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Bill Clinton Backs 100 Year Starship
astroengine writes "The light-years between the stars is vast — a seemingly insurmountable quarantine that cuts our solar system off from the rest of the galaxy. But to a growing number of interstellar enthusiasts who will meet in Houston, Texas, for the 100YSS Public Symposium next week, interstellar distances may not be as insurmountable as they seem. What's more, they even have the support of former U.S. President Bill Clinton."
Yes, but Bill Clinton supports it!
Bill Clinton supports it
I stand corrected.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
From the Soviet space program to empty skyscrapers in Pyongyang, politicians love high-visibility mega-projects that make for good propaganda - even if the populace is starving. Only free market capitalism, which includes both for-profit and voluntarily-funded non-profit ventures, can remain rooted in economic reality and allocate a civilization's resources wisely.
Space efforts should probably focus on near-term economic needs like: asteroid mining, space-based solar energy, and eventually space-based manufacturing. Those are the things that will solve all our environmental problems, provide cheap energy, revolutionize agriculture, lower living costs, and lift billions out of poverty! But other star systems are not realistic for the time being...
(Signed: Alex Libman's sockpuppet.)
...barring someone radically overturning Einstein...
The idea of FTL is not 'out for the count' by a long shot, despite Einstein... In the same fashion we pressurize our airplanes and remain quite oblivious to the outside conditions, we have to find a way to encapsulate a piece of space time in our little ship while it zips along at warp 9... Now cue the naysayers to tell me how crazy I am for even thinking it. Radical, yes, but no crazier than the idea of man on the moon, or human flight. Faster than sound? I should be locked up for thinking up such insanity!
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Such a ship can be loaded with politicians and lawyers and send to colonize the cold, hard vacuum.
Hopefully a post-singularity entity will lob a black hole after the ship. Or two, just to be sure.
No, but God help anything that lives on that planet when we impact it at .99c.
Clean coal, man. People keep telling me it's the right stuff.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Well, if someone on slashdot says it can't be done, then that's enough for me...
Call it off, boys!
Obvious exits are NORTH, SOUTH, and DENNIS.
"We have failed to uphold Brannigan's Law. However I did make it with a hot alien babe. And in the end, is that not what man has dreamt of since first he looked up at the stars?"
-Zapp Brannigan