Slashdot Mirror

I fail to understand your argument. You are essentially arguing that there is one big pot of money set aside for "space research" and the DoD gets most of that pot. That isn't how it works. NASA is given a certain budget each year from which they divide it up amongst the various Enterprises (space science, Earth science, etc.). The DoD is given a certain budget and they decide what problems to attack depending on the perceived threat (and Congressional mandates, etc.). If the President thinks nukes launched on missiles is a major threat, they dump a lot of money into missile defense, the airborne laser, etc. If they think space-based weapons are a major threat, or a major advantage to us, they'll dump money into defending or promoting technologies to answer those issues. They are entirely separate.

I also don't understand your numbers. That $10B quoted in the article you mentioned is apparently either taken out of context, or pulled out of the air (or some one's rear). The best number I can find is $1B, and that seems to include everything, including supporting ground-based experiments, modeling, etc.

I still argue that the biggest threat to space science is an increased emphasis on the manned component. That is what is killing it.

If you lament the use of space for military uses, that is fine. If you want to argue that putting offensive or defensive weapons into space violates international treaties, that is fine. But to argue that money is being taken away from NASA, NSF, or NOAA and earmarked to go to militarizing space shows, I think, a misunderstanding of how the government budget process and prioritization operates.

Ah, but even if you get to launch control, you still have to know the unlock codes.

Facts do matter. I finally found some information about the level of US arms exports.
It seems the US in 2002 exported about $4.56 billion worth of arms. This brings it in second behind Russia ($4.97 billion) as the worlds largest arms exporter.

So does it matter if the number is $5 billion instead of $700 billion? I mean really, US arms sales are chicken feed even on the scale of US music sales. I guess the question is, what point where you actually trying to make?

If you were trying to make the point that US arms exports is big business, you failed. There are MANY US companies with quarterly revenue over $5 billion, for an export industry, that's pathetic.

If you were trying to make the point that the US is the leading arms merchant to the world, you failed, but not by much. We are number 2.

So what exactly was the point you were making that stands up to the actual facts?

And when we're done with that, maybe we ought to dilute some old American warheads as well...

You misspelled two billion dollars per unit.

First off, this isn't designed to shoot down ICBMs - it's designed to shoot down TBMs, which are not exactly uncommon and become more widespread by the day.

First: The major security threat that we have to defend ourselves against is (as has been hammered into my head for 5 years by the current government and the media) terrorism. Now, the airborne threat that terrorists are likely to deliver is via jet, since a grassroots terrorist organization is unlikely to have the financial means or the infrastructure to design, build, and launch missiles of any kind. A missile defense laser of the kind described in the article is neither designed to take down a jet used as a missile or an ICBM, if what you say is true.
We are also unlikely to experience a missile threat from any well-defined enemy state, since a well-formed state incurring the wrath of the United States (the major economic power in the world) hasn't been a good idea for a while now. Again, the likelihood of an airborne missile attack of ANY kind, not just nuclear, has been greatly diminished since after the cold war. We are no longer in the age of wars between powers, but now in the age of many ill-defined, subversive cells fighting against a superpower(us) who have means available to them that do not include standard missiles of the kind that would be delivered by an enemy state.

Second off, nuclear weapons are about as likely to arrive via a shipping container as I am to grow a second head. (National leaders typically want such weapons closely controlled, because they are articles of statecraft, not weapons. There's a reason why virtually every nation that has built or sought to build nuclear weapons also seeks to build missiles.)

National leaders of rogue states are by and large more interested in profit and less in protecting the articles of statecraft. They can't and shouldn't be trusted to develop nuclear weapons and keep them safe from rogue terrorists with whom their religious beliefs or ideologies are aligned. Many leaders do not want to deliver a clear missile attack which would incite the direct and immediate wrath of the United States, but rather to give untraceable aid to terrorists who support insidious sneak attacks against public infrastructure in the United States. A subsequent attack is more likely to be delivered through trade routes and not through the US airspace which is purportedly well-protected by air guard(though I have my doubts after 9/11.)

It accounts for 30% of the discretionary spending - but for only about 10% of the total spending. (The goverment has sytematically mislead the people about the true size of the federal budget, and how much goes to social programs, by classifying entitlements as 'non-discretionary spending' and not reporting it as part of the budget.)

I'm pretty sure the 10% figure that you cite does not include the current costs of previous military spending, or the costs of social spending that are a direct result of military spending. The government is more interested in misleading us about the percentage of actual spending that they say goes towards social programs and other things when it actually goes towards defense spending. Moreover, either way, the disclosed spending on the department of defense is in the 2006 federal budget is $447.4 billion
In 2002, this number was $343.2 billion.

"These figures typically do not include combat figures, so 2001 onwards, the Afghan war, and 2003 onwards, the Iraq war costs are not in this budget. As of early 2006, Congress had already approved an additional funding total of $300 billion for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
As Chris Hellman, researcher of many of these statistics, also notes, when adjusted for inflation the request for 2007 together with that needed

Yeah... about that... funny story...

The power of a military is not based on sheer numbers of soldiers.

China does not even hold a candle to the US in terms of hardware and technology, even if you give them a generous amount of 'tom sectret' type developments.

The UK has a capable military for sure, but again it is not even in the same ballpark as the US.

A few figures for your consideration. Sure, dollars spent is not a direct 1:1 correlation with military might, but it should give some perspective as to the ballpark.

lets just hope they don't set passwd as p455w0rd

Hmm, that wouldn't be anything like setting the Minuteman launch codes to 00000000, would it?

Umm, I don't such a price tag would really be a deterrent to the military, considering that DoD's annual budget is in the hundreds of billions range.

Um, there's this odd little gap in your summary: why did capitalism/democracy take over in the 1990s if the experiment was as successful as you say?

No, wait, don't tell me -- I can guess. Stalin trod this path long before you. It was "wreckers" and kulaks (wealthy peasants) and petty bourgeousie and evil foreign influence and the cruel false seductions of money that ruined the noble experiment. It certainly had nothing to do with the majority of plain folks looking around at their lives and concluding: this just sucks. We've given the "experiment" a good long run and it doesn't work. Time to try something else, anything else.

If you can pass over the collapse of the Soviet Union and the radical restructuring of the economy in Communist China and Vietnam -- indeed in all surviving socialist countries -- since the 1990s without seeing the stark fact that almost everyone who has himself lived under these "experiments" has soundly rejected your premise, that the "experiments" are a success, then there is no arguing with you. You are in the grips of ideology!

Large portions of the population, after having had a taste of both systems, now favor a return to Communist times.

Sure, here is a report of a survey in which about 20% of Russians surveyed wanted a return to Communism. That is, indeed, a "large portion." But it's a minority. What you might have said -- indeed what I would have said -- is this: "Despite the chaos and misery occasioned by the sudden transition from Communism to the free market, and despite the steep decline in international influence after the Soviet Union broke up, a remarkable 80% of Russians do not want to return to Communism. One can only conclude that, having had a taste of both systems, they prefer capitalism/democracy (with all its warts) to Communism by substantial and enduring majorities."

For tenured professors, there is close to zero incentive to continue research and publication, except social stature and respect.

Is that so? In what country would that be? At least in the U.S., where I'm personally familiar with the system, if you aren't "research-active," as they say, your office migrates away from the windows, your full-time secretary turns into a 20% secretary, your pay immediately drops by 30% (no more "summer salary" from the research grant), you have to buy office supplies and computer equipment out of your own pocket, not to mention being unable to hire graduate students and post-docs to help with your work, and you are assigned sharply more teaching and administrative duties, so that the time in which you can do what you want plummets. Then of course you don't get any more promotions and raises except for the piddling 2% every other year cost-of-living bump, assuming your university does even that.

In short, as far as U.S. universities go, you're dead wrong. The incentives on tenured professors to research and publish are strong and strongly economic. And why would that be? Would it be because (A) that's what works, or (B) wreckers and evil foreign influence have subverted US university administrations, so that the latter falsely imagines "social stature and respect" are not quite as effective in motivating professors to do good work as filthy degrading money and the things that disgusting but curiously attractive stuff can buy?

Exactly which "rule of law" were they defending in their dissent to Rasul v. Bush, where they wiped their asses with the Fifth Amendment?

After heavy pressure from Israeli lobbyists, the US Congress enacted "shutter control" specifically for Israel in 1997. Satellites using US technology aren't permitted to image Israel with a resolution of greater than 2 meters per pixel. That's why the images of Israel are so lousy.

This is what's going on: Space Defense Notice how advanced they are? Their "last update" was January 1, 2006!! They are already time travelling.

http://www.cdi.org/blair/permissive-action-links.c fm

....The Strategic Air Command (SAC) in Omaha quietly decided to set the "locks" to all zeros in order to circumvent this safeguard. During the early to mid-1970s, during my stint as a Minuteman launch officer, they still had not been changed. Our launch checklist in fact instructed us, the firing crew, to double-check the locking panel in our underground launch bunker to ensure that no digits other than zero had been inadvertently dialed into the panel. SAC remained far less concerned about unauthorized launches than about the potential of these safeguards to interfere with the implementation of wartime launch orders. And so the "secret unlock code" during the height of the nuclear crises of the Cold War remained constant at OOOOOOOO. ...

Could it be that this is actually a toy for star wars - or whatever they call the US military's ambition to "strike any target on the planet" - you can read more about this BS (plutonium driven lasers, total US dominance of space, upsetting everyone else - China, Russia, N-Korea..., more junk in space) in the US Air Force Transformation Flight Plan, the document is there . Analysis of the text is at: <http://www.space4peace.org> <http://www.nuclearpolicy.org> < http://www.cdi.org>.

There was a show recently on TUC Radio , the first part of the show can be heard on that page , further down, at: MOST RECENT PROGRAMS: Arming the Heavens.

If 00000000 is an acceptable nuclear missle secret launch code, then 12345 has got to be NSA-level security!

• Brief Bio
• NPR Audio Interview from Dec 15, 2004
• 2001 Press Conference Speech

Cheers,
-l

Here's another question: Is it likely that this interceptor system can ever be made to work better than the dismal failure that the current interceptor technology that it appears to be based on?

Foreign aid is a black hole. The only reason we still bother with it is because ...well, even if it produces no tangible benefits for us, it's still the right thing to do.

But we still need aircraft carriers and interceptor missiles.

Foreign Aid, 2003: $15 Billion
Military Budget, 2004: $399 Billion

Which one of these is a black hole again?

Dum dum. J00 are teh no7 sm4rt...
France
UK
Ya dumb fuck. lol.

Al Qaeda probably already knows them: they are all zeroes.

True, but Republicans also like to spend other peoples money. Mostly on "defense", much of it being wasteful or just plain pork*. I respect the Libertarian position, but the Republican position is pretty nasty in my eyes - they are happy to spend our money on killing people and pork projects but refuse to help people in need. That's just amoral in my eyes.
Not that I'm really defending the Democrats per say - when it came down to it, they chose to end social welfare as we know it but didn't cut back their own cronyism.

*references here and here and here and here and here

Can't admit there's any holes in your argument can you. Let's check out the facts
1) During the taliban's rule Afghanistan was the largest supplier of poppy to the world.
2) The taliban used money generated from the sale of opium to support terrorists (al-Qaeda.)
3) Less than 6 months after the Taliban was ousted Afghanistan was miraculously exporting poppy at almost the same level as before their self imposed ban (must have been instant poppy.)

Sources
1
2
3
4
5

Just one question: Is ignorance really bliss?

Here, let me throw out some numbers:

In 2003, the U.S. military budget (not counting expenses allotted for the war in Iraq) was $399.1 billion. The two countries closest to us in spending, Russia and China, weigh in at $65 and $47 billion, respectively. The combined military spending of France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, and Spain in 2003 was $120.6 billion, less than a third of the US's spending.

And these numbers don't tell the complete story. They don't tell about our our unrivalled submarine fleet. They don't tell about our aircraft carriers and military bases across the globe. They don't tell of our air force, planes as numerous as locusts.

There is no army in the world that can stand before our legions. There is no citadel that can withstand the hammer-blows we can bring to bear upon it. A single enemy we might ignore, to demolish later at our leisure. But if somehow -- in the face of all reason -- all the world arrayed itself against us, our fury would rain down upon your cities like the wrath of God Himself.

Americans excel at two things: making money, and making war. I say all this not out of pride, but out of sad resignation. Because I wish that we could be checked -- but we can't.

Um, the 1st WTC attack had nothing to do with al Qaeda. It was orchestrated by the Egyptian terror group Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya, the same network that was behind the 1997 attack on tourists in Luxor, Egypt.

al-Islamiyya are now loosely affiliated with al Q as part of a general network of terrorist groups -- but that was a late-1990s development.

"Wow. Bush is kickin' ass and taking names."

Too bad they're the wrong asses and wrong names, huh?

A nuclear weapon without a fissile core was lost following a mid-air collision. A B-47 bomber carrying a nuclear weapon without its fissile core collided with a F-86 aircraft near Savannah, Georgia. Following three unsuccessful attempts to land the plane at Hunter Air Force Base in Georgia, the weapon was jettisoned to avoid the risk of a high explosive detonation at the base. The weapon was jettisoned into the water several miles from the mouth of Savannah River in Wassaw Sound off Tybee Beach, but the precise point of impact is unknown. The weapon's high explosives did not detonate on impact. A subsequent search covering three square miles used divers and sonar devices, but failed to find the weapon. The search was ended on April 16, 1958, and the weapon was considered to be irretrievably lost.

I live in a country with a 300 billion dollar annual PEACETIME military budget, and they can't locate an accidentally dropped nuclear bomb in 12 feet of water to recover it?

Uhh, it's actually currently about $400 billion. Which makes it close to the combined military spending of the rest of the planet.

"The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous." -1984 (movie, not the book...)

March 10, 1956, Over the Mediterranean Sea

July 28, 1957, Over the Atlantic Ocean - somewhere between Dover Air Force Base (Delaware) and Atlantic City, New Jersey

February 5, 1958, Savannah River, Georgia (this story)

September 25, 1959, Off Whidbey Island, Washington. Since this is slashdot, I feel obligated to point out that this is about 30 miles from Redmond.

January 24, 1961, Goldsboro, North Carolina

December 5, 1965, Aboard the USS Ticonderoga (CVA-14) in the Pacific Ocean (only miles from the Japanese island chain of Ryukyu)

Spring 1968, Aboard the USS Scorpion (SSN-589) in the Atlantic Ocean - 400-500 miles southwest of the Azores.

Any slashdotters have a geiger counter, a boat, and some free time?

But the list of broken arrows is a pretty long one. The way I understand it, there's no one organization that keeps track of all incidents and lost devices. On the bright side, they may have found the lost Mk-39 near Savannah, GA.

"I'm sure the computers that run missles and the like have multiple passwords that have to be entered all the time, but the average worker isn't going to be subjected to something like this."

You'd be surprised. According to this article our ICBM's had their codes set to 00000000 for many years to ensure we could launch them when needed. I have looked for correberation but all I can find are references the trace back to this article. That said it looks moderately reliable.

http://www.cdi.org/blair/permissive-action-links.c fm

Finger pointing is not going to help the world's problems. At the moment it is rather the US which seems to be interested in neo-colonialism and imperialism. For example the US defence budget represents 50% of the world's total expenditure on defense, see Figures for 2004.

If you agree that neo-colonialism and imperialism was wrong for the European countries, then why would it be any different for the US?

Bin laden and his gang have an issue with the US because it maintains military bases in Saudi Arabia and other neighbouring Arab countries. They saw it as desecrating their Holy Land. Militarily supporting Israel is not seen as a positive point either.

Regarding the Kyoto protocol, *all* of the countries in the EU have ratified the Kyoto protocol and are implementing it. In fact the Kyoto protocol has force of directive in the EU, and this means every member country must adopt it. Some countries have lowered their CO2 emission below 1990 levels already.

I don't see why the long-term goal of reducing emission would be detrimental to the economy. On the contrary. It seems that the US is spending a huge amount of resources (see above) to maintain access to the current way of producing energy (oil). If in 20 years time the Europeans and other nations have become good at using renewable energy sources but the US haven't and are still fighting in the Middle East, I'd say this wouldn't constitute a sound investment.

Finally it would be crazy of the Europeans to try and destroy the American economy. This is was drives the world. An ailing American economy is not good news anywhere around the world.

Less paranoia and more rational thinking would do a world of good.

I am somewhat bemused that despite sitting on something like 28% of the world's uranium, us Aussies don't have a reactor of our own (with the exception of the Lucas Heights HIFAR reactor opened in 1958). We even bitch about mining the stuff, the proceeds of which could be used to deal with real threats to the surrounding environment, like cane toads. We make over 10% of the world's supply of computer grade doped silicon, yet we bitch about upgrading the reactor facility too. Hopefully with some debate people will start pulling their heads out of their asses and making it happen before we end up with some serious problems on our hands. Before long chernobyl et al will end up being the most catastrophic events we've ever experienced - not because of the local effects but because of the resulting widespread misconception about nuclear power. Yes, where there are more plants nuclear fuel necessarily is more available so there is a greater need for security. However those linking the increased use of nuclear energy with foolish nuclear enabled governments and terrorists ought to spend more time worrying about who's got the weapons, why, who pays and what they are (or aren't) doing to protect them.

The article ended up here through dumb luck.

"somebody" is Strategic Air Command, which is high enough. So they eliminated a security margin without telling anyone.

The second part describes how some other guys were/are also removing constraints following their own judgement. This time it's in using the 'small print' on the role of the president

McNamara was sec. of defense during the Cuba crisis. In 2002 he stated that dumb luck played an important role in avoiding nuclear war.

Or maybe it was God's help . Quick! Name a president!

You're not talking about Africa, I'd guess. Most of the nations in Africa have low GNPs anyway, and they're not exactly trying to exert their influence around the world. They're trying to fight AIDS and keep their people fed.

You're not talking about Australia, as they're involved in the Iraq operation and had a military budget of $7.6 billion for 2003-2004.

You're not talking about Asia, as Russia, China and Japan alone had a combined military budget of $154.6 billion.

You're not talking about South America, as Brazil and Argentina alone spent a combined $11 billion on their militaries.

You're obviously not referring to North America, as the US alone spent $399.1 billion dollars last year and is continuing to spend billions more this year.

Maybe you're referring to Europe. Nope, that can't be right. After all, the military budgets of the top four European spenders (Russia not included) add up to $112.2 billion. That's certainly nothing like 0% of GNP. But maybe you were referring to the fact that European forces are never actually fielded in real-world operations.

Wait a minute. They actually ARE fielded in real-world operations. There are German troops in Afghanistan, and Norwegian troops in Afghanistan. There are British troops dying in Iraq and Afghanistan. There are Italian, Portugese, Polish, Ukranian, Dutch, Romanian, Danish, and other European soldiers in Iraq.

Their numbers pale in comparison to the number of American troops, but one wonders if the numbers would be higher had the Bush administration not bullied its allies into acquiescence on Iraq, rather than building a strong coalition the way the first Bush administration did. Perhaps the presence of forces from Germany and France, the most militarily powerful and politically influential of the continental nations, would have changed the overall calculus of the war.

But to say that Europeans are seeking diplomatic relevance without putting forth the force to back it up ignores the fact that many European nations are fielding units in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that many more might have been engaged had it not been for the brain-dead approach taken by the Bush administration.

All budget figures from the Center for Defense Information.

To the ignorant moderator(s) who modded this post flamebait, you might want to read one Marine General's take on our strategies in the Iraq war.

Pay special attention to his comments about who agrees with him among our military officers; and note that this viewpoint is also shared by quite a few Republicans.

OT: Why is database maintenance always taking place on my night off? What, is "Hump Day" a legit target? Grrrrrr ;-)

SB

Your soul searching (and quest for *any* accurate analysis of slew of reports coming in) echoes mine.

Here is something interesting... and I'll say that I'll trust a 40 year Marine General's word over the evasions and half-truths I hear coming out of the press and Washington.

If it really had been self-defence then I wouldn't be having this debate with myself.

Ditto wrt to Iraq. Not Afghanistan, tho...if our government had stuck to that war, at least finished it up before committing us to another one, well...

Cheers, and be well.

SB

Chinas military budget: $47 billion, GDP $6 trillion.

US militaries budget $399 billion, GDP $11 trillion.

Source

I'd consider a sub 1percent military budget quite moderate.

the french dont need the tomahawk,
have a look

The US military budget is greater than the next ten largest military budgets combined.

CORRECTION: Once you include the cost for Iraq, the US military budget is greater than all the worlds military budgets combined. The USA=$399 Billion plus the $75 to $100 billion in Iraq is to be determined; versus the rest of the world with at $463 billion.

Oops, sorry, I meant this one: CDI The summary table at the top pretty much says it all. Granted it's from last year, but I doubt that anyone has manufactured 10,000 thermonuclear devices since then. The heavy lifters in this area are still the U.S. and Russia.

Bush's Moon/Mars plan isn't going quickly into space!

Wonderful. So the only US program towards a manned spacecraft is facing difficulties while we're trying to save the ISS and Hubble.

Did it ever occur to these politicians that we might need some way to actually deliver people to the ISS and service the Hubble? Furthermore, with Soyuz, there's no guarantees -- the Russians aren't exactly in the best shape in the world. I hate to rely on them... especially considering the lack of capacity/capability.

Honestly I wish they had stuck with the Orbital Space Plane plan of attack, and started a new program towards Mars. It seems like this happens with every new concept at NASA. A program is started, it gets a decent way, and somebody decides it'd be better to do something different. We desperately need to stay the course with at least one program in five or so. How much money have we waisted already with this sort of abortion?

Furthermore, the "it costs too much" really pisses me off. NASA's FY04 budget was $15.5 billion. The increase in the Military budget -- not including the costs of our various wars around the world -- was $16.9 billion from FY03 to FY04. The overall military budget for FY04 was $399.1 billion. With wars included, it's even higher.

Should we turn a blind eye to this rampant military waste while putting NASA under a microscope?

In the long run, what's more important?

Fuckin' a. Sometimes I hate being human.

If that's what he said, he was wrong. That explaination is totally incorrect. Patriots are radar guided missiles. Explosions give off heat but don't reflect radar, so there's no possible way for a Patriot to have "honed in on the heat of the explosion". Someone is confusing infrared guided missiles with radar guided missiles and making up stories. SCUDs don't spontaneously blow up in mid air just before impact, either. Faulty SCUDs will nearly always go bad during the boost phase, if at all. What really happens is that the al-hussein (stretched, faster SCUD) missiles would come apart during reentry, their fuel tank and engine sections crumbling and acting as "false targets" near the warhead.

That's not to say, however, that the Patriots weren't crap, only that the reason is incorrect. The trouble was with the lack of effective proximity fuses. The Patriot was designed to intercept mach 2 aircraft, giving a maximum closing speed of ~mach 5 on any intercept. At this speed the prox fuse has plenty of time to verify the range of the target before detonating the warhead. But with ballistic missiles, the closing speed is much higher. By the time the Patriot PAC-1 prox fuse decided it was close enough to the target and detonated, the SCUD warhead had already gone past the Patriot. The Patriot warhead would blow up too late and do nothing more than deflect the course of the SCUD warhead slightly and it would continue on to the ground where it would blow up stuff. A good synopsis here. These problems were, however, fixed with the PAC-2 version of the patriot fielded after 1995.

The Pakistani web site was just first one I had in my link-list on this subject.
My bad, here's some additional links that should be more verifiable.

The Hindu : IAF working on weapon platforms in space
CDI: Developments in Military Space: Movement toward space weapons? [PDF]

That's why you always hear about Muslim terrorists and Islamic extremists, and not about Christian, scientologist, Jewish, or any other type

Check out the U.S. State Department's List of Known Terrorist Organizations. See how many of them are identified as Islamist? If a large percentage of media reporting about terrorism focuses on Islamist organizations, I suggest that it is simply because a similarly large percentage of terrorist acts are committed by those who call themselves Muslims.

I can hardly say there is a "slant" in "Big Media" is the reporting is statistically representative of what's actually going on in the world.

Global military spending (warning: PDF file) was about $800 billion in 2002. With the enormous ramp-up in 2003, the total is probably over $1 trillion now.

A trillion dollars down the drain, every year. Imagine what we could accomplish if we used that amount productively instead.

"Do you expect NASA to fabricate every component in the spacecraft?"

If we gave them a budget? Yes.

Nasa's fiscal year 2003 budget: $15.1 Billion.
DoD's fiscal year 2003 budget: $396.1 Billion.

The DoD's budget does not include emergency supplementals, such as the $40 billion supplemental in '02, or the $87 billion supplemental requested in '03.

Agree with your post in general, but one factor that hasn't been mentioned so far (which surprises me) but is alluded to in your post is the military aspect of all this.

The place to cut is in military spending. The war in Iraq would have paid for a lot of space travel, unfortunately it paid for blowing up buildings instead. We have lots of highly specialized weapons that are very expensive - millions of dollars per explosion. Military aircraft are not built using standard parts. Everything is custom. So everything is brutally expensive. Cut back on the custom nature of this hardware, and you'd save a lot of money. Cut back on unilateral foreign wars, and you'd save even more.

However there are those that argue that the whole space program is entirely about the military and I find this argument persuasive from several angles. Control of space is currently up for grabs. The International Space Station has been an interesting experiment, but for practical control of space a moon-base would probably be more practical. The control of space has always been an issue and has recently become a policy goal of the USA.

The presence of a large slush-fund for "space exploration" provides a huge amount of money for the companies in the Military Industrial Complex who are able to apply technologies developed for that ostensible purpose back to military and commercial projects.

So, guess where the money is going? To the kids that lack textbooks, healthcare and lobbyists or to the slick, plausible, verbose representatives of millions of dollars in campaign funds?

One more potential use has come to my attention since I wrote the article above.

From here we see a threatened (12/5/2002) Russian use (apparently of nuclear weapons) to destroy the population of Chechnya:

Question: Shamil Basayev is threatening Russia with nuclear terrorism. Should we be frightened?

Answer: If Chechen terrorists attempt to seize a nuclear power station or spread radioactive materials to pollute the air and land, it will amount to proclaiming a nuclear war on Russia. The reply will be ruthless for Chechens. ...

If Chechens resort to nuclear blackmail, there will be no Chechnya to fight for.

I'm just wondering if it was the one Microsoft was so proud of... here is the Case Study.

It would not be a suprise in light of the nuclear material lost as a result of Microsoft. I'm not saying it WAS their fault, just wondering.