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USA To Return To Moon By 2015, Then Mars
securitas writes "This afternoon George Bush announced space exploration plans for the USA to return to the Moon by 2015, the design and construction of a new space vehicle fleet by 2014 (called the Crew Exploration Vehicle) to replace the aging space shuttles which will be retired in 2010, and the construction of a permanent Moon base, followed by manned missions to Mars. The initiative begins with a $1 billion increase to NASA's budget and $12 billion in new space exploration money over next five years. However Congress is concerned about how to pay for the new space policy initiative in the face of a $500 billion national budget deficit. AP via Yahoo has a Moon/Mars/space policy FAQ, and there's more at NASA and the New York Times among others."
Yes, you are right Gottfried, Bill Gates did invent the Monkey-dance, but Linus Torvalds created the Macarena.
I, for one, welcome our new human overlords.
The current shuttle fleet has computers less powerful than the modern car and structural materials about as sophisticated as a shopping trolley.
Which is not necessarily a bad thing. Take, for instance, the International Ultraviolet Explorer; build on 1960s computer and materials technology, launched in 1978 for a 3 year mission. How long did it last? 18 years. Take it from me, we don't build 'em like this anymore.
In our rush toward the bright future, we have thrown out much of the robustness which made 1960s technology very spaceworthy. An example: memory subsystems based on ferrite cores are much more difficult to fry by cosmic radiation than those based on transistors.
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
We will be out of IRAQ and Afghanistan by 2020....
Shudders? SHUDDERS? ARE YOU INSANSE.
THink of the possibilities! Hell the goddam porn industry could fund this entire exhibition. Zero-G pr0n with your favorite actress'! Sweet god almighty the amount of money that this could make just boggles the mind.
p.s.
Personally, it's always been my life long goal to go to space and have wild kinky sex. Specifically I want to launch my self from one end of the capsule and um.. "spear" my lady. Goddam. A thing of beauty. And don't pretend you haven't thought of it either.
As the father of a Type I diabetic and the son of a Type II diabetic, I have a suggestion. Why not cure diabetes, save thousands of lives and billions of dollars. Here is what was spent on diabetes care in the U.S. in 2002:
There are numerous possible cures: Stem cells, INGAP peptide, etc. With 5-billion dollars and the right amount of political will you could cure it.
In 2000, there were 69,301 American deaths directly caused by diabetes, but the NIH states that diabetes contributed to a total of 213,062 deaths in that year. And it happened again in 2001 and 2002, and it will happen again this year.
How many people do YOU know with Type I or Type II diabetes? Cure this damned disease and then see what can be done with an extra $132 billion in the U.S. economy. Use a few billion to get to Mars? Why not!
Check out National Diabetes Statistics to see where these stats come from.
Is this sig nificant?
You can get the same effect as Viagra(tm) using hot chili sauce. For starters, just put a drop of it in your penis's hole.
Conservatives roasted Clinton for that sort of thing, but if you check Republican's pockets, I bet you'll find a cigar. Hypocrisy.
This is America, damnit. Speak Spanish!
Evil? You've been listening to Bush's rhetoric and BS for too long. Saddam has nothing on his contemporaries of "the last two generations". Ever heard of Pol Pot? He was orders of magnitude worse.
As opposed to the current system, in which there are NO standards, and no way of evaluating any sort of progress. It's embarassing how much power teachers unions have for the poor quality of "service" that we accept from them teaching our children...
It's a concept called the Triad. ICBMs and SLBMs may not be as invulnerable as we'd like (and eventually stealth will lose its protection). Defense planning also needs to take into account capabilities of potential opponents. Russia still has numerous ICBMs that are designed as first strike weapons. In fact, this one of the few areas Russia is actually purchasing military hardware (as opposed to selling it to the first person whose check clears).
"Five times over?" You should take a look at the cutbacks in the nuclear forces in the last 14 years. Peacekeeper? Gone. Trident boats? Cut dramatically. B1's? Taken out of SIOP. Same with B52s. B2 is our only airborne strategic nuke platform. You can recall a plane, can't recall an ICBM.
Hey, I love using robots too. I just think that getting folks in space is important too. It's too bad the International Space Station is such a drain. The cost of that boondoggle would fund quite a few dozen robotic missions.
If you're going to talk about "No CHild Left Behind", at least know what the hell you are talking about. Bill Clinton was the KING of unfunded mandates. It sounds like some of us are just spouting what we hear from television pundits.
No Child Left Behind works just fine if schools buckle down and get after it instead of whining. Are you telling me that you need more money to get all children reading by the third grade? If I'm in charge of education in your state, your ass is fired. If it takes you more than four years to do that, you are an idiot.
And what the heck is wrong with standardized tests? The only people who have a problem with it are folks in schools that are failing. You want to know how to get lazy school bureaucrats off their collective ass? Tell them that if 90% of these kids can't read, write, and solve simple math problems, your ass is fired. Well, faced with that problem, the bureaucrat has two choices... get off his or her ass or whine and bitch about how they need more math specialists and reading specialists and on and on.
When this was implemented in Texas there were those who went on and on about how the sky was falling and life as we knew it was over. They managed to get the kids passing. Texas then made the test harder. They managed to get the kids to pass. Schools full of idiots are quickly identified by their pathetic scores. If your teachers or administrators suck, you get new ones or the kids go to another school. Others whine about how teachers are now "teaching the test". "Oh my kid never gets to learn because his teacher is just teaching him the TAKS test! (sob) (sob)" Guess what! Every point in the curriculum is on the test. If he passes the test, it means he actually learned what he was supposed to learn and can prove it on paper without hints from the teacher, ridiculous bell curves, or any other help. Hell yeah the teachers "teach the test". It's their job. If they don't, the students don't learn and their teacher gets to look for a new job.
If you think "No Child Left Behind" tests are so damned easy, you send three or four 5th grade classes down to Texas from a state where they don't have standardized tests and let them take our "dumbed down" TAKS test in April. They'll be crying on their bubble sheet inside of two hours. In conclusion, if you need more money in your state to prove that your third graders can read, you need to seriously reconsider the public education system in your state.
Learn.
So, what was the last nuclear war started by ICBMs? IIRC, the last two nukes used were air-delivered. Other than that your post makes no sense, but that fits with your sig...
First nuclear war we won. Japan not having nukes doesn't mean it wasn't a nuclear war, just that it was one sided (the best type of war).
There's no evidence that a nuclear war is unwinnable. A total exchange of all the nukes in existence would be a bit uncomfortable, but there's nothing that proves a war between say India/Pakistan would lead to global nuclear war.
Now you're saying SLBMS are the key, not ICBMS? SLBMS have better survival abilities than ICBMs, but their accuracy (even with Trident D5) is lower than Peacekeeper used to be.
Plus you haven't given any proof other than your opinion that B2s wouldn't be survivable as a retaliatory weapon. Care to try again?