The analogy is actually much more accurate than most Americans really care to give it. Lincoln was given war powers that were more along the lines of the Roman Emperors than a beneveolent "first citizen" (hence President) of the country.
Mistakes were made by both the North and the South, with the major Confederate mistake being trying to fight the issue of succession with arms than trying to fight it through treaties and legal means. It would have been real interesting to see what the USA would be like had South Carolina, for instance, tried to get the SCOTUS to agree that its seccession was legal.
The Confederacy thought they had the upper hand, and at the beginning of the Civil War they certainly seemed to have the superior military force. It wasn't until the Northern states got into a war economy in a style more recognizable in the 20th Century and flooding Dixie with superior weapons, massive numbers of soldiers, and improved logistics (notably with a superior infrastructure of railroads).
BTW, most of the fighting happened in the 1860's, with most of the fighting over by the beginning of Lincoln's second term in 1864. The 1870's were noted as being quite bloody in Dixie as well, and throughout most of the rest of the 19th Century as the Klu Klux Klan fought against blacks (African-Americans), often with pitch battles between the two groups. There is some reason to believe that almost as many casualties occured from these actions as occured in open combat during the Civil War, although certianly not in as organized of military units as was seen during the Civil War itself. Keep in mind that black groups weren't exactly unarmed either, nor without simpathizers in the North.
Keep in mind that the whole issue with the Branch Davidians was blown up totally out of control by inept law enforcement personnel, particularly Federal officials who were frankly itching to get into a fight and try out a new "unit" that was developed to deal with exactly that sort of assult. That the Branch Davidians held off the feds for as long as they did gives credit to the fact that they were well prepared. Remember, it was the feds going into the Branch Davidian compound, not the other way around.
Also, major missed opportunities included things like having an ATF agent stand right next to David Korish at a check-out counter in a store (a gun shop no less) and waving good-bye as he left the store unarmed. Similar incidents occured where they could have arrested people in Waco itself rather than killing everybody as it finally happened.
Basically, if you are invading somebody's home against the occupant's will, you should expect to get your a**** shot off, fall into a pit of spikes, or get your foot chewed off by a doberman. If this doesn't happen, just count yourself lucky. All of these things can be done "legally" without even having a.50 caliber weapon, or even a firearm.
From my viewpoint and reading of the U.S. Constitution, absolutely!
Now at the same time, the possession of a nuclear warhead would require you to file environment impact statements if you are going to store it in your basement, and the 10000% federal excise tax on its purchase may also discourage you from actually purchasing it, considering that you would have to purchase components through interstate trade.
Also, if that same said bomb gets used you would be financially liable for the damage done by that same device, and subject to criminal prosecution if you kill anybody. Trafficing in the sale of a nuke to terrorist organizations may also be a capital crime.
The point is that while specifically "congress may make no law prohibiting..." there still are ways to regulate the possession of nukes by private individuals, even if ultimately Wm. H. Gates III is the only citizen that could afford to buy one.
I would have to add that not only should the government get totally away from VOIP, but the real question is how can it be done at all?
While I could see some "regulation" of dealing with the interface between VoIP servers and conventional land-line carriers, I totally fail to see how it would be even possible to stop me from making my own software, sending a copy to a friend or even a group fo friends, and setting up what is essentially a PBX system. Any regulation of speech over IP is simply going to be regulation of all data over IP, and just where are you going to draw the line there?
And even assuming that all TCP/IP packets are monitored, I fail to see how it would be technically possible to stop private networks from sharing data without going through government-controlled access channels. China (People's Republic) has a virtual monopoly on internet access of any kind, and even there they can't seem to stop all "news" from outside of goverment channels making it through. If China can't stop unauthorized internet traffic, what makes you think the FCC could stop enterprising individuals from saying "to hell with the FCC rules"?
I have replied to comments like this I need to make a FAQ on wikipedia or something.
Before you start being real critical of Presidential General Elections in the USA, you need to do a whole bunch of research first. The problem is not so much that you have a nation of 300 million people trying to vote, but it is due to the fact that each voter is being asked to vote on as many as 100 different offices and ballot referendum issues.
When I will vote on November 2nd, I will still be trying to make up my mind on many of these issues, although my decision for the President has already been decided a long time ago. For just federal officers, I am going to be voting also for both a Senator as well as a Representative for the U.S. House. There is also the governor of my state, attorney general (an elected office here), the state legislature, and all state judges who have juristiction over me except the state supreme court. I am also going to be voting on three different proposed changes to the state constitution and three additional pieces of legislation that was either put on by petition or because the state legislature decided to pass on taking a hard stand on the issue themselves (like a ban on gay marriage, but that is another issue).
The point is that the ballot itself is so complex that to have to resort to paper and pencil to deal with all of the issues on that ballot would result in statistical certainty that some races would be messed up. It is trying to resolve this complexity that voting machine were developed in the first place. I have no doubt that if the EU put that many issues on one of their ballots they would also want to automate the process somehow.
While I might agree about a statistic like that in some parts of Dixie (the old Confederacy of the U.S. Civil War), I doubt that you would find that common practice throughout the USA. Also, even in some areas in Dixie, there is such a strong majority of blacks that such disenfranchisement is probabaly just as likely among poor whites.
Honestly, I think other minority groups like Hispanics are much more likely to be denied the right to vote...where often their status as a U.S. Citizen would be questioned.
I would also take most of what Michael Moore claims with a grain of salt although he clearly has a strong political viewpoint. There are many much more authoritative reports and books that discuss election fraud over the years than that book you are reading.
Much of this is also an issue for people who seldom vote or are voting for the first time. If you have been voting for some time and regularly (not just for Presidential elections but also for bi-annual congressional elections, local school bond elections, municipal races, etc.) your voting status would be quite well known, and to have it suddenly revoked could also be appealed much more easily. I'm not sure what the statutory limitations are, but you may also be able to file a lawsuit against the voting registrar if they libel you and accuse you of being a felon when in fact you have a clean criminal record. This is not something to be done lightly.
What is interesting where I live it was not only legal for a felon to vote, but they were doing the voting in the prisons, with the state pennetentary being its own voting precint. And they were voting for the sherrif that put them in there in many cases. The problem is that it is not politically useful for a politician to support citizenship rights for convicted felons, so often it makes some political hay to restrict these rights, and doesn't offend the "core" voting blocks, so in this case a state-wide referendum was passed that prohibited voting while actually serving in prison.
Something else to think about: What fissionable materials can be found in asteroids? There are known iron/nickle asteroids and other materials that are quite high in heavy metals. Still, if we are talking trying to get something going sooner rather than later, substantial quantities of at least "yellowcake" and possibly more concentrated uranium ore would have to be sent into orbit from earth-based processing facilities, if not Plutonium and enriched Uranium. And that would really freak out the greens with the idea of an orbital nuclear ore processing facility. Not just nukes in space, but the manufacturing plant as well.
I would also have to add that I think nuclear power is going to have to be the primary energy source for the outer solar system. Mars is just barely pushing it for energy density (watts / m^2) from the sun, and in the Asteroid belt it would be too little to even make solar panels effective. That is why exploration of the outer planets of the solar system require RTG's. On the other hand, sending something to Mercury can really take advantage of solar energy panels, for exactly the same reason. And in terms of heavier metals, Mercury has an even higher average density than the Earth. I just don't know if I would want to be a miner there though.
I did an earlier post about the Hindenberg that is relevant to this discussion. Basically, airships themselves were doomed simply by their nature, and on top of all that would be incredibly expensive to be in if you really wanted to book a flight on one like you would on a passenger cruise line.
It is fore this reason, and because fixed-wing heavier than air vehicles (normal commercial aviation that we now have) generally get you to where you want to go cheaply and quickly...usually anywhere in the world in less than 48 hours, sometimes less.
The only real benefit of the lighter-than-air airships is the grand view you can have of the world as you fly over it. Now that is truly something that can be marketed by itself, but other areas that the Hindenberg would have excelled in (rapid transit between Europe and America, delivery of bulk goods in less than a week across continents, etc.) are now done through other transportation systems. This cuts out most of the potential markets that could have supported and sustained the airship industry.
If you want to buy one right now, there are companies that will sell one to you. Also, back in 2000 there was regular passenger airship service offered in the Las Vegas area. (If you want to see the web pages, you need to go to www.archive.org to see them.) Unfortunately the service was discontinued and is no longer available. In this case it looks like the internet bubble took this enterprise down with it.
This reinforces my thesis, that with today's economic climate it just isn't practical. The technology is available and plenty of money has been poured down on trying to get it to work since the 1920's.
I was going to write something basically in support of his not answering this question, and then I realized just how direct this question was.
Nader's answer about the hot dog is cute, but certainly not an issue of national importance.
Kerry's answer indicated that he at least read the question, but totally dodged it with the answer.
Frankly I thought all three candidates totally dodged the question. This is a very thoughtful question that would have shown true character from any candidate who honestly answered it. During the entire political careers of President Bush or John Kerry, I can't believe that they havn't had at least one example, even if it isn't a current campaign issue (like deployment of the Pershing II missiles in Germany or military intervention due to the 1970's oil boycott by OPEC).
I'd have to add that Christopher Columbus used a globe that was 2/3rds the size of what the earth really was, which is why he thought he could get to the Indies with the technology of the time.
When he got to Portugual, who BTW knew quite accurately the diameter of the Earth at the time due to their having acutally going to India and the "spice islands" on their own around Africa, thought Columbus was a total nut case and turned him down.
The point here is that not only was the earth considered to be a sphere going back to "ancient" times, but even the diameter has been fairly accurately known +/- 100 km for at least 2500 years. The "Flat Earth Society", as it now exists, is purely a 20th Century invention.
In the case of navigation and the discovery of the America's by European counties, read up a little on the discovery of Brazil by Portugal. The whole thing is a farce, except for the fact that Portugual formally and publicly acknowledged the fact that the territory was there and that they claimed it. It would be more like if the Bush Administration did a major push for a mission to Mars only to find Vulcans living there, drinking Coca-Cola and eating Twinkies during the formal introductions.
One of the problems with supersonic flight is that the overall cost of developing aircraft that can withstand those kind of environmental stresses is incredibly high. Keep in mind that you must meet the current safty requires that it appears the U.S. Congress also wants for spaceflight: That you are safer in an airplane from death or injury than if you are walking down the street on the sidewalk (statistically speaking).
Also, there have only been two supersonic aircraft project built for commercial passenger service, and both were massive government projects with pork everywhere and befitting of comparison to the Space Shuttle rather than Space Ship One. The American supersonic plane became so expensive that finally it was canned before it could get into regular service.
There were other problems with the Concorde besides the ticket price. Its landing gear was notorious on runways, and for regular service required a runway that was extra thick that could handle the beatings it would get on landing. Not even a 747 has as many problems in this regard.
Also, the Concorde was extreamly noisy, and many community noise ordinances (at least in the USA) would stop this plane from being able to land at their airports. Because of this when flying over the continental USA it had to fly at subsonic speeds, which kinda defeats the whole purpose of its design.
The Concorde also had an unfortunate design limitation that made its flight range to just a little bit more than crossing the Atlantic Ocean. For example, the Concorde, without refueling, couldn't go from London to Sydney. Again this defeats the whole point of flying a supersonic plane. A 747, on the other hand, can and does cover this distance non-stop. And hauls many more passengers is what would be an equivalent time for a Concorde with refueling along the way.
Finally, there were other companies that wanted to contine to fly the Concorde, including Richard Branson and Virgin Atlantic. He thought he could make a profit off of the plane, but the UK government refused to let him even try. Keep in mind that the two airlines that used the Concorde, Air France and British Airways, were owned by their respective governments in much the same way as the Post Office.
Many of the above issues are not as relevant for sub-orbital ballistic flight, and a better design can help deal with some of the issues. Also, the time advantage for sub-orbital flight is even more significant than with the Concorde, so the utility of the higher price is even more of an advantage.
Prices for going into space have largely been driven by military concerns (even with the Chinese, Indians, and Iranians) where cost per pound is not as important as fulfilling certain objectives that the missions require. Even NASA can be considered in this regard to be more like the military with mission objectives rather than a commercial enterprise scheduling flights. It is not NASA's fault that they have made orbital flight so expensive, it just isn't even in their overall agency objective to even make it cheap.
If you are talking something that is more passenger friendly, and so you don't need a medical release to ride on the flight, you could have the rocket do acceleration of about 2-3 G's, of just slightly more than a good elevator in a major skyscraper, and comparable to current commercial flight during take-off and landing.
That would mean it would take a little bit longer, and require more time for the rocket burn (dropping the efficiancy somewhat), but be much more comfortable to passengers. The Apollo rockets, in comparison, would pull sometimes as much as 8-9 G's (yes, pretty close to blackout) at their peak acceleration. ICBMs can do sometimes as much as 15-20 G's before they deliver a nuke (generally not a problem for that kind of cargo). The Space Shuttle, as a further reference, has a peak acceleration of about 5 G's, and its flight profile can be adjusted to drop that down even further if the payload requires it, depending on the orbial parameters as payload weight as well.
Keep in mind that peak acceleration occurs at the end of the stage or burn, which in a craft like SSO is when they are almost in space anyway. That just means they have to throttle their engines back a little to make it not accelerate as much.
I hear the Antarctica argument quite a bit in discussions like this. There is one very huge reason why Antarctica hasn't been developed commercially and why people don't live there:
Nobody owns the real estate down there.
The Antarctica Treaty has this very artificial hunk of slices deviding up the continent in cute pie wedges, but the truth is that no single nation really has claim on anything in Antarctica. Instead, the whole issue of ownership was put off for roughly a century and donated to scientists instead.
There was an attempt by Chile to actually send people to the Antarctic Peninsula (just south of Tierra del Fuego) and establish actual cities there to reinforce their claim on the continent. Some activities such as mining operations could occur there regardless of the climate, so to say that Mars won't be developed until Antarctica is takes a whole lot out of context and doesn't extablish what the real problem is.
Environmentalists are justifiably supported of the current arrangements, and there is some incredible value in having a whole continent that is untouched by people. I'm not advocating that we build a city in Antarctica, but the reason it hasn't happened is more to do with the legal complexities rather than the raw issues of survival. The research stations seem to stay open year round, and there is even some very interesting internet traffic between the researchers down there and the rest of the world.
The other problem with Antarctica is that the territory is also limited in acreage, and I think that if people from 1st World countries went down there to "settle" the continent, it would be filled up within 20-50 years (in terms of power and transit systems being strung everywhere and the first Antarctic war occuring over a territory dispute).
The advantage of going into space is that while you can also "fill up" the moon or Mars, there is plenty of more places to move to, or even build your own "manufactured cities" instead. Only when a Dyason Sphere is built can you truly say that the region near a star is truly crowded. That won't ever be built for at least 1 Million years... even with technological improvements. Well before things get that crowded we will have interstellar flight down rather well, which is going to be significantly more complicated than merely going to another planet.
If you could get the cost of a manned orbital laboratory down to as low as $50,000 per cubic foot per day, there would be many research labs and universities that would litterally beat a path to your door. Coupled with a $500,000 launch to get up and back, they would be positively drooling.
For us ordinary schmoos however, you are right: Only the very wealthy would be able to afford such a space hotel. Still, as has been pointed out before, there are plenty of examples where tourism went to exotic places like National Parks or to the jungles of Africa and spent an incredible amount of money there, only to have these destinations become much more affordable in the future.
Personally, I want a home on Phobos but L-5 would be just fine for me at the moment.
Ahhh... but the point here is that it isn't the vehicle that is regulated, but rather the fact that you have invaded a foriegn nation.
I guess I could have given safer examples, but the point is that no country regulates international waters, just like interplanetary space would also not be regulated by nation-states on the Earth.
What should happen is that everything they have done is now prior art, so if somebody comes along and does exactly what they have done, it can't be patented anyway. Unfortunately that is not how the USPTO works.
The objective is rather clear from their viewpoint: If you want to do research in this same area, be our guest, this stuff is open and available for your use.
It is too bad that more research groups don't do this and keep patents for unique and truly innovative concepts.
Before I do a knee jerk reaction and write my senator, could you tell me what changes were done with this latest ammendment?
I've tried to compare the text of the originally introduced bill with was was sent to the Senate, and I only found a couple of very minor corrections, none of which affect the legislation to the degree that you are implying. From the links that you've given, I can't find any Senate actions on the bill. There are some senate bills that are also listed, but again I can't find the text that has been added/changed. Even a related Senate version of the bill doesn't appear to have that much differnce, at least in philosophy.
It appears though, MSNBC has an article of their own regarding this action, so it certainly deserves some investigation.
Well, it will be real telling to see if the folks in congress are actually responsive to their citizens or if the tin-hat crowd is really correct. This really is an acid test in this regard, because there is so much pent-up enthsiasm regarding the private lanuch space industry that people in congress writing this legislation deep-six private launch only if they don't want to serve another term.
That companies like Boeing or Lockheed-Martin might try to push for hard regulations, I think the time has past for serious stoppage of private passenger spaceflight. That really is why the X-Prize was so incredibly impressive, because it really does open the doors that were previously closed to ordinary people. No longer do you have to go through a Mercury-style testing regimine in order to get into space anymore. That medical exams are going to happen at all is strictly to make sure people who shouldn't get on a spaceship (for example, Dick Cheeny with his bad ticker) don't go up and die because they are not physically fit. And that is only to make sure the first few flights don't draw the wrong kind of publicity.
The real test, however, will be if and when on a private spacecraft people can achieve escape velocity from the Earth. I.E. they can travel elsewhere in the solar system (provided they have sufficient provisions). When that happens, Congressional oversight over such matters will have essentially ended, just like the government can't stop a private citizen from throwing a rubber raft into the ocean and row from California to Sydney. The Australian government may complain about an entry without visa or passport, but that would be about it.
Thanks for the links. In looking around the site, they showed the U.S.S. Akron in use as an aircraft carrier. I can't even imagine what kind of guts it takes to launch from an airship at 6,000 feet and then attempt a recapture mid-air. These are truly some very brave individuals that put even normal floating carrier aviators to shame. Some interesting pictures of a head and a messon board as well. Cool.
It looks like they were for the most part even more cramped than a submarine, but that would have been a neat ship to serve on.
However, if you are on a city zoning board and need to approve new developments, or are looking over historical rennovations, you can use this information to simply state they the structures must be able to withstand an Earthquake of a certain magnatude because it is predicted to happen in the near future.
Where I'm living right now (Utah), we have some earthquakes, but the are very infrequent, but of very high magnitude when they do happen. There is a reason this state is full of mountains, and geologically speaking they haven't even stop growing taller.
And where was the worst earthquake in North America over the past 150-200 years? Missouri, not California. If you could give some folks in Ohio or Alabama the news that they are going to have an earthquake there with a 50% likelyhood in the next 50 years, I'm sure that there would be some major changes to zoning policies. Here in Utah most of Interstate 15 between Ogden and Provo has been rebuilt from scratch because most of the original bridges (crossing other roads & highways) were discovered to not be able to withstand an earthquake. One bridge practically fell apart just due to truck traffic over it and a contractor that seriously cut corners when it was originally put up. The state capitol building is also being rebuilt from scratch because it wouldn't stand up to even a 4.0 earthquake. The original marble is being preserved, but when it was originally built it depended on the sheer weight of the building stones to keep it up. Now a steel structure is being retrofited into the building to allow it to sway some and withstand a much more powerful earthquake. Almost all historical buildings are being examined and in order to get a building permit in most local communities you need to get an engineering study to determine if it will hold up to at least a 5.0 earthquake. The home I'm living in also went through a study like that, and this new construction that supposedly also fit with current building codes.
Yeah, I can see even a rough approximation of predicting earthquakes having a real useful potential.
Re:Not as interesting as the Bigelow $50 mil prize
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Win the X-Prize Cup
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You actually missed the biggest news in that article, rather than the $50 million prize:
"One of the primary contenders for the abovementioned X Prize is expected to be a Canadian group known as the Da Vinci Team. It turns out that the primary sponsor of the Da Vinci effort is a casino--the Golden Palace Online Casino, founded in 1997 in the Mohawk terriroty of Canada."
The best by far was the old Bell Labs, killed by the Department of Justice. Lucent Technologies is only a hollow shell of that former organization.
I will admit that IBM Research has certainly picked up the torch of Bell Labs to become the leading industrial research organization.
One other rather interesting group is Microsoft Research, which is patterned off of Bell Labs for its organization. Their relationship with mainstream Microsoft is bizzare at best, and it doesn't look like normal MS programmers take advantage of the research from their own company, although Longhorn may finally include some MS Research ideas. Still, it does show that somebody there is paying attention to the need for real research.
I used to work for a company that decided to outsource the R&D. The problem is that they had to give up a $10 million/year segment of their sales because of it. I'm not crying too much about that either. Dumping R&D looks good on paper in the short term, but you end up killing your company in the long term.
While I will admit that the Hindenburg disaster did quite a bit of damage to the airship industry, the real death nail to the airship industry was the take-off and landing issues, which were a nightmare.
It took crews of several hundred people at the aerodromes to anchor the airships down on landing just to make sure the airship wouldn't blow away in a moderate wind. They would have to close an aerodrome under conditions that even then normal airplanes had no problems trying to land under. Several ground crew personnel died because sometimes a gust of wind would pick up, the airship would suddenly lurch up 20-30 feet throwing the ground crewmember up sometimes as much as 50 feet in the air... onto hard concrete or ashphalt runways. That would not even be remotely acceptable today to deal with those issues.
I'm not exactly sure what the handling issues were while in flight (I'm not that much of an expert on the subject), but I would imagine that you would want to steer very clear of a Hurricane while piloting a lighter than air ship. I would also think that lightning would not be something pretty either. Jet aircraft are at least designed to route a lightning bolt around the airframe, even though pilots generally don't specificly try to get hit. Arcing lightning around Hydrogen would seem positively frightning to me.
The other problem with the dirigibles is that they are also very slow, but have operating expenses otherwise comparable with commercial fixed wing aircraft. Because of the speed, to do an intercontinental flight took long enough that you also had to include sufficient supplies to feed passengers and crew for several meals, and even berthing arrangements. In addition, trying to fight major wind currents like the Jet Stream is almost impossible in one of the airships.
By their nature, the airships also couldn't get too high in altitude. While there must have been at least some plans for pressurized cabins, it is much easier for the smaller cabin of a jet aircraft pressurized. That is one reason why jet aircraft have such tiny passenger windows. Once you get up above about 8,000 feet, you really need to pressurize everything as you are simply running out of air to even breathe. It also helps to get up even higher to simply avoid violent weather.
Current airships like the blimps running around sporting events with television cameras are considerably smaller than the Hindenburg, which makes handling issues much easier to deal with. Still, it is incredibly expensive to keep one of those airships going and is only marginally cheaper than having a helicopter do the same task. The #1 advantage a blimp has over a helicopter is simply stability of the camera platform, because it doesn't have to lurch all over the place.
Still, even with all of the drawbacks, getting on an airship like the Hindenburg would be a neat adventure, and I would love the chance to go on a "cruise" through the sky eating lobster and watching the scenry go by through huge picture windows. Unfortunately, paying for a ticket on one of those airships is going to cost almost as much as going on Virgin Galactic.
I hate to break the news, but it has been almost 100 years since the first trans-oceanic cables were put down, not 50. 40 Years ago (well, the very early 1960's), Telestar was put up for satellite communication, which caused a temporary crash for cable laying companies back then. Satellites now just don't have the bandwidth to serve all of the data now that goes between continents, which is why cable laying companies were quite profitable in the 1990's. That there is dark cable laying around in many places is just a function of economics.
I will admit though that things like teleconfrences were not possible in the past, and current encryption technologies are generally sufficient for most corporate transactions. Still, I'm trying to point out that businesses have had comparatively cheap long-distance communications systems for almost 150 years now, and while they have been used (and are used) substantially rather than face-to-face communication, that didn't stop people in the last century from physically going places when often they could have simply picked up the telephone and said "hello" instead.
I'm just trying to point out that no matter how hard you try, trying to "Reach Out And Touch Someone(TM)"* doesn't have the same impact as a personal one on one handshake. You don't see John Kerry or George Bush hoping that television and radio commercials are going to be sufficient to get people to vote for them, do you? It is part of human nature to see people in person, and no ammount of technology is going to totally replace that. While communications technology reduces the absolute necessity for travel, physical travel will still have to happen. Furthermore, when it is needed the requirement to get from point A to point B as fast as possible becomes all that much more important.
Also keep in mind that while the first few flights will be rather expensive ($100,000), there is no doubt that economies of scale can bring that price down quite a bit. I don't know what the bottom limit for a ticket into space, but I would guess about $10,000, maybe just a little less. It will be interesting to see just how low the fares can get if there is real competition in this market.
* Trademark of American Telegraph & Telephone Company
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The analogy is actually much more accurate than most Americans really care to give it. Lincoln was given war powers that were more along the lines of the Roman Emperors than a beneveolent "first citizen" (hence President) of the country.
Mistakes were made by both the North and the South, with the major Confederate mistake being trying to fight the issue of succession with arms than trying to fight it through treaties and legal means. It would have been real interesting to see what the USA would be like had South Carolina, for instance, tried to get the SCOTUS to agree that its seccession was legal.
The Confederacy thought they had the upper hand, and at the beginning of the Civil War they certainly seemed to have the superior military force. It wasn't until the Northern states got into a war economy in a style more recognizable in the 20th Century and flooding Dixie with superior weapons, massive numbers of soldiers, and improved logistics (notably with a superior infrastructure of railroads).
BTW, most of the fighting happened in the 1860's, with most of the fighting over by the beginning of Lincoln's second term in 1864. The 1870's were noted as being quite bloody in Dixie as well, and throughout most of the rest of the 19th Century as the Klu Klux Klan fought against blacks (African-Americans), often with pitch battles between the two groups. There is some reason to believe that almost as many casualties occured from these actions as occured in open combat during the Civil War, although certianly not in as organized of military units as was seen during the Civil War itself. Keep in mind that black groups weren't exactly unarmed either, nor without simpathizers in the North.
Keep in mind that the whole issue with the Branch Davidians was blown up totally out of control by inept law enforcement personnel, particularly Federal officials who were frankly itching to get into a fight and try out a new "unit" that was developed to deal with exactly that sort of assult. That the Branch Davidians held off the feds for as long as they did gives credit to the fact that they were well prepared. Remember, it was the feds going into the Branch Davidian compound, not the other way around.
.50 caliber weapon, or even a firearm.
Also, major missed opportunities included things like having an ATF agent stand right next to David Korish at a check-out counter in a store (a gun shop no less) and waving good-bye as he left the store unarmed. Similar incidents occured where they could have arrested people in Waco itself rather than killing everybody as it finally happened.
Basically, if you are invading somebody's home against the occupant's will, you should expect to get your a**** shot off, fall into a pit of spikes, or get your foot chewed off by a doberman. If this doesn't happen, just count yourself lucky. All of these things can be done "legally" without even having a
From my viewpoint and reading of the U.S. Constitution, absolutely!
Now at the same time, the possession of a nuclear warhead would require you to file environment impact statements if you are going to store it in your basement, and the 10000% federal excise tax on its purchase may also discourage you from actually purchasing it, considering that you would have to purchase components through interstate trade.
Also, if that same said bomb gets used you would be financially liable for the damage done by that same device, and subject to criminal prosecution if you kill anybody. Trafficing in the sale of a nuke to terrorist organizations may also be a capital crime.
The point is that while specifically "congress may make no law prohibiting..." there still are ways to regulate the possession of nukes by private individuals, even if ultimately Wm. H. Gates III is the only citizen that could afford to buy one.
I would have to add that not only should the government get totally away from VOIP, but the real question is how can it be done at all?
While I could see some "regulation" of dealing with the interface between VoIP servers and conventional land-line carriers, I totally fail to see how it would be even possible to stop me from making my own software, sending a copy to a friend or even a group fo friends, and setting up what is essentially a PBX system. Any regulation of speech over IP is simply going to be regulation of all data over IP, and just where are you going to draw the line there?
And even assuming that all TCP/IP packets are monitored, I fail to see how it would be technically possible to stop private networks from sharing data without going through government-controlled access channels. China (People's Republic) has a virtual monopoly on internet access of any kind, and even there they can't seem to stop all "news" from outside of goverment channels making it through. If China can't stop unauthorized internet traffic, what makes you think the FCC could stop enterprising individuals from saying "to hell with the FCC rules"?
I have replied to comments like this I need to make a FAQ on wikipedia or something.
Before you start being real critical of Presidential General Elections in the USA, you need to do a whole bunch of research first. The problem is not so much that you have a nation of 300 million people trying to vote, but it is due to the fact that each voter is being asked to vote on as many as 100 different offices and ballot referendum issues.
When I will vote on November 2nd, I will still be trying to make up my mind on many of these issues, although my decision for the President has already been decided a long time ago. For just federal officers, I am going to be voting also for both a Senator as well as a Representative for the U.S. House. There is also the governor of my state, attorney general (an elected office here), the state legislature, and all state judges who have juristiction over me except the state supreme court. I am also going to be voting on three different proposed changes to the state constitution and three additional pieces of legislation that was either put on by petition or because the state legislature decided to pass on taking a hard stand on the issue themselves (like a ban on gay marriage, but that is another issue).
The point is that the ballot itself is so complex that to have to resort to paper and pencil to deal with all of the issues on that ballot would result in statistical certainty that some races would be messed up. It is trying to resolve this complexity that voting machine were developed in the first place. I have no doubt that if the EU put that many issues on one of their ballots they would also want to automate the process somehow.
While I might agree about a statistic like that in some parts of Dixie (the old Confederacy of the U.S. Civil War), I doubt that you would find that common practice throughout the USA. Also, even in some areas in Dixie, there is such a strong majority of blacks that such disenfranchisement is probabaly just as likely among poor whites.
Honestly, I think other minority groups like Hispanics are much more likely to be denied the right to vote...where often their status as a U.S. Citizen would be questioned.
I would also take most of what Michael Moore claims with a grain of salt although he clearly has a strong political viewpoint. There are many much more authoritative reports and books that discuss election fraud over the years than that book you are reading.
Much of this is also an issue for people who seldom vote or are voting for the first time. If you have been voting for some time and regularly (not just for Presidential elections but also for bi-annual congressional elections, local school bond elections, municipal races, etc.) your voting status would be quite well known, and to have it suddenly revoked could also be appealed much more easily. I'm not sure what the statutory limitations are, but you may also be able to file a lawsuit against the voting registrar if they libel you and accuse you of being a felon when in fact you have a clean criminal record. This is not something to be done lightly.
What is interesting where I live it was not only legal for a felon to vote, but they were doing the voting in the prisons, with the state pennetentary being its own voting precint. And they were voting for the sherrif that put them in there in many cases. The problem is that it is not politically useful for a politician to support citizenship rights for convicted felons, so often it makes some political hay to restrict these rights, and doesn't offend the "core" voting blocks, so in this case a state-wide referendum was passed that prohibited voting while actually serving in prison.
Something else to think about: What fissionable materials can be found in asteroids? There are known iron/nickle asteroids and other materials that are quite high in heavy metals. Still, if we are talking trying to get something going sooner rather than later, substantial quantities of at least "yellowcake" and possibly more concentrated uranium ore would have to be sent into orbit from earth-based processing facilities, if not Plutonium and enriched Uranium. And that would really freak out the greens with the idea of an orbital nuclear ore processing facility. Not just nukes in space, but the manufacturing plant as well.
I would also have to add that I think nuclear power is going to have to be the primary energy source for the outer solar system. Mars is just barely pushing it for energy density (watts / m^2) from the sun, and in the Asteroid belt it would be too little to even make solar panels effective. That is why exploration of the outer planets of the solar system require RTG's. On the other hand, sending something to Mercury can really take advantage of solar energy panels, for exactly the same reason. And in terms of heavier metals, Mercury has an even higher average density than the Earth. I just don't know if I would want to be a miner there though.
I did an earlier post about the Hindenberg that is relevant to this discussion. Basically, airships themselves were doomed simply by their nature, and on top of all that would be incredibly expensive to be in if you really wanted to book a flight on one like you would on a passenger cruise line.
It is fore this reason, and because fixed-wing heavier than air vehicles (normal commercial aviation that we now have) generally get you to where you want to go cheaply and quickly...usually anywhere in the world in less than 48 hours, sometimes less.
The only real benefit of the lighter-than-air airships is the grand view you can have of the world as you fly over it. Now that is truly something that can be marketed by itself, but other areas that the Hindenberg would have excelled in (rapid transit between Europe and America, delivery of bulk goods in less than a week across continents, etc.) are now done through other transportation systems. This cuts out most of the potential markets that could have supported and sustained the airship industry.
If you want to buy one right now, there are companies that will sell one to you. Also, back in 2000 there was regular passenger airship service offered in the Las Vegas area. (If you want to see the web pages, you need to go to www.archive.org to see them.) Unfortunately the service was discontinued and is no longer available. In this case it looks like the internet bubble took this enterprise down with it.
This reinforces my thesis, that with today's economic climate it just isn't practical. The technology is available and plenty of money has been poured down on trying to get it to work since the 1920's.
Of course, I happen to love Cthulhu for President if you want to find somebody with a clearly defined position on all matters of American society.
What is funny is the bumperstickers and T-shirts you can buy from the "campaign headquarters". Do they have FEC registration confirmed?
Remember, this is only a write-in campaign.
I was going to write something basically in support of his not answering this question, and then I realized just how direct this question was.
Nader's answer about the hot dog is cute, but certainly not an issue of national importance.
Kerry's answer indicated that he at least read the question, but totally dodged it with the answer.
Frankly I thought all three candidates totally dodged the question. This is a very thoughtful question that would have shown true character from any candidate who honestly answered it. During the entire political careers of President Bush or John Kerry, I can't believe that they havn't had at least one example, even if it isn't a current campaign issue (like deployment of the Pershing II missiles in Germany or military intervention due to the 1970's oil boycott by OPEC).
I'd have to add that Christopher Columbus used a globe that was 2/3rds the size of what the earth really was, which is why he thought he could get to the Indies with the technology of the time.
When he got to Portugual, who BTW knew quite accurately the diameter of the Earth at the time due to their having acutally going to India and the "spice islands" on their own around Africa, thought Columbus was a total nut case and turned him down.
The point here is that not only was the earth considered to be a sphere going back to "ancient" times, but even the diameter has been fairly accurately known +/- 100 km for at least 2500 years. The "Flat Earth Society", as it now exists, is purely a 20th Century invention.
In the case of navigation and the discovery of the America's by European counties, read up a little on the discovery of Brazil by Portugal. The whole thing is a farce, except for the fact that Portugual formally and publicly acknowledged the fact that the territory was there and that they claimed it. It would be more like if the Bush Administration did a major push for a mission to Mars only to find Vulcans living there, drinking Coca-Cola and eating Twinkies during the formal introductions.
One of the problems with supersonic flight is that the overall cost of developing aircraft that can withstand those kind of environmental stresses is incredibly high. Keep in mind that you must meet the current safty requires that it appears the U.S. Congress also wants for spaceflight: That you are safer in an airplane from death or injury than if you are walking down the street on the sidewalk (statistically speaking).
Also, there have only been two supersonic aircraft project built for commercial passenger service, and both were massive government projects with pork everywhere and befitting of comparison to the Space Shuttle rather than Space Ship One. The American supersonic plane became so expensive that finally it was canned before it could get into regular service.
There were other problems with the Concorde besides the ticket price. Its landing gear was notorious on runways, and for regular service required a runway that was extra thick that could handle the beatings it would get on landing. Not even a 747 has as many problems in this regard.
Also, the Concorde was extreamly noisy, and many community noise ordinances (at least in the USA) would stop this plane from being able to land at their airports. Because of this when flying over the continental USA it had to fly at subsonic speeds, which kinda defeats the whole purpose of its design.
The Concorde also had an unfortunate design limitation that made its flight range to just a little bit more than crossing the Atlantic Ocean. For example, the Concorde, without refueling, couldn't go from London to Sydney. Again this defeats the whole point of flying a supersonic plane. A 747, on the other hand, can and does cover this distance non-stop. And hauls many more passengers is what would be an equivalent time for a Concorde with refueling along the way.
Finally, there were other companies that wanted to contine to fly the Concorde, including Richard Branson and Virgin Atlantic. He thought he could make a profit off of the plane, but the UK government refused to let him even try. Keep in mind that the two airlines that used the Concorde, Air France and British Airways, were owned by their respective governments in much the same way as the Post Office.
Many of the above issues are not as relevant for sub-orbital ballistic flight, and a better design can help deal with some of the issues. Also, the time advantage for sub-orbital flight is even more significant than with the Concorde, so the utility of the higher price is even more of an advantage.
Prices for going into space have largely been driven by military concerns (even with the Chinese, Indians, and Iranians) where cost per pound is not as important as fulfilling certain objectives that the missions require. Even NASA can be considered in this regard to be more like the military with mission objectives rather than a commercial enterprise scheduling flights. It is not NASA's fault that they have made orbital flight so expensive, it just isn't even in their overall agency objective to even make it cheap.
If you are talking something that is more passenger friendly, and so you don't need a medical release to ride on the flight, you could have the rocket do acceleration of about 2-3 G's, of just slightly more than a good elevator in a major skyscraper, and comparable to current commercial flight during take-off and landing.
That would mean it would take a little bit longer, and require more time for the rocket burn (dropping the efficiancy somewhat), but be much more comfortable to passengers. The Apollo rockets, in comparison, would pull sometimes as much as 8-9 G's (yes, pretty close to blackout) at their peak acceleration. ICBMs can do sometimes as much as 15-20 G's before they deliver a nuke (generally not a problem for that kind of cargo). The Space Shuttle, as a further reference, has a peak acceleration of about 5 G's, and its flight profile can be adjusted to drop that down even further if the payload requires it, depending on the orbial parameters as payload weight as well.
Keep in mind that peak acceleration occurs at the end of the stage or burn, which in a craft like SSO is when they are almost in space anyway. That just means they have to throttle their engines back a little to make it not accelerate as much.
I hear the Antarctica argument quite a bit in discussions like this. There is one very huge reason why Antarctica hasn't been developed commercially and why people don't live there:
Nobody owns the real estate down there.
The Antarctica Treaty has this very artificial hunk of slices deviding up the continent in cute pie wedges, but the truth is that no single nation really has claim on anything in Antarctica. Instead, the whole issue of ownership was put off for roughly a century and donated to scientists instead.
There was an attempt by Chile to actually send people to the Antarctic Peninsula (just south of Tierra del Fuego) and establish actual cities there to reinforce their claim on the continent. Some activities such as mining operations could occur there regardless of the climate, so to say that Mars won't be developed until Antarctica is takes a whole lot out of context and doesn't extablish what the real problem is.
Environmentalists are justifiably supported of the current arrangements, and there is some incredible value in having a whole continent that is untouched by people. I'm not advocating that we build a city in Antarctica, but the reason it hasn't happened is more to do with the legal complexities rather than the raw issues of survival. The research stations seem to stay open year round, and there is even some very interesting internet traffic between the researchers down there and the rest of the world.
The other problem with Antarctica is that the territory is also limited in acreage, and I think that if people from 1st World countries went down there to "settle" the continent, it would be filled up within 20-50 years (in terms of power and transit systems being strung everywhere and the first Antarctic war occuring over a territory dispute).
The advantage of going into space is that while you can also "fill up" the moon or Mars, there is plenty of more places to move to, or even build your own "manufactured cities" instead. Only when a Dyason Sphere is built can you truly say that the region near a star is truly crowded. That won't ever be built for at least 1 Million years... even with technological improvements. Well before things get that crowded we will have interstellar flight down rather well, which is going to be significantly more complicated than merely going to another planet.
If you could get the cost of a manned orbital laboratory down to as low as $50,000 per cubic foot per day, there would be many research labs and universities that would litterally beat a path to your door. Coupled with a $500,000 launch to get up and back, they would be positively drooling.
For us ordinary schmoos however, you are right: Only the very wealthy would be able to afford such a space hotel. Still, as has been pointed out before, there are plenty of examples where tourism went to exotic places like National Parks or to the jungles of Africa and spent an incredible amount of money there, only to have these destinations become much more affordable in the future.
Personally, I want a home on Phobos but L-5 would be just fine for me at the moment.
Ahhh... but the point here is that it isn't the vehicle that is regulated, but rather the fact that you have invaded a foriegn nation.
I guess I could have given safer examples, but the point is that no country regulates international waters, just like interplanetary space would also not be regulated by nation-states on the Earth.
This is exactly why the patent system is broken.
What should happen is that everything they have done is now prior art, so if somebody comes along and does exactly what they have done, it can't be patented anyway. Unfortunately that is not how the USPTO works.
The objective is rather clear from their viewpoint: If you want to do research in this same area, be our guest, this stuff is open and available for your use.
It is too bad that more research groups don't do this and keep patents for unique and truly innovative concepts.
Before I do a knee jerk reaction and write my senator, could you tell me what changes were done with this latest ammendment?
I've tried to compare the text of the originally introduced bill with was was sent to the Senate, and I only found a couple of very minor corrections, none of which affect the legislation to the degree that you are implying. From the links that you've given, I can't find any Senate actions on the bill. There are some senate bills that are also listed, but again I can't find the text that has been added/changed. Even a related Senate version of the bill doesn't appear to have that much differnce, at least in philosophy.
It appears though, MSNBC has an article of their own regarding this action, so it certainly deserves some investigation.
Well, it will be real telling to see if the folks in congress are actually responsive to their citizens or if the tin-hat crowd is really correct. This really is an acid test in this regard, because there is so much pent-up enthsiasm regarding the private lanuch space industry that people in congress writing this legislation deep-six private launch only if they don't want to serve another term.
That companies like Boeing or Lockheed-Martin might try to push for hard regulations, I think the time has past for serious stoppage of private passenger spaceflight. That really is why the X-Prize was so incredibly impressive, because it really does open the doors that were previously closed to ordinary people. No longer do you have to go through a Mercury-style testing regimine in order to get into space anymore. That medical exams are going to happen at all is strictly to make sure people who shouldn't get on a spaceship (for example, Dick Cheeny with his bad ticker) don't go up and die because they are not physically fit. And that is only to make sure the first few flights don't draw the wrong kind of publicity.
The real test, however, will be if and when on a private spacecraft people can achieve escape velocity from the Earth. I.E. they can travel elsewhere in the solar system (provided they have sufficient provisions). When that happens, Congressional oversight over such matters will have essentially ended, just like the government can't stop a private citizen from throwing a rubber raft into the ocean and row from California to Sydney. The Australian government may complain about an entry without visa or passport, but that would be about it.
Thanks for the links. In looking around the site, they showed the U.S.S. Akron in use as an aircraft carrier. I can't even imagine what kind of guts it takes to launch from an airship at 6,000 feet and then attempt a recapture mid-air. These are truly some very brave individuals that put even normal floating carrier aviators to shame. Some interesting pictures of a head and a messon board as well. Cool.
It looks like they were for the most part even more cramped than a submarine, but that would have been a neat ship to serve on.
However, if you are on a city zoning board and need to approve new developments, or are looking over historical rennovations, you can use this information to simply state they the structures must be able to withstand an Earthquake of a certain magnatude because it is predicted to happen in the near future.
Where I'm living right now (Utah), we have some earthquakes, but the are very infrequent, but of very high magnitude when they do happen. There is a reason this state is full of mountains, and geologically speaking they haven't even stop growing taller.
And where was the worst earthquake in North America over the past 150-200 years? Missouri, not California. If you could give some folks in Ohio or Alabama the news that they are going to have an earthquake there with a 50% likelyhood in the next 50 years, I'm sure that there would be some major changes to zoning policies. Here in Utah most of Interstate 15 between Ogden and Provo has been rebuilt from scratch because most of the original bridges (crossing other roads & highways) were discovered to not be able to withstand an earthquake. One bridge practically fell apart just due to truck traffic over it and a contractor that seriously cut corners when it was originally put up. The state capitol building is also being rebuilt from scratch because it wouldn't stand up to even a 4.0 earthquake. The original marble is being preserved, but when it was originally built it depended on the sheer weight of the building stones to keep it up. Now a steel structure is being retrofited into the building to allow it to sway some and withstand a much more powerful earthquake. Almost all historical buildings are being examined and in order to get a building permit in most local communities you need to get an engineering study to determine if it will hold up to at least a 5.0 earthquake. The home I'm living in also went through a study like that, and this new construction that supposedly also fit with current building codes.
Yeah, I can see even a rough approximation of predicting earthquakes having a real useful potential.
You actually missed the biggest news in that article, rather than the $50 million prize:
:)
"One of the primary contenders for the abovementioned X Prize is expected to be a Canadian group known as the Da Vinci Team. It turns out that the primary sponsor of the Da Vinci effort is a casino--the Golden Palace Online Casino, founded in 1997 in the Mohawk terriroty of Canada."
Now that really is news.
The best by far was the old Bell Labs, killed by the Department of Justice. Lucent Technologies is only a hollow shell of that former organization.
I will admit that IBM Research has certainly picked up the torch of Bell Labs to become the leading industrial research organization.
One other rather interesting group is Microsoft Research, which is patterned off of Bell Labs for its organization. Their relationship with mainstream Microsoft is bizzare at best, and it doesn't look like normal MS programmers take advantage of the research from their own company, although Longhorn may finally include some MS Research ideas. Still, it does show that somebody there is paying attention to the need for real research.
I used to work for a company that decided to outsource the R&D. The problem is that they had to give up a $10 million/year segment of their sales because of it. I'm not crying too much about that either. Dumping R&D looks good on paper in the short term, but you end up killing your company in the long term.
While I will admit that the Hindenburg disaster did quite a bit of damage to the airship industry, the real death nail to the airship industry was the take-off and landing issues, which were a nightmare.
It took crews of several hundred people at the aerodromes to anchor the airships down on landing just to make sure the airship wouldn't blow away in a moderate wind. They would have to close an aerodrome under conditions that even then normal airplanes had no problems trying to land under. Several ground crew personnel died because sometimes a gust of wind would pick up, the airship would suddenly lurch up 20-30 feet throwing the ground crewmember up sometimes as much as 50 feet in the air... onto hard concrete or ashphalt runways. That would not even be remotely acceptable today to deal with those issues.
I'm not exactly sure what the handling issues were while in flight (I'm not that much of an expert on the subject), but I would imagine that you would want to steer very clear of a Hurricane while piloting a lighter than air ship. I would also think that lightning would not be something pretty either. Jet aircraft are at least designed to route a lightning bolt around the airframe, even though pilots generally don't specificly try to get hit. Arcing lightning around Hydrogen would seem positively frightning to me.
The other problem with the dirigibles is that they are also very slow, but have operating expenses otherwise comparable with commercial fixed wing aircraft. Because of the speed, to do an intercontinental flight took long enough that you also had to include sufficient supplies to feed passengers and crew for several meals, and even berthing arrangements. In addition, trying to fight major wind currents like the Jet Stream is almost impossible in one of the airships.
By their nature, the airships also couldn't get too high in altitude. While there must have been at least some plans for pressurized cabins, it is much easier for the smaller cabin of a jet aircraft pressurized. That is one reason why jet aircraft have such tiny passenger windows. Once you get up above about 8,000 feet, you really need to pressurize everything as you are simply running out of air to even breathe. It also helps to get up even higher to simply avoid violent weather.
Current airships like the blimps running around sporting events with television cameras are considerably smaller than the Hindenburg, which makes handling issues much easier to deal with. Still, it is incredibly expensive to keep one of those airships going and is only marginally cheaper than having a helicopter do the same task. The #1 advantage a blimp has over a helicopter is simply stability of the camera platform, because it doesn't have to lurch all over the place.
Still, even with all of the drawbacks, getting on an airship like the Hindenburg would be a neat adventure, and I would love the chance to go on a "cruise" through the sky eating lobster and watching the scenry go by through huge picture windows. Unfortunately, paying for a ticket on one of those airships is going to cost almost as much as going on Virgin Galactic.
I hate to break the news, but it has been almost 100 years since the first trans-oceanic cables were put down, not 50. 40 Years ago (well, the very early 1960's), Telestar was put up for satellite communication, which caused a temporary crash for cable laying companies back then. Satellites now just don't have the bandwidth to serve all of the data now that goes between continents, which is why cable laying companies were quite profitable in the 1990's. That there is dark cable laying around in many places is just a function of economics.
I will admit though that things like teleconfrences were not possible in the past, and current encryption technologies are generally sufficient for most corporate transactions. Still, I'm trying to point out that businesses have had comparatively cheap long-distance communications systems for almost 150 years now, and while they have been used (and are used) substantially rather than face-to-face communication, that didn't stop people in the last century from physically going places when often they could have simply picked up the telephone and said "hello" instead.
I'm just trying to point out that no matter how hard you try, trying to "Reach Out And Touch Someone(TM)"* doesn't have the same impact as a personal one on one handshake. You don't see John Kerry or George Bush hoping that television and radio commercials are going to be sufficient to get people to vote for them, do you? It is part of human nature to see people in person, and no ammount of technology is going to totally replace that. While communications technology reduces the absolute necessity for travel, physical travel will still have to happen. Furthermore, when it is needed the requirement to get from point A to point B as fast as possible becomes all that much more important.
Also keep in mind that while the first few flights will be rather expensive ($100,000), there is no doubt that economies of scale can bring that price down quite a bit. I don't know what the bottom limit for a ticket into space, but I would guess about $10,000, maybe just a little less. It will be interesting to see just how low the fares can get if there is real competition in this market.
* Trademark of American Telegraph & Telephone Company