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Conquering the LaGrange Points?
3laws_safe writes "For decades, people have dreamed about building colonies at the five LaGrange points, intersections in space where gravitational and centrifugal forces balance out to provide orbital stability. But now, the official magazine of the U.S. Space Command advocates seizing control of the LaGrange points before other nations do it. From the article: 'We face the need to control the chokepoints of the solar system.' Arthur C. Clarke, who depicted a LaGrange colony in his classic 1961 novel A Fall of Moondust, is not very happy about this. He argues we should not 'export national rivalries beyond the atmosphere.' Is he right? Or should we prepare for the fact that such rivalries are inevitable, even in space?"
Or should we prepare for the fact that such rivalries are inevitable, even in space?
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Of course he's right... that's a silly question. We shouldn't even have those boundaries and rivalries in our atmosphere. Not that I'm naive enough to expect all boundaries to fall, but realistically, they are all arbitrary in the grand scheme of things.
-N
I've nothing to say here...
I'd do more for my kids's personal futures if Virgin Galactic (and I don't even know what country they're in) owned one of them than if any particular company's military base were put there.
Haha, the great thing about space is that there aren't any choke points. Unless they build a space elevator (which would pretty much ensure lasting dominance in space).
Real_men_don't_need_spacebars.
Zion will eventually take over the la grange points, that is, until a snotty kid from earth figures out how to pilot a huge robot.
Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.
It's saddening to me, but I am worried about space programs in the face of rising fuel costs. I don't see the price of oil ever going below $50 again, and honestly the I don't believe the current upward trending is going to stop anytime soon (have you noticed how any little thing now causes oil to spike up?).
Where will the space programs be in the face of $100 oil? Probably on the ground.
In Soviet LaGrange Points, First Prosts you!
You will hate me for this comment but just so you know there is no such thing as a centrifugal force. There is centripetal force, but no centrifugal.
It's gonna be finders keepers with the LaGrange points. Those who wish to get them should get while the getting is good. I'd much rather the US take control of them than China, who seems to be the only other power with something like the capability.
Do I entirely trust the US government to be altruistic? No, not really. But I'd rather them be in control than the Chinese, Indians, or Russians. If you had to pick - and you probably do - which would you go for? That's really the question here.
While Clark sentiments are noble, they're equivalent to saying that we shouldn't even be having these rivalries here on the ground. He is correct, but wishing does not make reality so.
Space colonization is going to be like any other form of colonization in history, only with less killing of the natives. It's going to be a chance for each country's "Way of Life" to be exported abroad and for each country to seize resources for themselves so that they can dominate their rivals close to home. The fact that it's in space instead of across the sea is irrelevant.
This is history. Prepare to repeat it.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Look at it this way, it can start out as an irrelevant US military base and then flourish commercially, or France can get there first, claim it in the name of the EU, and establish a massive bureaucracy with a 60% tax on everything passing through. I'd rather have a quasi-Free Market gov't grab it first.
You don't need a stable solar orbit when you can't even get to low-earth orbit reliably. Let's see how tomorrow's shuttle launch goes, then go back to dreaming about the military domination of the solar system later. Or maybe we can just the the &%$#* international space station finished, ferchrissake...
Have you read my blog lately?
...Linking to horrible html since 1996.
Lets agree that the military can have 2 of these, and the other 3 can be demilitarized. Of course the two we give the military will be the two THAT ARE UNSTABLE so any equipment place there will tend to drift away......
What if we just chip in and buy the Space Command Generals a few star registry names - maybe that will keep them happy.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
*And* seizing the chokepoints will require cheap reliable spacelift, which will inevitably make civilian space travel possible. Or has everybody forgotten that the First World War also changed the airplane from a toy to a vital military resource, and *commercial* aviation followed from that.
Clearly. I would rather the US control those points than someone frankly and overtly evil.
Discussions assume that the LP is a tiny patch of ground that can be taken and defended. Really, how large a volume of space does the usable portion of the LP occupy?
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Nevermind to use them for complete control of the earth by a world-wide empire.
But hey, what would nerds know about that? Just let the politicians keep cramming this nonsense about the glories of space, and keep those nerds working hard to build those empire-building lasers and missiles and....
Next Up: Bush claims Iraq could be used to develop solar cells that would save the environment! Sweet! I always needed a justification for it, too.
Even if the conflicts in space are just the diplomatic/political kind (ie - we built a base here first - this section of Mars/Moon/Space is ours), and not the military kind - they are inevitable. The only reason they haven't happened is because there is no reason to claim territory in space - yet. But once it starts, every nation that can will start planting flags... its not a matter of if - its when.
The wars of the future will not be fought on the battlefield or at sea. They will be fought in space, or possibly on top of a very tall mountain. In either case, most of the actual fighting will be done by small robots. And as you go forth today remember always your duty is clear: To build and maintain those robots.
Thank you.
me fail english? thats unpossible
Seems it'd be best for the US if WalMart owned one of the lagrange points, just like WalMart owns much of manufacturing in China and Exxon owns much of the oil in the mideast. If it's siezed as a military base it'll just sit there with lots of cost and little benefit to anyone; but if it's purchased as a commercial facility, it'll be a tax on everyone going into space. To rephrase the distinction in more concrete terms; China is WalMart's biggest ally, but China is also the US military's largest competitor for space domination.
I agree that the US corporations should race to control commercially the Lagrange points (as we do buying up oil in the mideast); but I think it'd be stupid if we decided to occupy them at great cost to ourselves (as we do to certain countries in the mideast).
wasn't that a bad 80's cartoon? i remember eating my Cheeri-o's and watching them save the galaxy, who knew they'd grow up with the rest of us?
I think that is the first FP claim I've seen that actually is the First Post! Congrats!
Please ignore any obvious problems in this post.
I thought we would probablly never be able to live in LeGrange points because of the radiation. Aren't they in the Van Allen belt? My understanding Van Allen radation is almost impossible to sheild against.
D.O.U.O.S.V.A.V.V.M.
It's stupid shit like this that makes other nations despise you.
I think most American citizens are fine people. It's time for you citizens to wrest control back from the evil scum who run your country.
If you do not, the inevitable outcome will be further degradation of your personal safety. You can not afford to let this happen.
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
This is a worse idea then sticking weapons in space (they're pretty easy to counter, even anti-missile systems, and are very expensive). Not only will it cost simply too much money, but it won't help foreign relations to say, "We're taking these points in space and they're not yours". And that's not even taking into consideration that we can't navigate freely in space yet anyways. If other countrie's sent satellites/probes to these points, what are they going to do there anyways? By the time the probes might do something actually useful, anyone who objects to their use will be able to destroy whatever early 21st century tech that is there and claim it for themselves. It's like claiming the bottom of the sea...
There's no questioning if this is going to happen. It's simply a question of who will win.
welcome our new LaGrange overlords :P
And that would be ZZ Top, I believe.
Though right at this moment I'd say there are few players at this level and they are all military in nature. But down the road everybody will join in.
Any group which intends to use physical force to impose its will on the surface of this planet, will need to be able to maintain assets in space. it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that out. (har, har, har)
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Keeping such bases and supplying them with reserves is quite an expensive undertaking. Look at how difficult it is to get another shuttle up. Some level of international cooperation is necessary... not just for the expertise, but also for covering expenses.
Taking an overtly aggressive stance on this issue is counterproductive for exactly what is being advocated. Regimes with fewer requirements for safety procedures might be motivated to actually try to put a base up there themselves... while the U.S. faces both safety and budget pressure.
The best bet, in my view, is to encourage international peaceful cooperation and thus better cover both expenses and take a leadership position through valuable contributions and not imperialism. It sends wrong signals to both friends and foes to actively seek such dominance.
see a Text Widget
but, did anyone else open up that first link and see Bill Gates in a space suit?
Clones are people two.
LaGrange points are the points in relation to two bodies, in this case the Earth and Sun, such that a body of neglegible mass will maintain its distance from the first two bodies. That is, relative to the Earth and Sun these stations wouldn't move. These points are here.
Why not an infinite number of LaGrange points at an equal distance from the center of the earth along the equator?
I am an elite member of the bush administration behind this conquest. All of you suckers who oppose will be assimilated.
All your LaGrange points are belong to us, bitch.
[ ] Create confusion by referring to Intel's CPU isolation and privilege strategy as LaGrange
[ ] Suggest renaming these imaginary, 3D coordinates the "Delarge" points - in honor of Alex from "A Clockwork Orange"
[ ] Mmmmmmm! Tasty fairy-cake!
[ ] Bend over, and kiss your asteroid goodbye.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
It was bad enough that they had to learn enough geography to know where Iraq is; now they have to learn enough physics to know about LaGrange points? It's tough being an über-patriot.
if the nations conquer space rather than the corporations.
We're all exited about SpaceShip One but don't forget those folks will bring back brain-eating facehuggers to us in a couple o' years...
I for one welcome our American DNS and space hub controlling overlords.
A Disney park at one Lagrange point and a WalMart at the other; or a new guantanamo out of reach of un inspectors? I'd say the former.
Obviously some asshole in Space Command would like to initiate a new space race in the manner of the kind Sputnik began.
Of course they have a vested interest in such a race. The question is, do the people who pay their bills do too?
Just don't let Amazon patent them.
SOHO, a (joint US/EU project) is in a halo orbit around L1 (http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/mission/page1.html ) and WMAP, a US satellite, is in a halo orbit around L2 - according to their official explanation (http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/m_mm/ob_techorbit1.html)
The WMAP page also explains that the L1 and L2 points aren't as stable as the article implies...
- armoring vehicles in Iraq
- providing for the future medical care of the soldiers currently being maimed in Iraq
- providing real security against terrorist attacks (e.g. inspecting container ships)
- providing all of the reconstruction aid we'd originally said we'd provide in Afghanistan and Iraq and that the military (the real ones, not the civilians like Cheney, Bush and Wolfowitz who pretend to be) said was absolutely essential for stabilization
So, we can't even secure the London Underground and these people are worried about the Chinese at the L5 points. Give me a break..."All successful systems accumulate parasites" -- Hal Hixon
Look at the Air Force officers fantasize about conquering the universe. How naively ambitious of them... Well, let's let them get back to playing their war games.
(It's never too late to join the Renaissance)
...at L4 and L5 for oxygen, water, propellent, and building material. You could build a pretty impressive colony with them, and it wouldn't be as dangerous as a normal earth orbit.
I'm in favor of leaving the LaGrange points out of the control of any government body, because I would hate to see either the militarization or commercialization of space. Unfortunately, human beings are still primitive territorial animals, so such scrabbling is inevitable. So, if any of the nations must dominate the LaGrange points, I guess I'd prefer to see the US there. Sure, we'll both militarize AND overcommercialize them, probably worse than anyone else, but at least we're pretty generous in letting facilities be used for research purposes as well.
-- The reason it's called the right wing? Irony.
to responsibly deal with itself, much less regulate the exploitation of "space." It's sickening to think of our pathetic political strggles escaping the confines of our planet. By and large, up to now, space has been the domain of unity, cooperation in the face of adversity. But I suppose the U.S. broke into space politics the minute we decided to put a man on the moon, not in the name of science, but in the name of "neener neener neener" to one-up Russia's Sputnik. As a registered American voter, I promise to watch out for those with a political agenda in space. All things considered, humans may never be ready for peaceful coexistence without genetic alteration. That, my friends, is a crying shame.
Rumor spreadin' round, Colorado town,
'Bout that chokepoint at Lagrange,
(Burt knows what I'm talkin' about)
Just let me know - if you wanna go,
To that station on the range
(Branson gotta hotel fulla nice girls there)
A-hmm, how, how, ho--*CLANG*owww!
"Gawddamn, Billy, ah know our guitars look fuzzier in zero-G, an' ah know we can grow us beards longer without trippin' on 'em alla time like back on Earth, but howinnahell's we s'posed to play guitar like this?"
"Hey Dusty, get the beard outa yer guitar while I sing a verse of Home on LaGrange!"
(screeching of guitars and shifting of gears as Billy breaks into the next track and Frank figures out how to use drums in zero-G...)
Clean slate, O2
Past low-earth orbit's where I'm goin' to,
Space suit, peroxide,
Got Allen's funding and my reason why,
They're buyin' tickets just as fast as they can,
'Cause every geek's crazy 'bout an L-5 man...
Top coat, top hat,
An overfunded NASA's budget fat.
Black tiles, white knight,
Lookin' sharp, ready for flight,
They're buyin' tickets just as fast as they can,
'Cause every geek's crazy 'bout an L-5 man...
Sometimes military solutions are the only solutions, but this is not one of those times.
I haven't been there for years, but I suspect they'd welcome a space colony.
By 1996, 41 nations, representing more than 80 per cent of the earth's population, had signed the treaty. Of these, 27 nations were full voting members of the treaty organisation.
Provisions of the treaty can be changed only by unanimous agreement of the voting members.
The treaty also bans any military operations, use of nuclear weapons, or disposal of radioactive waste in Antarctica; encourages the free exchange of information from scientific research conducted there; and forbids nations from making any new territorial claims on the continent.
It, however, made no ruling on existing territorial claims.
Why isn't this a viable model for control of the LaGrange points? Seems like there is a lot less resources to exploit in the LaGrange points than in the antarctic... hell, there aren't even any penguins living in the LaGrange points!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
There is no such thing as centrifugal source. There is, however, centripetal force.
We need competition.
If there was one thing that drives space exploration its competition, not your starry-eyed dreams of free society, or the wonder to know and explore. There is a reason it was called the "Space Race". For the better part of 35 years we have done mostly nothing in our national space initative, sure we have mars rovers, comet impacting probes, and other devices we have yet to fully understand. But where have WE gone?
We have sat in the comfort of earth and lower earth orbit for more than 35 years. We have sat here because space has turned from something to have national pride for, to something that really only makes the news with its failures.
Everyone wants to find fault with NASA, the Administration, some scape goat, (And I will not argue with their faults), but no one wants to see the real reason why we are stuck at home.
We have no competition. None. No country to upstage us for a long time. There are people who remember why we went to space, and those people wrote this article. Competition is coming though, and we will be hard pressed to catch up, because that is what we will have to do, Catch up.
Yes we are technologically superior, and probably will be for the forseeable future, but if you can believe, space is not captured by technology, it is captured by the human spirit, the will, the drive that is in all of us, but we have somehow learned to ignore this with our endless safety and budget meetings. Space has been turned into routine.
Competition will come from China, yes, everyone would like to call them at least somewhat backwards, but that is a dangerous interpratation.
They are not backwards, but merely held back. Their genetic and social expansion has been curtailed by a government for the better part of thousands of years. Im not just talking about their recent communist regime. They will find their drive one day, and when they do, they will not be stopped. The fatal flaw that our space program has suffered, the degeneration into routine, will not be a factor for a population long held back.
We as a nation must see this, we must see this coming competition, and thrive on it as we always have. LaGrange Points, Mars, Asteriod Belt, these are places humans can learn to use for our benifit, they are above and beyond critical to our long term survival, and competition will get us there, one way or another.
There is truth in humor.
I don't know where this CamelCase spelling comes from, but I bet poor ol' Lagrange would be surprised.
Gravitation is a theory, not a fact.
One of the primary goals of a colony at these points would be to be self-sufficient. In other words, independent of Earth.
Think about it - If you were a self-sufficient space faring colony with practically unlimited mining resources, why would you be taking orders from Earth?
In time, the colony will declare independence, as did other famous colonies. History will repeat itself.
Because one general in an obscure military journal tossed out the idea doesn't mean that the US supports this position, is working towards achieving this goal, or really much else.
Colonizing, or capturing, or whatever exactly the military wants to do with the LaGrange points is decades if not centuries away, and decades if not centuries away from being militarily significant. It is in no way feasable right now, given the ballooning US budget deficit. Our current national debt could not take the strain that the financial burden of such an endeavor would entail. This is nothing more than one soldier's wet dream.
Don't forget that Friday is Hawaiian shirt day.
...probably because it is.
What about all the British, French, Spanish, Dutch colonies in the Americas? They are all happy independent nations now (for the most part) that fought wars, not necessarily with each other, but against their home nations for independence.
What in the name of God or science makes you think space is going to be any different?
Think about who would move to a space colony: a pot-smoker wanting to get away from unjust laws on his lifestyle, a Falun Dafa group seeking asylum from persecution, and a libertarian trying to get away from taxes.
Nations can do their best to try to expand into state out of fear of other nations doing so first, but it's going to be the colonists that end up fighting the wars for these nations, and eventually, wars of independence a few generations later.
Maybe not every colonist would take up arms, but my assumption is that even of the ones that don't, they will most likely achieve independence anyway (Canada), so why would the US want to be the first?
Bodies in outer space are not supposed to be used for millitary purposes. Interesting that this is essentially a 'territory' which is not a physical body.
http://www.islandone.org/Treaties/BH766.html
http://www.spacelawstation.com/international.html
I always thought that outer space would at least prevent people from contesting territory, since area, particularly off of the major planets, seemed so vast relative to the cost of putting things up there. I figured scarcity wouldn't be a problem and the territorial boundaries that nations are based on might be partially undermined.
I figured space would be libertarian.
I guess this just re-emphasizes that even in space there are scarce resources which people are going to end up fighting over, and which will necessitate extending national power into outer space, in order to enforce any claims on territoriality.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
All of your LaGrange points are belong to us?
Achille Talon
Hop!
[ ] Heat tea, create infinite improbability drive
Revenge is a dish best served cold. It is very cold in space.
Ok, so someone had to say it.
Thanks! But somehow posting that, made me feel dirty. Must be bad karma... Aaaaaaaanyway, let's go back to the topic :)
Dear Mr IRS,
:
You are welcome to come and collect !
Here are my coordinates
Lagrange Point N.3
You cannot miss it, it's just beind the mine field, to the left of the laser battery.
Best Regards....
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker
See the subject.
Such rivalries are inevitable. One could argue otherwise, but it is to argue against human nature and all of our history as a species.
However, I do not believe it is in the best interest of the United States or any other nation to pursue such a one-sided and, in certain aspects, belligerent policy. We cannot change the inevitability of conflict, but each nation can attempt to ensure that it is not the first one to cast the proverbial stone.
If the United States decides to build a station at a Lagrange point, why not also assist the EU and Russia in doing likewise. This way a certain status quo is maintained and relations may be kept at a stable norm.
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. --Will
"Centrifugal force" is a convenient name for the apparent forces that appear when translating to a rotating reference frame. The classic method of determining where the Lagrange points are is literally to balance the gravitational and centrifugal forces. See here for a great example.
Why G. W. Bush want to invade LaGrange points?
AFAIk there is no oil there.
As long as space is an expensive commercial or government endeavor, those enterprises will have control about who and what gets to the L5 points. As long as those organizations have a say, they will try to exert their vision on their assets in space.
If you want the end of such rivalries, you will need to commoditize the components for reaching space, and you will need to remove the administrative barriers to launching stuff there freely. When anyone can get there, such organizational and governmental rivalries cannot predominate.
I already own five acres of land on the moon,
Crunch!
Lets see who gets that far first..civilian or government spacecraft...I bet you it will be civilian (bill gates in the Windows 2012 rocket!)..what starts happening when all these civilians start taking plots of space for thier very own..who has right to tell them no?..Like they are going to listen to someone on earth.What happens when someone puts the first data centers in space..who will be able to control them..duh duh duh..the MPAA/RIAA Space Patrol!
~~"Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong." ~~Dennis Miller
Space colonization will probably kill a lot of natives of planet Earth, even just by accident. It seems inevitable there will be nuclear reactors in space and one is likely to screw up or fall back to earth sometime. Weapons are surely planned as well.
I like to think of it as how movies and video games taught me.
Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri and Civilization taught me that the first into space will be the only civilization that lives and even then we will inevitably fight amongst ourselves for supremacy of land and space. And regardless of what country we come from, there will be an intellectual divide that separates each faction of thought, whether it be a hive mind, militaristic, eco-friendly, or religion based mindset.
The Terminator Movie Series taught me that mankind is destined to destroy itself.
And Highlander taught me that there can be only one.
So ultimately, no matter where we go, we will want to be the first to claim our stake, and if there is a dispute, we will battle it out until all others are ultimately destroyed for that is our destiny until there is only one left.
Whenever I think of LaGrange, my mind goes immediately to LaGrange Indiana or that ZZ Top song.
It's all fun and games until you get ... SPACE HERPES!!!
...or maybe not.
Really? I never thought to check the USC for that....
I'd be interested in reading that law. Link?
Service guarantees Citizenship! Questions Guarantee GITMO.... Amerika Uber Alles!
What does a country being democratic have to do with it?
I seem to recall the US removing several democratically elected heads of state in South/Central America just because they saw them as threats to US economic/polic interests...
Let's also not forget the Iranian coup, (from Wikipedia):
"By the 20th century Iranians were longing for a change and thus followed the Persian Constitutional Revolution of 1905/1911. In 1953 Iran's prime minister Mohammed Mossadeq, who had been elected to parliament in 1923 and again in 1944 and who had been prime minister since 1951, was removed from power in a complex plot orchestrated by British and US intelligence agencies ("Operation Ajax").
Many scholars suspect that this ouster was motivated by British-US opposition to Mossadeq's attempt to nationalize Iran's oil. Following Mossadeq's fall, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (Iran's monarch) grew increasingly dictatorial... His autocratic rule, including systematic torture and other human rights violations, led to the Iranian revolution and overthrow of his regime in 1979."
Without competition, progress stagnates. There is nowhere that says that competition must be negative, incidentally... take the olympics for example. If this can be turned into a CHALLENGE instead of a cock-wagging contest, then full speed ahead! It will be done one way or another and I see it as a likely conclusion that the US space program will drive the 'race' to L1-L5.
Rumour spreadin' a-'round in that NASA town
'bout that point outside LaGrange
And you know what I'm talkin' about.
Just let me know if you wanna go
To that point out of the solar system.
They gotta lotta nice girls.
Have mercy.
A haw, haw, haw, haw, a haw.
A haw, haw, haw.
Well, I hear it's fine if you got the time
And the G's to get yourself in.
A hmm, hmm.
And I hear it's tight most ev'ry night,
But now I might be mistaken.
Hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm.
Have mercy.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
What are we going to do once we "occupy" these points? Extract taxes on the spice trade to Zeta Reticuli?
Really, the first colonizations will be on the moon and maybe Mars. The LP are a long way from either. Unfortunately, I have much more confidence in the human race's ability to exterminate itself before space colonies at the LPs are feasible.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
http://www.physics.montana.edu/faculty/cornish/lag range.html
Interesting to note is:
When a satellite parked at L4 or L5 starts to roll off the hill it picks up speed. At this point the Coriolis force comes into play - the same force that causes hurricanes to spin up on the earth - and sends the satellite into a stable orbit around the Lagrange point.
So perhaps it's possible to share L4 & L5 as a kind of virtual gravitational body.
I think this competition will be very integral to get anything space oriented off the ground. Without it, NASA seems to stagnate. The last time we had any manned missions with the attention of the public it was the space race, and as much as it cost us, it was well spent. Now if only we would spend our tax dollars on exploration rather than attemtping to reinvent the wheel in other countries, and this from a moderate conservative! Derek
This entire question is ridiculous. Although L4 and L5 are points in space, there is a HUGE area of space both circumferance wise and on either side of the actual points to occupy. We're not talking ten square feet here. I imagine every craft and station ever built could easily fit nicely. Perhaps even that number times a thousand. Space is big.
In theory any craft not exactly in the middle will drift over time, but considering the forces involved here and other logistics, small thruster adjustments could easily compensate.
POTD (Pointless Question of the Day)
I'd be much happier if we conquered the Lagrange points first.
It's not capitalized oddly. It's just spelled Lagrange. As in, Joseph Louis Lagrange.
Of course we'll have them in space. Economics is at the root of virtually all wars: someone has something someone else wants badly enough to kill for it. On a massive scale. And, once we get out into the solar system in a big way, and start to exploit the wealth that is out there ... well, let's face it, greed and avarice have followed humanity everywhere he's ever gone. Often, we go there because of those emotions. Frankly, I can't see the Final Frontier being an exception to thousands of years of established human history. Might even get a tad uglier.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
What's next? The Earth's core? Saturn's rings? When are we going to stop trying to lay claim to everything???
Who says anyone must hold absolute control of the LaGrange points?
I mean, the same argument could be said for Antarctica -- if we don't turn it into a U.S. controlled territory, the Chinese will! Well, maybe if they were trying to monopolize access to Antarctica, we would care enough to do it first. In the meantime, many countries can conduct their own business on Antarctica and there are no problems.
Why treat space differently? Why would you, in anticipation of a conflict in the future, create one now? If you treat control of LaGrange as a binary choice -- either us or the Chinese have 100% control with no access at all for the other -- then you will bring that situation about. If you say that we will fight over LaGrange and thus we must claim it now and prevent the Chinese from doing so, then you only give them an incentive to take it for themselves, whether before or after we do.
I am fully aware that with history as our guide we can predict conflicts in space. Why assume that all such conflicts are unavoidable and that the only choice is preemptive action? History doesn't bear that out at all. History does say that when one side believes war is innevitable, then it is.
We don't have to go to war with China, over the LaGrange points or anything else. We don't. And only by believing that this is the case will it ever be possible.
So I say we treat it like Antarctica. Nobody claims it, nobody prevents others from accesing it, everybody benefits. If this model of peaceful coexistence breaks down, well hopefully we're not fools and are prepared. But let's not go creating conflicts where none exist yet, okay?
The enemies of Democracy are
If you take a careful examination of that list you'll notice that all of those countries (and cities within) attacked the United States of America first. The lesson is clear: If you don't want the USA "way of life" exported to your country then don't fuck with us.
favorite ZZ Top songs!
Bored. And burning Karma:)
*** Sigs are a stupid waste of bandwidth.
It doesn't matter if the US Space Command wants to wrest control of these points. They have to get there before they can exert control.
China is the only country with a forward-thinking Space Program. In 1000 years, we'll all be Chinese simply because nobody else went into space and made colonies. It's evolution - didn't you take Science?
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
If there's no rivalry to get to the Lagrange points, chances are it's because nobody wants to go there.
Going to space is a major undertaking, so any extra bit of motivation we can find is a good thing, IMHO.
A classic problem with space travel is the assumption that it will grow from the ground up. As in we will gradually expend more and more earth resources into putting people in space. This is a doomed approach. The need for resources is growing so fast that we will never be able to maintain a major prescene in space using ground based resources. The only hope is to focas on establishing self sustaining space colonies that can grow on their own and expand and hopefully contribute back resources to the mother world. It may already be too late. There was a window in the seventies and eighties when the third world hadn't begun to take up resources that it might have been possible. At present the plan seems to be to even shut down what public funded space travel there is now. The obvious battle cry is private investment but are corporations willing to put the hundreds of Billions needed into something that may not pay off for tens of years if not hundreds of years. Space colonies have a massive potential but it's a very long term investment. How many decades before they would be self sustainedable? At that point how many decades before they grow enough to contribute back a percentage of their growth to the Earth. It's similar to the colonization of the americas only on a much grander and more expensive scale. It took decades back then to pay off a colony. It might cost north of a trillion dollars to get space colonies self sufficent. How long would it take to return that investment with interest? To avoid the petty nationalism the colonies would have to be independent. Another problem given the backers would want control. The only practical solution would be for every country to contribute and share equally. Never happen. Greed will trump that one. Barring a major cost saving technology, the space elevator is a possiblity, it's doubtful major space colonies will happen anytime soon.
I know it's habitual but the US needs to stop, think and ask some questions before shooting.
The US seems to love taking the initiative. So do so in a manner which involves the international community. Not in a way which creates further division.
This just seems like a good opportunity to do something right.
Well then, I'm all for some uninformed US-bashing from time to time - it tends to keep things interesting - but this reaction is completely out of line.
It looks exactly like something some extremist nutcase like al-zarqawi says every time he or his clan murdered innocent people: "The US people are surpressed by their evil scum leaders: dispose of them, or the inevitable outcome will be the further degradation of your personal safety".
Is this a direct threat or what? Insightful my heiny.
and why do you think we park our ship here? you can't even confirm what i'm saying, can you, space monkey?
Right it's much better to export the Khemer Rouge, old USSR, chinese, Taliban way of life. I'm sure people will be much better off then.
or so ZZ Top says:
Rumour spreadin' a-'round in that texas town
'bout that shack outside la grange
And you know what I'm talkin' about.
Just let me know if you wanna go
To that home out on the range.
They gotta lotta nice girls.
Have mercy.
A haw, haw, haw, haw, a haw.
A haw, haw, haw.
Well, I hear it's fine if you got the time
And the ten to get yourself in.
A hmm, hmm.
And I hear it's tight most ev'ry night,
But now I might be mistaken.
Hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm.
Have mercy.
- billy gibbons, dusty hill & frank beard
Read it. Read them all.
The earlier one about "weasel words" and stuff? Read that one before.
It pretty much negates the entire "High Frontier" issue.
There needs to be a word for this level of masturbatory bullshit.
A stable, predictable point far, far away with a clear line of sight is hardly a strategic or tactical high ground.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
The same people running the Iraq war are going to take control of the Lagrange points now :-(
Yes! If anything motivates the Americans into action, it is the need to STOP OTHERS from going there first or possibly having to SHARE the use of anything! How about thinking in terms of International cooperation and the whole Earth? Totally alien concepts to America, it seems. - We must get there to stop others from possibly benefitting from these to maintain US supremacy.
Frankly if the only thing that gets us to spend on space exploration/colonization is national competition I'm for it.
Your friendly neighborhood nitpicker
...the oil right?
" the fact that such rivalries are inevitable "
That is your opinion.
I believe that such rivalries can be prevented.
I have seen much progress already made by nations working together and sharing information. Even the Soviets have opened their space program. Your pessimistic attitude should not warp your logic so much that you think you can see into the future.
"We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts we make our world." -Buddha
Vietnam and Iraq clearly did not attack America first (only in the alternate universe of the criminal-in-chief where the truth is spun of a web of lies). Their sovereignty was first invaded by America, and neither launched an offense against America, except as part of a regional civil war or protecting their own homeland.
How was the American way of life exported to Hiroshima and Nagasaki by using weapons of mass destruction to vaporize large numbers of civilians? I guess that would justify Iraq or Iran using weapons of mass destruction against us since we attacked Iraq and materially supported Iraq's slaughter of Iranians?
The Lagrange points you mention are those of the sun/earth system. The article refers to the earth/moon Lagrange points...
The moon L1 point is useful for something else - you can build a space elevator from the moon, past the L1 point and with a big weight on the earth side of the L1 point as a counterbalance to the cable itself. This is needed since the moon is tidally locked to earth, which means there's no luna-stable orbit around the moon.
The Rumsfeld Doctrine on space already promotes its militarization and has now for a while. It's not surprising that U.S. Space Command would agree with the U.S. Secretary of Defense.
? print
http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2004_11/Krepon.asp
I hope that after I die the one word people use to describe me is "resurrected."
...a how how how....
they should be fired.
...
That was always my problem with SDI 'Star Wars'.
We (the US taxpayers) pay these people really well (at least the brass and contractors). If it worked, they would (should) just do it and we'd hear about it later. This isn't to give respect to the Military Industrial Complex or advocate a genocidal first strike, just living in a real world.
While there are still wars on Earth, they will extend into space.
Imagine there's no countries
Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.
It's not "controlling the chokepoints of the solar system" or "exporting national rivalries beyond the atmosphere." Under the assumption we haven't developed Project Goldeneye, which I think is reasonable, these orbits are important insofar as they relate to conventional warfare today, not conquering the galaxy in 2345. Information Age stuff, not Space Age stuff.
Here's a gem from page 3 of the USAFSC journal: The foundation of Space Superiority is Space Situation Awareness, which means having a complete understanding of what is happening in space. To that end, we must have continuous situation awareness of...space.
I'm not a fanboy for the military, but I think one needs to keep the audience in mind when interpreting the mag's tone. For better or worse, we don't get unmanned warfare without comsats. That said, can somebody explain why the stable orbits have more strategic value than the ones we currently use?
There are issues worth considering here--like what may be an expiring US monopoly on GPS. But the authors of these pieces, unlike the knuckleheads we elect, hold PhDs, and write thoughtful opinions. Unfortunately the p. 46 article, which reads like a high school book report, is more marketable.
you can have my violent video games when you pry them from my cold, dead hands.
Prime UID Club
The FAA paperwork requirements are actually quite basic:
http://ast.faa.gov/lrra/about_lrra.htmPre-application consultation;
Application evaluation, comprised of:
Policy review and approval; Safety review and approval; Payload review and determination; Financial responsibility determination; & Environmental review.Compliance monitoring.
Anything less is really a public dis-service. Which of these wouldn't you do before someone set off something with an impulse of >200,000 lb-sec?
Has anyone noticed that Bill Gates's likeness populates the space suit in the picture?
Ask the Vietnamese, the Iraqis, the residents of Nagasaki, Hiroshima, etc. how much they benefitted from the American slaughter.
When you are in a rotating reference frame, you experience centrifugal force. Translating to a non-rotating reference frame makes the force disappear.
When you are in a stationary reference frame near a massive object like the earth, you experience gravity. Translating to a reference frame in free-fall makes the force disappear.
So if centrifugal force doesn't exist, then General Relativity says gravity doesn't exist.
I think the upshot of all this is: "Pedants Don't Exist". Now, what were we talking about again?
(oh - and "Hi, Mark!" Nice link.)
My amazing wife - Artist, Author, Philosopher - Laurie M
Let's have a raffle and raise some money while we're at it.
org.slashdot.post.SignatureNotFoundException: ewg
Each of those places is better off now than it was before the US' involvement.
LaGrange points are mostly useful for interplanetary transit, and I really don't see much realistic need to control access to truely "outer" space. Until there's some realistic proof that the far reaches will provide us with access to rare resources, I don't see much need to 'fight' for control of what is, effectively, a hole in space.
I understand the value of controling up as far as geosync, but going beyond that seems rather 'dog and straw'ish.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
While at Rockwell, I submitted an unsolicited proposal to NASA to explore the vicinity of the Earth-Moon and Earth-Sun Lagrange points with solar sails that had acoustic monitors to detect and measure impacts with dust grains and larger particles. I don't know for a fact that NASA received this, as I only received one acknowledgment for a dozen or so proposals I did, which might have been for the whole batch. The uncertainty was also due to a weirdo named Ron Jones who kept offering to hand deliver everyone's proposals to the mailroom (presumably so he could winnow them or plagiarize them, as several people testified to his plagiarism). Anyway, it was (and is) a cool idea. We should at least determine the distribution of material at and in halo orbits near these points. If we don't seize the high ground, we should at least survey it. I tend to agree with Sir Arthur C. Clarke about not (further) militarizing space, although I disagree with the Moon Treaty.
-- Professor Jonathan Vos Post
How does one 'buy" one of these things? It's a fucking abstract concept? or are they sugesting to buy one of them like I own a acre of the moon?
If for anything else, most nationalities might be discribed as simply "a man on the moon". But, there is an exception. If he's from France, then it'll be "somebody from France is on the moon"
However, we have developed different mechanisms for sorting them out, from courts and arbitration to fisticuffs and nuclear war.
Personally, I think everyone on the planet would benefit from global demilitarization. Now, this isn't some hippie-dippy "peace and love" idea. It's based on nation states agreeing to disclose their war-making endeavors and execute simultaneous destruction of such programs and capacities.
Of course, there will still be the need for knives and guns for tool use and huting, and personal arms for policing. But if everyone disarmed simultaneously, we wouldn't need dedicated war equipment such as attack aircraft, aircraft carriers, tanks, nuclear missles, etc.
Nations and terrorist organizations can still use dual-purpose equipment to make attacks on others, ala 9-11 where commercial airliners were used as missles, or when Timothy McVeigh use a fertilizer truck bomb. However, this is already a threat now and conventional weaponry isn't terribly useful -- the most useful tools against this kind of terrorism are good intelligence and police work.
Global demilitarization would not usher in world peace, but it would make wars less violent and deadly.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory is currently in orbit at L1.
Even though the EU has not demonstrated any ability to exert its will outside or within their borders, collectively they are wealthy enough to insert their presence.
And the Japanese are currently the second richest nation on earth. Perhaps they have enough financial resources to make a go of it.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
Sure, specially for the 25000 dead in Iraq, they
rest in peace now thanks to the US, hey thank you!!
Not to mention the 2 million killed in Vietnam.
The problem is that those who travel into space and those who make the decisions on what is done in space are different folks. I'm sure the decisionmakers get some input from those who have actually been there (for how realistic some new notions might be), but toss in economics and militaristic intentions, and many people will get involved. And of those who do travel beyond their sphere of comfort, I doubt that many CEOs who take trips abroad to see the future locations of their factories are moved by the breath-taking beauty of natural settings, or are moved to tears by the poverty-stricken locals. There are plenty of places on earth that can change people's sense of their place in the grander scheme of things, but not everyone will react the same way.
All your LaGrange are belong to U.S.!
I, for one, welcome our new Ur-Quan masters.
you can have my violent video games when you pry them from my cold, dead hands.
Prime UID Club
You gotta look at where Iraq was when you say that. Yeah, Iraq isn't a paradise right now -- in fact it is a very dangerous place. But at least a dictator has been replaced by hope.
As far as Vietnam, the same principle applies. The French and the Communists had pretty much already screwed the place up. At least part of that country is free now.
L2 is occupied by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, and in the future, a telescope is planned to occupy that location.
Okay, it wasn't the US, but it was friends of the US. Kuwait was attacked first. Then they didn't live up to the peace treaty.
There's no native populations that need to be cleared out.
I think this is all a government conspiracy to stop anyone from discovering earth's sister planet hidden behind the sun..
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Funny how just today, SpaceDev (the guys who built the engine for SpaceShipOne) announced that they and Andrews Space are working on a mission funded by NASA to get to the Lunar LaGrange Point 1 between the Earth and the moon.
For those interested, this is a private mission to the moon using a completely electrical propulsion system. As to why this has not become big news, is confusing me. I suppose it is shadowed by the Discovery launch.
See the article for yourself:
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=24563
Back in the 18th Century Americam Colonies did not have any professional scientists. Franklin did not have any formal education, he was mathematically illiterate. Anyway his accomplishments were way below those of the great French scientists of 18th Century France (D'Alembert, Laplace, Lagrange, Monge, Lavoisier to name only a few)
US did not have any real mathematical physicists before J. W. Gibbs.
Lagrange was a great pure and applied mathematician, he created analytical mechanics.
BTW I am neither French nor American.
What are the odds the US will try to sieze control of the Lagrange points, lets see:
:)
:)
* It will cost a ton of money - a lot of which will go to Bush supporters/Republican business interests/Military Industrial Complex. Check.
* Its militaristic and helps establish the American Empire's control over the rest of the world in some way by at least preventing some other country with billions upon billions in spare cash from exploiting first. Check.
I'd say pretty decent. There is no way in hell that we are going to prevent space from becoming filled with the same political and military problems we have here on Earth, and I am sorry to say the US will lead the way in making sure thats the case, don't worry
I am sure glad I don't live south of the border these days, I hope you guys can hang onto your freedom, because from my point of view its looking like you are gonna need a second revolution soon
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
We do have probes at the S-E L1 and L2 (I think) points; S-E L2 is the planned location for the Hubble follow-on, the James Webb Space Telescope. (Btw, it's about 1.5 million kilometers away from Earth). E-M L1 would be very useful for a Lunar-anchored space elevator, as would E-M L2 to a lesser extent. (The L1 elevator would be held up by an entirely different principle than a terrestrial SE.)
Describing the LaGrange points as intersections in space where gravitational and centrifugal forces balance out to provide orbital stability is pretty useless; that's true of any point on any stable orbit. It's pretty much the definition of "orbit."
If you are were an alien seeking advanced life forms in a solar system,
would Lagrange Points not be a great place to start?
With our current technology, is it possible to calculate and detect emissions from Lagrange Points of our latest neighboring planetoid discoveries, possibly with SETI?
Better to think that an intervention more beneficial to Earth life comes from a rendezvous made at a Lagrange Point as apose to using it for more greedy control/mongering.
Throughout all of human history, when there's been a chokepoint, humans have found a way to seize control of it and deny it to competitors and exploit it to their advantage. Now that someone has pointed out that LaGrange Points may have a strategic significance that's a problem? As I see it the alternatives are:
1) cede control of the LaGrange points to an enlightened body of incorruptible superbeings more commonly known as the UN
2) keep our mits off the LaGrange points until some less-gullible entity seizes control thereof
3) don't worry about it until someone figures out how to turn a buck controlling the LaGrange points then buy out that someone
There are some al Qaeda bases on the Moon, and quite possible Saddam's UFO fleet moved their WMD to their underground Mars bases. We have it on good authority from the interrogation team. Several terrorists have signed testimonies to this end, albeit some of them died during the questioning. None the less, truth prevails, with a little help from torture.
No, they're not. The top 10 in sequence are the US, China, Japan, India, Germany, UK, France, Italy, Brazil and Russia. This of course assumes that the EU is not a country.
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
I know this has been marked as funny, and was surely partly humorous. However, I feel that the parent is ENTIRELY correct. The first into space will be the only civilization that lives and even then we will inevitably fight amongst ourselves for supremacy of land and space. And regardless of what country we come from, there will be an intellectual divide that separates each faction of thought, whether it be a hive mind, militaristic, eco-friendly, or religion based mindset. Considering that we have seen such things happen before (colonization of the Americas, for example), and already see the intellectual divides in our current political situation, I see no reason NOT to expect that the nations that go to space will fight over it. And try to "win" by out-colonizing and out-fighting the others.
... try to reach suborbital space neighborhood securely. This whole military arrogance without backing is plain both typical and ridiculous.
Rivalries?
Clearly this is a move to fight interplanetary terrorism abroad rather than defend against it at home.
If we don't secure L2, surely Al Qaeda soon will!
should sieze all the oil, air, land and food before our rivals do.
Yeah I agree with that early poster who said let's try and get the earth-orbits nailed down. I mean, talk about a bunch of dreamers.
Yeah, the dictator has been replaced by DU debris too...
If I point out that you are incorrect, making me a foe does not make you any more correct.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Hmmm.... I wonder if you've confused Korea and Vietnam.
Vietnam is a crumbling vestige of bastardised communism - with all the highs and lows points that go with that. There's only one Vietnam, unless you're talking about special trade areas within Vietnam.
Korea is...well...screwed. Partitioned (wow, isn't that always an instant remedy for success for an occupying power), the North is a type of Monarchy in the trappings of Communism, reputed to be very corrupt while the South seems to be mired in an endless string of corruption cases.
Better off with American influence? Plenty of people would disagree, considering with how much respect Vietnam and both Koreas have been treated with by America.
Concrete analysis...
Why isn't this a viable model for control of the LaGrange points? Seems like there is a lot less resources to exploit in the LaGrange points than in the antarctic... hell, there aren't even any penguins living in the LaGrange points!
Ask yourself if you'd rather own a claim to part of Antarctica or to a LaGrange Point. Which is or will be more valuable? I'll take a LaGrange Point, thank you very much. That's why nations are willing to fight over it. They are (or will be) very valuable pieces of real estate. And they're not making them anymore!
I'd like to think that we'd remember what happened at the American Revolution and be a bit smarter than that
Don't believe the American propaganda about the American Revolution. The British did not really do anything *stupid* to spark the revolution, it was simply a matter of distance. Several influential Americans so that their influence would be greater if they were independent, and felt that the Atlantic provided enough of a barrier that they could be successful. Which actually would never have happened if the French had not seen the American revolution as an opportunity to embarass and weaken their great rival, Britain. Without French naval support, Britain would have put us (yes, I am American) down pretty quickly.
The point being, if the psychology of being an ocean away (plus typical human greed, lust for power, etc.) was one of the large motivating factors, we would have to be *GENIUS* to overcome the psychology of being in outer-freaking-space.
As a conservative, I favor the policy that ensures maximum violence.
On the one hand, if we "export national rivalries" into space colonization, of course there will be strife in space. And we all know that in space, no one can hear you scream. This fact may very likely be the impetus behind massive space wars, and since we're already bordering on autonomous droids and human clones, George Lucas can tell you where that one's going.
On the other hand, if space colonies are thought to be a "free" land, they will inevitably become their own faction. Life will be luxurious in the majority of space colonies, simply because it's more expensive to get out there and the ritzy will be in a higher proportion. As such, with the colonies thinking themselves better than those down below, and the earthbound resenting those above them in both a financial and literal sense, we will undoubtedly come to blows with giant mechanical killing machines called Gundams.
Yeah, it's quite a toughie.
Glog!
So the connection between the article subject and the book is rather weak. I understand that it's there to segue to the author's commentary, but it just doesn't work for me. Not that anyone cares about what works for me.
-- $SIGNATURE
maybe US control of these 5 spots in space, extremizing a function wouldn't be so difficult for students in the states
"Persistence is annoying success." - ghee22 11:28:1999 - 10:53:PM
If it's worth something, and one can control it, someone will try.
It's not a question of if someone should own it, it's a question of when will it happen? You can disagree with it (I'm not happy about it either, especially considering it will almost certainly be grabbed by an intrinsincly evil power-hungry capitolist group), but that's just the way it is.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
"Arthur C. Clarke, who depicted a LaGrange colony in his classic 1961 novel A Fall of Moondust, is not very happy about this. He argues we should not 'export national rivalries beyond the atmosphere.' Is he right? Or should we prepare for the fact that such rivalries are inevitable, even in space?"
As much as I hate to agree, I have to side with the U.S. Space Command. space is the ultimate highground and there are already powers that would seek to claim that highground. Claiming such a stable gravity point gives whatever nation that claims it a substantial edge in the movement of material into and out of orbit. This translates into more than defense, but finacial benefits as well. In the game of "Us or Them" I normally side with us as much of a shock as that may come. And unless something has changed on the planet earth that I haven't noticed, AC Clark's feel good communist social structure isn't anywhere on the horizon either. No black monoliths have been unearthed to eliminate man's drive for competeition or promote the reformation of the world governments either, so I'll side with the realist on this one.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
I already bought the titles to the LaGrange Points for fifty bucks on the internet.
I'm still trying to conquer the G-spot!
"Vietnam and Iraq clearly did not attack America first (only in the alternate universe of the criminal-in-chief where the truth is spun of a web of lies). Their sovereignty was first invaded by America, and neither launched an offense against America, except as part of a regional civil war or protecting their own homeland."
America tried to defend South Vietnam against North Vietnam. America successfully defended Kuwait against Iraq in the Gulf War. The current Iraq war is supposedly due to violations of the treaty ending the Gulf War. I'm not a big fan of the current conflict, BTW. As an aside, claiming any dictator has the right to rule a country by force, which is what you did by talking about Iraq's sovereignty, is a strange belief.
Vote for Pedro
" Please do NOT export USA "way of life" as it was exported to Vietnam, Hiroshima, Nagazaki, Iraq, Afhganistan,.... (unending list.....)"
...(unending list).
Please do NOT overthrow allied govts to US (without US permission), sneak attack US military base, give GW Bush any pretext for involving the US in a stupid war, fly planes into American buildings,
Vote for Pedro
When it's economically feasible to move large masses around at will in space (like asteroids), perhaps they can just be gathered at the L4 and L5 points. If they smash into each other and get pulverized, or if they end up sticking together like snowballs, that's fine -- it changes what we could do with them (or at least how), but the building blocks remain the same. By the time there's enough mass to create small planets, we'll probably have figured out how. Even then, more mass can be accumulated in orbit around the new planets.
If these new planets get Moon-sized, they probably are going to have their own Lagrange points (I don't know how the leading or trailing Earth will screw this up), which means more places to build artificial planets in stable orbits. Even if each new planet "loses" an L4 or L5 point because the Earth is already occupying it, they should open up at least one new one each. Planets on opposite sides of the sun might have to communicate with each other via a repeater at another planet's L1 (it's the shortest path I can think of that dodges the Sun) or via one of the other planets, but that's hardly a catastrophe. Eventually there would be a whole Token Ring of planets -- whether this is a good or bad development is left to the reader -- or even a ringworld.
Mal-2
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
or does it not count because they were all still breathing bottled atmosphere taken from earth?
We do not have the launch technology to do any conquering of anything in space. This is all talk to get money spent on research and development that may see real world application in 100 years at the rate we are exploring space.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
In addition to the Earth-Moon Lagrange points (in geometric relation to the Moon's orbit), there are similar Earth-Sun Lagrange points. The Earth-Sun L-4 and L-5 points are pretty far away of course - 60 degrees ahead of and behind Earth's orbit around the sun. So probably not terribly useful. But Earth-Sun L1 and L2 are definitely useful - only a couple of million miles away.
Also, while at any instant there are points that geometrically correspond to the Lagrange criteria, in practice a body near one of these points would follow a stable "halo" orbit near the point (with minor adjustments to maintain that orbit near the unstable L-1 and L-2 points). These stable halos can occupy a lot of space - 20-30% of the otherwise smallest dimensions involved (Moon-L1/L2 or Earth-L1/L2 distances for L1/L2).
Also note the old L5 society turned into the National Space Society some time ago.
Energy: time to change the picture.
Dear World Leader,
We have become aware of your active trafficking, talking, or planning to take ownership of "La Grange", a copyrighted work by RIAA artist ZZ Top. You do not have permission to use "La Grange" in any context other than those permitted by the RIAA, and are liable for $10,000 in damages for each infringement.
In addition, you are not permitted to deal in Cheap Sunglasses, Pearl Necklaces, and neither Velcro nor Flies. You are permitted to use Legs and Tush, limited to the extent that they are those you were born with.
Best,
Cary Sherman
Anybody want a peanut?
Any time there is greed and power involved there will be conflict. It is inevitable, you can't really tell a whole bunch of 'kids' to share. Even if a majority, we agree things should be shared equally and everyone should benefit in the harmony of perfect equality, it is a fantasy world and will NEVER happen.
Thanks for your time,
[cx]
First, your assertions do nothing to salvage the original claim that these countries somehow attacked America.
America tried to defend South Vietnam against North Vietnam.
When did they join the Union?
America successfully defended Kuwait against Iraq in the Gulf War. The current Iraq war is supposedly due to violations of the treaty ending the Gulf War.
The key word here here being "supposedly", yet even if it were true, which it is not, it was not an attack on America, and the WMD claims were lies by the Bush administration that were nearly as transparent at the time as they were now. The US was far more responsible than Iraq for kicking out weapons inspectors by infiltrating them with spies, which was never part of the deal, telling them they had to leave because the US was going to attack again, and forbidding them from ever reentering to resecure the real weapons sites that they had secured much more effectively than the Americans did (demonstrating that that was never the real intent of the American aggression). As incompetent as the UN was, it was not nearly as incompetent or vicious towards civilians as American operations there are today and Kofi Annan correctly judged the war as an unfounded, illegal war by the US.
I'm not a big fan of the current conflict, BTW. As an aside, claiming any dictator has the right to rule a country by force, which is what you did by talking about Iraq's sovereignty, is a strange belief.
Claiming that Sadaam had a right to rule by force was what the US administrations did repeatedly when Sadaam was still weak enough that he might have been overthown, but the US loved him because he was so good at slaughtering Iranians and we were helping him keep power and even target his chemical attacks.
If he had been universally opposed, he would have easily been overthrown and there would not be such a large opposing the US rule. Now, the US is the one ruling by force, responsible for at least a hundred thousand deaths and much more maiming, etc. You cannot impose democracy at the barrel of a gun. Taking sides in civil wars is silly. Disarming and declaring war on one army which basically had terrorism under control just to train a whole other set of army troops for the other side and hand victory to the Iranians is silly and has nothing to do with Democracy. Sadaam was our dictator, just as Bin Laden was our man in Afghanistan and most of the new, improved trained police there are just another dimension for another civil religious war and they are turning loose the same type of death squads that Sadaam had, initiated by American action which has not generally advanced rights at all, as many now-oppressed groups will readily tell you.
Bush is also a dictator over those who oppose his illegal immoral actions taken in the name of America. Just because the political process allows him to take power in an election where there were no credible alternatives does not mean he and his party should have absolute power to lie, cheat, steal, etc. as they do, without fear of any responsibility. Iran is also a democracy, which Bush ironically finds to be illegitimate for similar reasons. There is not as much a difference as you would like to pretend.
We already control Antarctica. How do you think we fought off that Goa'uld attack?
This country needs a new space race. "War on Terror," "War on Drugs," All pointless drivel. The best we can do is that?
Nah - we can do much better. Let's try to seize control of the LaGrange points. Spain? France? You ninies wanna try and stop us? Come and try, you puny bastards. We'll beat you to the punch!
Here's the thing - the space race in the 60's was a huge success! The US had PURPOSE! What's the purpose now? "Spreading capitalism?" What a pile of crap. If an idea is good, it'll spread itself.
So, hey, a new space race would be a good thing.
...is not a force.
The combined gravitational pull of the two bodies in orbit equals the centripetal acceleration of a third, smaller body in orbit, keeping it in orbit. Of the five (per two bodies), only two are stable.
The man is trying to speak common sense to you, as most people around the world see it: What goes around, comes around.
If Americans go around fscking the planet, it's just a question of time when the payback comes. Indeed, 911 was one such payback, if you believe that al Qaeda are responsible for it, and if you listen to what they are saying: you guys had it coming for a good number of reasons.
Like the bible says: Do unto others, as you would have them do unto you. - 128,000 Iraqis Killed By US Occupation Since 2003. over 55% of them women and children under 12 -- This is what the rest of the world will judge you by: YOUR DEEDS. Americans and their newspapers may pretend to be blind and deaf but the world still sees the blood and gore in your collective hands.
The words of your president may be as noble lies as ever, but when your country is upto it's neck in the gore of dead children, it doesn't matter what the words are. Deeds are all that matter. Deeds are what you will be judged by.
Is this a threat? No. It is plain common sense talking to you. Sure it may sound offensive, as most common sense does when you're way out of line. Still, Americans who see everything as a threat are just living in fear of their paranoid delusions due to what they have done. Good. By any mearsure of decency: You and your country deserve it. It is the least sign of the healthy fact that you are now beginning to realize what kind of genocidal massmurdering maniacs you have become and what you deserve for it. And this makes you live in constant paranoid fear, just like the nazis used to. Deny the problem all you like. It won't go away.
As the world sees it: THE REAL TERRORISTS ARE THE AMERICANS, no amount of dollars won't bring back the dead. This isn't a game you are plaing with the predator drones. If you read messages like this as threats: go see a shrink. You're one sick dude.
Notice that the nonlinear stability is much harder to prove than the linear stability analysis. In general, nonlinear stability implies linear stability but the converse is false. On the other hand, linear instability implies nonlinear instability.
http://gme.unizar.es/docum/arnoldGeom.pdf
We can certainly trust all parties to come to terms on something positive... once we get rid of that little issue with the inhabitants of that evil little separatist island... but nothing that can't be ironed out.
Surely, nothing can go wrong once a treaty is signed... *COUGH*ballistic*COUGH*weapons*COUGH*
Yup. No doubt that all parties are trustworthy and able to reach a positive accord.
I guess it comes mostly from the white skin. But the intermingling of bloodlines means you've infected even the others.
And who gives a shit for the Lagrange points anyway? By the time you get there, we'll all be dead anyway.
We're going to all be dead long before we have the technology and resources to create affordable colonies at the La Grange points. We might as well talk about how to arrange the chairs on the Titanic.
there will be disagreements about who owns what. Gaza for instance.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
...you just need a relay at L4 or L5. Not sure about the early human habitation prospects, but once L4 or L5 are occupied, it seems that it would make a pretty good place for unmanned sattelites.
Fill in your four or five-letter word of wisdom here _ _ _ _ _.
We must not allow a mineshaft gap!
Go look at keyhole satellite photos from http://maps.google.com/ . The earth as seen from space, with no borders. Yippee.
So, are you changed? Full of loving kindness for all of humanity now?
While all the Lagrange points have potential uses, it looks like the primary contention would be at L1. This is the point where you would want to place a lunar space elevator; hanging from the moon, through (or near) the L1 point.
Whomever controls this region of space, may effectively "own" the moon for a while. (or at least have a significant advantage when it comes to exploiting its resources.) This is a rather disconcerting thought, and I hope we can all get along a bit better before this becomes an issue.
I just need to know one thing.
Which Lagrange point has the QUAD DAMAGE?
For evidence see all of human history.
People are the problem.Free Mac Mini Yeah, it's
This guy is the definition of liberal right here, everybody take a good look, he'll probably be dead of a drug overdose shortly.
So it may be too soon to say where things will go in space. Potentially, treaty agreements might prevent militarization, and it would probably be in everybody's interests to have this happen. On the other hand, the U.S. has hedged its bets on Antarctica- we do a lot of research there, reserve the right to make a future claim, and the C-130s taxi over every other nation's claim when they take off (since the claims are wedges which converge at the South Pole) so it's clear that the U.S. is positioning itself to take advantage of the continent... if it ever needs to.
Concerning war, even bands of chimps wage crude wars against each other, which suggests that the behavior is very ancient- millions of years old. So somehow, I doubt that looking down on the earth from space and getting an impression of tranquility and oneness is going to make us suddenly wake up and stop killing each other. War will always be with us I'm sure. However, the question is whether warfare will be as common and destructive in the future as it is now. Primitive hunter-gatherer societies have been romanticized a lot, but supposedly life in these societies is pretty rough and the odds of a violent death are much higher than in modern industrialized nations, our sophisticated weaponry and standing armies notwithstanding.
Or should we prepare for the fact that such rivalries are inevitable, even in space?
It's the preparation for them that makes the rivalries inevitable. No prep == no rivalry.
If it were Libertarian, it would be concerned with liberty, or prople's rights. One of those rights is the right to property. Therefore space "property" would be high on their agenda.
Peace has been found between untrustworthy adversaries in the past. Your implication of naivete is misplaced. Treaties are made, and treaties are broken. The point is that at all times peace should be the goal, and abandoned only when peace is no longer feasible. Asserting that peace is impossible before it is tried and starting a war is the height of foolishness.
Practically, the best thing the U.S. and China have going for them is their economic co-dependence. It is utterly stupid for the U.S. to have outsourced its fundamental production capacity to China -- if war did break out, and China decided to stop shipping us steel, what would we make war machines with? Our Intellectual Property? Nevertheless, it becomes increasingly undesireable for the U.S. and China to escalate things. Of course this means we're forced to tolerate China's miserable human rights record (which unsurprisingly hasn't been difficult for our business sector). We may have little choice but to let Taiwan sink or swim on its own.
In the worst case, we've still got MAD. It sucks, but it works.
The enemies of Democracy are
There won't be any national claims to space because there's no way to secure it. A few well-aimed pebbles can take out any space station we're going to be building for the next few centuries.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
Cause the Japanese war machine was a good thing for the region and the world. And the Soviet Union in the 60s was a force for good. And Saddam was a great guy to party with.
I never said they were. There is the issue of consistency on the topic of weapons of mass destruction, and vaporizing relatively-innocent populations in the name of democracy, while condemning others for the same sorts of actions.
Bush I and Rumsfeld thought Sadaam was a great guy to party with, not I. The pictures and government documents establish that, but you keep ignoring it. Now they think the dictator in Pakistan, whose people proliferated real (not phantom) WMD all over the middle east is the great guy to support against popular overthrow and "party with" even though his country is the one most-likely harboring Bin Laden and who helped support the Taliban and is repeatedly shown to oppose democracy and export terrorism into Kashmir and India. How is he different from Sadaam the dictator when they supported him? Perhaps he has a bit more of a conscience toward Arabs, since he opposed the American intervention in Iraq instead of being such an American tool of slaughter.
I might read it if I knew more about the author. What credentials does he have? Does he present a fair informed picture or only the deeply-flawed Neocon side ignoring all the inconvenient facts of the region and its occupiers and dictators.
Wherever human goes, stupidity follows.
I have read any number of good books on Japanese brutalities. That does not justify American-sponsored brutalities and mass targeting of civillians (or hiding behind them).
Speaking of WWII, there were extreme brutalities of Russians toward many innocent other countries, which we ignored. Even when the leadership of the Nazi party was gone, the allied commanders forced the German who took over after Hitler, who was a very decent German, to prolong the war for 18 months, just to try to bring his armies back from the Russian front to avoid surrender to the Russians, who had slaughtered millions long before the Nazi Party started exterminating the Jews.
The flaw in so many neocon moral judgements is that the outcome of the judgement is really based upon who they are allied with at the time, which was never more apparent than with Japan, Russia, Iraq, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, etc. All war crimes are bad, even those the current white house and its current allies are guilty of. Just ask Vietnamese, Iraqis, citizens of American WMD, shock and awe, fire storm, etc. terror-based attacks, etc.
Came close tho. The USSR fired a laser at a shuttle from Siberia.
When? Why?
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
If we're ever going to be able to defend ourselves against an alien invasion, we're going to have to know how to fight effectively in space. What better way than to practice against ourselves in preparation?
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Appropriate, insightful, and beautiful analogy. Thank you for reigning in the craziness.
You gotta look at where Iraq was when you say that. Yeah, Iraq isn't a paradise right now -- in fact it is a very dangerous place. But at least a dictator has been replaced by hope.
So why did we prop up this dictator back in the 80's, and help him gas the Kurds which we now claim is somehow bad? If he's a horrible dictator, why did we install him there? It's the exact same thing that happened in their neighbor Iran: they had a nice, stable democracy, so we overthrew it and installed the Shah. The place has been a mess ever since.
Where do you get the energy to produce hydrogen ? Directly or indirectly, that'd be ... tada ... OIL (or oil derivatives, if you're anal).
C'mon, where are all the Gundam jokes, people?!? That's the whole reason I even clicked on this headline!
... but a useful "mnemonic" for the LaGrange points:
/. readers.
Look at the Earth:moon system from Earth's north. You are now looking "down" on the northern hemisphere of earth from such a distance that the whole system looks flat, coins on a table. The moon (in this terrible view) revolves counterclockwise around the earth, and ignore any troublesome rotation. Here's the best (i.e., worst) part: imagine a clockwise field, denoted by little curved arrows all pointing around the moon, such that if you push the moon out of place, it must now move in the direction of the arrows.
Yes, this is all very bad; there is no field. Instead, the little clockwise field (for an object seen to orbit counterclockwise) is a little mental shorthand for orbital mechanics. This is only useful for very limited situations, and even then it's a terrible, really ugly way to understand something. This is a GOTO statement in an OO world.
Long story short; now picture the same little field around a third object at one of the two stable points (L4, L5) on the "circle" of the moon's orbit about Earth. If your third object is pushed a bit from it's own orbit around earth, the combination of those little arrows (er, orbital mechanics) and the shifted balance between the effect of Earth's and the moon's pull on your object will soon have it moving in little kidney-shaped (I think) orbits around the POINT, not around any object. The little orbits get smaller, I think, eventually putting the object back into a relaxed, stable circular orbit.
Incidentally, replace circle with ellipse, line with curve, field with "imaginary bullshit effect", stable with quasi-stable, useful with dangerous, and Windows with Linux, and I think you'll have an explanation acceptable to most
Don't trust anyone under thirty.
The year is After Colony 195....
Seems to me we could just send Optimus Prime up there to nuke unwanted lagrange residents, such as Decepticons
High Frontier has never been the place to go for unbiased non-militaristic reporting - it's not trying to be "Aviation Leak and Space Technology" or the New York Times or even Stars&Stripes. I haven't followed the field enough over the last few decades to know if this author is a regular there, or influential, or if he's just a random Air Force officer who likes writing but isn't going to get any funding.
[*Internet standards documents are an exception to this principle - they say "must" a lot, but with the specific meaning of "if your box doesn't do what I say, it won't talk to my box successfully." When we're ranting, we say things are "considered harmful" or use more general-audience insults. ]
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Any thing man understands our terrestrial rivals to a point have been helpful but in the end are detrimental as a collective focus is far stronger than splintered focus. To conquer space it will require a unilateral effort in terms of effort, expenditure, and know how. Removing the primitive mindset of terrestrial rivalry will be one of the cornerstone of advancing beyond a primitive civilization.
And you are correct, "we shouldn't be having these rivalries at home", however, lesser minds haven't been able to fathom any other existence.
I am not from India. I just have met and talked extensively with people from many corners of the globe, including Iraq, Pakistan, and India. I am born and raised in the USA as were my ancestors for many generations. The actions in the middle east have not prevented terrorism by any stretch (and now a majority even of Americans believe they have increased the risk, not reduced it). By every reasonable analysis, they have greatly increased the risk of terrorism, lost us all sympathy of most of the world, etc. It is far scarier to fly internationally now than following 9/11 because the world holds us accountable for much evil when we use to have their sympathy and good will. Now they will start treating us like we treat them.
Your references to Pakistan are just the same thing people said about Iraq when the US supported dictator Hussein or even Russia in the second world war. Did you know that Pakistan has greater population than Russia? You suddenly care about Iraq because the neocons suddenly care to make another war. No principles, just stumbling blindly from one war to another, creating lots of terrorists along the way by our own terrorizing actions, arming more and more militias to attack us later and making more populations hate us. Its is great for those who profit from war, but not for civilizations.
Probably before these morons can "seize control" of the LaGrange Points, we Transhumans will fry their asses with nanotech.
This is bullshit. They're looking for more taxpayer money to be pissed away on expensive and completely useless military projects in exchange for contractor industries funding politicians campaigns and paying them big bucks to be on the boards of said companies when they retire from the military - and enhanced military careers while they're in.
Morons can't knock over a bunch of insurgents in Iraq and they want to drop rocks on countries from the LaGrange Points. Get serious.
Fucking assholes, the lot. I say bin Laden needs to try again on the Pentagon - use more and bigger planes loaded with explosives this time. Hijack a couple freight planes - forget passenger planes. Load them up with a truckload of C4 - forget the fertilizer crap.
Make sure you get Donnie Asshole the SecDef. Catch him at home at night - drop a plane on his house. It's not rocket science. Why Arab terrorists have left this idiot breathing - let alone Sharon - is a mystery to me. I don't care how many bodyguards the idiot has, it's the work of five minutes to remove his ass from the scene - and it's long overdue. 1,740 dead US troops and scores of thousands of Iraqis because of this twit while he mumbles about "things we know that we don't know and things we don't know we don't know" or whatever that bullshit was. Anybody else recognize extreme senility in this old twat?
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
That basically says those countries won't:
- Put nuclear weapons or other WMDs in space.
- Put weapons on the moon or other heavenly bodies.
Going to put weapons at a LaGrange point? Go right ahead. Just make sure they're not nukes or WMDs. If this limits their usability (kinetic-energy weapons tend to be a one-time thing, for example), oh well.Maybe a solar-powered laser/ion cannon, used very infrequently so it'd have time to charge up...?
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
Russia's still a big country with a lot of natural resources, but its industrial base was collapsing before the Soviet Union fell, and while it still has nuclear weapons and the totalitarians are starting to get some control back, it's basically a basket case run by a variety of Mafias. It might be able to damage Poland, and cause a lot of trouble, but it can't even really control Chechnya. It's not a serious player.
A few years ago the Republicans were totally pleased with themselves when they remembered that the Chinese government still called themselves Communists, because they hadn't seen any Commies in years except at Berkeley and Harvard and a few mayors in Italy and France. And China does have an industrial base and an army - but it's not really Communist any more, and the army's more concerned with making money running the industrial base and winning infighting between competing factions of the military for economic power than they are about actually fighting anybody. Sure, it's less liberal politically than Singapore, and it occasionally goes "booga booga booga" about Taiwan just for fun, but basically the Chinese leadership are neo-capitalists and Not Stupid. However, as military competitors go, there's nobody else out there.
Sure, there's North Korea, who might be able to make a bomb, but can't feed their own people, and would totally fail if they were to invade South Korea again. There's Pan-Arab Nationalism, but that's not a united political movement any more, and unless the House of Saud falls, the important parts are mostly supported politically and militarily by the US, even if there are economic squabbles about the price of oil - and they're certainly not putting anything into Space at the scale of colonizing the Lagrange points. India's running a small space program for reasons of national pride, but as satellites have been superseded by undersea fiber for telecommunications, and television satellites are easy enough to put up with commercial launch services from the US or Russians.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
For the visually-oriented minds:
g range.html
o ints.html
http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/m_mm/ob_techorbit1.html
http://www.physics.montana.edu/faculty/cornish/la
For the mathametically inclined:
http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/physics/LagrangeP
I just read Justin Raimondo's latest column over at www.antiwar.com and he quotes foreign policy analyst Chalmers Johnson as follows:
Look at the Big Picture through the perceptive eyes of foreign policy analyst Chalmers Johnson, who notes in his book, Sorrows of Empire, that conquerors of all eras have built encampments and forts in subject provinces, but there is something unique about the Americans:
"What is most fascinating and curious about the developing American form of empire, however, is that, in its modern phase, it is solely an empire of bases, not of territories, and these bases now encircle the earth in a way that, despite centuries-old dreams of global domination, would previously have been inconceivable."
Aside from the interest groups that benefit economically from a policy of militarism and perpetual war, and such factors as securing oil and other resources, Johnson sees
"Something else at work, which I believe is the post-Cold War discovery of our immense power, rationalized by the self-glorifying conclusion that because we have it we deserve to have it. The only truly common elements in the totality of America's foreign bases are imperialism and militarism-an impulse on the part of our elites to dominate other peoples largely because we have the power to do so, followed by the strategic reasoning that, in order to defend these newly acquired outposts and control the regions they are in, we must expand the areas under our control with still more bases. To maintain its empire, the Pentagon must constantly invent new reasons for keeping in our hands as many bases as possible long after the wars and crises that led to their creation have evaporated."
So now these same assholes want to dominate the entire world from the LaGrange Points.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Wouldn't a LaGrange point be a good place to build a Death Star?
Oh, so that's why the military wants to get there first.
Authority questions you. Return the favor.
Given the number of troll moderations you got today, it should be clear you're speaking to the wrong crowd. I find it really funny that they all get up and arms about free software, fair use, bad patent laws, etc. but if you mention something bad about Bush you get wacked in the head within seconds.
The topic in question has to do with people not getting along, wars, etc. What greater example can you get?
Since I'm a recently graduated student with a bachelor's degree in Global Studies, I am of course uniquely qualified to long-windedly give a not very definite answer to the question: "Is he right?"
The answer all depends on how you feel about the nation-state. Are nations becoming more powerful, as they or are they losing ground to multinational corporations and the influence of transnational forces like the increased movement of people, media images, technologies, and ideas? This is a fundamental question because it is key to how one agrees with, disagrees with, or simply understands Clarke's stance on the issue of nationalizing space.
What is the nation-state? The Peace of Westphalia that settled the 30 Year's War in 1648 essentially gave birth to the state in the modern sense of the word. The treaties formally recognized the sovereignty of all the countries involved and provided certain rights for the states and rules for their interaction, to a limited degree. It's interesting to note that the very creation of the nation is actually an international matter--a treaty signed among warring parties.
Nations don't just will themselves into legal existence, they are fought for and fought over, and their very existence hinges on their as being accepted as legitimate by other nations. In one way, this can be seen as one grand global rivalry--everyone belongs to a tribe (whether large or small or subsumed by some larger identity) and that's the way it always will be (see: Sam Huntington's Clash of Civilizations or Ben Barber's Jihad vs. McWorld ). Or, you take a longer term view and consider that the nation-state as we know it today is no older than 350 years (and most are much younger still... consider the relatively newly independent states of Africa for example) and that this whole flag-waving thing will be passé before too long.
I take the longer-term view. While I believe that the nation-state is currently the most powerful player in the global geopolitical world order, it is being challenged on all fronts by the reality of a 17th century concept trudging ahead into the 21st century. As people are presented with more and more images of other lives, of other possibilities for human existence (an idea referred to as the social imaginaire), their identities become more complex than what is required for nations of bounded, mostly segregated peoples? People can begin to conceptualize of their
And all this is well and good and nicely theoretical, but it's all about cash in the end. Governments and businesses have it, so they're both going to be out there in the solar system. My bet is that space will be colonized by political entities formed by nations in large ideological/cultural blocks (e.g. the West, China & Russia, etc.) but also multinational corporations seeking new revenue streams. I can only hope that these efforts will be minimally competitive and completely demilitarized, but that's probably not likely to happen.
The worst outcome, I believe, would be for corporations to control space with exclusive rights to resources and territory. At least with national governments, there's the pretense that people are in control through democratic mechanisms... with corporations you have no such possibility of the popular will having any input in how things are run.
It may only be in space where masses of humans will learn how to relate to one another on a post-national basis. For an interesting view of how this might play out, I'd suggest Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy, a fictional account of the first 100 settlers on Mars, who come from many differen
I've had this theory for som time now which I'm trying to formulate into one single phrase:
"If it can be thought up, there exists at least one person trying to make it happen" - Phil
So, if you look at that phase in deptht it would mean that for everything that the human race has fantisized about doing, somewhere, somehow someone is actually trying to do it "for real".
This means that for the good stuff (utopia, advanced tech - like teleportation, space flight, genetic enhancement, robotics, AI, preservation of the environment), somewhere someone is looking into how to make it real, existing in the real world.
Now for the scary part: the law is double-edged.
That means that someone psyco-enough is going for the bad ideas, too (genocide, space-war, bacteriological & nanotechnological warfare, hollywood-style mass murders, unchecked exploitation of the environment, total informationcontrol, supercapitalism - i.e. where *everything*, even lives can be bought and sold, e.t.c.). It doesn't have to be a single person, this goes for regimes too.
Military domination of space is also an idea that has been thought up, and a bad one in my book (since it *will* lead to conflict)
One can only hope that humanity prioritizes the good ideas, and thus builds us a better future. (sorry for the spelling misstakes)
"If it can be thought up, there exists at least one person trying to make it happen for real" - Phil
To prepare for national and military rivalry that does not yet exist out there, except for friendly competition, is to create those rivalries.
Here I was, hoping that maybe space exploration will be one thing that will finally bring us together in peace, for all humankind... Sometimes I think people *want* conflicts and rivalry. If the USA decides to take over and claim certain parts of the solar system, that's just going to make people lose whatever little respect they had for that nation.
Instead, why not set a good example, by bringing together all nations to some conference where you agree not to bring archaic national rivalry into space?
No military presence in space, please! We've had lots of it on this planet, and let me tell you, it's not bringing a whole lot of joy.
I second that. However, given that the /. is declaredly US-centric, being modded a troll for supporting any other point of view then one of the two officially accepted (dem and rep, namely) is not surprising. It's the equivalent of being labeled a "terrorist/terrorist sympathizer" in the US society at large. I, for one, am sitting on the edge of my seat in anticipation of the next McCarthy era (or should I say, "the Gonzales Era"?).
Something bad is coming when people are suddenly anxious to tell the truth.
It's Lagrange, for the love of God.
"Long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead." (John Maynard Keynes)
Is this a joke? ...or is the US "Air Force Space Command"'s crest meant to have an Original Series commbadge slapped on top of it?
...these aren't my real teeth.
Your list is very interesting. Iraq was actually a US ally up to the point when they invaded Kuwait in 1991, and even then, Sadam Hussein had told the US embassy of his plans and alledgedly had received no "cease and desist" order from the US.
Iraq was not involved in 9/11 in any way.
We must avoid a Lagrange point gap!
I'm adding you to my friends list.
anyways, i would say, this is *precisely* the reason there needs to be a counterweight/balance to the US. When there's an alternative, everybody's better behaved. The problem is there isn't one yet, and how to have one would be difficult - Europe is still seriously fragmented, and Russia or China aren't really places where "the people" (that stand the risks of dying/suffering) have control over the government (which can hide in bunkers).
I think the US Space Command's sentiments are the ridiculous ones. They talk big but they can't even keep things from unaccountably falling off of their spaceships. What, are they using paste? No, sorry, but I find it highly unlikely that they would be able to afford a successful capture of the LaGrange Points.. at least not if the US keeps up its terrestrial military conquest...and if they decide to spend money capturing empty space rather than killing civilians, well, sure, go for it. Throw money at the sun, you eejits.
Whatever gets us up - and out - there again is fine with me. This Low Earth Orbit crap is getting really tired.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
You pinned the problem in one.
" You don't need a stable solar orbit when you can't even get to low-earth orbit reliably."
Unless and until someone manufactures a reliable process for significant mass tranfer from Earth to at least LEO this is all crap.
The people/company/gov that controls cheap earth to LEO+ will dominate any part of near Earth space they want.
If the USAF want to domiante the Lagrange points then they had better get off their asses and into their own and NASA's files and find out what does and doesn't work in terms of lifting mass to orbit.
Otherwise it will the next in line - China, Europe or India. Or a South American country in 20 years when they get over their current economic problems.
The Singularity is closer than you think
Quant
As these points are named after the french Joseph Louis Lagrange and not some city in Georgia or Indiana, USA, they are called Lagrange points, not LaGrange Points.
And even then, the aliens from the Andromeda galaxy will come to take our super black hole and leave our galaxy centerless. Bad aliens.
"Is he right?"
Hell no! We need to occupy those Lagrange points immediately, before they use their stockpiles of WMD on us.
The problem with the Lagrange Points is that they really can only be controlled by one power at a time. They are tiny (infinitesimal?) points in space where the forces on an object due to the earth and another body (the sun or moon etc) cancel each other ; allowing an object placed there to maintain its position relative to the two bodies http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrange_point/
.pdf of the magazine, and speaking as someone who lives outside of the USA, I found the dogma of "control" of space and its use in future wars (will you guys ever get tired of them?) a truly terrifying insight into the minds of the US milirary-industrial machine...
Their precise location and size mean that it really is only possible for one space station to be at each point at any one time. Whoever builds at a Lagrange point first effectively owns it, as any other power trying to build there would first have to remove the existing station.
Incidently, having read the
While Clark sentiments are noble, they're equivalent to saying that we shouldn't even be having these rivalries here on the ground. He is correct, but wishing does not make reality so.
Agreed.
"Thou Shall Not Kill" and "Love Thy Neighbor As Thyself" are noble and time-honored sentiments -- yet the world remains long on killing and short on love.
Ideals are probably a good thing, we'd be in even worse shape without them. But we sure as Hell don't live in Utopia.
-kgj
-kgj
You can't really blame them. They're military. It's their job to be belligerent and simple-minded.
I'm sorry -- we just don't agree here. The US is one of the strongest forces for "good" in the world today. "Good" is an abstract concept, and in the eye of the beholder, but I think "by every reasonable analysis" this is more than obvious.
The risk of terrorism has not increased in the US -- it has decreased. What has increased is the FUD about terrorism abroad. The US didn't "invite" 9/11 -- it was cold blooded mass murder. Terrorism isn't about casualties -- it's very ineffective at that. It's about FUD -- and you have bought in hook, line, and sinker.
I care about Iraq because it was/is a security threat to the US and its allies. It no longer is -- mission accomplished. Eliminating a dictator and freeing the country were nice side-effects.
Our governments will never make it there first. Burt Rutan will ultimately be in control of these points, which is a good thing because he is sane, and certain leaders (not mentioning any names) in this world are not.
Go ahead and put something at L1, L2, or L3. It won't be there for long.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
All you bases are belong to US!!!!!
...using the shuttle, China, Korea and Japan will have nothing to worry about.
``Tension, apprehension & dissension have begun!'' - Duffy Wyg&, in Alfred Bester's _The Demolished Man_
On the subject of what will happen should humanity spread out into space I simply cannot recommend this book highly enough:
:)
Eric Frank Russell - "The Great Explosion" (see write up on Amazon here)
Bad thing is the only version in stock is £ 10 (I got mine a few years ago for about £ 5 UK) But I'm sure you'll be able to do better at your local bookstore
One of my top 10 Sci-Fi books of all time and an absolutely splendid commentary on the way people are !
Sky subscribers are morons. They pay to be advertised at !
Quite aside from the fact that this is foolish - as others have pointed out L-points are potentially huge areas of space, and as you point out no-one (save the US military it seems) has countenanced the idea of occupying them, it is just myopic nationalism at its worst.
In fact the logical extension of this argument to all policy is 'we cannot trust our enemies to be in charge of any part of Earth, as they could use it as a base to attack us, therefore we must eliminate all of them'. Nothing short of full supremacy seems to be acceptable. What a curious world-view.
Sadly this seems to be really quite a credible argument to some in the present Bush administration. If they had any hope of getting a craft up there, let alone a station this story might be scary rather than just absurd. As it is absurd I suppose it's just a hack-handed attempt to secure more funding for military efforts in space.
How was Iraq a security threat (any more when this "war on terror" was started, compared to the previous ten years?) most of Sadaam's weapons (which the US so graciously provided, for the most part) were on the way out - there's still never been any evidence found of WMD, and there's been no conclusive proof of any links between the 9/11 terrorists and Iraq at the time of the attacks (although there sure as hell are now). Iraq's fundamentalist loonies and their friends all over the world are now more of a threat to the western world than they ever were before, mostly due to the US and UK's ridiculous stance on terror. if you seriously think that there's been some kind of mission accomplished by invading Iraq under some mis-guided pretext and a bunch of blatant lies, you're just plain wrong. around the world, people are telling you you're wrong. open your eyes, for god's sake.
Well even better there appears to be a version online (I haven't done a thorough check but a couple of glances at random chapters seem to indicate it's all there)
:)
So cheapskates fire up yer web bruiser and head on over to: Dis a place for a right good read
Sky subscribers are morons. They pay to be advertised at !
We could always choose to build something there for the purposes of research and exploration, and invite others along if they want. You know, like, they show up at the door and instead of blowing them away we invite them in?
Scarcity doesn't have to mean fighting, sometimes it can mean sharing.
...from your link, "the mass ratio between the two large masses exceeds 24.96." It goes on to say that in the case of the Earth-Sun system, this condition is indeed satisfied. But it's not the case that the two are stable for all systems.
Currently NASA has two spacecraft "at" the L1 point -- SOHO and ACE. They share a volume several hundred times bigger than the volume of Earth itself. There's plenty of room there -- every nation on Earth could build a colony the size of Manhattan out there, and they'd never collide. "Defending" the Lagrange points is pretty ludicrous.
I think colonies in space would develop into their own nationality, regardless of who put them there, because they would be the ones living there.
For example, Europeans colonized the americas, which formed into their own countries over a realitively short time.
Regardless, we don't really have the tech to make this real anyway, look at the international space station. sure, weightlessness is ok for a space station, but I think gravity might be just a little more important for an entire colony. All we could really do now is put some beacon there to prove its stable, and have it constantly transmit "Future site of another wal-mart" or something to that nature.
I do think that we need to hurry this up though so I can have more room for my epic battles in my Gundam. My neighbors are starting to get pissy about all the mass destruction I've been doing lately, fighting the Earth Alliance and all, plus it does look alittle out of place in my driveway
i don't care
While mathematically these are points, we're doing ourself a great disservice to think of them as such. There is going to be a very large volume of space where the cancellation will be good enough that only ocassional and minor corrections would be necessary, and that's all that really matters. A constrained resource? Yes, but not to the point that it is likely to matter unless you're a population panic monger.
Thinking of LaGrange points as of points is somewhat stupid. They are actually orbital _tracks_. So conquering them is a bit complicated... :-))))
The nuclear bombs are on the verge of being exported all over the world to unstable regimes due to extreme incompetence on the part of the US with respect to North Korea. By the way, the Koreans got their nuclear technology from Pakistan, while we have been illegitimately fumbling around in Iraq.
But in a way, I am glad they are all getting nuclear weapons, because they seem to need them to legitimately defend themselves against the US. I don't think we would have attacked Iraq if they had had a real nuclear arsenal and not just an imaginary one.
As for four years of no American attacks, it was longer than four years (eight years) between the first and second attack on the towers by terrorists with no war on Iraq. It obviously takes a while to stage something like that. It seems to have worked so well now, too, for our allies, the British. Gee, no attacks in four years, kaboom, kaboom, kaboom, kaboom.
I love people like you.
People who somehow have this idea that the reason that the rest of us are fighting a lot of the time is because we just don't know any better. That if *you* were just around to educate us about being nice, then the world would have eternal peace.
Guess what, the world isn't like that. It isn't going to be for quite some time; no matter how hard you keep complaining about it. Yes, we all know that if we were just all nice then the world would be better, but not everyone is nice and the rest of us aren't going to sit around and get pummeled for the sake of peace.
We're working on peace, but it's going to take some time. Your elitist attitude isn't going to help.
Mad Software: Rantings on Developing So
All lies. Saddam installed himself -- he was quite capable. The U.S. did not give him WMDs, nor did it encourage him to attack the Kurds.
Yes, Franklin Delano Roosevelt did that, but it was during the Cold War. He feared the Soviets would have done the same thing given half the chance. Doesn't make it "right" by today's standards, but that's the full picture.
Decades later, if Jimmy Carter hadn't botched things up, Iran might have had a successful transition from U.S.-backed dictatorship to independent democracy. Just look at South Korea.
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
They are tiny (infinitesimal?) points in space where the forces on an object due to the earth and another body (the sun or moon etc) cancel each other ; allowing an object placed there to maintain its position relative to the two bodies http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrange_point/
Technically that is true; practically it is false. The exact point of stability is infintesimally small, which is why no real object placed there can get by without having some kind of orbit correction mechanism. Once you have that mechanism, the area of space which is relatively stable is quite large.
In particular I understand that the L4 and L5 points have large areas around them where an object will stably orbit the LaGrange point itself.
So practically it is possible to have a number of stations near the L points and still allow craft to pass through them to achieve low-energy trajectories to other places in the solar system. There is no need for a monopoly.
The enemies of Democracy are
We played the appeasement game in the Middle East for over a decade, and got rewarded with 9/11.
Oh, I forgot, this is the United States of America we're talking about. Damned if we negotiate with dictatorships, and damned if we overthrow them.
If our actions are making terrorists, then Afghanistan and Iraq should be major exporters or terrorists. Yet that is not the case. Hell, Iraq can't produce enough "insurgents" to fight against U.S. forces in their own country. Most terrorism there is due to foreign interlopers.
If our actions in Iraq are so bad, why are so few Iraqis taking up arms against us?
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
I was not being elitist, I was replying to the sentiment prevalent higher up in the thread, and in TFA premise itself, that it's either us or them, that fighting is inevitable.
More specifically, in the post to which I was replying, I was responding to this:
Whoever builds at a Lagrange point first effectively owns it, as any other power trying to build there would first have to remove the existing station.
Sorry, I should have quoted it.
Additionally, I reject the premise that putting forth the viewpoint of peace and sharing is somehow inherently elitist, and that the only way one can avoid being elitist (assuming that's a worthwhile objective in the first place) is to argue that we have "accept" war as an expected norm. Continuing to advocate for peace and sharing does not imply that the advocate thinks other people "don't know any better."
However, given the original topic, a proposal is put forth to capture an available space resource and control it, and keep others away from it, I would say that the proposal willfully ignores other possibilities, and definitely reflects not knowing any better. In fact, I would say that rather than labelling peace advocates as elitist, perhaps war and war preparedness advocates should be labeled appropriately as pathological obsessive-compulsives. Or, to put it succinctly, insane warmongers.
Perhaps the history of "the rest of us" "fighting a lot of the time" has its root cause in people rushing out to claim territory that they don't really have any particular rightful claim to. And then other people get pissed and come along pummeling, and then the warmongers shout, "Hey, are we just going to sit here and get pummelled, or are we going to fight?" when they're the ones that provoked the attacks in the first place.
I would never advocate against defense, only against offense. Unfortunately, sometimes people who like war like to blur the distinctions. TFA's proposal seems to me to be some sort of "pre-emptive defense" which, as far as I'm concerned, is more accurately called offense.
Certainly, a cooperative research effort should be prepared for conflict and be prepared to defend itself. Say we put a research station up there in cooperation with Europe, and then China got pissed and decided to attack it, it'd be pretty stupid to not be prepared for that possibility.
When is the last time you seen that reported in US newspaper, not to mention TV stations.
Why?
The answer is obvious.
But the result is that it reinforces the idea/impression that non-US human lives don't count or at least don't count as much. So how else would those "ignorant natives" view the US actions?
Here is a nice web site that discusses space tourism : http://www.space.cc/
You need to watch A Day Without a Mexican. While essentially a comedy, this movie offers up many statistics about illegals and their (largely unrefunded) contributions to the state economy. Much of the surplus you cite is provided on their backs.
Six score characters.
Brevity being wit's soul
I have enough space.
Now, the top wheel contains a magnet (electromagnet which spins around the outside wall of the wheel). So does the bottom. Using the only thing humans are good for (mastery of the frequency domain) the magnets(magnet/diamagnet combination) are switched on and off rapidly(alternating with each other). For example, at first the top magnet is turned on and the bottom diamagnet turned on. This makes the wheels magnets repel each other - spinning around the outside of the wheels in opposite directions. At a selected point (just as the two magnets are approaching maximum distance away from each other - max1), both the top magnet and the bottom diamagnet are turned off. The momentum already generated makes them spin freely past each other. Now, wait until they are past their second maximum - max2 outside the discs. Now, the bottom wheel's magnet is turned on and at exactly the same time the top magnet is turned on (now both attract each other - two magnets). Finally, at the point just before convergance, they again switch over to the off state (no magnetism or diamagnetism) until free momentum carries them beyond each other. Once they are beyond each other - repulsion again (both top magnet and bottom diamagnet are turned on). [Repeat above]. With every spin the wheels accelerate towards infinity with respect to each other!. Provided, a powerful enough computer is used, the spin speed is limited only by physics, carbon nanotube strength, and how fast you can switch the magnets and diamagnets on and off.
Finaly. imagine 2 equal weights (also made primarily of the same material)locked to the magnets carbon nanotube hulls. one weight is a dead weight, a counterbalance for the other weight - which is a probe. Both are released simultaneously to align perfectly with a tangent (the tangent runs from the release point in the direction of it's wheels spin) Both shoot off at enormous speed. The destination of the dead weight is irrelevant. The other weight (the probe) goes wherever you want it to, assuming you can do the math/computing. The probe actually has a potentential acceleration built up before it leaves the rotating disc aperture. Also if the discs are big enough you could do interesting things at the centre!
df0b6e5d6cff5bc63364f9970c78b698
And certainly George Washington and the others were traitors to their King. I don't know how anyone could deny that. In any case, like most truths it is far more complicated than the simple story taught to first-graders. They are also taught about atoms, math, and other things that become less clear-cut as you look into them more deeply, but you have to start somewhere. I think it is healthy to learn that truth is never simple (as we do when our education progresses), makes you look below the surface on many things. College history is a bit different to 1st grade; we learn more about the "not nice" aspects of history.
Six score characters.
Brevity being wit's soul
I have enough space.
The word "natural" is a buzzword, which was invented and popularized by those Enlightenment* eco-freaks, like Rousseau.
;)
It was supposed to be associated with "best" or "optimal".
Saying that there is a "natural state" means to create a false dichotomy, wherein we have to decide which is better, more natural: peace XOR war. Neither is "natural".
Now, I understand what you were going to express. A better term to use would be "dominant", or "most frequent".
* not the window manager
Fight Frist Psoting!
Browse Slashdot with 'Newest First'!
may be appropriate here.
However, that has not stopped nations from building aircraft carrier or forts to control chole points such as channels. So one interesting Q is whether there are any real choke points in space.
people who like war
This is an extreme minority. Perhaps there are those who think war is the only way to solve certain problems, but I don't many except some in the military who like to go to war.
My peeve is with those who preach peace with the implication that the rest of us don't even understand the concept. Most of us want peace, we just may disagree on the methods to go about it.
Mad Software: Rantings on Developing So
I'll place my new weapons platform at the newly calculated Lagrange coordinates taking the asteroid into consideration. Then I'll carry out my twisted plan and watch your base drift off course...
Star wars here we come
During WWII, there was the Axis.
During the cold war, there was Soviet Union,
Now, there is China.
Why do we have to constantly look for an outside threat to justify what we want to do?
Sure it's convenient for the politicians and military. But is it really in the long term interests of the nation? of the world?
Today, China just does not have the wealth to challenge the USA either economically or militarily. It still have a vast and mostly poor population to support. The space program is just a show piece and not a real investment.
I have no doubt the China will become a regional power. But it will be at least 40 years before they could seriously challenge the US hegemony.
So I view our job as managing the relationships such that there will be NO need to resort to armed conflict - the most wasteful actions of all. Articles which cry wolf over the growth of China will only hurts this prospect. So I urge every one to look beyond simple labels and work for understanding in depth.
If we know the exact mass of every significant body in our solar system, and assuming we can precisely measure such masses to the most infinitessimal degree, then any error or offset in the location of the Lagrange point(s) would/should? have to be as a result (primarily) of the minor gravitational influence of the other planets PLUS the minor backround gravitational influence of our galaxy! (afterall our solar system orbits the milky way.
So, assuming we could simulate where the point(s) should be (accounting for the influence of the rest of the solar system - significant bodies etc.) we may be able to compare it(them) against the actual real measured Lagrange point(s). Since we know the position of the solar system relative to the milky way (i.e. outer edge), we should find a slight deviation in location of the Lagrange points to account for this error.
Perhaps the size of this error could tell us more about the mass of our galaxy and indeed the combined mass of dark matter within our milky way!
The more Lagrange points we use, the more we should be able to verify the offset/error and get more accuate results!
df0b6e5d6cff5bc63364f9970c78b698
I almost always enjoy my commute home. Not only am I going home, I get to enjoy nature along the way. Of course, if it's raining and I've forgotten my umbrella, the walk isn't usually as much fun!
Even before I went back to school, the commute home wasn't all that bad - and I lived in Atlanta! Of course, I worked up in Marietta, so my commute was in the opposite direction from most others. Sometimes, if something good was on the radio, I did enjoy this commute, as well.
Now, this doesn't dispute the idea that most people probably don't enjoy their commute home, but you did ask for a single example!
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
I'd mod you up, but you invoked Godwin's Rule.
The Chinese will turn it into a U.S. controlled territory? :)
Why, how nice of them
If our actions in Iraq are so bad, why are so few Iraqis taking up arms against us?
If Saddam's actions in Iraq were so bad, why were *even fewer* Iraqis taking up arms against him? I don't remember there being several bombs a week detonated in Baghdad under his rule.
Note that I'm not saying Saddam was better; I'm saying your argument is weak. Find a better one.
Oh, and by the way, we are playing the "appeasement" game as much now as we ever have, which is to say hardly at all. We've toppled governments, armed rebels, and incited wars in the region almost constantly since the beginning of the cold war. We weren't appeasing, we were fighting Communism by proxy. I'm not judging these actions, I'm just saying that they're hardly "appeasement".
Historically, appeasement usually took the form allowing threatening nations concessions in the hopes that they will be content or... wait for it... appeased, and not try to take any more by force. It often backfires.
I can't think of any time that we've done that in the ME in the last 50 years. The closest thing would be the ceacefire that we negotiated between Egypt and Israel, where we gave BOTH parties massive sums of aid (which continues to this day), but even that doesn't fit the definition very well.
I think a permanent ocupation of the north pole is more atractive. Like the lagrange points it is also a point of geometric importance. The presence of air, water, decent temperatures, a gravitational field, an ionosphere, ... makes it very interesting to start a colony. It is maybe hell on earth but compared to Lagrange it is heaven.
I think his point was that an armed civilian revolution is a near impossibility these days. Places where the government is over thrown by violence almost always are overthrown by the military... hence why the world has so many military dictatorships. The USSR was no exception. The civilian population had very little to do with the revolt, and almost the entire thing was conducted by the military.
Now, that is not to say that you can't still oust a government with popular protest, but the application of that one is limited to places where the government is willing to show a little restraint or the government has a weak control over the military. Try a popular protest in South America and you might have some luck. Try the same thing in North Korea and you are going to have to use bulldozers and dump trucks to remove all of the civilian bodies.
Put another way, can you name the last nation to create a democracy in an armed civilian revolution against the military?
linky
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
Hopefully the killer Koala AI will be able to take care of them though.
Does anyone else feel like he should be screaming "Heil, Bush!" whenever "Homeland" is mentioned?
The German Nazis used "Fatherland" instead. I genuinely believe the current incarnation of Nazis at the helm in the USA use such terminology just to antagonize folks who recognize the signs.
If our actions are making terrorists, then Afghanistan and Iraq should be major exporters or terrorists. Yet that is not the case. Hell, Iraq can't produce enough "insurgents" to fight against U.S. forces in their own country. Most terrorism there is due to foreign interlopers.
When the scandal at Abu Ghraib broke out, I believe that fewer than 2% of the occupants were found to be foreigners.
In the many other cases I have seen, I have never seen the number even close to 10%. I have seen it approach 5% occasionally in specific operations. The vast majority of native freedom fighters hates them, but they hate Americans more and are content to watch them blow themselves up. The Iraqi resistance and Bin Laden are natural enemies, but Bin Laden's associates have also regained something they were losing in Afghanistan and didn't have in Iraq under Sadaam: a place to train terrorists for operations in many other places. The masses slaughtered in the name of American democracy are not generally foreign terrorists. You would find far higher numbers of foreigners if American freedom fighters were resisting an illegal and immoral occupation.
" The US is one of the strongest forces for "good" in the world today. "Good" is an abstract concept, and in the eye of the beholder, but I think "by every reasonable analysis" this is more than obvious."
I'm pretty sure the only beholders who agree with you are your fellow Americans who are so totally stuck on themselves that they will ALWAYS refuse to believe the U.S. is ever wrong, or makes mistakes or screws over the rest of the world. The U.S. has propped up a plethora of right wing dictators all over the world in the last century, all just as bad as Saddam. The U.S. was A-OK with Saddam when he was bloodying the Iranians and before he invaded Kuwait and threw out the Bush family's friend, the completely corrupt emir of Kuwait who is totally a dictator(so much for "Freedom and Democracy" again).
For the last half of the 20 century as long as a ruthless dictator was anticommunist the U.S. was glad to support them, and could care less about "Freedom and Democracy". The Shah of Iran and Pinochet being sterling examples in a hall of shame.
The dynamics are a little different today with no U.S.S.R and the communists in China being A-OK now as long as the West can turn a profit there.
Pretty much the entire world outside of the U.S. is of the opinion the Iraq invastion was a complete mistake and was pouring gasoline, not water, on the fire burning in the muslim world,
"I care about Iraq because it was/is a security threat to the US and its allies. It no longer is -- mission accomplished. Eliminating a dictator and freeing the country were nice side-effects."
You are completely on drugs again Threeep. Iraq is now the nexus for a rising tied of hatred and resentment directed at the U.S. by the world in general, and the Muslim world in particular. Its also a tinderbox that could easily end up in full fledged civil war as soon as the U.S. gets tired of it and pulls out. Its almost certain to end up as an Iranian style Islamic republic as soon as the U.S. stops pressuring the Shia. The area around Basra, the Shia heartland in the South, is already well on its way to hardline Islamic rule, ala Taliban and Iran, with full fledged oppression of women in particular. Women had more freedoms under Saddam than they are likely to have in the Shia controlled parts of the new Iraq.
@de_machina
by the Iraqi government
This was not the Iraqi government study, but one by an Iraqi humanitarian organization.
You may have to revise your talking points.
And expect more of that after this incident.
Do you really think constantly being attacked by Coalition forces in Iraq is just as good as being left alone in Afghanistan?
I maintain that not one terrorist has been exported from Iraq since we took control of the country. If you have even vague evidence otherwise, I'd like to hear it.
Oh, and you can play the percentages game all you want, but the fact remains that all the funding, leadership, and any new weaponry come from foreign sources. You boast that 95% of the prisoners at Abu Gharib are Iraqi, but how many there are just run-of-the-mill thugs and kidnappers? Even out of the insurgent prisoners alone, how many are just common criminals trying to collect on al-Qaeda-sposored bounties? I'd imagine most.
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
Um, no. The Shah was installed in 1953, after FDR left office. It was the Eisenhower administration that was responsible.
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http://www.iranchamber.com/history/coup53/coup53p
Saddam was a US-backed assassin charged with killing the Iraqi prime minister:
http://www.rise4news.net/Saddam-CIA.html
Here's a picture of Donald Rumsfeld shaking the hand of his good buddy Saddam:
http://cnparm.home.texas.net/911/Backg/Rumsfeld-S
During the Iran-Iraq war, the US fully approved of the use of chemical weapons against Iran:
http://www.antiwar.com/glantz/?articleid=2804
Why were WMD ok back then, but not now? Huh? Does anyone have an answer for me?
And what was the US's interest in the war anyway? They wanted to stop the revolution in Iran, the revolution to overthrow the brutal dictator that they themselves installed! Instead of letting a country's people decide their own destiny and form of government, which might affect the flow or price of oil, the US would rather prop up brutal dictators.
Carter is not at issue here. If the US hadn't planted a dictator there to begin with, we wouldn't be in this situation, and the people in that region would have no reason to be angry with us for interfering in their affairs.
For anyone raised with decent morals and values, it should be plain that all of these actions by the US were downright wrong. The fact that the US acted out of self-interest alone, instead of having any concern for the people in those countries, is an act of evil. On a personal level, that's how people who have no conscience, called sociopaths, act: with regard only to their own self-interest. What's interesting is that all the people who claim to be "good christians" and standing for "family values" are the ones who promote this sociopathy on a national level.
One of the reasons why colonies in the Americas, and the rest of the continents on the Earth, were able to get rid of European control was primarily issues related to distance and communications issues.
In space this is an issue as well, although for the first time in human history a major segment of frontier space will be made available with rapid communications (radio) over time to physically get there. How this will affect human colonization is going to be interesting and unique in human history.
Travel from the Earth to Mars by Hohmann transfer orbit is about 9 months long, and improved nuclear engines or other exotic technology can cut this down to about 3 months... about the same amount of time it took to travel between London and Boston back in the 1700's. Governance strategies are likely going to be similar in nature, although I hope countries realize the political implications before they start acting.
Travel between the Earth and L5, on the other hand and as demonstrated by the Apollo missions, is about 3 days. This means that potentially an evacuation could even bring people back to the Earth if some really ugly celestial event were to happen (although weither the Earth would be safe at the same time is subject to interpretation as well).
As far as the basic tech to make this happen, the ISS is far from the best solution, although the ISS shows precisely that it can happen, and at large scales. The #1 problem for building at the LaGrange Points is simply obtaining a reasonable quantity of basic construction supplies (girders, glass, oxygen, water, etc.) Almost all of that can be obtained from the Moon at prices far cheaper than can be done from the Earth, which is going to require colonization and mining efforts on the Moon to support any space colonies at the L Points larger than the ISS. Tugging a smaller asteroid into place can also give an initial supply of raw materials as well.
All of the raw science necessary to make this happen has already been discovered, and there are no show-stopper problems like there is for interstellar travel (like Einstein's Relatiivity equations). The rest is engineering and practical experience, which both Russia and the USA have in boatloads as well right now, with the Europeans, Japan, India, Brazil, and China not too far behind. All seven of these nations (the EU considered as one nation, if you will) will eventually get into space colonization in a major way, with even some other countries possibly getting into the act as well.
Suppose a corporation discovered a way to get into space cheaply. What might happen?