Primary space politics

cIclops · 2008-05-03 07:05:12

Right. Are you sure it's not a same sex marriage?

Terraformer · 2008-05-05 06:40:03

Yes. Hillary has already been First Laddy, Bill would be First Lady.

cIclops · 2008-05-24 02:30:04

Spaced Out: Obama says NASA needs a mission

Here is Obama in his own words. You make up your own minds:
Q: I was wondering what your plans are for the space center?
A: Our space program, I think, has always symbolized what's best about America. That spirit of adventure. Limitless frontiers. Being able to achieve whatever it is we can imagine and dream.
So I want to not just maintain our space program, but strengthen our space program. Part of the problem, I'll be honest with you, I think that over the last decade, maybe two decades, we haven't defined our core mission of the space program as well as it needs to be.
I can imagine during the Apollo program everybody was very clear. First were going to send astronauts around the planet. Then we're going to send them to the moon. Then were going to land them on the moon. It captured people's imagination.
Now even though a lot of good work has been done through the shuttle program, I don't think people have as deep a commitment to the program. So what I want to do is to work with NASA to define the program.
Now I know we're transitioning from the shuttle to the Orion program and I am fully committed to making sure that is funded. But I want to review with NASA what are we doing in terms of manned flights to the moon or to Mars vs. are we better off using things like Hubble that yields us more information and better bang for the buck.
The bottom line is I am absolute committed to making sure we have a space program that is second to none in the world. That's my absolute commitment. But I want to sit down with NASA and figure out what's our focus and make sure that that focus is clear and yielding the kind of benefits over time. I want us to understand what it is we're trying to accomplish.
It is very important, though, because other countries -- the Europeans, China -- they are all in a position where they could potentially leapfrog us.

Obama needs another meeting with his advisor.

Tom Kalbfus · 2015-07-31 11:55:06

Here we are, almost Primary Season once again. We have Donald Trump in the lead. What kind of Space Policy do you think he would promote?

SpaceNut · 2015-07-31 18:48:29

It would be about the same as Cruz has done on the subcommittee..... While Trump Is Well Ahead As First Debate Looms but when it comes to Donald Trump leads GOP race but is the weakest bet when pitted vs. Hillary Clinton as a University/USA Today poll, released survey on Tuesday, found that Trump is the weakest competitor among the Top 7 Republican presidential candidates when pitted against Democrat presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton.

As for the question would Hillary be any better the jury is still out.

Mark Friedenbach · 2015-07-31 19:21:09

Tom Kalbfus wrote:

Here we are, almost Primary Season once again. We have Donald Trump in the lead. What kind of Space Policy do you think he would promote?

Doesn't matter as Trump would never win the general electorate.

The default assumption for Hillary is what happened under Bill... which is a mixed history.

Tom Kalbfus · 2015-08-11 18:16:27

Mark Friedenbach wrote:

Tom Kalbfus wrote:
Here we are, almost Primary Season once again. We have Donald Trump in the lead. What kind of Space Policy do you think he would promote?
Doesn't matter as Trump would never win the general electorate.
The default assumption for Hillary is what happened under Bill... which is a mixed history.

Why not? if the choice is a crook (Hillary) or a billionaire (Trump), who do you think they would pick? Most likely, Democrats that don't like Hillary and who don't like Trump would stay home and not vote at all. Also Hillary is not even a good liar, but Trump is skilled at making money, that ought to be worth something. Also consider that Trump's politics isn't that radical, he's supported politicians on both sides of the aisle. Trump will be whatever he needs to be to get elected, he emphasizes his conservative credentials to be nominated, and he will be a centrist to get elected, and it really wouldn't take much to beat Hillary. Trump made $10 billion, and Hillary was married to a President, and took a few set aside jobs in the Senate and State Department because of who she was married to. I'd say Trump is smarter than Hillary, because believe me, making $10 billion is not easy. Trump is not a professional politicians, this is his first time seeking public office, but he does know how to make money. You can treat him as a clown if you like, but he is a ten billion dollar clown! Trump is not a nobody, and he is nobody's fool!

SpaceNut · 2015-08-11 19:44:20

The billionare is just as big of a crook as the other but its the statements that are made that finishes it for his chances....
The Best Insults Of Donald Trump's Latest Campaign Speech

Trump: I Don't Insult Women

Trump's most notable insults

Tom Kalbfus · 2015-08-12 05:44:56

I seem to remember his poll results going up after the debate, not down. The thing is Trump is a Protest Candidate, the Republican rank and file are not happy with the professional politician class they had elected and who didn't keep their promises. Trump is a non-professional politician, so they have rallied around him.

Being rude doesn't make him a crook. There are billionaires who are crooks such as El Chapo for example, who escaped from a maximum security prison in Mexico by his compatriots building a tunnel. Trump made his billions by building hotels and resorts, and high end apartments such as the Trump Towers on the west side of Manhattan, he is a legitimate businessman, and he is very smart. Not that he doesn't have character flaws, he is arrogant, has a high opinion of himself and is a braggart not afraid to tell you he's smart, but that does not make him a crook. Have you seen some of the things Trump has built? By contrast, what has Hillary done? She has taken bribes in the form of Contributions to the Clinton Foundation, the amount of money she has made through her influence peddling is "petty cash" to Trump.
I might remind you that for Trump, the Republican Party is a party of convenience, much as it was for Michael Bloomberg, another billionaire, in getting him elected Mayor of New York City. I know many people don't like the 'R' next to his name, but it could just as easily have been a 'D'. Trump is not very political, all he wants to do is business. If you want to look at a political conservative, you can look at Ted Cruz, but Trump does not live and breath politics.

RobertDyck · 2015-09-23 22:21:59

In the Deimos thread, Tom wrote:

Tom Kalbfus wrote:

So maybe we need a superhuman electronic brain to figure out what human brains cannot. Humans don't seem to be any good at figuring out ways of colonizing space inexpensively, maybe such genius is beyond us, so we need some help from superior electronic intelligence that we may devise. Seems like computers are advancing tremendously, yet we have had trouble getting into space for 58 years now! The Space age is 58 years old, yet we are still too stupid to put more than tiny objects into space, we should have gotten much farther after the Apollo Program, but we just weren't smart enough! Maybe artificial intelligences greater than us we succeed where we have failed. I was born during the Apollo years, 1967, I was too young to remember the Apollo missions when they happened, and I'm 48 years old now, it is amazing how little progress we have made since those first footprints on the Moon. There has been talk talk and more talk of how we'll send astronauts to the Moon, I remember when the book High Frontier was published, I remember the descriptions and the illustrations of those space colonies, the only problem was, we just weren't smart enough to build them, and right now we are struggling to build only slightly larger versions of the Apollo hardware which got us to the Moon 46 years ago, and I've heard all the excuses in the world for not going. I think the people in charge of development are just cowards, they are so deathly afraid of failure that they just test things ad nauseum and are afraid to take that risk because they fear it would be the end of that program and more importantly for them, their jobs! For too many NASA is just a jobs program, something to keep smart people busy. It took most of my life to get that picture of Pluto by the way, we still need better photos of some of the moons of Uranus and Neptune by the way, as only one spacecraft has ever visited them.
The main damning thing is that despite 58 years of the space age, space travel is still something we only watch rather than do. Now is space travel ever became routine, such as buying an airplane ticket, I am sure taking apart Deimos wouldn't be a big deal, they would have tried a number of things and figured it out by trial and error.

Tom, the key is money. We could have gone to Mars long ago, but why? The Soviet Union did it to demonstrate technological superiority, to win allies. It worked. But America had a dream of technological superiority, and specifically superiority in space. Congress approved funding only until the Soviet lead was spoiled. The continued to fund military space to maintain superiority. Anything with that motivation will only be flags-and-footprints. If you want a sustained presence, you need something else. Sustained presence requires profit. Development of the A380 airbus cost more than a human mission to Mars. It was paid for without any government funding what so ever. So private enterprise can, but only if there's profit. How can a commercial venture recover its investment plus profit?

NASA could have sent humans to Mars long ago. One problem is scientists want to focus on science. I met several scientists who don't want humans in space, only unmanned probes. Corporate executives for Old Space contractors don't see any value in space, they just want short-term profit. They gouge for as much as they can get away with. And NASA has become bureaucratic. Richard Nixon gutted NASA, redirected funds to the Vietnam War. His election campaign claimed a secret plan to end the Vietnam War early, and America at that time was so desperate to get out of Vietnam that they elected him. He wasn't the Republican nominee. Unfortunately his "secret plan" was to take funds from NASA, give it to the military to find a surge. That didn't work at all. But after NASA was gutted, it never recovered. At this point I suspect people at NASA think of doing anything significant in space as pie-in-the-sky, they have completely lost the can-do attitude of the 1960s. They don't believe they can send humans to Mars. Many will indulge in dreams of science fiction things, but they treat it as science fiction. They don't believe they can do anything as dramatic as NASA did from it's founding until Skylab.

I've seen many young people on TV, and one person in his late 20s in the local chapter who complain that they've never seen any big thing, any positive accomplishment that the world can cheer on like humans to the Moon. Not at all in their lifetime. To focus the world on positive things instead of constant "dark" this or "dark" that, we need something like humans to Mars. And not just flags-and-footprints, this time a permanent human base.

What I see on TV is dark this, or dark that. Shows focus on vampires, werewolves, and other creatures who live by killing or otherwise feeding upon others. These are metaphors for murder, theft, or legally harming others with various scams. The show "Being Human" is about a vampire, werewolf and ghost living together, murdering multiple people, engaged in organized crime, while trying to portray the lead characters as somehow victims or misunderstood. We need to stop glorifying crime, instead focus on something positive, creative, building, cooperation.

An article in Forbes estimates the War on Terror has cost $1.7 trillion from 2001 through 2015. And that doesn't include the Persian Gulf War of 1991, or conflicts in the Middle East from that war until the War on Terror. How much could we have accomplished if that money was spent on something productive? Something not war.

A lot of people were worried about the disparity between rich "have" countries vs third world "have not" countries. That this would eventually result in a war over resources. They point out conflict over resources have always occurred throughout history. No government has been able to deal with it; however, commercial business has. It's amazing that multi-national corporations are in the process of equalizing the wealth of the world. That's not their intent, but it is the result of what they're doing. Globalization is moving manufacturing jobs to third world countries, giving workers there good jobs in high-tech manufacturing. The reason corporations do this is greed, so they can pay those workers peanuts. But those workers now have regular jobs, and earn a lot more than they used to. And wages will go up, workers in Mexico are already demanding pay increases and the same benefits as western countries. This has resulted in loss of jobs from Canada and the US. Sorry guys, but that's permanent. We can whine, or we can work with it. Those countries will become more wealthy, until they're equivalent to us. Then that means greater demand for all goods. The next question is whether we can provide raw materials to support a global economy as intensive as first world nations like Canada and the US.

We will have to harvest resources from space to support this economy. Yes, recycling solves a lot. Yes, greater efficiencies like CFL instead of incandescent light bulbs and greater insulation reduce energy requirements. But we will need more platinum for petroleum catalysts, hydrogen fuel cells, etc. We will need more gold and silver for electronics. We will need nickel and chrome for stainless steel, so equipment becomes durable and doesn't rust. We will need lots of stuff. We can get a lot of that from space.

And perhaps we can stop fighting over territory if new territory is opened in space.

Tom Kalbfus · 2015-09-24 07:04:33

RobertDyck wrote:

In the Deimos thread, Tom wrote:
Tom Kalbfus wrote:
So maybe we need a superhuman electronic brain to figure out what human brains cannot. Humans don't seem to be any good at figuring out ways of colonizing space inexpensively, maybe such genius is beyond us, so we need some help from superior electronic intelligence that we may devise. Seems like computers are advancing tremendously, yet we have had trouble getting into space for 58 years now! The Space age is 58 years old, yet we are still too stupid to put more than tiny objects into space, we should have gotten much farther after the Apollo Program, but we just weren't smart enough! Maybe artificial intelligences greater than us we succeed where we have failed. I was born during the Apollo years, 1967, I was too young to remember the Apollo missions when they happened, and I'm 48 years old now, it is amazing how little progress we have made since those first footprints on the Moon. There has been talk talk and more talk of how we'll send astronauts to the Moon, I remember when the book High Frontier was published, I remember the descriptions and the illustrations of those space colonies, the only problem was, we just weren't smart enough to build them, and right now we are struggling to build only slightly larger versions of the Apollo hardware which got us to the Moon 46 years ago, and I've heard all the excuses in the world for not going. I think the people in charge of development are just cowards, they are so deathly afraid of failure that they just test things ad nauseum and are afraid to take that risk because they fear it would be the end of that program and more importantly for them, their jobs! For too many NASA is just a jobs program, something to keep smart people busy. It took most of my life to get that picture of Pluto by the way, we still need better photos of some of the moons of Uranus and Neptune by the way, as only one spacecraft has ever visited them.
The main damning thing is that despite 58 years of the space age, space travel is still something we only watch rather than do. Now is space travel ever became routine, such as buying an airplane ticket, I am sure taking apart Deimos wouldn't be a big deal, they would have tried a number of things and figured it out by trial and error.
Tom, the key is money. We could have gone to Mars long ago, but why? The Soviet Union did it to demonstrate technological superiority, to win allies. It worked. But America had a dream of technological superiority, and specifically superiority in space. Congress approved funding only until the Soviet lead was spoiled. The continued to fund military space to maintain superiority. Anything with that motivation will only be flags-and-footprints. If you want a sustained presence, you need something else. Sustained presence requires profit. Development of the A380 airbus cost more than a human mission to Mars. It was paid for without any government funding what so ever. So private enterprise can, but only if there's profit. How can a commercial venture recover its investment plus profit?
NASA could have sent humans to Mars long ago. One problem is scientists want to focus on science. I met several scientists who don't want humans in space, only unmanned probes.

Then the question becomes, how can we justify spending money on their research if no one's going in space? There is only so much money to fund astronomy, just because its interesting and its of no practical value otherwise. I one time wanted a degree in astronomy, and then I realized that for all practical purposes, professional astronomers are basically living off of charity, someone donates the funds to build those bog telescopes, and if the government funds it, it has to justify those funds each and every year to congress versus funding for something more useful, such as highways for instance. The space age as so far been a spectator sport, imagine if by 1960 we were only watching people fly on airplanes over television, and basically those were just test pilots or billionaires who could afford to fly in an airplane, there would be something wrong with this aviation age if that were so, people would be saying that airplane travel was just a waste of money, and their would be fights in congress as to whether to continue to fund the airplane, or whether we have more important priorities to fund, that just an aviation spectacular, and of God had intended man to fly, he would have given us wings!

Corporate executives for Old Space contractors don't see any value in space, they just want short-term profit. They gouge for as much as they can get away with. And NASA has become bureaucratic. Richard Nixon gutted NASA, redirected funds to the Vietnam War.

There are very few "Richard Nixon" Republicans these days, the Vietnam War wasn't his war anyway. I don't think most of the money came from cancelling the Apollo program. The key thing is why isn't the Space Age self-sustaining, why does it reuire funding from the government? The Wright Brothers didn't require a lot of funding from the government.

His election campaign claimed a secret plan to end the Vietnam War early, and America at that time was so desperate to get out of Vietnam that they elected him. He wasn't the Republican nominee. Unfortunately his "secret plan" was to take funds from NASA, give it to the military to find a surge. That didn't work at all. But after NASA was gutted, it never recovered.

It didn't work because the Democrats switched sides after drafting all those young men and sending them over to Vietnam, Nixon want to make sure that those young men didn't die in vain by making sure we won, the Democrats on the other hand wanted to make sure that the war they got us involved in was painted as "Richard Nixon's war" when it really was a decision of Democrats like John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B Johnson, those two created this mess and then handed off to Richard Nixon as an issue the Democrats could attack him on, but as I said before the Vietnam War wasn't started by the Nixon Administration, he was just doing his best to see that we wouldn't lose, and it was actually lost after Watergate and during the Ford Administration if I'm not mistaken, and it was lost in Congress, not on the battlefield!

At this point I suspect people at NASA think of doing anything significant in space as pie-in-the-sky, they have completely lost the can-do attitude of the 1960s. They don't believe they can send humans to Mars. Many will indulge in dreams of science fiction things, but they treat it as science fiction. They don't believe they can do anything as dramatic as NASA did from it's founding until Skylab.

Oh I'm sure we could, but what they are afraid of is something like Apollo 1, they had a fire in the capsule killing three astronauts, and there was a fear that this could cancel the program and then all those people would be out of work, so the best way to avoid that from happening is to drag out development and launch prep for as long as possible, until people start criticizing them for getting nothing done, as opposed to blowing something up on the launch pad.

I've seen many young people on TV, and one person in his late 20s in the local chapter who complain that they've never seen any big thing, any positive accomplishment that the world can cheer on like humans to the Moon. Not at all in their lifetime. To focus the world on positive things instead of constant "dark" this or "dark" that, we need something like humans to Mars. And not just flags-and-footprints, this time a permanent human base.
What I see on TV is dark this, or dark that. Shows focus on vampires, werewolves, and other creatures who live by killing or otherwise feeding upon others. These are metaphors for murder, theft, or legally harming others with various scams. The show "Being Human" is about a vampire, werewolf and ghost living together, murdering multiple people, engaged in organized crime, while trying to portray the lead characters as somehow victims or misunderstood. We need to stop glorifying crime, instead focus on something positive, creative, building, cooperation.
An article in Forbes estimates the War on Terror has cost $1.7 trillion from 2001 through 2015. And that doesn't include the Persian Gulf War of 1991, or conflicts in the Middle East from that war until the War on Terror. How much could we have accomplished if that money was spent on something productive? Something not war.

The first cost was the destruction of the World Trade Center on 9/11, that cost a lot, and I think if George Bush said that he was going to solve this problem by sending men to Mars, he would have been thrown out of office!

A lot of people were worried about the disparity between rich "have" countries vs third world "have not" countries. That this would eventually result in a war over resources. They point out conflict over resources have always occurred throughout history. No government has been able to deal with it; however, commercial business has. It's amazing that multi-national corporations are in the process of equalizing the wealth of the world. That's not their intent, but it is the result of what they're doing.

Well actually it enlarges their customer base, they never had any interest in keeping the world poor.

Globalization is moving manufacturing jobs to third world countries, giving workers there good jobs in high-tech manufacturing. The reason corporations do this is greed, so they can pay those workers peanuts. But those workers now have regular jobs, and earn a lot more than they used to. And wages will go up, workers in Mexico are already demanding pay increases and the same benefits as western countries. This has resulted in loss of jobs from Canada and the US. Sorry guys, but that's permanent. We can whine, or we can work with it. Those countries will become more wealthy, until they're equivalent to us. Then that means greater demand for all goods. The next question is whether we can provide raw materials to support a global economy as intensive as first world nations like Canada and the US.

Of course we can, the only thing that prevents the Third World from developing is Third World Politics, people become envious of successful people and want to redistribute those successes, thus the really talented have no incentive to accomplish anything, because they realize that anything they accomplish will only be taken away by the government and be redistributed, such talented people tend to want to move out of those Third World countries if they can.

We will have to harvest resources from space to support this economy. Yes, recycling solves a lot. Yes, greater efficiencies like CFL instead of incandescent light bulbs and greater insulation reduce energy requirements. But we will need more platinum for petroleum catalysts, hydrogen fuel cells, etc. We will need more gold and silver for electronics. We will need nickel and chrome for stainless steel, so equipment becomes durable and doesn't rust. We will need lots of stuff. We can get a lot of that from space.
And perhaps we can stop fighting over territory if new territory is opened in space.

The Universe is full of energy, the Sun wastes more energy each second than we consume in a year!

RobertDyck · 2015-09-24 09:32:32

Tom Kalbfus wrote:

I don't think most of the money came from cancelling the Apollo program.

Of course not. But Nixon claimed Apollo was a stupid stunt. He gutted NASA because he treated it as a waste of money.

Tom Kalbfus wrote:

The key thing is why isn't the Space Age self-sustaining, why does it reuire funding from the government? The Wright Brothers didn't require a lot of funding from the government.

The Wright Brothers sold their vehicle to the military. Further development was by military funding. After the military, it was commercialized as "barn stormers". How do you "barn storm" at a local air show in a small town with a rocket? So space has a major gap there. After barn storming came mail. But rockets can't deliver high speed mail, today we have the internet. After mail came passenger flights. But how do you provide high speed passenger flights? It was tried, the Concord provided trips across the Atlantic in 2 hours at high cost. It was cancelled because too few passengers used it to remain economically viable. Barn Stormers quickly added joy rides, not just display. Virgin Galactic is trying to do that. So Virgin Galactic is taking space to the "Barn Storming" stage. Space Adventures arranged for a few tourists to ride a Soyuz spacecraft to ISS. The price was far too high for high volume, and amazingly NASA objected.

Tom Kalbfus wrote:

It didn't work because the Democrats ... Nixon ... Democrats ... Democrats ... Nixon ... Democrats ... Nixon ... Watergate ... Ford Administration ... Congress

Uh huh. Partisan blah blah blah. Truth is Nixon was neither the Democrat nor Republican nominee. He thought humans in space was a ridiculous stunt (his words), so he gutted NASA. NASA has never really recovered.

Tom Kalbfus wrote:

I suspect people at NASA think of doing anything significant in space as pie-in-the-sky, they have completely lost the can-do attitude
Oh I'm sure we could, but what they are afraid of is something like Apollo 1

Sure they could, if they truly believed. But they don't. The can-do attitude is gone. You'll never achieve anything as long as you don't believe you can.

Tom Kalbfus wrote:

The first cost was the destruction of the World Trade Center on 9/11, that cost a lot, and I think if George Bush said that he was going to solve this problem by sending men to Mars, he would have been thrown out of office!

No, the first cost was long before that. Nixon gutted NASA. Since then NASA has limped along with a Frankenstein's monster of a Shuttle, until even that was cancelled. Carter's administration tried to replace Shuttle with VentureStar, but corporate greed had become so entrenched that getting cost down was a Herculean undertaking.

As for security, George H. W. Bush gave General Norman Schwarzkopf the order to have a clear military objective before going into Iraq in 1991. He did; he went in, kicked but, and went home. Unfortunately someone in Congress decided to establish no-fly zones and continue low level war with Iraq. That made the conflict in the Middle East drag on indefinitely, and it hasn't stopped since. The US created the problem, which escalated to 9/11. When George W. Bush pushed his missile defence system, I sat with a friend in a coffee shop to brainstorm what the real threats were. We concluded terrorists were the problem, and since Al Qaeda attempted a truck bombing of the World Trade Centre, they would try again. In March 2001 we predicted Al Qaeda would use box cutter knives to highjack a 757, slam it into one of the twin towers of the World Trade Centre, and this attack would occur on a working day during working hours some time in September after Labour Day when kids were back in school so the maximum number of adults would be back at work. Is that accurate enough? That was 6 months before the attack, so when George W. said no one could have predicted it, he was wrong. Actually, Israel's Mossad said the same thing. One senior investigator at the FBI was tracking Al Qaeda and he was in direct contact with Condoleezza Rice. So even Bush's security adviser knew.

Tom Kalbfus wrote:

the only thing that prevents the Third World from developing is Third World Politics

Very condescending. You realize the United States in the 1700s was little more than a third world country itself. It took a long time and a lot of resources to bring it to what it is today.

Tom Kalbfus wrote:

The Universe is full of energy, the Sun wastes more energy each second than we consume in a year!

So why don't we use it? Minnesota has 100% coal burning power generation. For over a decade now they've bought power from Manitoba, which generates power mostly with hydro dams, a tiny bit with wind mills. To be fair, Manitoba has 2 puny coal plants built as backups only, but had run them at maximum capacity to sell power to Minnesota, until environmentalists held Manitoba politicians to account. They built another small hydro plant so they can sell the same amount of power and completely shut down the coal plants. But all generating capacity within Minnesota is coal. Power from Manitoba only replaced some coal plants, but those coal plants were not shut down. Instead Minnesota sells power to California at a price higher than they pay Manitoba. Of course Alberta is mostly coal; when I worked there in 1995 roughly 98% was coal, 2% hydro. In 2013 Alberta was 51.56% is coal, 38.2% natural gas, 4% wind, 3% biomass, 2.6% hydro. Natural gas from coal beds is just another non-renewable fossil fuel, so I don't consider that progress.

Tom Kalbfus · 2015-09-25 01:47:28

RobertDyck wrote:

Tom Kalbfus wrote:
I don't think most of the money came from cancelling the Apollo program.
Of course not. But Nixon claimed Apollo was a stupid stunt. He gutted NASA because he treated it as a waste of money.

But I notice that Jimmy Carter did not restore the funding for the Apollo Program when he became President, he didn't even try! I guess Jimmy Carter must have agreed with Richard Nixon! Why do you suppose Jimmy Carter did not want to continue JFK's legacy?

RobertDyck wrote:

Tom Kalbfus wrote:
The key thing is why isn't the Space Age self-sustaining, why does it reuire funding from the government? The Wright Brothers didn't require a lot of funding from the government.
The Wright Brothers sold their vehicle to the military. Further development was by military funding. After the military, it was commercialized as "barn stormers". How do you "barn storm" at a local air show in a small town with a rocket? So space has a major gap there. After barn storming came mail. But rockets can't deliver high speed mail, today we have the internet.

Well actually they could, when you order something on Amazon, you still need physical delivery to receive what you ordered if it was not a download. A rocket could deliver a package for example, that is how Martian colonists would be resupplied by NASA after all.

RobertDyck wrote:

After mail came passenger flights. But how do you provide high speed passenger flights? It was tried, the Concord provided trips across the Atlantic in 2 hours at high cost.

Those would be Ballistic Spaceliners, with one of those you could cross the Atlantic in less than 30 minutes!

RobertDyck wrote:

It was cancelled because too few passengers used it to remain economically viable. Barn Stormers quickly added joy rides, not just display. Virgin Galactic is trying to do that. So Virgin Galactic is taking space to the "Barn Storming" stage. Space Adventures arranged for a few tourists to ride a Soyuz spacecraft to ISS. The price was far too high for high volume, and amazingly NASA objected.
Tom Kalbfus wrote:
It didn't work because the Democrats ... Nixon ... Democrats ... Democrats ... Nixon ... Democrats ... Nixon ... Watergate ... Ford Administration ... Congress
Uh huh. Partisan blah blah blah. Truth is Nixon was neither the Democrat nor Republican nominee. He thought humans in space was a ridiculous stunt (his words), so he gutted NASA. NASA has never really recovered.
Tom Kalbfus wrote:
I suspect people at NASA think of doing anything significant in space as pie-in-the-sky, they have completely lost the can-do attitude
Oh I'm sure we could, but what they are afraid of is something like Apollo 1
Sure they could, if they truly believed. But they don't. The can-do attitude is gone. You'll never achieve anything as long as you don't believe you can.

They want job security instead. Tell me what happened to most of the workers on Apollo once their goals were met? They got laid off right, so it seems to me that if I wanted Job security, I would want to stretch out that program for as long as possible, knowing that once we succeeded in landing men on Mars people would immediately talk about shutting down the program and find some other use for the money spent on it. Am I right or am I wrong?

RobertDyck wrote:

Tom Kalbfus wrote:
The first cost was the destruction of the World Trade Center on 9/11, that cost a lot, and I think if George Bush said that he was going to solve this problem by sending men to Mars, he would have been thrown out of office!
No, the first cost was long before that. Nixon gutted NASA. Since then NASA has limped along with a Frankenstein's monster of a Shuttle, until even that was cancelled. Carter's administration tried to replace Shuttle with VentureStar, but corporate greed had become so entrenched that getting cost down was a Herculean undertaking.

Actually no, that was Clinton.

RobertDyck wrote:

As for security, George H. W. Bush gave General Norman Schwarzkopf the order to have a clear military objective before going into Iraq in 1991. He did; he went in, kicked butt, and went home.

Imagine if FDR did that to Hitler, just kick his butt, send those German Soldiers packing from France back into Germany and then left him alone, and Stalin did the same! I think of someone gives you trouble and costs you lives, you get rid of him once and for all so he never does it again! That is the problem I had with George H. W. Bush, he didn't take America's enemies seriously, he gave him a spanking and sent him packing so he could later plot his revenge. I don't like loose ends or reoccurring villains! That is good for television series, not for real life!

Unfortunately someone in Congress decided to establish no-fly zones and continue low level war with Iraq.

You like to watch Kurds get slaughtered? Does that give you pleasure?

That made the conflict in the Middle East drag on indefinitely, and it hasn't stopped since.

All you have to do is be a cold-blooded reptile, and be unaffected by millions starving and being killed by Saddam's Troops, after all, they thought they were going to be liberated, but surprise, George H. W. Bush only liberated Kuwait, the Kurds thought they could cause some trouble for Saddam while his attention was diverted with George H. W. Bush kicking their butt, but when he stopped at the border with Iraq, went a little farther and then pulled back, he basically betrayed Saddams victims, because they started fighting with the though of overthrowing him, and then the US pulled back figuring Saddam had learned his lesson, and it was tough luck for the Kurds, they should have know better than to trust the United States, so Saddam gets to kill them, their woman and children because of George's action to teach Saddam a lesson, and your fine with that? How about we should have let Hitler finish his final Solution against the Jews after we kicked him out of France and taught him a lesson.

The US created the problem, which escalated to 9/11.

That's the familiar mantra, "everything is the US's fault!" I've heard that so many times it makes me sick. We should stop trying to do good, we should let dictators commit genocide and do nothing about it to stay out of wars, maybe we should cease to exist. Aren't you glad to be Canadian so everybody doesn't blame you for everything?

When George W. Bush pushed his missile defence system, I sat with a friend in a coffee shop to brainstorm what the real threats were. We concluded terrorists were the problem, and since Al Qaeda attempted a truck bombing of the World Trade Centre, they would try again. In March 2001 we predicted Al Qaeda would use box cutter knives to highjack a 757, slam it into one of the twin towers of the World Trade Centre, and this attack would occur on a working day during working hours some time in September after Labour Day when kids were back in school so the maximum number of adults would be back at work. Is that accurate enough? That was 6 months before the attack, so when George W. said no one could have predicted it, he was wrong. Actually, Israel's Mossad said the same thing. One senior investigator at the FBI was tracking Al Qaeda and he was in direct contact with Condoleezza Rice. So even Bush's security adviser knew.

So if you were President of the United States, you would go golfing that day, right? Ho hum, so two 747s were deliberately crashed into the World Trade Center, and one into the Pentagon, so its back to reading books to children? So according to you our President has no responsibilities, if someone attacks the United States, he is to do nothing to avoid starting a war?

Tom Kalbfus wrote:
the only thing that prevents the Third World from developing is Third World Politics
Very condescending. You realize the United States in the 1700s was little more than a third world country itself. It took a long time and a lot of resources to bring it to what it is today.

Actually their standard of living was higher than Great Britain's. American colonists had more meat in their diet, the grew taller than British people by several inches on average, and a much higher proportion of them owned land, why much of the British people remained a peasants working on the Lord's Manor. The reason the plantation owners imported slaves was due to the lack of peasants who were willing to work their land, instead they claimed their own land and worked as independent farmers. The people who settled North America had to afford the passage across the ocean, they either bought a ticket or signed contracts of indenturement for a fixed period of time in exchange for passage. The poorest of the poor didn't make it across the ocean. American colonists were basically middle class land owners for the most part.

Tom Kalbfus wrote:
The Universe is full of energy, the Sun wastes more energy each second than we consume in a year!
So why don't we use it? Minnesota has 100% coal burning power generation. For over a decade now they've bought power from Manitoba, which generates power mostly with hydro dams, a tiny bit with wind mills. To be fair, Manitoba has 2 puny coal plants built as backups only, but had run them at maximum capacity to sell power to Minnesota, until environmentalists held Manitoba politicians to account. They built another small hydro plant so they can sell the same amount of power and completely shut down the coal plants. But all generating capacity within Minnesota is coal. Power from Manitoba only replaced some coal plants, but those coal plants were not shut down. Instead Minnesota sells power to California at a price higher than they pay Manitoba. Of course Alberta is mostly coal; when I worked there in 1995 roughly 98% was coal, 2% hydro. In 2013 Alberta was 51.56% is coal, 38.2% natural gas, 4% wind, 3% biomass, 2.6% hydro. Natural gas from coal beds is just another non-renewable fossil fuel, so I don't consider that progress.

Coal is stored solar energy.

RobertDyck · 2015-09-25 05:10:40

Tom Kalbfus wrote:

Imagine if FDR did that to Hitler... That is the problem I had with George H. W. Bush, he didn't take America's enemies seriously, he gave him a spanking and sent him packing so he could later plot his revenge. I don't like loose ends or reoccurring villains! That is good for television series, not for real life!

First, Europeans have the attitude that killing soldiers is Ok, but killing a prince is not. The rich kings and queens can play war with their cousins, sending thousands of soldiers to die, but you don't kill royalty. So George H. W. Bush was constrained by his European allies. But there is another issue: don't annex Iraq. And if they aren't annexed to the United States, they they are entitled to their own government. The issue was to kick them out of Kuwait, that was all. Furthermore, General Schwarzkopf knew that if they Republican Guard was defeated, they would be discredited. But if they were slaughtered, they would be martyrs. Family of the killed Republican Guard soldiers would be out for revenge. The objective was to make Iraq's conquest of Kuwait a failure. Not to make it their equivalent to 9/11.

And tell me, what would America do if a foreign power assassinated the American president? Why would you think Iraq would react any differently to assassination of their head of state? Sure, when Saddam Hussein was captured, America had kicked out the old regime and installed a puppet government formed from a rival political group, based on a different ethnic population. But what if the old regime was still in power, and you just assassinated Hussein?

Tom Kalbfus wrote:

You like to watch Kurds get slaughtered? Does that give you pleasure?

When Iran invaded Iraq, Iran got Kurds to fight against their own government. So America thought it was a good idea to do the same. They forgot to think of what happens after the war is over. Once foreign military pulls out, the government of Iraq will be out for revenge against any citizens who took up arms against their own government in support of a foreign power. That's normally called treason. America should never have involved the Kurds. But once they did, the price is you have to sit on your hands and do nothing while your enemy takes revenge upon your alie. But America didn't do this either. The result is ongoing occupation. America has been involved militarily for over a decade.

Tom Kalbfus wrote:

That made the conflict in the Middle East drag on indefinitely, and it hasn't stopped since.

All you have to do is be a cold-blooded reptile, and be unaffected by millions starving and being killed by Saddam's Troops, after all, they thought they were going to be liberated, but surprise, George H. W. Bush only liberated Kuwait, the Kurds thought they could cause some trouble for Saddam while his attention was diverted with George H. W. Bush kicking their butt, but when he stopped at the border with Iraq, went a little farther and then pulled back, he basically betrayed Saddams victims, because they started fighting with the though of overthrowing him, and then the US pulled back figuring Saddam had learned his lesson, and it was tough luck for the Kurds, they should have know better than to trust the United States, so Saddam gets to kill them, their woman and children because of George's action to teach Saddam a lesson, and your fine with that? How about we should have let Hitler finish his final Solution against the Jews after we kicked him out of France and taught him a lesson.

Tom Kalbfus wrote:

The US created the problem, which escalated to 9/11.
That's the familiar mantra, "everything is the US's fault!" I've heard that so many times it makes me sick. We should stop trying to do good, we should let dictators commit genocide and do nothing about it to stay out of wars, maybe we should cease to exist. Aren't you glad to be Canadian so everybody doesn't blame you for everything?

Dropping bombs on people is not doing good. Sending covert ops to murder, is not doing good. And the second Iraq ware saw more Americans killed than 9/11, but more importantly over 100,000 civilians. How is that better than ISIS? American can be blamed for genocide.

And Prime Minister Harper is copying Republican foreign policy. Actually, the Progressive Conservative party doesn't exist any more. It's now the Conservative Party of Canada, and Stephen Harper has turned it into Republican north.

Tom Kalbfus wrote:

So if you were President of the United States, you would go golfing that day, right? Ho hum, so two 747s were deliberately crashed into the World Trade Center, and one into the Pentagon, so its back to reading books to children? So according to you our President has no responsibilities, if someone attacks the United States, he is to do nothing to avoid starting a war?

The Taliban offered to hand over Osama bin Laden. George W. should have accepted that offer. And there is *NO* excuse for attacking Iraq again. Al Qaeda was in Afghanistan.

Tom Kalbfus wrote:

American colonists were basically middle class land owners for the most part.

Except for blacks. And Irish. And Chinese. And Scots. Etc. Maybe you aren't familiar with Scots. They were tenant farmers, until landlords realized they could make more money from large sheep hurds to feed wool to the new factories. So poor tenant farmers came to pretty much all the British colonies with little more than clothes on their back, looking for land.

Tom Kalbfus · 2015-09-25 08:06:13

RobertDyck wrote:

Tom Kalbfus wrote:
Imagine if FDR did that to Hitler... That is the problem I had with George H. W. Bush, he didn't take America's enemies seriously, he gave him a spanking and sent him packing so he could later plot his revenge. I don't like loose ends or reoccurring villains! That is good for television series, not for real life!
First, Europeans have the attitude that killing soldiers is Ok, but killing a prince is not. The rich kings and queens can play war with their cousins, sending thousands of soldiers to die, but you don't kill royalty. So George H. W. Bush was constrained by his European allies. But there is another issue: don't annex Iraq. And if they aren't annexed to the United States, they they are entitled to their own government. The issue was to kick them out of Kuwait, that was all. Furthermore, General Schwarzkopf knew that if they Republican Guard was defeated, they would be discredited. But if they were slaughtered, they would be martyrs. Family of the killed Republican Guard soldiers would be out for revenge. The objective was to make Iraq's conquest of Kuwait a failure. Not to make it their equivalent to 9/11.

Saddam Hussein was not a prince. The United States was not constrained by its European Allies, those allies could not stop him. If you say the Iraqi people had a right to choose their own government, the Saddam denied them that, as Saddam was not democratically elected, but if he was, then the Iraqi people would then be responsible for what he did, since he would in that case represent them. The Iraqi people would then have to pay the price for waging a war against their neighbor, they shouldn't get away with starting a war and then saying, I'm sorry and go back to their lives as if nothing had happened.

And tell me, what would America do if a foreign power assassinated the American president? Why would you think Iraq would react any differently to assassination of their head of state? Sure, when Saddam Hussein was captured, America had kicked out the old regime and installed a puppet government formed from a rival political group, based on a different ethnic population. But what if the old regime was still in power, and you just assassinated Hussein?
Tom Kalbfus wrote:
You like to watch Kurds get slaughtered? Does that give you pleasure?
When Iran invaded Iraq, Iran got Kurds to fight against their own government. So America thought it was a good idea to do the same. They forgot to think of what happens after the war is over. Once foreign military pulls out, the government of Iraq will be out for revenge against any citizens who took up arms against their own government in support of a foreign power. That's normally called treason. America should never have involved the Kurds. But once they did, the price is you have to sit on your hands and do nothing while your enemy takes revenge upon your alie. But America didn't do this either. The result is ongoing occupation. America has been involved militarily for over a decade.
Tom Kalbfus wrote:
That made the conflict in the Middle East drag on indefinitely, and it hasn't stopped since.
All you have to do is be a cold-blooded reptile, and be unaffected by millions starving and being killed by Saddam's Troops, after all, they thought they were going to be liberated, but surprise, George H. W. Bush only liberated Kuwait, the Kurds thought they could cause some trouble for Saddam while his attention was diverted with George H. W. Bush kicking their butt, but when he stopped at the border with Iraq, went a little farther and then pulled back, he basically betrayed Saddams victims, because they started fighting with the though of overthrowing him, and then the US pulled back figuring Saddam had learned his lesson, and it was tough luck for the Kurds, they should have know better than to trust the United States, so Saddam gets to kill them, their woman and children because of George's action to teach Saddam a lesson, and your fine with that? How about we should have let Hitler finish his final Solution against the Jews after we kicked him out of France and taught him a lesson.
Tom Kalbfus wrote:
The US created the problem, which escalated to 9/11.
That's the familiar mantra, "everything is the US's fault!" I've heard that so many times it makes me sick. We should stop trying to do good, we should let dictators commit genocide and do nothing about it to stay out of wars, maybe we should cease to exist. Aren't you glad to be Canadian so everybody doesn't blame you for everything?
Dropping bombs on people is not doing good. Sending covert ops to murder, is not doing good. And the second Iraq ware saw more Americans killed than 9/11, but more importantly over 100,000 civilians. How is that better than ISIS? American can be blamed for genocide.

dropping bombs on the Germans is what defeated them and what saved the remaining Jews that the Germans haven't yet killed, had we not dropped bombs on the Germans, they would have proceeded with killing the Jews unimpeded. War is a nasty business, there is no nice way to fight it. The United States by the way liberated Europe, first Western Europe and then the rest after winning the Cold War!

And Prime Minister Harper is copying Republican foreign policy. Actually, the Progressive Conservative party doesn't exist any more. It's now the Conservative Party of Canada, and Stephen Harper has turned it into Republican north.

Why shouldn't the Conservative Party be conservative, isn't that why its so named?

Tom Kalbfus wrote:
So if you were President of the United States, you would go golfing that day, right? Ho hum, so two 747s were deliberately crashed into the World Trade Center, and one into the Pentagon, so its back to reading books to children? So according to you our President has no responsibilities, if someone attacks the United States, he is to do nothing to avoid starting a war?
The Taliban offered to hand over Osama bin Laden. George W. should have accepted that offer. And there is *NO* excuse for attacking Iraq again. Al Qaeda was in Afghanistan.
Tom Kalbfus wrote:
American colonists were basically middle class land owners for the most part.
Except for blacks. And Irish. And Chinese. And Scots. Etc. Maybe you aren't familiar with Scots. They were tenant farmers, until landlords realized they could make more money from large sheep hurds to feed wool to the new factories. So poor tenant farmers came to pretty much all the British colonies with little more than clothes on their back, looking for land.

And except for the blacks, they did find land Scots and Irish weren't treated any worse than other white people in the 13 colonies. There were very few Chinese in the 13 colonies, probably most people didn't know to treat them any different as they were just curiosities, if a Chinese person ever showed up during the Revolutionary War, I don't think he would have been mistreated, unless he got involved and was captured on the opposite side from which he was involved in.

I am done, you brought up the Vietnam thing and the War on Terror, I just felt compelled to defend my country once you brought those subjects up, they have nothing to do with why were not in space, if those two wars hadn't happened, we still wouldn't be colonizing the Mars or the Moon

Last edited by Tom Kalbfus (2015-09-25 10:32:03)

GW Johnson · 2015-09-25 12:11:12

What Robert Dyck says about our involvement in the middle east is true enough, but it is incomplete.

For most but not all of the time from when he came to power in a coup in 1959, almost until we overthrew him, Saddam Hussein was a paid US government employee. He was paid to help stage that coup. He was “our boy” against Iran in all the years since the Iran hostage crisis. We gave him the chemical weapons he used on Iranian troops, and upon his own people, during and after the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war. Because we could not let him lose to Iran, and he was losing.

We lost him to Soviet influence sometime in the early 1960’s (that’s where he got all the Mig-21’s), but we had him back on our payroll by sometime before the Iranian hostage crisis. We saw fit to pay him to be an evil dictator, precisely because he kept a greater evil, mullah-controlled Iran, in check. This kind of rationale is precisely why the CIA does so many of the evil things that it does. (That’s an explanation, not an excuse.)

After the 1991 Gulf War, we no longer paid him, so he didn’t mind his keepers, but he still functioned as a threat to keep Iran in check. For free. And THAT is the main reason why Bush 41 left him in power after that war. All those other things Robert mentioned are true, but of very secondary importance. We had to have a check on Iranian mullah ambitions, no matter how evil our check was.

As for the response to 9-11, from the beginning, Bush 43’s “neo-con” (read “extremist conservative” if you like, I see no difference, actually) advisors pushed to invade Iraq and topple Saddam in retribution for the attacks. Bush 43, not known for his great wisdom or even his deep education (he was a C student), failed to include anybody among his advisors of any different stripe. So all he heard was “Iraq” and he let them do it, by way of Afghanistan. If you hear it enough, and you do not know any better, then after a while you believe it is true. (You can thank both Goebbels and Lenin for that that notion: ever heard of “the big lie technique”? Countless since have used it for all kinds of nefarious purposes, including US election campaign organizations, for a long time now.)

These extremist conservatives, like so many of their type, were self-seduced into using “might makes right” and “impose democracy everywhere we can” as ideologies to be put into US policy. They then seduced “W” into doing it. And that is why we have been bogged down for decades in the middle east fighting pointless wars that nobody ever bothered to pay for.

Ideology NEVER EVER makes good policy, I don’t care who comes up with it! There are many examples, not the least of which are Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany. Cheney and many others have a lot to answer for. Such as the best part of a million dead. Not mention almost $2 trillion in war debt.

The only chemical weapons we ever found in Iraq were 6 rusty old rocket rounds lost in the sand since the Iran-Iraq war. They had “made in USA” stamped on the warheads. You noticed, I hope, how quickly the story that “we finally found the WMD’s!” died? That’s why.

With Saddam gone, Iran was free to run amuck. And they have, ever since. Their two proxy armies are Hamas for the Sunnis and Hezbollah for the Shiites. You’ll notice that they never use both in the same theater of operations. The mullahs are evil, but they are not stupid. Of course they will cheat on the nuclear deal. They’re just betting we have not the belly to punish them for it.

We have no conventional weapons that can destroy that Fordow facility inside that mountain. We will have to nuke it, and repeatedly, to destroy it. Fortunately, it is outside the main population centers, which reduces mass casualties dramatically. Unfortunately, given significant warning, the mullahs will attempt to forestall us with a human shield. That is simply what kind of evil people they are.

Taking down Saddam before the mullahs (and their “Revolutionary Guard”, the equivalent to Hitler’s SS that keeps them in power) were removed in Iran, is without a doubt the most egregiously stupid mistake in US foreign policy, ever! Bar none! It makes fighting the Civil War to assuage the egos of rich slaveholders and rich abolitionists in Congress look sane, by comparison. Thank you very much, “Darth” Cheney, et al.

As for what this thread started over, consider this: the ONLY reason we actually sent astronauts to the moon was 8 years solid and consistent support for “winning the space race”, on the part of JFK and then LBJ. No president since has done anything at all like that. Each has merely killed his predecessor’s weak initiatives, and substituted his own weak ideas. And we’ve been nowhere but orbit since. Do you see a pattern there? (You should.)

Space lost its political luster long ago. In point of fact, the only thing keeping it alive at all, has been the public popularity of a few things like the Hubble Space Telescope and the rovers on Mars. And an increasingly-inept NASA bureaucracy almost lost the Hubble to extreme bad management (blurry optics from not checking and confirming). Guys, this Hubble almost-a-disaster was 3 decades ago!

The NASA we have is NOT the NASA that put men on the moon. It has become a very bloated bureaucracy seeking only to preserve itself, and it is very risk-averse, after killing 3 crews from its own publicly-disclosed bad management. That is incompatible with attempting to do anything not done before. It is compatible with making a huge deal over how difficult and dangerous it is to do what we did before but have since lost (the SLS/Orion as a new moon rocket). It is also compatible with lying to the public (the Challenger hearings attempted cover-up, and that SLS/Orion is a Mars rocket). Didn’t anybody else notice this pattern?

“Big Space” is, and always has been, a part of the military-industrial complex that Eisenhower warned us about. What he predicted (including the perpetual wars for company profits) came to pass around 3 or 4 decades ago, and it has a stifling hold on things now. I have used the term “giant corporate welfare state” for this before. It has spread beyond aerospace/defense into many sectors of the economy.

The US government is now wholly owned by these corporations, and only serves merely as the pickpocket to separate cash from the people to keep these giants wealthy. They need accomplish nothing useful for the money anymore. Example 1: the F-35 boondoggle, designed from the start to be unsuccessful. Example 2: the SLS/Orion boondoggle, which if it ever does fly, will be too expensive to ever use. There are many more. Can you say “B-2”? Can you say “B-1B avionics suite”?

Until and unless this setup is broken, EXPECT NOT any humans going to Mars, the moon, or the asteroids on government-sponsored missions. Expect more of the same nonsense repeated over and over, and expect no change. Ever.

That is my definition of insanity, if you do expect to see change, while just repeating this same nonsense. Our only hope to even crack this system open at all, much less fix it, lies with newcomers like the Spacex’s of this world. But they had better get it done, before they too get corrupted by the lure of all the money, and join the pyramid scheme.

Another symptom of it is the political party incivility and dysfunction that we suffer. This is mandated by the corporations that own them, as a circus to distract the people from what is really being done to them. Both parties are party to it, if you will forgive my choice of words. In my book, this kind of political behavior is oathbreaking and treason. As far as I am concerned, both parties are crap, and should be scrapped entirely. While we’re at it, we should outlaw ideology-as-policy. On pain of death.

They do it because money talks louder than all else, in the halls of government. But it is a pyramid scheme, and it will eventually fall, with consequences no one will enjoy. In fact, most will die. So too did Rome fall. They went down this exact same self-serving corruption path that we have just begun.

If you want to see a government-sponsored mission to Mars, then we all have to fix our governments. All are defective, the US egregiously so. Myself, I’m betting on a visionary private concern attempting some sort of dramatic space stunt first. Too many people believe in ideologies to ever even consider changing or repairing their governments (which kinda says we’re doomed).

Sorry to bear the bad news,

GW “Cassandra” Johnson

Tom Kalbfus · 2015-09-25 19:18:00

GWJohnson wrote:

What Robert Dyck says about our involvement in the middle east is true enough, but it is incomplete.
For most but not all of the time from when he came to power in a coup in 1959, almost until we overthrew him, Saddam Hussein was a paid US government employee. He was paid to help stage that coup. He was “our boy” against Iran in all the years since the Iran hostage crisis. We gave him the chemical weapons he used on Iranian troops, and upon his own people, during and after the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war. Because we could not let him lose to Iran, and he was losing.

Oh you mean like this government employee General Douglas MacArthur?

Tell me something, why would we hire a foreigner like him, when we could hire an American like General Douglas MacArthur? He ran Japan for a time, and as defacto leader of Japan, he didn't start wars with neighboring countries. So tell me, if Saddam Hussein was a US government employee, why wouldn't an American citizen qualify for the position he held? Seems to me that US Generals are far more reliable and they don't start wars with us the way Saddam Hussein did.

GWJohnson wrote:

These extremist conservatives, like so many of their type, were self-seduced into using “might makes right” and “impose democracy everywhere we can” as ideologies to be put into US policy. They then seduced “W” into doing it. And that is why we have been bogged down for decades in the middle east fighting pointless wars that nobody ever bothered to pay for.

So you unlike George W. Bush, think that Iraqis aren't suitable for democracy, they are not as good as the typical American, which means that if any refugees come knocking at are door, we should say, sorry, you can't become US citizens because you are judged to be incapable of democracy. I have a question for you, if we can't make Iraq and other countries through out the world civilized and democratic so they don't threaten us, what should we do with them? If we leave them alone, they will threaten us, just like Saddam Hussein did, so obviously that is not an option, and if we can't democratize them, what else shall we do?

GWJohnson wrote:

Until and unless this setup is broken, EXPECT NOT any humans going to Mars, the moon, or the asteroids on government-sponsored missions. Expect more of the same nonsense repeated over and over, and expect no change. Ever.

If nothing else, superior robots or nanotechnology will get us to Mars if they don't destroy us first. Probably those superintelligent robot would solve the Iraq problem as well, and the Iraqis, no matter how violent, won't be able to out think those AIs and if they blow up a few, the robots will simply download their personality into another robot body, so the fanatics would only be blowing up hardware.

Last edited by Tom Kalbfus (2015-09-25 19:31:15)

GW Johnson · 2015-09-26 10:15:13

Tom, you need to research the real facts of history and quit believing in the propaganda. The truth ain't in the books, you gotta go dig the truth out.

Saddam was employed and paid through the CIA. There's quite the history of them propping up evil dictators like that for other purposes, if you read between the lines and do a little digging.

For another example, CIA engineered the coup that brought the Shah to power as a dictator in Iran, just so we would have a friend in the middle east. That coup toppled their democratically-elected president, a thing remarkable for the time (1953), since most of those countries had zero social tradition regarding democratic life.

That coup bringing a hated dictator is why the Iranians resent us, to this very day. The deposed president’s name was Mossadegh. He had too many leftist-communist leanings to suit CIA in that same 1950’s McCarthy-witch-hunt governing culture in the US.

Most of those countries have two overwhelming defects regarding planting a democracy. You can't just walk in there, impose a democratic form of government, and expect it to work (neocon ideology about that was, and still is, simply egregiously wrong). It’s not about what or how we who would impose it would choose to do it. The local folks simply do not have the traditions or experience to make it work. They quite literally do NOT know how to behave as citizens of a democracy. Here's the two defects:

(1) their borders were deliberately drawn by the Brits after WW1 to put warring tribes together deliberately, so that they would be too busy killing each other. That way they would never unite to throw the Brits out. And it worked, right up to the aftermath of WW2, when the Brits left. Iraq is not alone, just the most egregious example. Nothing has changed since, by the way.

(2) With the brief exception of an elected government in Iran, none of those countries or tribes has ever known anything but brute force rule by despots. That goes back as far as there is recorded history; several thousand years. All the social and religious traditions were about living under dictators. That's all they ever knew. That’s why they do not know how to behave as citizens of a democracy.

As for Douglas MacArthur, he was employed by the US Army, not the CIA. Different outfit, different traditions. I made no comparison between him and Saddam Hussein, and you shouldn’t either. It’s insulting to the memory of MacArthur.

MacArthur was a very talented general, but he was also an insufferable prima donna. He almost got us into a land war with Red China in 1951, which is why Truman cashiered him, for gross insubordination. At that time, we did not have the resources, conventional or nuclear, to take on the Chinese Red Army in Korea. Truman was right to do what he did, as it turned out. Although it was many years later before the American public understand what happened and why.

Technologically, I do not see why you put such faith in robotics and AI. For one thing, there are no smarter-than-we-are robots, and there won't be for many years yet. Nobody understands what AI really might actually be, which is exactly why we have not yet actually created it. We'll have to understand what intelligence is in ourselves, before we can put it into silicon. I see no signs of that kind of understanding yet.

For another, I'm kind of glad there is no real AI yet. There is the problem illustrated in fiction by Asimov's 3 Laws of Robotics, which we do not yet know how to build in, even if we had such robots. Without that, any superintelligent self-replicating robots would inherently pose the same threat to us that your fictional Cylons (in the picture) posed. Even Stephen Hawking agrees.

Back to the CIA: long long ago, when I was young, I went to DC and interviewed with them. There's 2 sides to that house: the analysts and the spooks. It's the spook side that does all the dirty spy stuff. The evil dictators they've propped up include Noriega, Saddam Hussein, the Shah, Fulgencio Batista, and many more. None of that ever led a good outcome long-term, so I think that sort of policy is decades overdue a serious review and revision. Ain't gonna happen from inside, though; the culture is wrong for that.

I interviewed for a job on the analyst side, but didn't take the job because I was rather unimpressed with them. Not to mention bad starting pay in a region with high costs of living. Coincidentally, that was just about the time the CIA analysts completely misunderstand the inlets on the ramjet SA-6 "Gainful" as exaggerated fairings, and pronounced it a rocket, with about 40% of the kill envelope that it really had. That sort of mistake is also induced by a cultural thing in the organization. It's sort of an inherent defect in any organization with a lot of history behind it.

Not quite a decade later I helped clean up the mess created by that mistake the CIA analysts made, as an industry engineer. I evaluated the SA-6 fuel and engine (both quite unique) from data and hardware captured on the battlefield (1973 Arab-Israeli war) as part of Project Group Work on our side, and I used the data from that and the other contractors to put together a model that revealed the true kill envelope. That's when I first learned on-the-job that the real smarts lay not in any of the government agencies or labs, but in the companies they hired to do the real work.

Nothing about that picture has ever changed. But it has a serious downside. Any capabilities the government does not hire them for, those same companies do not preserve, because no one is managing the preservation of technologies and skillsets. Not the government, not the companies. How brain-dead is that?

That is exactly how technology and skillsets get lost. That is why "big space" is now finding it so hard to build a moon rocket or a space capsule. The guys in those companies who actually knew how to do those things were laid off, retired, and/or died long ago, without ever passing on their knowledge. NONE of the government labs or agencies EVER really knew how to do those things (including NASA).

Not just aerospace, but all engineering technology and skillsets, are at most about 40% science (meaning written-down where others could learn it from a book or report), 50% art (passed-on directly on-the-job one-on-one from mentor to apprentice), and 10% blind dumb luck. That's in production work. In development work the art and luck fractions are higher.

Industrial culture typically make mentors of those in the 50-55 age bracket. The slightly younger ones (at age 45-55) are too busy and overloaded to do it. Younger than that, they do not yet have the experience and knowledge to teach. The older ones (55+) no longer care much about anything but retiring. It’s a Dilbert sort of thing. But it’s quite true.

The art percentage is as high as it is, because no manager ever wanted to pay for writing it all down, pure and simple. Yet typically, management belief systems deny that there is any such art. Otherwise, employees could not be treated like grapes: a dime-a-dozen, interchangeable, and gotten rid of when they get too old (age 45-ish) and expensive. That's an observed fact, offered to you from Old Doc Johnson's "School of Hard Knocks", based on decades of service in industry, observing all this going on around me.

GW

Tom Kalbfus · 2015-09-28 08:34:41

GW Johnson wrote:

Tom, you need to research the real facts of history and quit believing in the propaganda. The truth ain't in the books, you gotta go dig the truth out.
Saddam was employed and paid through the CIA. There's quite the history of them propping up evil dictators like that for other purposes, if you read between the lines and do a little digging.
For another example, CIA engineered the coup that brought the Shah to power as a dictator in Iran, just so we would have a friend in the middle east. That coup toppled their democratically-elected president, a thing remarkable for the time (1953), since most of those countries had zero social tradition regarding democratic life.
That coup bringing a hated dictator is why the Iranians resent us, to this very day. The deposed president’s name was Mossadegh. He had too many leftist-communist leanings to suit CIA in that same 1950’s McCarthy-witch-hunt governing culture in the US.
Most of those countries have two overwhelming defects regarding planting a democracy. You can't just walk in there, impose a democratic form of government, and expect it to work (neocon ideology about that was, and still is, simply egregiously wrong). It’s not about what or how we who would impose it would choose to do it. The local folks simply do not have the traditions or experience to make it work. They quite literally do NOT know how to behave as citizens of a democracy. Here's the two defects:
(1) their borders were deliberately drawn by the Brits after WW1 to put warring tribes together deliberately, so that they would be too busy killing each other. That way they would never unite to throw the Brits out. And it worked, right up to the aftermath of WW2, when the Brits left. Iraq is not alone, just the most egregious example. Nothing has changed since, by the way.
(2) With the brief exception of an elected government in Iran, none of those countries or tribes has ever known anything but brute force rule by despots. That goes back as far as there is recorded history; several thousand years. All the social and religious traditions were about living under dictators. That's all they ever knew. That’s why they do not know how to behave as citizens of a democracy.
As for Douglas MacArthur, he was employed by the US Army, not the CIA. Different outfit, different traditions. I made no comparison between him and Saddam Hussein, and you shouldn’t either. It’s insulting to the memory of MacArthur.

No, when the United States defeated Japan, Harry Truman put General MacArthur in charge of it, he did not hire a strongman foreigner. So why wouldn't the United States put a US General in charge of Iraq instead of supporting a dictator? It would seem to make more sense simple to get rid of Saddam and put a general in charge like we did with Japan. You see Saddam wouldn't do what we told him to do, and we did not order him to invade Kuwait, so it seems we do not have reliable employees if we hire foreigners like Saddam as opposed to Generals like MacArthur.

MacArthur was a very talented general, but he was also an insufferable prima donna. He almost got us into a land war with Red China in 1951, which is why Truman cashiered him, for gross insubordination. At that time, we did not have the resources, conventional or nuclear, to take on the Chinese Red Army in Korea. Truman was right to do what he did, as it turned out. Although it was many years later before the American public understand what happened and why.

The way I see it, China almost got us in a land war by invading the Korean Pennisula, and MacArthur wanted to stop China, Truman stopped MacArthur from stopping China, and the result is we now have a nuclear armed North Korea, which we wouldn't have had Truman allowed MacArthur to stop China! China still is not acting responsible for this Monster they created called North Korea! I think perhaps we should make it clear to them that we should treat an attack by North Korea as an attack by China, since China created North Korea and North Korea would not exist if it weren't for China.

What did MacArthur want to do, but respond to China's invasion, and Truman ordered him to be a chicken and run away! China had no nuclear weapons in 1951, and it just attacked a country which did! Now what MacArthur proposed was to nuke a bunch of Chinese cities which were the staging grounds for the Chinese invasion of Korea.

Technologically, I do not see why you put such faith in robotics and AI. For one thing, there are no smarter-than-we-are robots, and there won't be for many years yet. Nobody understands what AI really might actually be, which is exactly why we have not yet actually created it. We'll have to understand what intelligence is in ourselves, before we can put it into silicon. I see no signs of that kind of understanding yet.

We simply have to simulate a human brain on a computer, we understand the cellular processes of the human brain pretty well, we just have to put it all together to simulate a whole human brain and that requires raw computer processing power, and we will achieve that power by the end of this decade, that is what Moore's law indicates, and shortly thereafter, computers will surpass human intelligence, and we won't be subject to the limits of human brain power, when it comes to exploring and settling space.

For another, I'm kind of glad there is no real AI yet. There is the problem illustrated in fiction by Asimov's 3 Laws of Robotics, which we do not yet know how to build in, even if we had such robots. Without that, any superintelligent self-replicating robots would inherently pose the same threat to us that your fictional Cylons (in the picture) posed. Even Stephen Hawking agrees.

But as those Cylons realized, the next group of Cylons which were more advanced that they would also pose a threat to them, so basically the AIs we develop would be in the same boat as ourselves, in that they would be made shortly obsolete due to Moore's law. I think we need something smarter than humans in order to settle space, because so far, it has taken too long based on our brainpower alone.

Back to the CIA: long long ago, when I was young, I went to DC and interviewed with them. There's 2 sides to that house: the analysts and the spooks. It's the spook side that does all the dirty spy stuff. The evil dictators they've propped up include Noriega, Saddam Hussein, the Shah, Fulgencio Batista, and many more. None of that ever led a good outcome long-term, so I think that sort of policy is decades overdue a serious review and revision. Ain't gonna happen from inside, though; the culture is wrong for that.

And what did those four have in common? They were all foreigners! If they were hired by the CIA, they were not very loyal employees. What is wrong with just having an American General run those countries like MacArthur ran Japan? Japan didn't start any wars when it was under MacArthur's rule. MacArthur didn't have a power base other than through the US chain of command, Saddam Hussein did, and thus as an employee of the US government, he was not very reliable, as we have seen with his invasion of Kuwait. So do you advocate the direct rule of Iraq through a US general, or do you advocate that the Iraq people elect someone who is another dictator and thus a threat to us? What is you solution?

I interviewed for a job on the analyst side, but didn't take the job because I was rather unimpressed with them. Not to mention bad starting pay in a region with high costs of living. Coincidentally, that was just about the time the CIA analysts completely misunderstand the inlets on the ramjet SA-6 "Gainful" as exaggerated fairings, and pronounced it a rocket, with about 40% of the kill envelope that it really had. That sort of mistake is also induced by a cultural thing in the organization. It's sort of an inherent defect in any organization with a lot of history behind it.

Well actually, a Jet is an air breathing rocket, it expells a gas out the back that expands and provides the push forward, much as a rocket does.

Not quite a decade later I helped clean up the mess created by that mistake the CIA analysts made, as an industry engineer. I evaluated the SA-6 fuel and engine (both quite unique) from data and hardware captured on the battlefield (1973 Arab-Israeli war) as part of Project Group Work on our side, and I used the data from that and the other contractors to put together a model that revealed the true kill envelope. That's when I first learned on-the-job that the real smarts lay not in any of the government agencies or labs, but in the companies they hired to do the real work.
Nothing about that picture has ever changed. But it has a serious downside. Any capabilities the government does not hire them for, those same companies do not preserve, because no one is managing the preservation of technologies and skillsets. Not the government, not the companies. How brain-dead is that?
That is exactly how technology and skillsets get lost. That is why "big space" is now finding it so hard to build a moon rocket or a space capsule. The guys in those companies who actually knew how to do those things were laid off, retired, and/or died long ago, without ever passing on their knowledge. NONE of the government labs or agencies EVER really knew how to do those things (including NASA).

If a company is going to build a rocket properly, it needs to build one for itself, to chase a profit that NASA provides, NASA shouldn't guarantee them a profit, just provide for the possibility of one, but the company has to decide to build the rocket, NASA shouldn't be paying them to build a rocket, it should be paying them to achieve a goal, a rocket is simply a means to an end that NASA set up and offers a reward for.

Not just aerospace, but all engineering technology and skillsets, are at most about 40% science (meaning written-down where others could learn it from a book or report), 50% art (passed-on directly on-the-job one-on-one from mentor to apprentice), and 10% blind dumb luck. That's in production work. In development work the art and luck fractions are higher.
Industrial culture typically make mentors of those in the 50-55 age bracket. The slightly younger ones (at age 45-55) are too busy and overloaded to do it. Younger than that, they do not yet have the experience and knowledge to teach. The older ones (55+) no longer care much about anything but retiring. It’s a Dilbert sort of thing. But it’s quite true.
The art percentage is as high as it is, because no manager ever wanted to pay for writing it all down, pure and simple. Yet typically, management belief systems deny that there is any such art. Otherwise, employees could not be treated like grapes: a dime-a-dozen, interchangeable, and gotten rid of when they get too old (age 45-ish) and expensive. That's an observed fact, offered to you from Old Doc Johnson's "School of Hard Knocks", based on decades of service in industry, observing all this going on around me.
GW

Last edited by Tom Kalbfus (2015-09-28 08:58:27)

GW Johnson · 2015-09-28 14:42:27

Tom,

The difference between the occupation of Japan and the 4 CIA-supported dictators that I mentioned is who made the decisions. Harry Truman decided what to do with Japan. CIA didn't exist then, and would not have made that decision even if it did. I'm not the one who needs to get facts straight here.

You're sort-of "right" saying that China almost got us into a land war in Asia when it invaded Korea in 1951. That's what MacArthur wanted to do, to get involved in that war right then, based on all his experience and knowledge. But here's what makes your thesis wrong: what you do not seem to know about that situation....

With only conventional weapons, we would have lost a land war in Asia, that army was just too big to take on, at long distance from home like that. I think you might know that, at least I hope you do. It's still true today, by the way.

What you don't seem to know at all is that our total atomic inventory in 1951 was only 3 or 4 Hiroshima size nukes, carriable only in the B-29 or the B-36. That's too few to have made a difference in the outcome. Truman, being the president, knew that. MacArthur was not privy to that information.

When I see a statement like this: "Well actually, a Jet is an air breathing rocket, it expells a gas out the back that expands and provides the push forward, much as a rocket does." then I begin to understand why you stray so far afield of actual real technology in so many of the things you say.

If the statement is to be taken at face value, then it says that your understanding of these devices and this technology is about as superficial as a high school physics explanation. Without evidence to the contrary, your technical credibility with me just sank to near zero.

The only common piece of physics between jets and rockets is how the jet blast nozzle force works, and airbreathing engines have a ram drag piece of physics that rockets do not, not to mention all the interactions between airframe aerodynamics and the exact nature of any kind of propulsion installation. The actual hardware technologies are thus really vastly different. Exactly how, and with what, those nozzle streams are created are entirely different, as are all the measurable characteristics of the propulsion types.

As for Iraq, there is demonstrably no solution, not in our lifetimes. They have generations of experience yet to acquire living under something other than a dictator, before they will truly understand how to behave as citizens in the sort-of democracy that they currently have. But I rather doubt their neighbors will allow that.

We made everything worse, doing what we did, but that's now water under the bridge. We all (them included) are where we are now. I think we ought to help them if we can. But I have little faith in any of the proposals I have heard for exactly what we might do.

A lot of the problems in Iraq would more-or-less go away if the mullahs and their Revolutionary Guard were to be deposed in Iran. But nobody knows how to do that, either, without killing millions in a nuclear war.

As for NASA contracting, I just posted a description you might want to read in another thread. Not all cost-plus is bad. Some is, some isn't. Interplanetary Transportation/Orion CEV/SM status.

GW

Tom Kalbfus · 2015-09-28 21:25:50

GWJohnson wrote:

Tom,
The difference between the occupation of Japan and the 4 CIA-supported dictators that I mentioned is who made the decisions. Harry Truman decided what to do with Japan. CIA didn't exist then, and would not have made that decision even if it did. I'm not the one who needs to get facts straight here.

GWJohnson wrote:

You're sort-of "right" saying that China almost got us into a land war in Asia when it invaded Korea in 1951. That's what MacArthur wanted to do, to get involved in that war right then, based on all his experience and knowledge. But here's what makes your thesis wrong: what you do not seem to know about that situation....

The war was already going on when China decided to get involved, the was no decision by MacArthur to get involved in a war, he was already fighting one with the North Koreans, the Chinese decided to enter the Korean War on the side of the North, despite the fact that the United States had nuclear weapons, it should have known that among the possibilities of what might happen was the one of China getting nuked. MacArthur wanted the nuke the Chinese Army and send them packing, but Truman was more of a chickenish persuasion, he wanted to cut his losses and giv up ground to the Chinese, thus undermining the nuclear deterrent, MacArthur would have maintained it by using nukes on the Chinese to stop their invasion of Korea, a war that he had just about won until the Chinese got involved.

It was called the OSS. Just changing the initials doesn't change what it is. The NKVD was the KGB of that time for the Russians by the way, and again the name changes was for propaganda reasons, it doesn't change what it is.

GWJohnson wrote:

When I see a statement like this: "Well actually, a Jet is an air breathing rocket, it expells a gas out the back that expands and provides the push forward, much as a rocket does." then I begin to understand why you stray so far afield of actual real technology in so many of the things you say.
If the statement is to be taken at face value, then it says that your understanding of these devices and this technology is about as superficial as a high school physics explanation. Without evidence to the contrary, your technical credibility with me just sank to near zero.

Who do you think you are, Donald Trump?

GW Johnson · 2015-09-29 11:44:32

Your comparing me to Donald Trump is as insulting as your comparing Douglas MacArthur to Saddam Hussein. You really need to think before you speak/write.

Trump is an egostical attention-seeker who just happens to be filthy rich (although the researchers have shown not as rich as he always claims). He got filthy rich more-or-less randomly, after going bankrupt multiple times (losing other people's money, he never went hungry himself).

He has no other redeeming values that I know of, and seems to know nothing about what's going on in the world except which buzz words to use. Most of the ones he uses are deliberately targeted toward inflaming racist and bigoted attitudes in this country. That is not the sort of person who should hold any sort of public office. (In that evil, he is not alone, too many do exactly the same thing.)

I am forced to conclude that he's a parasitical gadfly who creates nothing of substantial usefulness to humanity, although he might (repeat might) have created some useful jobs. Maybe they were useful jobs, maybe not so much. With his bankruptcies and his incessant selling/buying, I'm not so sure any such jobs lasted very long, either. Not much good to balance all the evil he's doing now.

As for me, I am a cutting-edge aerospace/defense engineer, with 4+ decades experience, and I am not a narrow one-specialty sort. If I speak about jet and rocket engine technology, or flight vehicle technology, or pretty much any other sorts of engineering hardware, it's because I know all that stuff well enough to have designed it, built it, tested it, and sold it, all those decades. And I can still do it now, in spite of my age. In point of fact, I am still doing it, for consulting clients.

So if I tell you that, underneath the superficiality of the same exhaust stream momentum equation applying, rockets and airbreathers are quite different, you can believe it.

Typical kero-lox chamber pressure is 1000 psi at 6000 F. Typical military gas turbine chamber pressure (in the cans) is around 150 psi at around 1700-2000 F. Typical kero-lox rocket exhaust velocity is around 10,000 ft/sec, while typical gas turbine (non-afterburn) jet velocity is around 1300 ft/sec or so. The rocket has no ram drag (or any other drag associated with propulsion). The airbreather's thrust is the difference between nozzle thrust and a ram drag that is quite often almost as big as the nozzle thrust.

Not even all the airbreathers are the same, either. Low and high-bypass gas turbines are quite different, and suited for quite different applications. Both are as different as night and day from ramjet, or from piston.

There's a whale of a difference in the frontal thrust density of airbreathers and rockets, too, that being thrust divided by the cross section area of the vehicle containing the engine(s). The rocket is in the high 1000's of lb/ft2, while the airbreathers are far lower in the few 100's but quite wildly variable as flight conditions change.

BTW, 3 or 4 20-KT nukes would not have made much difference if Truman had let MacArthur go into China. There's too many soldiers fighting too near their home supply lines for a US expeditionary force to cope with, even today.

GW

Tom Kalbfus · 2015-09-29 18:13:23

GW Johnson wrote:

Your comparing me to Donald Trump is as insulting as your comparing Douglas MacArthur to Saddam Hussein. You really need to think before you speak/write.

Well in the sense you use irrelevant insults, the way Trump does when he gets offended, then "the shoe fits."

The offending statement was this:

GW Johnson wrote:

When I see a statement like this: "Well actually, a Jet is an air breathing rocket, it expells a gas out the back that expands and provides the push forward, much as a rocket does." then I begin to understand why you stray so far afield of actual real technology in so many of the things you say.
If the statement is to be taken at face value, then it says that your understanding of these devices and this technology is about as superficial as a high school physics explanation. Without evidence to the contrary, your technical credibility with me just sank to near zero.

I would say the second paragraph is a Trumpism, my understanding of a rocket is its basically a reaction engine, I see no definition of rocket which said it can't take in its oxidizer to ignite its fuel to heat the gas in the chamber to propel the vehicle. I believe a Jet is a specific type of rocket, maybe your definition is more specific, but insulting me because I don't agree with you on definitions is uncalled for! Trump does much the same thing, his big ego will not allow him to accept a difference of opinion that is not attributable to someone being inferior to him, and I would say your reaction speaks to the size of your ego, so you are not so different from Trump in that respect. Otherwise being compared to Trump is not entirely a bad thing, Trump is very smart, his ego is a character flaw I admit, but it doesn't take away from the fact that he is very smart and is a billionaire after all, no small accomplishment that. So don't take the comparison as an insult.

Trump is an egostical attention-seeker who just happens to be filthy rich (although the researchers have shown not as rich as he always claims). He got filthy rich more-or-less randomly, after going bankrupt multiple times (losing other people's money, he never went hungry himself).
He has no other redeeming values that I know of, and seems to know nothing about what's going on in the world except which buzz words to use. Most of the ones he uses are deliberately targeted toward inflaming racist and bigoted attitudes in this country. That is not the sort of person who should hold any sort of public office. (In that evil, he is not alone, too many do exactly the same thing.)
I am forced to conclude that he's a parasitical gadfly who creates nothing of substantial usefulness to humanity, although he might (repeat might) have created some useful jobs. Maybe they were useful jobs, maybe not so much. With his bankruptcies and his incessant selling/buying, I'm not so sure any such jobs lasted very long, either. Not much good to balance all the evil he's doing now.
As for me, I am a cutting-edge aerospace/defense engineer, with 4+ decades experience, and I am not a narrow one-specialty sort. If I speak about jet and rocket engine technology, or flight vehicle technology, or pretty much any other sorts of engineering hardware, it's because I know all that stuff well enough to have designed it, built it, tested it, and sold it, all those decades. And I can still do it now, in spite of my age. In point of fact, I am still doing it, for consulting clients.
So if I tell you that, underneath the superficiality of the same exhaust stream momentum equation applying, rockets and airbreathers are quite different, you can believe it.
Typical kero-lox chamber pressure is 1000 psi at 6000 F. Typical military gas turbine chamber pressure (in the cans) is around 150 psi at around 1700-2000 F. Typical kero-lox rocket exhaust velocity is around 10,000 ft/sec, while typical gas turbine (non-afterburn) jet velocity is around 1300 ft/sec or so. The rocket has no ram drag (or any other drag associated with propulsion). The airbreather's thrust is the difference between nozzle thrust and a ram drag that is quite often almost as big as the nozzle thrust.
Not even all the airbreathers are the same, either. Low and high-bypass gas turbines are quite different, and suited for quite different applications. Both are as different as night and day from ramjet, or from piston.
There's a whale of a difference in the frontal thrust density of airbreathers and rockets, too, that being thrust divided by the cross section area of the vehicle containing the engine(s). The rocket is in the high 1000's of lb/ft2, while the airbreathers are far lower in the few 100's but quite wildly variable as flight conditions change.
BTW, 3 or 4 20-KT nukes would not have made much difference if Truman had let MacArthur go into China. There's too many soldiers fighting too near their home supply lines for a US expeditionary force to cope with, even today.
GW

Terraformer · 2015-09-30 04:26:48

Tom, when it comes to rockets...

Ygritte wrote:

You know nothing.

If anyone is like Trump, you are, being reminiscent of him talking (well, spouting nonsense) about autism whilst standing next to a neurologist.

Tom Kalbfus · 2015-09-30 05:58:31

Well I would like to have ten billion dollars, wouldn't you?

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