bases that could be hit from space. Why do you think China will be a threat? Both countries would be extremely reluctant to go to war because of the economic consequences, and the U.S. and China are currently on relatively friendly terms. I think I agree with clark that space-based weapons are unlikely to be very useful at the present compared to the problems they will create and the fact that they will present a target to enemies.
n short, the creation of totally artificial life. Not copying or modifying existing life, but building something entirely new from the ground up.
Do you name it, or just give a year, make and model?
And how do you classify it? Maybe it's time for a new kingdom. Or another classification level above Kingdom: Make -- natural or artificial (or something like that; it would probably be in Latin).
A galactic government should probably have very little power, allowing planets or nations to govern themselves according to what they believe is best for them. Few I imagine would like a government light-years away from their home that would almost certainly be out of touch with their needs and would be trying to create one system that would work for everybody despite the vastly different conditions that they lived in.
Therefore, I would suggest that there be only a simple constitution that ensures the right of nations to own territory and govern it as they see fit, basic human rights for citizens of all nations, and a promise between all the nations that they will not go to war with one another. Any nation that attacks another will be considered the enemy of all others. The constitution should not establish any sort of permanent legislature. Rather there will be a mechanism whereby a congress of representatives from all nations may be called into session when there is an issue of great concern to all humanity (such as invasion by another species) or a major dispute between nations which they cannot resolve on their own. This loose union should have little or no permanent bureocracy in order to both limit its power and potential for corruption. Representatives to the congress will not be employed full-time but will be chosen by the nations as they see fit on the rare occasions when the congress is called into session. Since a representative may well be employed for only one vote, he/she will not have to worry about the implications of that vote towards his reelection to the congress.
That's my view on galactic government anyway: leave most of it up to the individual nations, but have a mechanism for acting cooperatively if the need arises. I'm sure the plan could use a little reworking, but overall I don't think an overarching galactic government could function well.
Perhaps the space advocacy community needs to take a collective moment of silence and thank the Nazi leadership for being bungling ignorant fools when it comes to missile systems, thereby allowing Von Braun to hoodwink them into building spaceships instead of the solid-fueled rockets that better informed leaders might have been supporting.
True. There's probably alot of things we should thank the Nazi leadership for being bungling ignorant fools in. It's not a very pleasant thought, but there are alot of things that they could have done differently that might well have led to them winning the war.
And regardless of not finding the WMD, the liberation of Iraq was an intrinsically good thing in itself. Give it time and I believe history will vindicate that.
Everyone believes that they are right and history will vindicate them. It's probably good to bear in mind that most are found to have made some mistakes and many are found to be wholly wrong. Personally, I opposed going to war and still believe that it was the wrong idea. The future of Iraq is still very much up in the air, but I think the future will show some good and some bad results from the invasion. Outcomes ranging from widespread Arab democracy as Bush claims will be the result to widespread Arab jihad against America as many of his opponents fear. More likely the future will be alot like the present, some democratic reform in Arab countries and some Arab jihad against America. The only certain result of the war, however, is carnage.
"GEE, WHY WOULD YOU WANT TO DO THAT"!
The depressing thing is that the American people had a chance to get rid of this administration last November and we failed to take it. The truth about the yellowcake and other lies that have led to the carnage in Iraq was out at that time too. But people just looked the other way and voted for the guy who, in empty words, promised to protect us. Didn't these people notice that he has concentrated money and military might on the enemy that neither attacked us nor even threatened us, rather than on the one (Al Quaida) that did attack and threatens to do so again. It's a sad commentary on the intelligence of the populous that we're suffering under four more years of Bush and Cheney. So much for reason. Slogans, lies, and obviously empty promises win the support of the people. I still hope that my fellow Americans will one day come to their senses. Maybe in 2008, but it's a long time to wait. Until then, I suppose we have no one to blame but ourselves that we're stuck with this administration.
Witch-hunt are for people that may or may not actually be involved directly with this torture scandal, but that not the case or in this situation. The orders that caused this torture came right from the top or George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, etc. We know who was involved and who authorized it and we know it was premeditated act to engage in torture in Iraq. Beside we both testimonies and written memo signed by George Bush and crafted by the current head of home land security and we don't want to for Donald Rumsfeld edit to authorize torture either which we also have a signed document of too. But, we have other members of the Bush Administration like Dick Cheney who were planning this disaster that we are currently in during the Reagan Administration and as a group in 1991. We also have a document in Great Britain that assure us that is true also, that state the George Bush intends to invade Iraq and fix the intelegence to match his foriegn policy or lie and this was before the 9/11 attack. So we have the documentation on these bastards and what they actually did. So that not the issue and this is not a witch-hunt, this is a fact and can be proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that it is so. The only question that is to be answered is, do you believe the truth. Yes or No and there is no other choice.
Larry,
I agree with you that there can and should be an investigation into the authorization and encouragement of torture by high-ranking military and/or government officials without it being a witch-hunt. I think there's enough evidence that higher-ups were involved to go ahead with such an investigation. I can't agree with your last two sentences though. ("The only question that is to be answered is, do you believe the truth. Yes or No and there is no other choice.") I think there are alot of questions that we still need to answer such as: Who did/said what?, What exactly did they do/say?, What was the context etc. We need more definitive answers so that even the Bush apologists won't be able to deny what happened. This is especially true where Bush and Cheney are implicated as being at fault in some of this. If they encouraged torture it is important that the truth comes out. But the evidence isn't yet enough to prove it "beyond a reasonable doubt." I think we also need more specific information about Bush's lies about the war, although in my mind at least there's pretty strong evidence that some of his claims were lies.