So your saying that you'd like to live on the Moon or Mars. You want to live on a desolate wasteland????
Why not just move to Antarctica??? It is equally deadly, but has breathable air and... WATER right their on the surface. There are also penguins to eat (but you have to be quick;-)
So before people start talking about the "opportunities" of Mars and the Moon. Please remember, that there is an entire uninhabited continent right here on earth. It has thousands of time the resources as the Moon or Mars. It has a breathable atmosphere. It will cost trillions less to live there.
It has to be useful because your proposing using public funding for it.
Typically, people want to see some return of services from their tax dollars. The closest analogy to manned space flight is the military.
Well, the military keeps this country safe and secure. Manned space flight delivers bad telivision at best.
Manned space flight is a conclusion looking for a motivation. It's a wonderful dream. But lets try to stay with reality when where chucking around hundreds of billions of dollars.
You know, a lot of people call for comprehensive mass transit systems. And each time the critics say "IT WILL COST TOO MUCH". But it does provide a LOT of benefit.
Well, I'd wager we could crisscross the nation with elevated Mag-Lev trains for the 1 trillion that a Mars mission will likely cost. Such a system would provide enduring value to the nation and provide a vital redundancy in travel. It would also cut down dramatically on greenhouse gasses through reduced auto and airline use.
And yeah, it would be really fucking expensive. But here we see people proposing hundreds of billions of dollars in spending for ZERO enduring value. Only a nice trip for a few individuals.
I believe that colonizing Mars will be a great shared human adventure. But it should be undertaken after we've sorted things out on earth. I don't see that happenning anytime soon. And even then, armies of robots should build everything before the first human sets foot on Mars.
So please, lets leave space exploration up to dedicated carreer professionals... Robots!!!!
there are many other places money goes that are much lower on my priority than libraries.
Thats the thing about the federal government. The things that it does must be in the best interest of the whole. Not just YOURS and the spacies who think that moon missions are good TV.
I guess thats ultimately a value you thing. Millions of kids deprived of enriching library time vs sending a couple of men to go RVing on Mars. Yeah, they'll bring us back rocks as souvenirs. But robots can do that just as well at a FRACTION of the cost.
Oh and as far as BOOSTING peoples spirits. How about good jobs. How about good public transportation. How about cheap internet.
Yeah, people were really riveted to their TVs for the first moon missions. But after Apollo 13, they got bored. They beat the Russians. Without that rather weak point there was no point left in sending men on lunar vacations.
And exactly what does space teach kids about science and math????
NOTHING!!!!!!!!
It's good TV. It's indescernible from Star Trek. Manned space flight is pointless to science. It's a photo-op with a few relatively meaningless experiments added to "justify" it. Heck, half of those experiments have to do with more manned space flight.
What can inspire kids to learn. How about good teachers. How about up wall to wall Discovery, TLC and Nova. I never learned near as much in High School as I learned watching TLC.
Ohh, how about government funded repositories of "freeware" for lesson plans. Multimedia presentations. GPL for teachers. It will cost a LOT less than the 1 trillion that Mars will probably cost.
If Space weaponry ever becomes a reality it will quickly become the same as nuclear weaponry. Why???
Because those things we spend into space are VERY fragile. So deploying systems that DESTROY other satellites will be trivial. Deploying satellites that can withstand explosives, nukes, or microwave radiation bombardment will be VERY difficult.
So a space arms race would mirror the nuclear arms race. There would be TONS of destructive capacity and very little defensive capacity. Essentially there would be mutally assured destruction in orbit.
Furthermore, like the doomsday of nuclear war and it's associated nuclear winter, there is also a possible orbital doomsday. NASA has been very concerned about space litter for quite some time. It's very pervasive and it NEVER goes away.
It has been proposed that a critical mass of space debris would set of a catostrophic chain reaction that would render orbit to dangerous for any satellite. Now imagine 3,000 orbital defense weapons blowing up all the satellites in space and imagine how that would add to the volume of orbital junk? We could lock ourselves onto our own planet perpetually.
So I do agree that the control freaks of the tri-lateral commision want to "control" space. But I realize that there is:
1) Very little to control. 2) The pursuit of such warfare is ultimately as futile and self destructive as nuclear weaponry.
From that perspective, it may be relevant just to get killer satellites deployed BEFORE the Chinese do. In this way we aren't caught at a strategic disadvantage. Not that sending all our manufacturing to China isn't a disadvantage???
I sometimes wonder how much "thinking" occurs in think-tanks.
Gene Roddenberry was right about so many things. Foreign policy is probably his greatest stroke of genius.
We are seeing first hand our limitations in meddling with the affairs of other nations. See Dubaya claims he invaded Iraq on behalf of the Iraqi's (and that BS weapons of mass destruction shit).
But in the aftermath of the war, we see that Bush is reluctant to give Iraq back to the Iraqis. You may say they aren't mature enough to build their nation. I say it's none of our business. It's THEIR country.
Here we see the ultimate irony of fundamentalists opposing a fundamentalist government in Iraq. It's not good for Washington. But it's NONE OF OUR BUSINESS!!!! It's not our country. The country belongs to Iraq.
We get into so many scrapes globally because we dick around with democracies that don't cow-tow to Washington. We practically turned most of Central and South America over to brutal dictators for the sake of corporate exploitation and under the guise of "anti-communism".
Even now Washington is waging black ops against Venezuela and their elected president Hugo Chavez. Why??? Because he refuses to cooperate with the WTO. He refuses to turn his countries resources over to the control of foreigners.
For some reason, Americans sometimes think they have the right to force policies upon foreign countries. Why??? Because we have a bigger military. Yet, the mere hint by foreigners that America is wrong brings howls of protests from right wing politicians.
We are seeing in Iraq first hand evidence that we CANNOT unilaterally force puppet governments on foreign countries. Sometimes they simply have too much fight. The exact thing happened in Vietnam.
Oh you say these are Baathist extremists? Why don't their neighbors simply turn them in? Why are Iraqi's sympathetic? Because Washington is dictating their civil affairs with no input from them. And they are doing a SHITTY job of it.
The situation has already passed the point of no return. We have to swiftly and aggresively turn Iraq over to Iraqi citizens. Get out ASAP and let the Iraqi's run their own affairs. If they ask for assistance, we will assist them. But it's THEIR country and THEIR show.
Thats the application of the Prime Directive. We are engaged when our presence is requested. When we are asked to leave, we leave. We defend ourselves and allies when they are threatened. We actively support democratically elected governments irregardless of whether they are white or whether they talk nicely to Castro.
The Prime Directive should be the HIGHEST law of foreign policy!!!!
The idea that the nuclear deterrent mission is no longer required is sophmoric at best.
Umm, thats what we have MISSLES for. That was the whole bitch about a stealth nuclear delivery system. It's only an effective FIRST STRIKE weapon.
It's useless as a retaliatory weapon because it's sole tactical target (Nuke silos), would have all been launched in a first strike.
We should be quite happy and content knowing that we can incinerate the world 5 times over with our current strategic nuclear capacity. There is no need for a "stealth" nuclear bomber.
That having been said, we do have a need for a large to medium capacity bomber that can deliver multiple "LARGE" precision payloads on a single mission. The B-2 weakly fills that role. In fact, the Air Force doesn't want any more but congress forced them down their throats a couple years ago.
Regarding funding of a Mars/Moon Mission???
I would like to see NASA split into two divisions. One would be responsible for furthering human knowledge through science and space exploration. The other would put men in space;-) I'd call it the Space Transportation Administration.
One of the biggest risk in this boondoggle is that they will divert money away from building robots. Them robots do all the effective grunt work of space science. They also cost pennies to the thousand dollar when compared to manned space travel. Humans in space are tourists first, explorers second.
Yeah, those astronauts DID bring back all kinds of moon rocks. And they DID add to human knowledge. But it's really nothing that robots couldn't accomplish given a bit more time and a LOT less funding.
I don't think that ANYONE would doubt that satellites are useful and helpful to human civilization. The debate seems to be whether HUMAN BEINGS personally launching satellites is beneficial.
Rather, robots seem to do a good job at pennies on the thousand dollars compared to manned space flight. There are very few things that robots CAN'T accomplish in space that humans can. For example, it would be difficult to make a robot that hits golf balls on the moon;-)
I'm sure at some point in the future we will be a space-faring race. And by that time, we will have MUCH better robots that will be perfectly capable of hitting golf balls along with all those other HUMAN tasks besides eating.
If we ever DO colonize Mars, the VERY last delivery will be the humans. The robots will have built all the dwellings before humans arrive.
How about funding more mass transit systems that lower peoples need for cars and hence more interstates. Wouldn't be nice to be able to hop on trains and get pretty much ANYWHERE in the US. How about 400 MPH on the ground without the 2 hours to get in and out of airports. How bout wind farms on the Great Lakes that would provide a profound amount of green power (the really BIG ones turn slow and don't kill birds)?
How about a great new effort for PEDESTRIAN super-highways. If you've been on a rail-to-trail you know what a great concept this is. A safe place for kids and adults to get from one place to another on their bikes, skates, etc... Add lots of pedestrian bridges. After all, America is facing a crisis of obesity. A lot of this can be attributed that we spend profound amounts of time in cars on our asses instead of WALKING.
How about more money for border patrol to secure our nation from illegals of ALL kinds? How about more resources for first responders (the money Bush promised but didn't deliver) to deal with a chemical or biological attack?
How about universal preventative and emergency health insurance (this would benefit small business)? How about building more $5 million dollar schools instead of $750 million dollar stadiums? How about more cops to keep our cities safe, even the "bad" parts?
How about raises for our civic heroes: Cops, fireman and teachers. Yeah we revere them but we pay them DICK!!!
Mars is likely a trillion dollar mission. And what will it deliver to the US in return??? A new improved version of Tang?? Was teflon really that much better than an oiled iron pan??? Was there really any technology that NASA delivered that wouldn't be developed by private industry when they needed it???
Speaking of NASA technology... How bout funding for those scramjet engines? How about the space inferometer project? How about funding for carbon nano-tubes that will enable a space elevator which will cut launch costs to a tenth of what they are now?
Oh yeah, and all that fiber-optics sounded really good too. Actually Kucinich is pimping free secondary education at a price of 27 billion annually. This is a gem of a bargain compared to a trillion of ten years.
So, there are some other things to spend money on besides "muddin" on mars.
He wants to ditch the space station and build a moon station. He wants to use the moon as a "launch pad" to Mars. He wants to toss the shuttle away.
He's also not proposing any more money for NASA. He's proposing changes NASA's "focus". So basically all those space robots that provide data for science will go on the back burner so we can send astronauts to drive four wheelers on Mars.
Part of me suspects that this is part of the far-rights deep hatred of astromers and cosmology. In other words, the more data we collect the more we figure out that god shaped the universe in a way somewhat more complex than that described in the bible.
So, if they move funding away from advanced telescopes and Europa probes, the natural creation sciences have less data. You can also shift money away from people studying global warming. If you cut off their thermometers, they can't observe the subtle changes in temperature that give evidence for the phenmenom.
Yeah, but did you see what Star Wars episode I looked like after sitting on a shelf for 20 years? They had to do a LOT of cleaning to get it into decent shape. Film can degrade as well.
It's very likely that we need to invent some more resilient optical formats for library archiving.
Their business will be printing digital photographs on Kodak film. They will also sell a lot of Photo Paper directly to consumers.
Watch out for Kodak to jump DIRECTLY (not rebranded) into home laser and inkjet printers since they DO know a thing or two about printing. A possible strategy to accomplish this could be a merger with Epson or Lexmark.
But you have to remember that the internet of 1986 was something different than the internet of 1994.
I mean, one could say that Al Gore's pop didn't take initiative for creating interstate highways because a LOT of those routes were already in place. They simply extended a lot of roads, connected conected them and built a lot of bridges and cloverleafs.
So perhaps you could say that he didn't take initiative for creating the internet. He mearly took initiative for transforming it into the information super-highway. Keeping in mind that initiative means legislation by definition.
The point is that the whole Al Gore and the internet thing was blown completely out of proportion. You should thank Al Gore for his forsight and efforts to put an onramp to the internet in virtually every home, office, and classroom in America.
Better not tell this to President Bush. Bush is 100% for smaller tactical Nukes.
Personally, I think an explosive drilling technology is necessary to get into those bunkers. But I guess a series of micro-nukes that vaporize layers of materials could be used for this.
There is a fellow out there who believes that oil is created by geologic activity. He wrote a book called "The Deep Hot Oil".
Personally, I think he's full of shit. But I'm just throwing it out there for perspective. If we drilled for oil on Mars and found it, it would suggest that organic materials can be created by geologic activity.
It is suspect because he is an astronomer, not a geoligist. It just kinda sounds like he's pumping up interest in seemingly lifeless planetoids.
Try breaking the cable high enough above the planet that the counterweight exits Earth orbit. Now, imagine TIMING such an event so that the counterweight ends up headed right for a lunar base.
You assume it would have enough momentum to get much higher in orbit.
Yeah, if the ribbon breaks while your on it, your in a bad spot. But pods with people could always have horizontal ejections mechanism without parachutes.
Finally, the current plans is to position the ribbon base in the pacific ocean like a moveable oil rig. The likelyhood of the ribbon hitting anything on the way down is pretty remote.
The construction of the ribbon would make severing it pretty difficult in the first place. Yeah, it could be struck by an asteroid. But I would be the odds of that happening are a LOT lower than a shuttle bursting into flames (which has happened twice).
Hopefully, NASA is giving grant money to Carbon Nano-tube researchers. Unlike most NASA crap, they actually have far reaching applications in military and civilian use.
Bush really fucked up with his whole Moon and Mars bit. The space elevator concept will make orbiting stuff cheap. It will make going to the Moon and Mars reasonable. In fact, I don't think NASA should even consider new manned interplanetary missions until a space elevator is in place.
Mind you, I think the net would have evolved all by itself without Al's support on Capital Hill. But it may have been delayed a few more years.
No one claimed that Al Gore CREATED the early internet. But you have to realize that the phenomenon we now know as the internet was something entirely different in 1986.
Al didn't write code, he didn't design protocols and I doubt he's ever connected a network adapter. But he put funding in the pockets of people who did.
Gore also spent a lot of time acting as a PR guy for internet development. He was the guy who was pushing internet connectivity in EVERY classroom. Granted, some appropriate K-12 content would have been nice as well. But that has come along as well.
I'll remind you that Dan Quayle was outsmarted by a Kindegarten student.
Then he started throwing out terms like "phoenetically correct" to a five year old.
The fact is that "Potatoe" is the spelling used in britain. Dumb old Dan couldn't even get the nature of his correction right.
The problem ISN'T that he misspelled "potato". The problem is he tried to make a 5 year old feel bad because HE misspelled "potato". Then he tried to flaunt his intellectual superiority in front of said 5 year old.
I misspell words all the time. But I don't try to make up fancy excuses when they're pointed out. You just correct them and move on.
BTW, read associated posts for why his claim of taking initiative is correct. Make sure you look up the term "initiative".
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So your saying that you'd like to live on the Moon or Mars. You want to live on a desolate wasteland????
... WATER right their on the surface. There are also penguins to eat (but you have to be quick ;-)
Why not just move to Antarctica??? It is equally deadly, but has breathable air and
So before people start talking about the "opportunities" of Mars and the Moon. Please remember, that there is an entire uninhabited continent right here on earth. It has thousands of time the resources as the Moon or Mars. It has a breathable atmosphere. It will cost trillions less to live there.
Let me know when you go????
It has to be useful because your proposing using public funding for it.
... Robots!!!!
Typically, people want to see some return of services from their tax dollars. The closest analogy to manned space flight is the military.
Well, the military keeps this country safe and secure. Manned space flight delivers bad telivision at best.
Manned space flight is a conclusion looking for a motivation. It's a wonderful dream. But lets try to stay with reality when where chucking around hundreds of billions of dollars.
You know, a lot of people call for comprehensive mass transit systems. And each time the critics say "IT WILL COST TOO MUCH". But it does provide a LOT of benefit.
Well, I'd wager we could crisscross the nation with elevated Mag-Lev trains for the 1 trillion that a Mars mission will likely cost. Such a system would provide enduring value to the nation and provide a vital redundancy in travel. It would also cut down dramatically on greenhouse gasses through reduced auto and airline use.
And yeah, it would be really fucking expensive. But here we see people proposing hundreds of billions of dollars in spending for ZERO enduring value. Only a nice trip for a few individuals.
I believe that colonizing Mars will be a great shared human adventure. But it should be undertaken after we've sorted things out on earth. I don't see that happenning anytime soon. And even then, armies of robots should build everything before the first human sets foot on Mars.
So please, lets leave space exploration up to dedicated carreer professionals
there are many other places money goes that are much lower on my priority than libraries.
Thats the thing about the federal government. The things that it does must be in the best interest of the whole. Not just YOURS and the spacies who think that moon missions are good TV.
I guess thats ultimately a value you thing. Millions of kids deprived of enriching library time vs sending a couple of men to go RVing on Mars. Yeah, they'll bring us back rocks as souvenirs. But robots can do that just as well at a FRACTION of the cost.
Oh and as far as BOOSTING peoples spirits. How about good jobs. How about good public transportation. How about cheap internet.
Yeah, people were really riveted to their TVs for the first moon missions. But after Apollo 13, they got bored. They beat the Russians. Without that rather weak point there was no point left in sending men on lunar vacations.
And exactly what does space teach kids about science and math????
NOTHING!!!!!!!!
It's good TV. It's indescernible from Star Trek. Manned space flight is pointless to science. It's a photo-op with a few relatively meaningless experiments added to "justify" it. Heck, half of those experiments have to do with more manned space flight.
What can inspire kids to learn. How about good teachers. How about up wall to wall Discovery, TLC and Nova. I never learned near as much in High School as I learned watching TLC.
Ohh, how about government funded repositories of "freeware" for lesson plans. Multimedia presentations. GPL for teachers. It will cost a LOT less than the 1 trillion that Mars will probably cost.
If Space weaponry ever becomes a reality it will quickly become the same as nuclear weaponry. Why???
Because those things we spend into space are VERY fragile. So deploying systems that DESTROY other satellites will be trivial. Deploying satellites that can withstand explosives, nukes, or microwave radiation bombardment will be VERY difficult.
So a space arms race would mirror the nuclear arms race. There would be TONS of destructive capacity and very little defensive capacity. Essentially there would be mutally assured destruction in orbit.
Furthermore, like the doomsday of nuclear war and it's associated nuclear winter, there is also a possible orbital doomsday. NASA has been very concerned about space litter for quite some time. It's very pervasive and it NEVER goes away.
It has been proposed that a critical mass of space debris would set of a catostrophic chain reaction that would render orbit to dangerous for any satellite. Now imagine 3,000 orbital defense weapons blowing up all the satellites in space and imagine how that would add to the volume of orbital junk? We could lock ourselves onto our own planet perpetually.
So I do agree that the control freaks of the tri-lateral commision want to "control" space. But I realize that there is:
1) Very little to control.
2) The pursuit of such warfare is ultimately as futile and self destructive as nuclear weaponry.
From that perspective, it may be relevant just to get killer satellites deployed BEFORE the Chinese do. In this way we aren't caught at a strategic disadvantage. Not that sending all our manufacturing to China isn't a disadvantage???
I sometimes wonder how much "thinking" occurs in think-tanks.
Gene Roddenberry was right about so many things. Foreign policy is probably his greatest stroke of genius.
We are seeing first hand our limitations in meddling with the affairs of other nations. See Dubaya claims he invaded Iraq on behalf of the Iraqi's (and that BS weapons of mass destruction shit).
But in the aftermath of the war, we see that Bush is reluctant to give Iraq back to the Iraqis. You may say they aren't mature enough to build their nation. I say it's none of our business. It's THEIR country.
Here we see the ultimate irony of fundamentalists opposing a fundamentalist government in Iraq. It's not good for Washington. But it's NONE OF OUR BUSINESS!!!! It's not our country. The country belongs to Iraq.
We get into so many scrapes globally because we dick around with democracies that don't cow-tow to Washington. We practically turned most of Central and South America over to brutal dictators for the sake of corporate exploitation and under the guise of "anti-communism".
Even now Washington is waging black ops against Venezuela and their elected president Hugo Chavez. Why??? Because he refuses to cooperate with the WTO. He refuses to turn his countries resources over to the control of foreigners.
For some reason, Americans sometimes think they have the right to force policies upon foreign countries. Why??? Because we have a bigger military. Yet, the mere hint by foreigners that America is wrong brings howls of protests from right wing politicians.
We are seeing in Iraq first hand evidence that we CANNOT unilaterally force puppet governments on foreign countries. Sometimes they simply have too much fight. The exact thing happened in Vietnam.
Oh you say these are Baathist extremists? Why don't their neighbors simply turn them in? Why are Iraqi's sympathetic? Because Washington is dictating their civil affairs with no input from them. And they are doing a SHITTY job of it.
The situation has already passed the point of no return. We have to swiftly and aggresively turn Iraq over to Iraqi citizens. Get out ASAP and let the Iraqi's run their own affairs. If they ask for assistance, we will assist them. But it's THEIR country and THEIR show.
Thats the application of the Prime Directive. We are engaged when our presence is requested. When we are asked to leave, we leave. We defend ourselves and allies when they are threatened. We actively support democratically elected governments irregardless of whether they are white or whether they talk nicely to Castro.
The Prime Directive should be the HIGHEST law of foreign policy!!!!
The idea that the nuclear deterrent mission is no longer required is sophmoric at best.
;-) I'd call it the Space Transportation Administration.
Umm, thats what we have MISSLES for. That was the whole bitch about a stealth nuclear delivery system. It's only an effective FIRST STRIKE weapon.
It's useless as a retaliatory weapon because it's sole tactical target (Nuke silos), would have all been launched in a first strike.
We should be quite happy and content knowing that we can incinerate the world 5 times over with our current strategic nuclear capacity. There is no need for a "stealth" nuclear bomber.
That having been said, we do have a need for a large to medium capacity bomber that can deliver multiple "LARGE" precision payloads on a single mission. The B-2 weakly fills that role. In fact, the Air Force doesn't want any more but congress forced them down their throats a couple years ago.
Regarding funding of a Mars/Moon Mission???
I would like to see NASA split into two divisions. One would be responsible for furthering human knowledge through science and space exploration. The other would put men in space
One of the biggest risk in this boondoggle is that they will divert money away from building robots. Them robots do all the effective grunt work of space science. They also cost pennies to the thousand dollar when compared to manned space travel. Humans in space are tourists first, explorers second.
Yeah, those astronauts DID bring back all kinds of moon rocks. And they DID add to human knowledge. But it's really nothing that robots couldn't accomplish given a bit more time and a LOT less funding.
I don't think that ANYONE would doubt that satellites are useful and helpful to human civilization. The debate seems to be whether HUMAN BEINGS personally launching satellites is beneficial.
;-)
Rather, robots seem to do a good job at pennies on the thousand dollars compared to manned space flight. There are very few things that robots CAN'T accomplish in space that humans can. For example, it would be difficult to make a robot that hits golf balls on the moon
I'm sure at some point in the future we will be a space-faring race. And by that time, we will have MUCH better robots that will be perfectly capable of hitting golf balls along with all those other HUMAN tasks besides eating.
If we ever DO colonize Mars, the VERY last delivery will be the humans. The robots will have built all the dwellings before humans arrive.
How about a US MagLev transport system????
... How bout funding for those scramjet engines? How about the space inferometer project? How about funding for carbon nano-tubes that will enable a space elevator which will cut launch costs to a tenth of what they are now?
How about funding more mass transit systems that lower peoples need for cars and hence more interstates. Wouldn't be nice to be able to hop on trains and get pretty much ANYWHERE in the US. How about 400 MPH on the ground without the 2 hours to get in and out of airports. How bout wind farms on the Great Lakes that would provide a profound amount of green power (the really BIG ones turn slow and don't kill birds)?
How about a great new effort for PEDESTRIAN super-highways. If you've been on a rail-to-trail you know what a great concept this is. A safe place for kids and adults to get from one place to another on their bikes, skates, etc... Add lots of pedestrian bridges. After all, America is facing a crisis of obesity. A lot of this can be attributed that we spend profound amounts of time in cars on our asses instead of WALKING.
How about more money for border patrol to secure our nation from illegals of ALL kinds? How about more resources for first responders (the money Bush promised but didn't deliver) to deal with a chemical or biological attack?
How about universal preventative and emergency health insurance (this would benefit small business)? How about building more $5 million dollar schools instead of $750 million dollar stadiums? How about more cops to keep our cities safe, even the "bad" parts?
How about raises for our civic heroes: Cops, fireman and teachers. Yeah we revere them but we pay them DICK!!!
Mars is likely a trillion dollar mission. And what will it deliver to the US in return??? A new improved version of Tang?? Was teflon really that much better than an oiled iron pan??? Was there really any technology that NASA delivered that wouldn't be developed by private industry when they needed it???
Speaking of NASA technology
Oh yeah, and all that fiber-optics sounded really good too. Actually Kucinich is pimping free secondary education at a price of 27 billion annually. This is a gem of a bargain compared to a trillion of ten years.
So, there are some other things to spend money on besides "muddin" on mars.
The presidents plans are sheer and utter madness.
He wants to ditch the space station and build a moon station. He wants to use the moon as a "launch pad" to Mars. He wants to toss the shuttle away.
He's also not proposing any more money for NASA. He's proposing changes NASA's "focus". So basically all those space robots that provide data for science will go on the back burner so we can send astronauts to drive four wheelers on Mars.
Part of me suspects that this is part of the far-rights deep hatred of astromers and cosmology. In other words, the more data we collect the more we figure out that god shaped the universe in a way somewhat more complex than that described in the bible.
So, if they move funding away from advanced telescopes and Europa probes, the natural creation sciences have less data. You can also shift money away from people studying global warming. If you cut off their thermometers, they can't observe the subtle changes in temperature that give evidence for the phenmenom.
I think it's great that he makes tall sizes. Their popular judging from the fact that the tall sizes are all sold out.
Retailers don't keep enough tall stuff in stock. It's easy to roll up sleaves, but when the sleaves come half way up your wrists, it really sucks.
And exactly how would you discrimate it with:
1) Nuclear, which leaves radioactive piles of sludge that will be unsafe for 10,000 years.
2) Sulfur Coal - Deposits all kind of waste into the atmosphere.
3) That dirt petro mix that they scrape up and burn in texas.
So you see it's all a matter of perspective. It really depends on how many total KWH the panel delivers during it's lifetime.
I can imagine Dubaya donning the jacket and then asking how to make it fly ;-)
Yeah, but did you see what Star Wars episode I looked like after sitting on a shelf for 20 years? They had to do a LOT of cleaning to get it into decent shape. Film can degrade as well.
It's very likely that we need to invent some more resilient optical formats for library archiving.
More resolution and higher capacity every year. Digital will soon pass film in terms of resolution.
The Kodak Digital Cameras are VERY nice. They are also very easy to use. The menus are cartoonish and the use Comic Sans font ;-)
It was certainly refreshing after attempting to use an Olympus digital (jeesh).
Their business will be printing digital photographs on Kodak film. They will also sell a lot of Photo Paper directly to consumers.
Watch out for Kodak to jump DIRECTLY (not rebranded) into home laser and inkjet printers since they DO know a thing or two about printing. A possible strategy to accomplish this could be a merger with Epson or Lexmark.
Well, it would be a fuel source for a Mars Colony if and when humanity decides to go.
I do see what your saying. He did mis-speak.
But you have to remember that the internet of 1986 was something different than the internet of 1994.
I mean, one could say that Al Gore's pop didn't take initiative for creating interstate highways because a LOT of those routes were already in place. They simply extended a lot of roads, connected conected them and built a lot of bridges and cloverleafs.
So perhaps you could say that he didn't take initiative for creating the internet. He mearly took initiative for transforming it into the information super-highway. Keeping in mind that initiative means legislation by definition.
The point is that the whole Al Gore and the internet thing was blown completely out of proportion. You should thank Al Gore for his forsight and efforts to put an onramp to the internet in virtually every home, office, and classroom in America.
Better not tell this to President Bush. Bush is 100% for smaller tactical Nukes.
Personally, I think an explosive drilling technology is necessary to get into those bunkers. But I guess a series of micro-nukes that vaporize layers of materials could be used for this.
There is a fellow out there who believes that oil is created by geologic activity. He wrote a book called "The Deep Hot Oil".
Personally, I think he's full of shit. But I'm just throwing it out there for perspective. If we drilled for oil on Mars and found it, it would suggest that organic materials can be created by geologic activity.
It is suspect because he is an astronomer, not a geoligist. It just kinda sounds like he's pumping up interest in seemingly lifeless planetoids.
Try breaking the cable high enough above the planet that the counterweight exits Earth orbit. Now, imagine TIMING such an event so that the counterweight ends up headed right for a lunar base.
You assume it would have enough momentum to get much higher in orbit.
Yeah, if the ribbon breaks while your on it, your in a bad spot. But pods with people could always have horizontal ejections mechanism without parachutes.
Finally, the current plans is to position the ribbon base in the pacific ocean like a moveable oil rig. The likelyhood of the ribbon hitting anything on the way down is pretty remote.
The construction of the ribbon would make severing it pretty difficult in the first place. Yeah, it could be struck by an asteroid. But I would be the odds of that happening are a LOT lower than a shuttle bursting into flames (which has happened twice).
Hopefully, NASA is giving grant money to Carbon Nano-tube researchers. Unlike most NASA crap, they actually have far reaching applications in military and civilian use.
Bush really fucked up with his whole Moon and Mars bit. The space elevator concept will make orbiting stuff cheap. It will make going to the Moon and Mars reasonable. In fact, I don't think NASA should even consider new manned interplanetary missions until a space elevator is in place.
The guy who gets a project funding CONTRIBUTES!!!
Mind you, I think the net would have evolved all by itself without Al's support on Capital Hill. But it may have been delayed a few more years.
No one claimed that Al Gore CREATED the early internet. But you have to realize that the phenomenon we now know as the internet was something entirely different in 1986.
Al didn't write code, he didn't design protocols and I doubt he's ever connected a network adapter. But he put funding in the pockets of people who did.
Gore also spent a lot of time acting as a PR guy for internet development. He was the guy who was pushing internet connectivity in EVERY classroom. Granted, some appropriate K-12 content would have been nice as well. But that has come along as well.
So I DO think he contributed.
Well shit, I always assumed that. Looks like dear old Dan was 100% wrong.
;-)
I'm sorry for implying that Brits are as dumb as Dan Quayle
From the article, it sounds like they just need to coat the hull with nail polish remover ;-)
I'll remind you that Dan Quayle was outsmarted by a Kindegarten student.
Then he started throwing out terms like "phoenetically correct" to a five year old.
The fact is that "Potatoe" is the spelling used in britain. Dumb old Dan couldn't even get the nature of his correction right.
The problem ISN'T that he misspelled "potato". The problem is he tried to make a 5 year old feel bad because HE misspelled "potato". Then he tried to flaunt his intellectual superiority in front of said 5 year old.
I misspell words all the time. But I don't try to make up fancy excuses when they're pointed out. You just correct them and move on.
BTW, read associated posts for why his claim of taking initiative is correct. Make sure you look up the term "initiative".