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Site for Moon Base Determined
Deinhard writes "Going hand-in-hand with the recent discussion on Moon Bases, Space.com is reporting that the perfect spot for a moon base has been found. According to the article, 'the best spot to settle on the Moon may be on the northern rim of Peary crater, close to the north pole.' What makes the location so important is that it is permanently lit, with a balmy -58 Fahrenheit (-50 C)."
...we've had the technology for years as Robert Zubrin points out in his book. The moon is just a big rock, and we've been there before.
;) )
(Seriously, read the book, and if you're not convinced, well, you should be.
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The lack of atmosphere really changes the way heat flows. Our intuition about hot and cold is shaped by convection, where heat is transfered to gas molecules that bump against us and are then swept away. With no atmosphere, heat transfer slows down. The only heat loss on the moon would occur by conduction into the surface of the moon.
How "cold" is the moon in human terms? I don't have any idea. I'd imagine sunlight would be more important for constant solar power (well, barring eclipses).
Use the Firehose to mod down Second Life stories!
The US was never paying down the debt for any extended period of time (I believe our longest period of paying it down was 9 months.) Take a look for yourself, you'll see the number never goes down.
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http://www.publicdebt.treas.gov/opd/opdpenny.ht
Also, a large part of the "surplus" was unsustainable. To some degree the surplus was a result of cost cutting but mostly it was the result of increased revenue in the form of capital gains tax. Around the late 90's the government was collecting incredible amounts of capital gains tax due to stock market bubble. This was not a sustainable form of revenue.
The "debt holders" are a sundry group with many different agendas and motives. To suggest that they were all worried about the debt being paid off (which wasn't happening anyway) is misleading at best.
Considering how much misleading crap you were able to pack into your first sentence I think it is safe for people to disregard the rest of your hyper-biased post.
As an aside, I understand it is fashionable to hate Bush on this board and to suggest that he is somehow some evil genius/dumb monkey pulling all the strings to make the rich richer but you do yourself and your politcal cause a huge disservice when you exaggerate (and lie about) your claims.