I have to agree with the other replier. Blaming the public's need for accountability for the risk adverse nature of government is silly. It would be far worse without that accountability. Probably not Holodomor level malfeasance, but you certainly aren't considering the negative consequences of removing accountability from the decision-making process for a government entity.
Another thing to remember here is that risk taking isn't automatically a good thing. As the grand parent noted, because government doesn't care about the outcome, they can obsess over things like engine efficiency at any cost rather than building a viable and economical engine. That sort of fatally flawed decision making process isn't going to get any better just because you choose not to look at it or criticize it.
And then it took over 9 years of former NASA employes work to build a functional rocket.
No, it took 9 years from the end of 2003 to build two rocket vehicles and three rocket motors and conduct 9 launch attempts in that time - 5 of which were successful and 1 partially successful.
It is not even close to as easy as you describe often needing 1000s of generations or more, and you end up with something that is antibiotic resistant *on agar*. Your host is not such a simple media.
Thousands of generations? So that's a few years at most assuming that part of the problem really is as tough as you claim. Most definitely, beyond the attention span of an organization like ISIS, we hope.
And then a few passes through rodents to get virulence up for the first try. Sounds moderately tough to me too. But not as tough as trying the same thing with a virus that needs to infect living tissue in order to propagate.
How about a couple minutes for you to understand exactly why it wasn't allowed.....playing that time passing song....
It was because NASA needed funding for the Space Shuttle. It had nothing to do with safety. Merely, requiring private companies to post bonds prior to each launch covers your safety concerns without requiring a decade long ban.
Further, it's worth noting that many of the companies which by your reckoning can't be trusted to run a safe commercial launch vehicle are the same ones that were building and running NASA's Space Shuttle (as well as having decades of launch experience under their belts).
Further, it is monumentally stupid to claim that commercial launches can be confused with a nuclear attack. One launch isn't going to take out the USSR.
For example, here's a story written shortly after the fall of the Shuttle monopoly.
Some of the agency's likely tactics are already evident. One strategem, reported by several observers close to the Shuttle/ ELV controversy, has been to apply pressure on contractors sup- plying major components to NASA to keep them from entering the ELV business. Although nothing has appeared in official docu- ments, it is said that NASA officials have suggested to possible private competitors that their contracts for Shuttle components might be endangered if these firms engaged in private launches. Another tactic has been to try to delay implementation of "full cost recovery," so that NASA could charge Shuttle customers less than the full cost of launches for long enough to capture the market, with the cost picked up by the taxpayer. This could close down production lines for a number of the components needed to construct and launch ELVs, making their later development far more expensive than would otherwise be the case.
What is most disturbing is that NASA's anti-competitive activities could undermine the President's broad initiative on space commercialization by undermining private sector efforts before they can acquire a firm financial footing. The agency would thereby undercut a number of key benefits for Americans that the initiative would otherwise yield.
The first thing you should do before writing stupid drivel is ask yourself, "Gee, is there really a problem here?" But no, you just had to get that anti-libertarian straw man in without regard for the history.
So what you are telling me is that for some odd reason, despite private rocket launches in their own facilities using their own rockets is now considered okay, and done on a regular basis, you are still in a white hot seething astrorage anger and feeling much butthurt because of the way it used to be a long time ago?
And you should too. Because history has a habit of repeating itself. What's going to happen when NASA has the SLS supply chain and SpaceX has the Falcon Heavy, a cheaper and more reliable competitor?
Well, that SLS supply chain, being better connected politically, are going to use their connections to sabotage SpaceX, just like Space Shuttle proponents did commercial space launch back in the 70s or the launch oligopoly did to various would-be competitors in the 80s and 90s.
They're already playing games with the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program which was an attempt by NASA to encourage commercial launch services, including SpaceX, to supply ISS with supplies and personnel. The number of competitors was reduced from six competitors to two by interference from Congress. There's also fishing expeditions for "anomalies" from recent Falcon 9 launches. Notice that nobody else was targeted by that demand for info
Bullshit. The law authorizing NASA directs NASA at numerous points to plan and promote things that fall under "having vision". For example:
Congress further declares that such activities shall be the responsibility of, and shall be directed by, a civilian agency exercising control over aeronautical and space activities sponsored by the United States
he Administration seek and encourage, to the maximum extent possible, the fullest commercial use of space
The development and operation of vehicles capable of carrying instruments, equipment, supplies, and living organisms through space.
The establishment of long-range studies of the potential benefits to be gained from, the opportunities for, and the problems involved in the utilization of aeronautical and space activities for peaceful and scientific purposes.
The most effective utilization of the scientific and engineering resources of the United States, with close cooperation among all interested agencies of the United States in order to avoid unnecessary duplication of effort, facilities, and equipment.
Later on, there's:
plan, direct, and conduct aeronautical and space activities;
That's the vision mandate. It's worth remembering here that Congress isn't the experts on space exploration in the US government, NASA is supposed to be. Nor does Congress have responsibility for promoting and insuring that the US has viable and useful NASA activities. Once again, that's NASA's particular responsibility.
NASA is an engineering and scientific agency (with an overlay of flags-and-footprints) and always has been, not an exploratory agency. They do not exist to feed the wet dreams and masturbation fantasies of the space fanboys.
The above law also has numerous places where it directs NASA to do space exploration or to encourage space exploration by US private sources.
What gets missed in all these clueless and misguided posts about "space fanboys", is that technology and the economics of space activities are progressing and getting into space need not stay as hard and as costly as it is now. Rather than merely decree without much thought that something is permanently impossible or unprofitable, it makes more sense to figure out what thresholds need to be crossed in order for an activity to be possible or profitable.
Even with significant investment, that's unlikely to change for decades, maybe centuries.
Decades is the usual shortest time frame discussed for this sort of thing anyway. You're not in disagreement with most "space fanboys" on that. I think it's a bit dishonest to downplay someone's ambitions as delusions and hallucinations while simultaneously admitting that the only real problem is that you think their estimates of time to achievements are mildly ambitious.
In October 2003! Do you still believe that SpaceX is really that "fast" and "agile"?
They have demonstrated they are by developing two launch vehicles and several rocket engines in that period of time - for about a tenth the estimated NASA pricing of the task in question.
And I find it odd how you can't figure out that your quote is completely irrelevant to your implied assertion that SpaceX isn't "fast" or "agile". We would expect them to run tests. We would expect some of their tests to fail. This sort of thing is independent of how fast or "agile" they are.
You had a three sentence post and two of them were full of ignorance.
I was disabusing the previous poster of some pretty misguided notions. I guess you need some help as well. I notice, for example, that you don't actually disagree, you just choose to characterize my short observations as "full of ignorance". Do you have a reason why you think so?
I'm quite aware how NASA operates - by writing large checks to private contractors who make sure the money gets spent in the right congressional districts. But that sort of activity hasn't resulted in a viable launch platform since the 70s, when the Space Shuttle was developed.
And rather than continue to do something that hasn't worked in around four decades (and really, the Space Shuttle and the Apollo programs were just money sinks) maybe we could look at things that do work, like SpaceX's approach?
Anyhow, I went off the deep end on your idea to illustrate just how silly the idea that the government is holding back progress on rocketry.
Like the US banning private launch vehicles through to 1984? Or maintaining a launch oligopoly funded on the public dollar through to the last decade? Or paying a few tens of billions to develop a huge rocket while not paying a few billion to get someone like SpaceX to develop said rocket.
Well, either rocket can be used for non-pork purposes. There's no physical limitation that prevents them from being used that way. But one of them is going to be well priced out of doing anything that doesn't have huge funding from some government, the congressional one versus one which can be priced to sell to groups other than governments, the SpaceX one.
My take is a really cheap big rocket would have takers. Either bigger satellites, more delta-v, and/or launching more satellites at one time.
Humans can and have figured out how to make waste into something valuable. So we are already better than cats in that respect. The sentiment you express is just another myth.
Further, how do you expect people to learn how to do that sort of thing better? Living on Earth is soft in many ways, including a lack of need to not "waste" things. Such wouldn't be true in space.
I'm reminded of the proverb, "necessity is the mother of invention". When someone needs to learn how to do something, they tend to do a better job of it than if the learning is optional or irrelevant.
As an aside, there's been a number of complaints in recent years about work and how there's too much of it. The basic idea there seems to be that people are forced to do it so everyone needs more freedom in being able to reject choices that cause them to endure more work drudgery.
Well, this is one of those choices. And as a result, somewhere around half the population of Detroit decided they'd rather be somewhere else than suffer through Detroit and its many problems. So you have to decide what is more important, your particular moral opinion or the freedom of people to make choices that you don't like.
My view is that if a moral rule or obligation results in massive defection or resistance, then there's something wrong with the rule - not with the people.
Because NASA did all the heavy lifting half a century ago?
No. Because SpaceX and similar companies are doing the heavy lifting now.
We're already "exploring space" from our computer chairs. No one needs to go anywhere!!! The universe is billions of light years across, how does sending a few test pilots on the Moon for 45 minutes help at all?
How does getting out of your house help you travel anywhere? Travel isn't a process of deciding to go somewhere and just magically end up there.
More blaming the victim garbage (though bonus points for pretending the victims were the perpetrators). There are plenty of other cities out there that would and, as it turned out, did treat the people or businesses formerly of Detroit well.
You can spin these ridiculous fantasies about "con artists" and "fixing their mess" (said mess not actually being theirs), but the bottom line is that in a free world, other people aren't forced to deal with your shit. When you treat them like crap, they leave.
Where are you going to get the rats and fleas to spread Y.pestis?
Yea, those are pretty scarce resources and near impossible to find in any city. Or as the other replier noted, they could always use humans. Those always seem to be present in every city for some reason.
And I read your response to that replier:
You need either already infected humans, who would live long enough for the plague to reach the pneumonic form, OR an ability to CREATE AND DEPLOY an aerosoled version without catching any yourself.
Hint: It's not something you'll be doing in a cave.
I imagine it'd be something you could do in a lab... which could be put in a cave or anywhere else they happen to be.
Gone forever until they rebuild the hotels. I wager inside of twenty years, the pilgrims on Hajj would be just as numerous as they are now. Functionally, there's no real difference between having a few meteorites or a glass lake at the spot.
All the city's productivity and investment? Gone, because private companies decided they could just pack their bags and walk away.
And they were right. Once again, the victims get blamed because the city drove them away. All these companies, all those workers, and all that productivity and investment would have stayed if the environment were far less toxic.
I also find it odd how irrelevant the "myths" of your story are to the original poster's assertion. For example, "Detroit will be saved by bankruptcy" is just so totally on topic.
Yea and it's not the middle ages either and there are no strains of plague that are anti-biotic resistant. The only Bacteria that are scary are anti-biotic resistant ones, all the rest can be cured with a dose of anti-biotic. That's why people with the real knowledge don't research bio-weapons from bacteria, they use viruses that have no effective treatment option.
OTOH, it's far easier to cultivate bacteria than viruses. For example, Yersinia pestis, the bacteria that causes bubonic plague can be grown in a modified agar gel with no need for host cells of any kind. And it's pretty easy to breed in resistance to anti-biotics by exposing the bacteria over many generations to all the anti-biotics in use at doses where a small part of the colony survives.
Whether that can be done over a short enough time that interests an organization like ISIS, is unknown to me. But it wouldn't take much effort IMHO to make a bubonic plague variant that is at least highly resistant to anti-biotics. Making it also highly infectious and lethal is another problem. That might require substantially more testing and breeding of the bacteria in host animals like rats or mice or something closer to us, like monkeys or people themselves.
Amazing how putting this on the front of your list just discredited your entire post instantly. Public labor unions are a particularly nasty parasite. The union in question, the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Union got overly greedy and demonstrated an epic level of hubris.
The results were not so good. Not only did they get burned permanently (the strikers weren't only fired, but banned permanently from employment with the Federal government), but they also set back all labor unions by swinging public opinion massively against labor unions in general.
If it's not bending metal, it's not pretty thorough. And a big problem with the study that you mention is that it is written by people with a huge conflict of interest to present solar and wind power as being sufficiently reliable that they can drive most of an electric grid without a lot of expensive infrastructure like energy storage and transmission.
I thought we would need storage temporarily.
I thought we would need storage permanently in a situation where we're relying heavily (80%) on variable sources of power.
The "smart grid" just throws the cost of energy storage and brown outs (when supply can't meet demand) onto the end user.
Executive orders are merely relatively formal written orders from the person in charge of the executive branch, the US President. If you do away with executive orders then no one is in charge and the only meager control you have is via Congress's power of the purse.
You are willing believe in aliens from other worlds, time travel and the idea all this can be kept hidden but a person being able to witch a well is a bridge too far?
Where's the evidence? If the Greys land in front of the White House in a flying saucer and ask to be taken to our leader, then I would allow that there's something to this UFO stuff. Who knows? You might too.
It doesn't seem that way to me. I think a lot of people here on Slashdot have figured out the life-work balance that's good for them in their current situation. Maybe we could do an "Ask Slashdot" thing here.
You know I'm not speaking of UFOs in the literal definition, but of the social phenomenon. And who knows, there may actually be aliens, humans from the future, beings from alternate dimensions, or whatever. That doesn't mean much since we don't have actual evidence of these guys, but rather a huge load of hysterical tales and remarkably poor and often doctored photographic evidence.
Slashdot Mirror
I have to agree with the other replier. Blaming the public's need for accountability for the risk adverse nature of government is silly. It would be far worse without that accountability. Probably not Holodomor level malfeasance, but you certainly aren't considering the negative consequences of removing accountability from the decision-making process for a government entity.
Another thing to remember here is that risk taking isn't automatically a good thing. As the grand parent noted, because government doesn't care about the outcome, they can obsess over things like engine efficiency at any cost rather than building a viable and economical engine. That sort of fatally flawed decision making process isn't going to get any better just because you choose not to look at it or criticize it.
And then it took over 9 years of former NASA employes work to build a functional rocket.
No, it took 9 years from the end of 2003 to build two rocket vehicles and three rocket motors and conduct 9 launch attempts in that time - 5 of which were successful and 1 partially successful.
It is not even close to as easy as you describe often needing 1000s of generations or more, and you end up with something that is antibiotic resistant *on agar*. Your host is not such a simple media.
Thousands of generations? So that's a few years at most assuming that part of the problem really is as tough as you claim. Most definitely, beyond the attention span of an organization like ISIS, we hope.
And then a few passes through rodents to get virulence up for the first try. Sounds moderately tough to me too. But not as tough as trying the same thing with a virus that needs to infect living tissue in order to propagate.
How about a couple minutes for you to understand exactly why it wasn't allowed.....playing that time passing song....
It was because NASA needed funding for the Space Shuttle. It had nothing to do with safety. Merely, requiring private companies to post bonds prior to each launch covers your safety concerns without requiring a decade long ban.
Further, it's worth noting that many of the companies which by your reckoning can't be trusted to run a safe commercial launch vehicle are the same ones that were building and running NASA's Space Shuttle (as well as having decades of launch experience under their belts).
Further, it is monumentally stupid to claim that commercial launches can be confused with a nuclear attack. One launch isn't going to take out the USSR. For example, here's a story written shortly after the fall of the Shuttle monopoly.
Some of the agency's likely tactics are already evident. One strategem, reported by several observers close to the Shuttle/ ELV controversy, has been to apply pressure on contractors sup- plying major components to NASA to keep them from entering the ELV business. Although nothing has appeared in official docu- ments, it is said that NASA officials have suggested to possible private competitors that their contracts for Shuttle components might be endangered if these firms engaged in private launches. Another tactic has been to try to delay implementation of "full cost recovery," so that NASA could charge Shuttle customers less than the full cost of launches for long enough to capture the market, with the cost picked up by the taxpayer. This could close down production lines for a number of the components needed to construct and launch ELVs, making their later development far more expensive than would otherwise be the case.
What is most disturbing is that NASA's anti-competitive activities could undermine the President's broad initiative on space commercialization by undermining private sector efforts before they can acquire a firm financial footing. The agency would thereby undercut a number of key benefits for Americans that the initiative would otherwise yield.
The first thing you should do before writing stupid drivel is ask yourself, "Gee, is there really a problem here?" But no, you just had to get that anti-libertarian straw man in without regard for the history.
So what you are telling me is that for some odd reason, despite private rocket launches in their own facilities using their own rockets is now considered okay, and done on a regular basis, you are still in a white hot seething astrorage anger and feeling much butthurt because of the way it used to be a long time ago?
And you should too. Because history has a habit of repeating itself. What's going to happen when NASA has the SLS supply chain and SpaceX has the Falcon Heavy, a cheaper and more reliable competitor?
Well, that SLS supply chain, being better connected politically, are going to use their connections to sabotage SpaceX, just like Space Shuttle proponents did commercial space launch back in the 70s or the launch oligopoly did to various would-be competitors in the 80s and 90s.
They're already playing games with the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program which was an attempt by NASA to encourage commercial launch services, including SpaceX, to supply ISS with supplies and personnel. The number of competitors was reduced from six competitors to two by interference from Congress. There's also fishing expeditions for "anomalies" from recent Falcon 9 launches. Notice that nobody else was targeted by that demand for info
NASA is not supposed to have vision
Bullshit. The law authorizing NASA directs NASA at numerous points to plan and promote things that fall under "having vision". For example:
Congress further declares that such activities shall be the responsibility of, and shall be directed by, a civilian agency exercising control over aeronautical and space activities sponsored by the United States
he Administration seek and encourage, to the maximum extent possible, the fullest commercial use of space
The development and operation of vehicles capable of carrying instruments, equipment, supplies, and living organisms through space.
The establishment of long-range studies of the potential benefits to be gained from, the opportunities for, and the problems involved in the utilization of aeronautical and space activities for peaceful and scientific purposes.
The most effective utilization of the scientific and engineering resources of the United States, with close cooperation among all interested agencies of the United States in order to avoid unnecessary duplication of effort, facilities, and equipment.
Later on, there's:
plan, direct, and conduct aeronautical and space activities;
That's the vision mandate. It's worth remembering here that Congress isn't the experts on space exploration in the US government, NASA is supposed to be. Nor does Congress have responsibility for promoting and insuring that the US has viable and useful NASA activities. Once again, that's NASA's particular responsibility.
NASA is an engineering and scientific agency (with an overlay of flags-and-footprints) and always has been, not an exploratory agency. They do not exist to feed the wet dreams and masturbation fantasies of the space fanboys.
The above law also has numerous places where it directs NASA to do space exploration or to encourage space exploration by US private sources.
What gets missed in all these clueless and misguided posts about "space fanboys", is that technology and the economics of space activities are progressing and getting into space need not stay as hard and as costly as it is now. Rather than merely decree without much thought that something is permanently impossible or unprofitable, it makes more sense to figure out what thresholds need to be crossed in order for an activity to be possible or profitable.
Even with significant investment, that's unlikely to change for decades, maybe centuries.
Decades is the usual shortest time frame discussed for this sort of thing anyway. You're not in disagreement with most "space fanboys" on that. I think it's a bit dishonest to downplay someone's ambitions as delusions and hallucinations while simultaneously admitting that the only real problem is that you think their estimates of time to achievements are mildly ambitious.
In October 2003! Do you still believe that SpaceX is really that "fast" and "agile"?
They have demonstrated they are by developing two launch vehicles and several rocket engines in that period of time - for about a tenth the estimated NASA pricing of the task in question.
And I find it odd how you can't figure out that your quote is completely irrelevant to your implied assertion that SpaceX isn't "fast" or "agile". We would expect them to run tests. We would expect some of their tests to fail. This sort of thing is independent of how fast or "agile" they are.
You had a three sentence post and two of them were full of ignorance.
I was disabusing the previous poster of some pretty misguided notions. I guess you need some help as well. I notice, for example, that you don't actually disagree, you just choose to characterize my short observations as "full of ignorance". Do you have a reason why you think so?
I'm quite aware how NASA operates - by writing large checks to private contractors who make sure the money gets spent in the right congressional districts. But that sort of activity hasn't resulted in a viable launch platform since the 70s, when the Space Shuttle was developed.
And rather than continue to do something that hasn't worked in around four decades (and really, the Space Shuttle and the Apollo programs were just money sinks) maybe we could look at things that do work, like SpaceX's approach?
Anyhow, I went off the deep end on your idea to illustrate just how silly the idea that the government is holding back progress on rocketry.
Like the US banning private launch vehicles through to 1984? Or maintaining a launch oligopoly funded on the public dollar through to the last decade? Or paying a few tens of billions to develop a huge rocket while not paying a few billion to get someone like SpaceX to develop said rocket.
Well, either rocket can be used for non-pork purposes. There's no physical limitation that prevents them from being used that way. But one of them is going to be well priced out of doing anything that doesn't have huge funding from some government, the congressional one versus one which can be priced to sell to groups other than governments, the SpaceX one. My take is a really cheap big rocket would have takers. Either bigger satellites, more delta-v, and/or launching more satellites at one time.
Humans can and have figured out how to make waste into something valuable. So we are already better than cats in that respect. The sentiment you express is just another myth.
Further, how do you expect people to learn how to do that sort of thing better? Living on Earth is soft in many ways, including a lack of need to not "waste" things. Such wouldn't be true in space.
I'm reminded of the proverb, "necessity is the mother of invention". When someone needs to learn how to do something, they tend to do a better job of it than if the learning is optional or irrelevant.
As an aside, there's been a number of complaints in recent years about work and how there's too much of it. The basic idea there seems to be that people are forced to do it so everyone needs more freedom in being able to reject choices that cause them to endure more work drudgery.
Well, this is one of those choices. And as a result, somewhere around half the population of Detroit decided they'd rather be somewhere else than suffer through Detroit and its many problems. So you have to decide what is more important, your particular moral opinion or the freedom of people to make choices that you don't like.
My view is that if a moral rule or obligation results in massive defection or resistance, then there's something wrong with the rule - not with the people.
Because NASA did all the heavy lifting half a century ago?
No. Because SpaceX and similar companies are doing the heavy lifting now.
We're already "exploring space" from our computer chairs. No one needs to go anywhere!!! The universe is billions of light years across, how does sending a few test pilots on the Moon for 45 minutes help at all?
How does getting out of your house help you travel anywhere? Travel isn't a process of deciding to go somewhere and just magically end up there.
More blaming the victim garbage (though bonus points for pretending the victims were the perpetrators). There are plenty of other cities out there that would and, as it turned out, did treat the people or businesses formerly of Detroit well.
You can spin these ridiculous fantasies about "con artists" and "fixing their mess" (said mess not actually being theirs), but the bottom line is that in a free world, other people aren't forced to deal with your shit. When you treat them like crap, they leave.
Where are you going to get the rats and fleas to spread Y.pestis?
Yea, those are pretty scarce resources and near impossible to find in any city. Or as the other replier noted, they could always use humans. Those always seem to be present in every city for some reason.
And I read your response to that replier:
You need either already infected humans, who would live long enough for the plague to reach the pneumonic form, OR an ability to CREATE AND DEPLOY an aerosoled version without catching any yourself. Hint: It's not something you'll be doing in a cave.
I imagine it'd be something you could do in a lab ... which could be put in a cave or anywhere else they happen to be.
Their most holy site would be gone forever.
Gone forever until they rebuild the hotels. I wager inside of twenty years, the pilgrims on Hajj would be just as numerous as they are now. Functionally, there's no real difference between having a few meteorites or a glass lake at the spot.
All the city's productivity and investment? Gone, because private companies decided they could just pack their bags and walk away.
And they were right. Once again, the victims get blamed because the city drove them away. All these companies, all those workers, and all that productivity and investment would have stayed if the environment were far less toxic.
I also find it odd how irrelevant the "myths" of your story are to the original poster's assertion. For example, "Detroit will be saved by bankruptcy" is just so totally on topic.
Yea and it's not the middle ages either and there are no strains of plague that are anti-biotic resistant. The only Bacteria that are scary are anti-biotic resistant ones, all the rest can be cured with a dose of anti-biotic. That's why people with the real knowledge don't research bio-weapons from bacteria, they use viruses that have no effective treatment option.
OTOH, it's far easier to cultivate bacteria than viruses. For example, Yersinia pestis, the bacteria that causes bubonic plague can be grown in a modified agar gel with no need for host cells of any kind. And it's pretty easy to breed in resistance to anti-biotics by exposing the bacteria over many generations to all the anti-biotics in use at doses where a small part of the colony survives.
Whether that can be done over a short enough time that interests an organization like ISIS, is unknown to me. But it wouldn't take much effort IMHO to make a bubonic plague variant that is at least highly resistant to anti-biotics. Making it also highly infectious and lethal is another problem. That might require substantially more testing and breeding of the bacteria in host animals like rats or mice or something closer to us, like monkeys or people themselves.
Union breaker
Amazing how putting this on the front of your list just discredited your entire post instantly. Public labor unions are a particularly nasty parasite. The union in question, the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Union got overly greedy and demonstrated an epic level of hubris.
The results were not so good. Not only did they get burned permanently (the strikers weren't only fired, but banned permanently from employment with the Federal government), but they also set back all labor unions by swinging public opinion massively against labor unions in general.
And zero evidence of any of the prior roughly 100 billion (your estimate again, going with your thought experiment) having gotten out alive.
Well, there's not much evidence that they got out dead either. It's not like anyone's counted the bodies to make sure we got everyone.
I thought we would need storage temporarily.
I thought we would need storage permanently in a situation where we're relying heavily (80%) on variable sources of power.
The "smart grid" just throws the cost of energy storage and brown outs (when supply can't meet demand) onto the end user.
So we make it more efficient to buy a lawnmower at 3am by making it a moral wrong? I'm not seeing the connection here.
Executive orders are merely relatively formal written orders from the person in charge of the executive branch, the US President. If you do away with executive orders then no one is in charge and the only meager control you have is via Congress's power of the purse.
You are willing believe in aliens from other worlds, time travel and the idea all this can be kept hidden but a person being able to witch a well is a bridge too far?
Where's the evidence? If the Greys land in front of the White House in a flying saucer and ask to be taken to our leader, then I would allow that there's something to this UFO stuff. Who knows? You might too.
It doesn't seem that way to me. I think a lot of people here on Slashdot have figured out the life-work balance that's good for them in their current situation. Maybe we could do an "Ask Slashdot" thing here.
You know I'm not speaking of UFOs in the literal definition, but of the social phenomenon. And who knows, there may actually be aliens, humans from the future, beings from alternate dimensions, or whatever. That doesn't mean much since we don't have actual evidence of these guys, but rather a huge load of hysterical tales and remarkably poor and often doctored photographic evidence.