Maybe thats because Russia turned in to a totalitarian state not a worker's paradise. There wasn't anything socialist, Communist or left, left in it, except empty rhetoric, pretty much from the point Stalin siezed power after Lenin's death. Same goes for China.
The problem with most governments, no matter how idealistic they start out, no matter the supposed idealogy, they turn in to a small group of people, like 1%, bent on acquring power and wealth at the expense of the other 99%. In China and Russia it was the upper echelon's of the Communist party. In China most of its big companies are controlled by the upper echelon's of the Communist party. They don't care about workers at all now, if they ever did. They are exploiting Chinese workers so ruthlessly, to get rich, its the envy of the Capitalist West.
In western democracies its wealthy businessmen, executives of big companies, working hand in hand with the politicians they buy and get elected with the purchase of TV ads (just like selling soap). They maintain a facade of democracy by running candidates from two parties both of which are in their pockets, vividly exemplified by the 2004 election when a wealthy Yale Skull and Bonesman ran against.... a wealthy Yale Skull and Bonesman.
Ablative shields on capsules are great with me. I wager thats what CEV will do. The tiles would be great if you didn't have to pretty much rebuild them after every flight. At that point they stopped being reusable and they stopped being cost effective.
I sure hope Rutan gets to try a derivative of the feathered wing on a reentry from LEO. The best solution to heat shielding it to have cooler, safer reentries though its a big jump from suborbital reentry to LEO reentry.
I'm of the view that the U.S. should start building reusable spacecraft but only ones that stay in space, and are really spacecraft and don't have to be pummelled by reentry. Thats what we need to get to higher orbits, transit to the moon, LaGrange points, Mars etc.
Capsules, ablative shields and parachutes are perfectly fine for returning small cargos and crews to Earth.
"We won't even begin to talk about the crossrange capability the Shuttle provides relative to capsules."
That cross range capability is at the root of why the Shuttle became so heavy and expensive. In particular the Air Force requirement to do one polar orbit and land back at Vandenburgh was over the top. That required 1,000 mile cross-range and it compelled a dramatic increase in lift to drag ratio which resulted in a mammoth increase in the size and weight of the wing and the shuttle as a whole.
"Don't get me wrong -- capsules are elegant in their simplicity. But if you are trying to do what the Shuttle does -- you have got to have more..."
You keep saying that but you keep forgetting the Shuttle doesn't do ANYTHING anymore.
That cross-range was for Air Force launches from Vandenberg. The shuttle never launched from Vandenberg thanks to Challenger, and I'm not sure that 1000 mile cross range has ever been exercised. It was a complete waste of mass.
Again all the Shuttle DOES at this point, assuming it ever gets off the ground again, is fly to and from the ISS very expensively. If we get real lucky it might service Hubble one last time before its euthanized. It is necessary to finish the ISS but only because the ISS was designed that way. If we had kept Saturn, done incremental improvements, and never built the Shuttle we would be a decade ahead of where we are now, and the Saturn would have been cheaper in the long run. We would also have a vehicle now that was already capable of going to the Moon again, instead of having to spend billions and 5-15 years redeveloping it all.
"To shield or not to shield... that is the question."
I think that question has already been answered, you have to shield.
"There is currently no solution"
Mike Griffin said in Congressional testimony before he became administrator:
"Overall, however, the most difficult physiological issue is likely to be that of cosmic heavyion radiation. The human effects of and countermeasures for heavy ion radiation, encountered in deep space but not in the LEO environment of the ISS, have received little attention thus far. These are the essential technical and physiological challenges as I see them. Exploration missions will not be accomplished without human risk. While certainly worthy of our attention, however, none of these is so daunting that we should stay home."
"There is currently no solution."
Don't think that is true. Its just a question of how much to shield, with what, how bad the mass penalty is, can you push it to Mars, and where the mass comes from.
The favorite sci fi based solution is you shield with a water tank around a safe room or maybe around the main habitat module in the ship. You need the water anyway. The other one is you manufacture shielding out of lunar regolith since its easier to get the mass off the moon, though it would take a lot of infrastructure to make there, or you have a heavy lift launch vehicle and launch shield from earth.
When you are talking about the habitats on the moon and mars its a given the habitats should be buried to the extent necessary to be safe. Then you are just facing the problem of how much radiation astronauts face on the surface in rovers or space suits. Again shield as much as you can and yes there will be a field for medical study for treating the effects.
When people set out to sail in to uncharted waters or cross the west in prairie schooners they encountered stuff that killed them too, scurvy on ships for example. It didn't stop them.
Well that would give you empty space, good for storing supplies or to move around in but you still need prebuilt habitats and lab modules which have all the plumbing, wiring and life support preinstalled. We aren't going to be doing construction and engineering work any place but Earth for a LONG time. Its probibitvely expensive to do it in space, you need raw materials, tools, and skilled people. Maybe you could deliver all the stuff in kits and bolt them in to the tunnels but I'm still a little skeptical.
And of course the Soviet Union fought the lions share of the ground war long before D-Day came along, the Russian Winter of 1941/42, Stalingrad in 1942 and Kursk in 1943 was where Fascism was defeated on the ground. The American role in defeating the Fascists was pretty small, strategic bombing, supplying Russia and Britain, the campaign in Italy, D-Day and the Battle of the Bulge. The U.S. ground campaigns came after the tide had already turned on the Eastern front and about all they did was keep Russia from overruning all of Europe.
The U.S. won the war in the Pacific against Japan, but it is typical American self inflation to think that America was crucial to winning the war in Europe.
I doubt you are going to have the infrastructure to dig tunnels or make them in to livable habitats. Lunar soil is nasty and it wouldn't be surprising if tunnels would be unlivable without a liner. I think the idea is to land a tin can like the habitat modules planned for the original U.S. ISS or the Russian equivalent, and then bury them in regolith(dirt). Mike Griffin's desire was to use the original U.S habitat module for the ISS though it was cancelled long ago and replaced with the Russian Mir 2 modules.
"I would give almost anything just for the chance to be a "space janitor." I'm sure many other people feel the same way."
I'd take it in a heart beat too. I wager it would be way more fun that being a NASA astronaut to boot. It must totally suck working on the ISS and have the weenies in mission control planning every minute of your day, and micromanaging everything you do. Plus in a space hotel there would be lots of partying, and zero G sex.
"Like Space-X"
Well I wish them the best and Musk's heart is in the right place but I'll wait to see if A) their vehicle works consistently and B) if they can eek out a revenue stream to stay solvent. Its also a lot more challenging to build a man rated vehicle than it is to launch small satellites in to LEO. It appears government subsidy is inevitable, the first launch being a Navy satellite. I wager the Navy would LOVE to have a viable competitor on the scene to go against the Boeing/Lockheed consortium monopoly.
"And learning how to make use of off-planet resources, which we have effectively zero experience with at the moment."
Granted though I doubt the resources you are going to find on the Moon are going to be nearly the value of the ones on Mars, especially water which is probably the most important of all.
I'm willing to admit putting a practice base on the Moon is a good idea from an engineering perspective but potentially bad from a political and economic perspective. It has great potential to end up as the end and not the beginning, it will turn boring like the ISS, people will question the cost, it will end up being a decade or more of delay in going to Mars and I'll be dead before a Mars trip happens if its not killed before it even starts.
Problem with a moon base is the people there will be tourists not colonists. They will crutch off supplies from Earth and it will end up just being an ISS in the dirt. Martian colonists will ALWAYS have something compelling to do, survive, explore, mine and build. They would be like homesteaders and frontiersman of old. Not sure today's crop of NASA atronauts would work at all, you need farmers, miners, frontiersmen and survivors.
"Even the ISS program, which has been criticized extensively for poor science, has provided invaluable engineering experience on how (and maybe how not) to build a vehicle to go to the moon/mars. For example, we've had serious problems with the gyroscopes on ISS"
Who says you need to use gyros on a Martian spacecraft in the first place. Rockets work just as well for attitude control and are a lot more reliable at this point. I think I would rather carry the fuel than the thousands of pounds of spare gyros. Rockets are KISS, gyros are gold plated NASA, complex and unreliable.
Also hate to point this out but you could have learned the same lesson on gyro reliability from Hubble at a fraction of the price.
Problem with NASA is every lesson learned costs more than its weight in gold.
From Mike Griffin's congressional testimony before he became administrator. I hope he keeps such a level head now that he is adminsistrator and a political and bureaucratic punching bag. Here he is talking here only about the remaining ISS cost not the 100+ billion already squandered to learn about bad gyros and the fact that our spacesuits still suck after 40+ years:
"But the more important question is whether the return to be obtained from the use of ISS to support exploration objectives is worth the money yet to be invested in its completion. The nation, through the NASA budget, plans to allocate $32 B to ISS (including ISS transport) through 2016, and another $28 B to shuttle operations through 2011. This total of $60 B is significantly higher than NASA's current allocation for human lunar return. It is beyond reason to believe that ISS can help to fulfill any objective, or set of objectives, for space exploration that would be worth the $60 B remaining to be invested in the program."
"If we do Exploration right, we're going to leverage an aerospace workforce that has learned lessons from Shuttle and ISS, and use the moon as a proving ground. That experience is going to allow us to tackle the greater challenge of going to Mars."
Unfortunately it is a workforce that has learned to the point that its ingrained, to do things inefficiently, uneconomicly and which is consistently failing to succeed or deliver promised results. If you take that same workforce, that has been runined by decades of excessive spending and underperformance, and just transfer it wholesale to CEV, return to the Moon or on to Mars what assurance does anyone have that it wont fail as badly as it has on the ISS and Shuttle.
The important thing about teams is not so much the years of experience as it is their proven ability to succeed when faced with challenges, and overcome adversity. The Shuttle team has, in the face of adversity, just become ever more cautious and less capable to the point that now it is nearly useless. The only lesson the ISS team has learned well is how to spend money year after year and never deliver a working space station. Those aren't characteristics you want to carry forward in a team if you want to succeed on the next challenges.
"I like your argument about Mars, but I think that actually works better on the Moon."
Nope. Mars has resources, especially water, lots of water and you need that for...water and Hydrogen and Oxygen, and a thin atmosphere, and 1/3 G which would hopefully be tolerable to live in for long periods. It has temperatures that are survivable with some basic warm gear. A good shot of mineral deposits to mine, especially Iron. CO2 in the atomosphere for carbon.
Moon is hard vacuam, extreme temperatures, 1/6 G, presence of water is very iffy. resources you need to develop industry also very iffy. you spend a couple years at 1/6 G you probably wont be able to return to Earth and the Moon aint a great place for a life sentance. Like I said a Moon base is going to be an ISS except on the moon, manned with short duration astronauts. It wont proven much beyond what the ISS has proven which isn't much. About the only thing it offers is ground on which to build large structure and dirt in low G to use for shielding and the like
The goal here is not a closed circuit tin can. That kind of life would totally suck. The goal is to have people living real lives, outside, though obviously with constraints, mining, manufacturing, terraforming, and eventually severing the umbilical to earth with the exception maybe of fissile material and advanced manufactured goods like computer chips.
The one and only thing the Moon offers is it would be a place to practice before you go to Mars. Thats the only arguement Mike Griffin could make for it when he testified before Congress before he became administrator. I guess I can see it as a place to practice and test habitats but it isn't a place you want to live.
Read Kim Stanley Robinson's Red/Green/Blue Mars trilogy to spark your imagination. At times its pretty slow and dry but it has a vision that is captivating. A must read for geeks, space enthusiasts and sci fi fans.
LOL there's the ticket. Hey, kids you should aspire to be astronauts so you can be a space janitor or a space maid in a space hotel. I wonder if illegal aliens will be able to make it in to space to fill these jobs.
I totally agree that having a space industry would be nice but NASA ain't going to get you to any of these. You are going to have to hope some of the private ventures can scrape together the funds to build an afforable launch vehicle to LEO. It is a lot harder to do than Rutan's suborbital shots and more expensive.
Not sure the solar power thing will fly anytime soon. Nuclear reactors on Earth are a lot better bet.
The absolute pinnacle I can see NASA aspiring to is a moonbase which will end up looking a lot like an ISS except on the moon. People living in tin cans trying to find things to do on a place totally hostile to life.
The only objective really worth doing in my book is flying people to Mars one way, and doing what it takes to keep them alive and to develop self sufficiency. At the point you have colonists on Mars and not Astronauts that is the point you have accomplished something, you have achieved a revolution and you will change the way humans think about the universe.
Due to the ravages of long duration in low G's I doubt anyone would want to endure coming back to Earth and 1 G from a long mission to Mars anyway. I'm sure NASA will never break out of the round trip mode of thought but it is totally the wrong mindset for a Mars policy. Get as many people as you can and can keep alive, help them find the resources they need to live without depending on expensive and iffy space shots, and let them start manufacturing future colonists on site. Its way cheaper than flyng them from Earth.
No its setting policy for 2 years with the presumption there will be another policy bill then which might stay the course or do a 180. Its pretty likely around 2008-2009 when another President takes office there will be a new policy direction and it probably will veer. George's dad had an ambitious Mars policy intiative too that went absolutely no where.
Anyone have a link to the actual Bill. You can't trust a reporter's interpretation of it.
The way I'm reading it NASA is under massive pressure to redirect CEV in to being a crash program to build a tin can that can just get to the ISS by 2010 so they can retire the shuttle without having to depend on the Russians to keep the ISS supplied and manned. I really doubt that NASA will be able to develop a craft by 2010 that will go to the Moon or Mars. I'm willing to bet that CEV, under those time and budget constraints will be little more than the current Russian Soyuz, though maybe with more capacity, that will ferry people and cargo back and forth to the ISS. To keep the ISS functioning NASA has to have a manned vehicle that can get to the LEO because the Russians will no longer ferrying NASA astronauts and cargo for free, and Congress has embargoed Russia over its reactor project in Iran.
If all this is accurate, in 2010 the U.S. wont have moved forward an inch. It will still just be flying back and forth to the ISS. Once that CEV is done THEN someone has to start working on a stack and craft that will get to the moon by 2020 and it will be a miracle if the policy and the funding will hold together that long. Mars is so far out there you may as well stop wasting the breath talking about it. NONE of these craft are going to be even close to what you need to go to Mars. The word Mars is just there because it makes the policy initiative sound bold and adventerous. Without it this intiative is just spending billions to go to places we've gone before and we found to be boring (the ISS, LEO and the Moon).
"hang posters inspiring kids to set their goal on becoming an astronaut."
Excepting of course that at the rate the world, let alone NASA launches people in to space your odds as a kid of actually becoming an astronaut and worse making it in to space must be like 1 in a million. I'm thinking they should go for NBA, NFL, or MLB the odds are somewhat better, so is the pay and the sex. Also to become an astronaut you need to live a squeaky clean life as a perpetual over achiever and have a very high tolerance for bureaucracy.
Nope sorry to say it, even if NASA ever does make it back to the Moon or to Mars encouraging millions of kids to focus their lives at becoming an astronaut would be a massive waste, though maybe if they stick with the math and science they can find useful careers as engineers. Engineering is not a bad career but I hate to break it to everyone, the people that get rich tend to be the business people.
WHy do you think they call the department that hires and fires you HR, Human Resources:)
I used to have a boss that would refer to you as a resource to your face instead of hinting you might have a name or be a human being. Labor is just like raw materials and capital, stuff you feed in to corporation machinery to produce profit.
Needless to say the powers that be like both their labor and raw materials to be as cheap as possible, hence globalization of the work force so you have the opportunity to compete for a job against someone making 30 cents an hour in China.
The power that be also like their labor scared, obedient and drug free which is why police states are such a hot commodity with pro business governments like the U.S., U.K, China and Singapore. If you do it just right authoritarian states are very profitable, you just have to make sure workers don't start throwing their wooden shoes, sabots, in to the machinery(sabotage).
In authoritarian states you have no problems with labor unrest and you can set wages arbitrarily low and workers can't complain. If you look at the U.S. in the early 20th centurty, early attempts to organize labor, get a livable wage and a work week that wasn't 12 hours a day 6 and 7 days a week, were often met with guns and blackjacks from either the state or private security firms.
"As far as Osama, go figure out the difference between the mujahadeen and a rich-kid like Osama before you spout off."
Your the one thats spouting dude:) There is no difference between Osama, Al Qaeda and the mujahadeen. Osama grew up and Al Qaeda was formed in the mountains of Pakistan and Afghanistan during their holy war against the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. Their base came out of the mujahadeen. The CIA under Reagan armed and funded them. That early incarnation of Al Qaeda, though it hadn't chosen that name then, was an American ally and proxy in the cold war against the U.S.S.R and that war more than anything led to the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Osama and the mujahadeen were seeking to thow an infidel power out of an Islamic country, just as they are today in Iraq, and were to an extent in Saudi Arabia when the U.S established a permenent military presence there.
I wage Al Qaeda is expending so much effort on Iraq because they see so much similarity to the Russians in Afghanistan. I'm sure they are thinking if they can tie the U.S. up in Iraq in a 10 year insurgency that costs the U.S. in as much blood, gold and prestige as Afghanistan cost the U.S.S.R it could ultimately bring down the U.S. in one way or another. They are a patient group so they will still be in Iraq in 10 years from now, will the U.S.?
"The US is taking a stand and cleaning up the Osamas"
In case you missed it Osama is alive, well and flourishing nearly four years after 9/11. He is most probably in the tribal regions of Pakistan, alive and well, just as he was during his mujahadeen days. The U.S hasn't really made any attempt to catch him and if they did Osama's friends and allies in Pakistan, especially their secret service would protect him. Musharef might be the dictator but Pakistan secret service is a power unto itself, they were close allies of the Taliban and Al Qaeda and probably still are. The U.S. hasn't really made a dent in Al Qaeda or global isalmic revolution using its current tactics. Saddam wasn't a part of the Islamic revolution. He is a Baathist, they are secular socialists, not islamic fundementalists. Saddam forbid Iraqis from growing beards, in order to suppress islamic fundemenatlism where beards are mandatory. Thats why all Iraqis under Saddam wear mustaches. Islamic fundementalists dislike Saddam as much as you do. I imagine they are glad the U.S. toppled them so they can get an Islamic government in Iraq which is on its way(though Al Qaeda wants a Sunni not a Shia Islamic government). Yesterday I heard the new Iraqi consistution will be mostly based on Islamic law. All in all invading Iraq was more like pouring gasoline on Islamic fundementalism.
"He murdered so many they may never find all the mass graves"
Just so you know one of the bigger sources of mass graves in Iraq came right after the Iraqis were thrown out of Kuwait. The first Bush administration encouraged the Shia in the South and the Kurds in the North in to open revolt because they wanted them to overthrow Saddam so they didn't have to do the dirty work. When the Shia and Kurds did revolt, the U.S. for whatever reason turned its back on them, and Saddam slaughtered them. Thats what goverments do to people in open revolt against them, the U.S.included (remember the Civil War it killed more Americans than any other war by far). If the U.S had at least provided a no fly zone during this period and kept Saddam's helicopter gunships on the ground they might have had a chance.
Fact is Iraq is an artificial abomination of a country created by the British empire. There has been a civil war, either hot or cold, there for the last century. Here is a list. Lots of people get killed in civil wars, they are nasty, bloody affairs. The Sunni were in the dominant position through most of it so the Kurds and Shias took the worst of it but the Shia's and Kurds have done their shar eof killing too. Now the Sunni's are on the losing end so they are the ones in open insurrection, the Shia are on top and rushing to a Taliban style Islamic state, the Kurds are waiting for America to leave at which point they create a Kurdish state.
Only way you are likely to have peace in Iraq is to partition it in 3 and evenly divide the oil fields. But that would compell mass migrations and Turkey will never stand for an independent Kurdistan. You see the Turks have faced a Kurdish insurrection most of the last century just as bad as Iraq has, they brutally suppressed it to, just like Saddam. Only reason we differentiate Iraq from Turkey is American propaganda has chosen to emphasize Saddam's treatment of the Kurd's and ignore how Turkey has treated them. The Kurd's have been in open revolt against both trying to get an independent homeland so they've bombed and shot their fair share of Iraqis and Turks too. Again when you have a civil war going on people get killed.
" He ATTACKED A NEIGHBORING COUNTRY"
Hate to point this out to you but the U.S. and Britain have invaded all kinds of countries neighboring and on the other side of the world. The U.S. has sent marines in to countries in to Mexico, the Caribbean, Central America and South America every few years for the last 150+ years. Panama was the most recent and I'd be hard pressed to tell you what real justification the U.S. had for that invasion and regime change, other than Noriega had fallen out of favor after years of being on the CIA payroll.
I'm inclined to agreee with you the Saddam should have been taken down after he was driven out of Kuwait but to come back more than 10 years later was insane.
"Utilities coming back online, jobs, women aren't stoned to death for showing their face...."
Utilities in Iraq are a shambles stop kidding yourself or anyone else. Blackouts in Baghdad were just increase from 4 planned hours of blackout up to 10 unpredictable hours this week. The water and sewage systems are just as bad as the electical grid. Sabotage is obviously the main problem, but its also to dangeorus for any reconstruction to take place so the infrastructure collapsed during the sanction era, was damaged by the war and especially the looting that followed, and its getting worse not better since.
Reports I've seen indicate Basra, the Shia heartland, has in fact turned in to a Taliban style fundementalist Islamic state. I heard the constitution the Shia and Kurds are writting is in fact going to be heavily based on Islamic law. The U.S. resists it but the fact is Iraq's majority is overwhelmingly devout Shia Muslim and its going end up an Islamic state, with stoning and beheading because that is Islamic law.
As in many things in life its quality not quantity that counts. Having 100 blithering idiots on your friends list, who also have a 100 blithering idiots on theirs doesn't score in my book. In fact its a net negative versus having 10 people who have a clue and have something to say, because the 100 idiots can bug you all day every day and are just wasting your tim.
You are unfortunatley mistaken. Civil liberties have already been savaged, it just that is been done quite selectively so most people don't notice or care, because its only happening to Muslims. Most people aren't muslims. When the Bush administration declared Jose Padilla, an American citizen, an enemy combatant, locked him up apparently for life in solitary with no lawyer, no trial or access to his family they set a precedent. If they can do it to him they can do it to anyone. If that precedent stands the chief executive can strip anyone of ALL their civili liberties, you included. We are just at the mercy of his good will that he doesn't do it on a wide scale. The Supreme court has chided the White House for it, and said "dont do that", but fact is he is still in jail with no trial and the precedent stands. Chances are he isn't the only one, there are probably others but we don't even now their names. When your government makes people disappear you know you are in a police state just like all the one the U.S. supported in Central and South America, like Pinochet's.
When U.S. authorities snatched a Canadian citizen out of an airport who had the misfortune to connect through New York on the way home (didn't even really stop in the U.S.) and sent him to Syria to be tortured they set a precedent that they can snatch anyone, anyplace and do anything they want to them. In fact under a project code named Rendition they've been doing just that. They've been snatching people all over the world, under the noses and against the wishes of sovereign governments, and sending them to be tortured. The U.S. government just has to have a suspicion you might be a terrorist and your civil liberties are gone. They don't even have to be right, you can be completley innocent since there is no trial here.
Perhaps saying more American's need to die in Iraq was a bit jarring. But thats what it took during the Vietnam era to wake America up, Americans coming home in body bags and without limbs. Ideally the people dieing in Iraq should be the people that started that war based on a web of lies, but chicken hawks are really adept at sending others to die for them while they stay safe, and reap the wealth and power that flows from war profiteering.
The U.S.S.R and all the Warsaw pact countries are perfect examples, the Solidarity movement in Poland in particular. Its American propaganda that Reagan and America were the reason for the down fall. American's, like most peoples, like to take credit for everything that goes the way the like, and take no responsibility for the things that go wrong. Most of that change came from within, Poland in particular started it. It helped a lot that an enlightened leader came to power in Russia in Gorbachev. It appears Russians didn't really want freedom that bad because they are rushing back to a one party state. Turns out most Russians prefered order and the glory of the old U.S.S.R versus the chaos, especially economic chaos, of freedom.
The one thing the U.S. did do that was integral to the downfall of the Soviet Union was it funded and armed Islamic fundementalists who fought the Soviet Union for 10 long and bloody years in Afghanistan. That was the Soviet Union's quagmire and it created a generation of veteran's and their families who went to work to topple the communist party that got them in to it. The one irony for the U.S. was the fundementalists they armed and funded in Afghanist turned in to Al Qaeda.
Al Qaeda sees the same opporunity in Iraq they saw in Afghanistan. Infidel super power invades Muslim country. Muslims wage 10 year Jihad and insurgency against the superpower and after 10 years of guerilla war the superpower risks collapse because of internal dissent, disaffected verterans and having its coffers drained by a war they couldn't win.
Another example that comes to mind is Algeria which defeated French colonial rule after years of bloody insurgency. Vietnam defeated both French colonial rule and the American military and its puppet regime. Though its true they had massive logistical support from the Soviet Union. I wager they would still have won in the long run without it. Its incredibly hard to beat nationalist insurgencies that have wide spread popular support. The only example you hear the pundits quote lately when discussing beating the insurgency in Iraq is Malaysia. It took Britain a brutal decade to defeat that insurgency in 1960.
Maybe what American's need is to be invaded and occupied by a foreign power. THAT would wake them out of their stupor.
The American revolution is still the gold standard for people fighting for freedom though French intervention at Yorktown was pretty crucial to the rebels winning. Maybe they would have won without French help but it would have taken a lot longer and beem a lot harder. At least they were willing to try.
The one thing you see that came out of the American revolution was a generation of enlightened idealistic leaders that valued the liberties they fought so hard for and worked really hard to defend them in their Constitution. Now more than 200 years later is appears they ultimately failed. That is the thing completely absent in America today which is why we have no political leaders with the guts to defend civil liberties. One of the historical suspicions about the Bush family is they are in fact a remnant of Tory sympathizers which are still centered in Connecticut, the Bush families real power seat. They really didn't like all this equality and freedom. They seem to prefer the pre Revolution government with a wealthy elite with all the power and everyone else in indentured servitude and under control.
A. Either people faced with the harsh realities of a police state and having no civil liberties so they start to care about their government again
or
B. American's really want to live in a police state. Fact is a lot of people like police states as you don't cross the powers that be. There are plenty of people in Russia who want the U.S.S.R back. As long as you stay on the right side of the police, dictatorships do tend to keep order and make everyone safe. As much as everyone reviles Saddam he did keep order, versus now where 800 people a month are dieing in bombings and assassinations. Iraq isn't a viable country. Its a fabrication created by the British empire and it has such deep ethnic ad relgious division it will be a miracle if doesn't blow apart as soon as America get tired of the place. If you are going to make one country out of it pretty much need a ruthless dictator.
Its America's dirty little secret but a LOT of American's were very pro Nazi Germany in the 30's. Americans were rabidly anti communist, especially affluent and powerful Americans, and so was Nazi Germany. Lots of affluent Americans were aggressively investing in the economic miracle that Hitler brought to Germany in the 30's. George W.'s grandfather Prescott was the American banker for the Thyssen family, one of Germany's richest industrial dynasties during the 30's. Fritz Thyseen was integral in uniting Germany's big business behind Hitler and the Nazi's, and bankrolled their rise to power. Prescott's Union Banking was siezed for trading with the enemy after Pearl Harbor over it, much to the embarrassment of the Bush family.
It would have been interesting to see if Prescott or another Fascist leaning Republican had been in the White House then instead of Roosevelt. The world might be a completly different place.
In one of the sound bites I saw from the debate a blond lady Congressman whose name I didn't catch said, to paraphrase, "The Patriot act isn't about law abiding citizens, its about catching terrorists and she didn't want terrorists to have any rights.
She obviously didn't grasp the concept that she was in fact striping the rights of all citizens law abiding and terrorist alike, and was laying the groundwork for someone to be falsely accused of being a terrorist, disappeared, tortured and killed.
The problem with the House is they are pretty much always up for election so they tend to always pander to the people that will will always elect them in the next election. They know they will lose votes voting against the Patriotic act.
The Senate will probably be a little more delibrative and rational but the best you can hope for are a couple minor improvements. With 55 seats the Republican's can push it through unless the Democrats fillibuster, which they wont, because if they did the Republicans would try the nuclear option in a heart beat.
Dude, I think you are whipping a dead horse. Wasn't argueing that lightning isn't dangerous too and will scrub a launch, but thanks for the lecture. Wind shear in a thunderstorm will violate launch criteria too.
But, I'm nearly positive the Shuttle wont launch if there are moisture laden clouds in the area either. You can those with water drops in them bit enough to damage the fragile tiles and slim or no chance of lightning.
Proably wont win any karma for saying this but what exactly has Alan Kay done in like the last 20 years. If you read his HP bio there isn't really anything in there exciting thats happened after like 1980. Smalltalk was ground breaking and all, a great language, its fun to trash C++, and many other have built on his work, but how many of you have written any Smalltalk code lately.
A problem with gray beards in ivory tower research divisions, is sometimes they start puttering on things that amuse them but never transition that in anything of real world value, and especially something that can someday be turned in to a product a company can sell. Not saying thats the case here, maybe they have been doing revolutionary stuff and HP is shooting itself in the foot with this move. Advanced research is hard to pass judgement on but, you know, someday they you to produce something to justify the years of investment or its axed. Its irresponsible management to pour money in to something with no return, even if its not a near term return. For example what did this HP group do while SUN was inventing Java and Microsoft C#.
I'm of the school that this, the war in Iraq, Republican control of every branch of the government, restacking the Supreme court is the greatest thing to happen for democracy and civil liberties in the U.S. in at least 30-40 years.
You see for things to get better they have to get worse, much worse. The problem with America is its government is rotten to the foundation and the American people are completely indifferent and complacent. They ping pong between Republicans and Democrats seeking the lesser evil but finding neither is a lesser evil.
What America needs is a quagmire of a war or two where a lot of their children, friends and neighbors get killed an maimed, one with a draft would be best. What America needs is a newer, bigger Watergate where its exposed that the party in power is abusing its power to hold and expand its power so its becomes obvious we are in velvet gloved dictatorship under a facade of Democracy. We need the FBI and CIA to get even more out of control than they are, presumably after another 9/11 scale attack in the U.S and start rounding up people on a larger scale, torturing them, etc. We need a McCarthyist witch hunt like we got the last time the Republican's held power in Congress, and have it so sicken ordinary people that they will come to their senses and throw out anyone who have so completely lost sight of what our Constitution is supposed to stand for.
We need for this U.S. to turn in to a real police state, for all civil liberties to be eviscerated because its the only way the average American will remember that they had value, why they had value and why they were worth fighting for. American's have had it to easy for to long. They need to experience an old fashioned police state close up so they will remember why they are bad.
The goal is get enough people so disgusted with the status quo they will unite against both parties and start a movement for people and against power brokers, much like the Progressive movement was at the dawn of the 20th century. It could work but not with a bunch of lazy complacent people who could care less if they are living in a velvet gloved police state. That kind of people deserve to live in a police state and would probably be to ignorant to even notice.
To go off on a tangent there was an interesting comment on Charlie Rose recently about the Roberts nomination to the Supreme Court. The worst thing that could happen to the Republicans is for them to stack the court with far right idealogues who will overturn Roe V. Wade. Why because women who used to be 15-20% points for the Democrats and are now split 50-50 and giving the Republicans their power mow. If a Republican stacked supreme court takes away the right to abortion and sentances women to unwanted pregnancies they will turn on the Republicans in droves and drive them out of power. For things to get better they need to get worse.
"The tiles can shatter under finger pressure. In fact, the shuttle cannot be launched in a rainstorm because water droplets smacking into the ship as it hurtles toward orbit can damage the tiles."
Its somewhat beyond "rainstorm" since the rain doesn't have to hit the ground. I'm pretty sure NASA or Air Force planes fly in to any clouds near the launch trajectory and if there are water drops of any size in clouds that will be in the launch trajectory it will delay or scrub the launch until they clear.
When the shuttle first started flying I'm pretty sure water drops did damage tiles, and NASA ran a test program with a research aircraft with tiles strapped to that flew through clouds to establish how vulnerable they were to various droplet sizes at various speeds. Even if the droplets don't break the tiles they can damage them enough that they have to be replaced before the next launch.
There is a wind shear restriction as well which comes hand in hand with thunderstorms
There are so many Shuttle launch restrictions now its understandable that you can't keep track of them all.
When you have racism, violence and killing in games, especially immersive games you play for long periods, it desensitizes you to it, and is really promoting it as acceptable behavior in the right context.
You might not go out and murder people, but I assure you the military LOVES video games which is why they ship one of their own, because it gets kids early and trains them to kill and desensitized them to killing and being killed. It fact it makes kid LOVE to kill because they are pavlovian training devices with the goal of teaching you that if you kill you win and you get rich.
They are an especially good training aid to teach kids to kill remotely using stand off high tech weapons. Most pilots and soldiers who've manned modern jets and tanks will tell you how much like playing a video game it is when they are killing people miles away. Its a lot easier psychologically than bayonetting someone. Now that UAV's are here it is TOTALLY like a flight simulator video game.
The fact is if you are going to stoke up a nation, draftees and volunteers in the military especially, to go to war and kill people in large numbers you are going to use racism and its close cousin religion. Weather ir be viedo game or real war if you going to shoot, slash or hack the it has to be couched in its us or them, and we hate them, even if its for no real reason.
In reality most ware are fought over wealth, power, and control of land and resources. Those don't motivate enlisted soldiers to kill people though, since they don't reap the benefits directly, rich fat cats and politicians do. The fat cats and politicans get enlisted soldiers charged up to kill using rascism and religion.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe thats because Russia turned in to a totalitarian state not a worker's paradise. There wasn't anything socialist, Communist or left, left in it, except empty rhetoric, pretty much from the point Stalin siezed power after Lenin's death. Same goes for China.
.... a wealthy Yale Skull and Bonesman.
The problem with most governments, no matter how idealistic they start out, no matter the supposed idealogy, they turn in to a small group of people, like 1%, bent on acquring power and wealth at the expense of the other 99%. In China and Russia it was the upper echelon's of the Communist party. In China most of its big companies are controlled by the upper echelon's of the Communist party. They don't care about workers at all now, if they ever did. They are exploiting Chinese workers so ruthlessly, to get rich, its the envy of the Capitalist West.
In western democracies its wealthy businessmen, executives of big companies, working hand in hand with the politicians they buy and get elected with the purchase of TV ads (just like selling soap). They maintain a facade of democracy by running candidates from two parties both of which are in their pockets, vividly exemplified by the 2004 election when a wealthy Yale Skull and Bonesman ran against
Ablative shields on capsules are great with me. I wager thats what CEV will do. The tiles would be great if you didn't have to pretty much rebuild them after every flight. At that point they stopped being reusable and they stopped being cost effective.
I sure hope Rutan gets to try a derivative of the feathered wing on a reentry from LEO. The best solution to heat shielding it to have cooler, safer reentries though its a big jump from suborbital reentry to LEO reentry.
I'm of the view that the U.S. should start building reusable spacecraft but only ones that stay in space, and are really spacecraft and don't have to be pummelled by reentry. Thats what we need to get to higher orbits, transit to the moon, LaGrange points, Mars etc.
Capsules, ablative shields and parachutes are perfectly fine for returning small cargos and crews to Earth.
"We won't even begin to talk about the crossrange capability the Shuttle provides relative to capsules."
That cross range capability is at the root of why the Shuttle became so heavy and expensive. In particular the Air Force requirement to do one polar orbit and land back at Vandenburgh was over the top. That required 1,000 mile cross-range and it compelled a dramatic increase in lift to drag ratio which resulted in a mammoth increase in the size and weight of the wing and the shuttle as a whole.
"Don't get me wrong -- capsules are elegant in their simplicity. But if you are trying to do what the Shuttle does -- you have got to have more..."
You keep saying that but you keep forgetting the Shuttle doesn't do ANYTHING anymore.
That cross-range was for Air Force launches from Vandenberg. The shuttle never launched from Vandenberg thanks to Challenger, and I'm not sure that 1000 mile cross range has ever been exercised. It was a complete waste of mass.
Again all the Shuttle DOES at this point, assuming it ever gets off the ground again, is fly to and from the ISS very expensively. If we get real lucky it might service Hubble one last time before its euthanized. It is necessary to finish the ISS but only because the ISS was designed that way. If we had kept Saturn, done incremental improvements, and never built the Shuttle we would be a decade ahead of where we are now, and the Saturn would have been cheaper in the long run. We would also have a vehicle now that was already capable of going to the Moon again, instead of having to spend billions and 5-15 years redeveloping it all.
"To shield or not to shield... that is the question."
I think that question has already been answered, you have to shield.
"There is currently no solution"
Mike Griffin said in Congressional testimony before he became administrator:
"Overall, however, the most difficult physiological issue is likely to be that of cosmic heavyion radiation. The human effects of and countermeasures for heavy ion radiation, encountered in deep space but not in the LEO environment of the ISS, have received little attention thus far. These are the essential technical and physiological challenges as I see them. Exploration missions will not be accomplished without human risk. While certainly worthy of our attention, however, none of these is so daunting that we should stay home."
"There is currently no solution."
Don't think that is true. Its just a question of how much to shield, with what, how bad the mass penalty is, can you push it to Mars, and where the mass comes from.
The favorite sci fi based solution is you shield with a water tank around a safe room or maybe around the main habitat module in the ship. You need the water anyway. The other one is you manufacture shielding out of lunar regolith since its easier to get the mass off the moon, though it would take a lot of infrastructure to make there, or you have a heavy lift launch vehicle and launch shield from earth.
When you are talking about the habitats on the moon and mars its a given the habitats should be buried to the extent necessary to be safe. Then you are just facing the problem of how much radiation astronauts face on the surface in rovers or space suits. Again shield as much as you can and yes there will be a field for medical study for treating the effects.
When people set out to sail in to uncharted waters or cross the west in prairie schooners they encountered stuff that killed them too, scurvy on ships for example. It didn't stop them.
Well that would give you empty space, good for storing supplies or to move around in but you still need prebuilt habitats and lab modules which have all the plumbing, wiring and life support preinstalled. We aren't going to be doing construction and engineering work any place but Earth for a LONG time. Its probibitvely expensive to do it in space, you need raw materials, tools, and skilled people. Maybe you could deliver all the stuff in kits and bolt them in to the tunnels but I'm still a little skeptical.
And of course the Soviet Union fought the lions share of the ground war long before D-Day came along, the Russian Winter of 1941/42, Stalingrad in 1942 and Kursk in 1943 was where Fascism was defeated on the ground. The American role in defeating the Fascists was pretty small, strategic bombing, supplying Russia and Britain, the campaign in Italy, D-Day and the Battle of the Bulge. The U.S. ground campaigns came after the tide had already turned on the Eastern front and about all they did was keep Russia from overruning all of Europe.
The U.S. won the war in the Pacific against Japan, but it is typical American self inflation to think that America was crucial to winning the war in Europe.
I doubt you are going to have the infrastructure to dig tunnels or make them in to livable habitats. Lunar soil is nasty and it wouldn't be surprising if tunnels would be unlivable without a liner. I think the idea is to land a tin can like the habitat modules planned for the original U.S. ISS or the Russian equivalent, and then bury them in regolith(dirt). Mike Griffin's desire was to use the original U.S habitat module for the ISS though it was cancelled long ago and replaced with the Russian Mir 2 modules.
"I would give almost anything just for the chance to be a "space janitor." I'm sure many other people feel the same way."
I'd take it in a heart beat too. I wager it would be way more fun that being a NASA astronaut to boot. It must totally suck working on the ISS and have the weenies in mission control planning every minute of your day, and micromanaging everything you do. Plus in a space hotel there would be lots of partying, and zero G sex.
"Like Space-X"
Well I wish them the best and Musk's heart is in the right place but I'll wait to see if A) their vehicle works consistently and B) if they can eek out a revenue stream to stay solvent. Its also a lot more challenging to build a man rated vehicle than it is to launch small satellites in to LEO. It appears government subsidy is inevitable, the first launch being a Navy satellite. I wager the Navy would LOVE to have a viable competitor on the scene to go against the Boeing/Lockheed consortium monopoly.
"And learning how to make use of off-planet resources, which we have effectively zero experience with at the moment."
Granted though I doubt the resources you are going to find on the Moon are going to be nearly the value of the ones on Mars, especially water which is probably the most important of all.
I'm willing to admit putting a practice base on the Moon is a good idea from an engineering perspective but potentially bad from a political and economic perspective. It has great potential to end up as the end and not the beginning, it will turn boring like the ISS, people will question the cost, it will end up being a decade or more of delay in going to Mars and I'll be dead before a Mars trip happens if its not killed before it even starts.
Problem with a moon base is the people there will be tourists not colonists. They will crutch off supplies from Earth and it will end up just being an ISS in the dirt. Martian colonists will ALWAYS have something compelling to do, survive, explore, mine and build. They would be like homesteaders and frontiersman of old. Not sure today's crop of NASA atronauts would work at all, you need farmers, miners, frontiersmen and survivors.
"Even the ISS program, which has been criticized extensively for poor science, has provided invaluable engineering experience on how (and maybe how not) to build a vehicle to go to the moon/mars. For example, we've had serious problems with the gyroscopes on ISS"
Who says you need to use gyros on a Martian spacecraft in the first place. Rockets work just as well for attitude control and are a lot more reliable at this point. I think I would rather carry the fuel than the thousands of pounds of spare gyros. Rockets are KISS, gyros are gold plated NASA, complex and unreliable.
Also hate to point this out but you could have learned the same lesson on gyro reliability from Hubble at a fraction of the price.
Problem with NASA is every lesson learned costs more than its weight in gold.
From Mike Griffin's congressional testimony before he became administrator. I hope he keeps such a level head now that he is adminsistrator and a political and bureaucratic punching bag. Here he is talking here only about the remaining ISS cost not the 100+ billion already squandered to learn about bad gyros and the fact that our spacesuits still suck after 40+ years:
"But the more important question is whether the return to be obtained from the use of ISS to support exploration objectives is worth the money yet to be invested in its completion. The nation, through the NASA budget, plans to allocate $32 B to ISS (including ISS transport) through 2016, and another $28 B to shuttle operations through 2011. This total of $60 B is significantly higher than NASA's current allocation for human lunar return. It is beyond reason to believe that ISS can help to fulfill any objective, or set of objectives, for space exploration that would be worth the $60 B remaining to be invested in the program."
"If we do Exploration right, we're going to leverage an aerospace workforce that has learned lessons from Shuttle and ISS, and use the moon as a proving ground. That experience is going to allow us to tackle the greater challenge of going to Mars."
Unfortunately it is a workforce that has learned to the point that its ingrained, to do things inefficiently, uneconomicly and which is consistently failing to succeed or deliver promised results. If you take that same workforce, that has been runined by decades of excessive spending and underperformance, and just transfer it wholesale to CEV, return to the Moon or on to Mars what assurance does anyone have that it wont fail as badly as it has on the ISS and Shuttle.
The important thing about teams is not so much the years of experience as it is their proven ability to succeed when faced with challenges, and overcome adversity. The Shuttle team has, in the face of adversity, just become ever more cautious and less capable to the point that now it is nearly useless. The only lesson the ISS team has learned well is how to spend money year after year and never deliver a working space station. Those aren't characteristics you want to carry forward in a team if you want to succeed on the next challenges.
"I like your argument about Mars, but I think that actually works better on the Moon."
Nope. Mars has resources, especially water, lots of water and you need that for...water and Hydrogen and Oxygen, and a thin atmosphere, and 1/3 G which would hopefully be tolerable to live in for long periods. It has temperatures that are survivable with some basic warm gear. A good shot of mineral deposits to mine, especially Iron. CO2 in the atomosphere for carbon.
Moon is hard vacuam, extreme temperatures, 1/6 G,
presence of water is very iffy. resources you need to develop industry also very iffy. you spend a couple years at 1/6 G you probably wont be able to return to Earth and the Moon aint a great place for a life sentance. Like I said a Moon base is going to be an ISS except on the moon, manned with short duration astronauts. It wont proven much beyond what the ISS has proven which isn't much. About the only thing it offers is ground on which to build large structure and dirt in low G to use for shielding and the like
The goal here is not a closed circuit tin can. That kind of life would totally suck. The goal is to have people living real lives, outside, though obviously with constraints, mining, manufacturing, terraforming, and eventually severing the umbilical to earth with the exception maybe of fissile material and advanced manufactured goods like computer chips.
The one and only thing the Moon offers is it would be a place to practice before you go to Mars. Thats the only arguement Mike Griffin could make for it when he testified before Congress before he became administrator. I guess I can see it as a place to practice and test habitats but it isn't a place you want to live.
Read Kim Stanley Robinson's Red/Green/Blue Mars trilogy to spark your imagination. At times its pretty slow and dry but it has a vision that is captivating. A must read for geeks, space enthusiasts and sci fi fans.
"...and space-hotels,"
LOL there's the ticket. Hey, kids you should aspire to be astronauts so you can be a space janitor or a space maid in a space hotel. I wonder if illegal aliens will be able to make it in to space to fill these jobs.
I totally agree that having a space industry would be nice but NASA ain't going to get you to any of these. You are going to have to hope some of the private ventures can scrape together the funds to build an afforable launch vehicle to LEO. It is a lot harder to do than Rutan's suborbital shots and more expensive.
Not sure the solar power thing will fly anytime soon. Nuclear reactors on Earth are a lot better bet.
The absolute pinnacle I can see NASA aspiring to is a moonbase which will end up looking a lot like an ISS except on the moon. People living in tin cans trying to find things to do on a place totally hostile to life.
The only objective really worth doing in my book is flying people to Mars one way, and doing what it takes to keep them alive and to develop self sufficiency. At the point you have colonists on Mars and not Astronauts that is the point you have accomplished something, you have achieved a revolution and you will change the way humans think about the universe.
Due to the ravages of long duration in low G's I doubt anyone would want to endure coming back to Earth and 1 G from a long mission to Mars anyway. I'm sure NASA will never break out of the round trip mode of thought but it is totally the wrong mindset for a Mars policy. Get as many people as you can and can keep alive, help them find the resources they need to live without depending on expensive and iffy space shots, and let them start manufacturing future colonists on site. Its way cheaper than flyng them from Earth.
No its setting policy for 2 years with the presumption there will be another policy bill then which might stay the course or do a 180. Its pretty likely around 2008-2009 when another President takes office there will be a new policy direction and it probably will veer. George's dad had an ambitious Mars policy intiative too that went absolutely no where.
Anyone have a link to the actual Bill. You can't trust a reporter's interpretation of it.
The way I'm reading it NASA is under massive pressure to redirect CEV in to being a crash program to build a tin can that can just get to the ISS by 2010 so they can retire the shuttle without having to depend on the Russians to keep the ISS supplied and manned. I really doubt that NASA will be able to develop a craft by 2010 that will go to the Moon or Mars. I'm willing to bet that CEV, under those time and budget constraints will be little more than the current Russian Soyuz, though maybe with more capacity, that will ferry people and cargo back and forth to the ISS. To keep the ISS functioning NASA has to have a manned vehicle that can get to the LEO because the Russians will no longer ferrying NASA astronauts and cargo for free, and Congress has embargoed Russia over its reactor project in Iran.
If all this is accurate, in 2010 the U.S. wont have moved forward an inch. It will still just be flying back and forth to the ISS. Once that CEV is done THEN someone has to start working on a stack and craft that will get to the moon by 2020 and it will be a miracle if the policy and the funding will hold together that long. Mars is so far out there you may as well stop wasting the breath talking about it. NONE of these craft are going to be even close to what you need to go to Mars. The word Mars is just there because it makes the policy initiative sound bold and adventerous. Without it this intiative is just spending billions to go to places we've gone before and we found to be boring (the ISS, LEO and the Moon).
"hang posters inspiring kids to set their goal on becoming an astronaut."
Excepting of course that at the rate the world, let alone NASA launches people in to space your odds as a kid of actually becoming an astronaut and worse making it in to space must be like 1 in a million. I'm thinking they should go for NBA, NFL, or MLB the odds are somewhat better, so is the pay and the sex. Also to become an astronaut you need to live a squeaky clean life as a perpetual over achiever and have a very high tolerance for bureaucracy.
Nope sorry to say it, even if NASA ever does make it back to the Moon or to Mars encouraging millions of kids to focus their lives at becoming an astronaut would be a massive waste, though maybe if they stick with the math and science they can find useful careers as engineers. Engineering is not a bad career but I hate to break it to everyone, the people that get rich tend to be the business people.
WHy do you think they call the department that hires and fires you HR, Human Resources :)
I used to have a boss that would refer to you as a resource to your face instead of hinting you might have a name or be a human being. Labor is just like raw materials and capital, stuff you feed in to corporation machinery to produce profit.
Needless to say the powers that be like both their labor and raw materials to be as cheap as possible, hence globalization of the work force so you have the opportunity to compete for a job against someone making 30 cents an hour in China.
The power that be also like their labor scared, obedient and drug free which is why police states are such a hot commodity with pro business governments like the U.S., U.K, China and Singapore. If you do it just right authoritarian states are very profitable, you just have to make sure workers don't start throwing their wooden shoes, sabots, in to the machinery(sabotage).
In authoritarian states you have no problems with labor unrest and you can set wages arbitrarily low and workers can't complain. If you look at the U.S. in the early 20th centurty, early attempts to organize labor, get a livable wage and a work week that wasn't 12 hours a day 6 and 7 days a week, were often met with guns and blackjacks from either the state or private security firms.
Thats how to to run an efficient economy.
"As far as Osama, go figure out the difference between the mujahadeen and a rich-kid like Osama before you spout off."
:) There is no difference between Osama, Al Qaeda and the mujahadeen. Osama grew up and Al Qaeda was formed in the mountains of Pakistan and Afghanistan during their holy war against the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. Their base came out of the mujahadeen. The CIA under Reagan armed and funded them. That early incarnation of Al Qaeda, though it hadn't chosen that name then, was an American ally and proxy in the cold war against the U.S.S.R and that war more than anything led to the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Your the one thats spouting dude
Osama and the mujahadeen were seeking to thow an infidel power out of an Islamic country, just as they are today in Iraq, and were to an extent in Saudi Arabia when the U.S established a permenent military presence there.
I wage Al Qaeda is expending so much effort on Iraq because they see so much similarity to the Russians in Afghanistan. I'm sure they are thinking if they can tie the U.S. up in Iraq in a 10 year insurgency that costs the U.S. in as much blood, gold and prestige as Afghanistan cost the U.S.S.R it could ultimately bring down the U.S. in one way or another. They are a patient group so they will still be in Iraq in 10 years from now, will the U.S.?
"The US is taking a stand and cleaning up the Osamas"
In case you missed it Osama is alive, well and flourishing nearly four years after 9/11. He is most probably in the tribal regions of Pakistan, alive and well, just as he was during his mujahadeen days. The U.S hasn't really made any attempt to catch him and if they did Osama's friends and allies in Pakistan, especially their secret service would protect him. Musharef might be the dictator but Pakistan secret service is a power unto itself, they were close allies of the Taliban and Al Qaeda and probably still are. The U.S. hasn't really made a dent in Al Qaeda or global isalmic revolution using its current tactics. Saddam wasn't a part of the Islamic revolution. He is a Baathist, they are secular socialists, not islamic fundementalists. Saddam forbid Iraqis from growing beards, in order to suppress islamic fundemenatlism where beards are mandatory. Thats why all Iraqis under Saddam wear mustaches. Islamic fundementalists dislike Saddam as much as you do. I imagine they are glad the U.S. toppled them so they can get an Islamic government in Iraq which is on its way(though Al Qaeda wants a Sunni not a Shia Islamic government). Yesterday I heard the new Iraqi consistution will be mostly based on Islamic law. All in all invading Iraq was more like pouring gasoline on Islamic fundementalism.
"He murdered so many they may never find all the mass graves"
Just so you know one of the bigger sources of mass graves in Iraq came right after the Iraqis were thrown out of Kuwait. The first Bush administration encouraged the Shia in the South and the Kurds in the North in to open revolt because they wanted them to overthrow Saddam so they didn't have to do the dirty work. When the Shia and Kurds did revolt, the U.S. for whatever reason turned its back on them, and Saddam slaughtered them. Thats what goverments do to people in open revolt against them, the U.S.included (remember the Civil War it killed more Americans than any other war by far). If the U.S had at least provided a no fly zone during this period and kept Saddam's helicopter gunships on the ground they might have had a chance.
Fact is Iraq is an artificial abomination of a country created by the British empire. There has been a civil war, either hot or cold, there for the last century. Here is a list. Lots of people get killed in civil wars, they are nasty, bloody affairs. The Sunni were in the dominant position through most of it so the Kurds and Shias took the worst of it but the Shia's and Kurds have done their shar eof killing too. Now the Sunni's are on the losing end so they are the ones in open insurrection, the Shia are on top and rushing to a Taliban style Islamic state, the Kurds are waiting for America to leave at which point they create a Kurdish state.
Only way you are likely to have peace in Iraq is to partition it in 3 and evenly divide the oil fields. But that would compell mass migrations and Turkey will never stand for an independent Kurdistan. You see the Turks have faced a Kurdish insurrection most of the last century just as bad as Iraq has, they brutally suppressed it to, just like Saddam. Only reason we differentiate Iraq from Turkey is American propaganda has chosen to emphasize Saddam's treatment of the Kurd's and ignore how Turkey has treated them. The Kurd's have been in open revolt against both trying to get an independent homeland so they've bombed and shot their fair share of Iraqis and Turks too. Again when you have a civil war going on people get killed.
" He ATTACKED A NEIGHBORING COUNTRY"
Hate to point this out to you but the U.S. and Britain have invaded all kinds of countries neighboring and on the other side of the world. The U.S. has sent marines in to countries in to Mexico, the Caribbean, Central America and South America every few years for the last 150+ years. Panama was the most recent and I'd be hard pressed to tell you what real justification the U.S. had for that invasion and regime change, other than Noriega had fallen out of favor after years of being on the CIA payroll.
I'm inclined to agreee with you the Saddam should have been taken down after he was driven out of Kuwait but to come back more than 10 years later was insane.
"Utilities coming back online, jobs, women aren't stoned to death for showing their face...."
Utilities in Iraq are a shambles stop kidding yourself or anyone else. Blackouts in Baghdad were just increase from 4 planned hours of blackout up to 10 unpredictable hours this week. The water and sewage systems are just as bad as the electical grid. Sabotage is obviously the main problem, but its also to dangeorus for any reconstruction to take place so the infrastructure collapsed during the sanction era, was damaged by the war and especially the looting that followed, and its getting worse not better since.
Reports I've seen indicate Basra, the Shia heartland, has in fact turned in to a Taliban style fundementalist Islamic state. I heard the constitution the Shia and Kurds are writting is in fact going to be heavily based on Islamic law. The U.S. resists it but the fact is Iraq's majority is overwhelmingly devout Shia Muslim and its going end up an Islamic state, with stoning and beheading because that is Islamic law.
Whatever else
As in many things in life its quality not quantity that counts. Having 100 blithering idiots on your friends list, who also have a 100 blithering idiots on theirs doesn't score in my book. In fact its a net negative versus having 10 people who have a clue and have something to say, because the 100 idiots can bug you all day every day and are just wasting your tim.
You are unfortunatley mistaken. Civil liberties have already been savaged, it just that is been done quite selectively so most people don't notice or care, because its only happening to Muslims. Most people aren't muslims. When the Bush administration declared Jose Padilla, an American citizen, an enemy combatant, locked him up apparently for life in solitary with no lawyer, no trial or access to his family they set a precedent. If they can do it to him they can do it to anyone. If that precedent stands the chief executive can strip anyone of ALL their civili liberties, you included. We are just at the mercy of his good will that he doesn't do it on a wide scale. The Supreme court has chided the White House for it, and said "dont do that", but fact is he is still in jail with no trial and the precedent stands. Chances are he isn't the only one, there are probably others but we don't even now their names. When your government makes people disappear you know you are in a police state just like all the one the U.S. supported in Central and South America, like Pinochet's.
When U.S. authorities snatched a Canadian citizen out of an airport who had the misfortune to connect through New York on the way home (didn't even really stop in the U.S.) and sent him to Syria to be tortured they set a precedent that they can snatch anyone, anyplace and do anything they want to them. In fact under a project code named Rendition they've been doing just that. They've been snatching people all over the world, under the noses and against the wishes of sovereign governments, and sending them to be tortured. The U.S. government just has to have a suspicion you might be a terrorist and your civil liberties are gone. They don't even have to be right, you can be completley innocent since there is no trial here.
Perhaps saying more American's need to die in Iraq was a bit jarring. But thats what it took during the Vietnam era to wake America up, Americans coming home in body bags and without limbs. Ideally the people dieing in Iraq should be the people that started that war based on a web of lies, but chicken hawks are really adept at sending others to die for them while they stay safe, and reap the wealth and power that flows from war profiteering.
The U.S.S.R and all the Warsaw pact countries are perfect examples, the Solidarity movement in Poland in particular. Its American propaganda that Reagan and America were the reason for the down fall. American's, like most peoples, like to take credit for everything that goes the way the like, and take no responsibility for the things that go wrong. Most of that change came from within, Poland in particular started it. It helped a lot that an enlightened leader came to power in Russia in Gorbachev. It appears Russians didn't really want freedom that bad because they are rushing back to a one party state. Turns out most Russians prefered order and the glory of the old U.S.S.R versus the chaos, especially economic chaos, of freedom.
The one thing the U.S. did do that was integral to the downfall of the Soviet Union was it funded and armed Islamic fundementalists who fought the Soviet Union for 10 long and bloody years in Afghanistan. That was the Soviet Union's quagmire and it created a generation of veteran's and their families who went to work to topple the communist party that got them in to it. The one irony for the U.S. was the fundementalists they armed and funded in Afghanist turned in to Al Qaeda.
Al Qaeda sees the same opporunity in Iraq they saw in Afghanistan. Infidel super power invades Muslim country. Muslims wage 10 year Jihad and insurgency against the superpower and after 10 years of guerilla war the superpower risks collapse because of internal dissent, disaffected verterans and having its coffers drained by a war they couldn't win.
Another example that comes to mind is Algeria which defeated French colonial rule after years of bloody insurgency. Vietnam defeated both French colonial rule and the American military and its puppet regime. Though its true they had massive logistical support from the Soviet Union. I wager they would still have won in the long run without it. Its incredibly hard to beat nationalist insurgencies that have wide spread popular support. The only example you hear the pundits quote lately when discussing beating the insurgency in Iraq is Malaysia. It took Britain a brutal decade to defeat that insurgency in 1960.
Maybe what American's need is to be invaded and occupied by a foreign power. THAT would wake them out of their stupor.
The American revolution is still the gold standard for people fighting for freedom though French intervention at Yorktown was pretty crucial to the rebels winning. Maybe they would have won without French help but it would have taken a lot longer and beem a lot harder. At least they were willing to try.
The one thing you see that came out of the American revolution was a generation of enlightened idealistic leaders that valued the liberties they fought so hard for and worked really hard to defend them in their Constitution. Now more than 200 years later is appears they ultimately failed. That is the thing completely absent in America today which is why we have no political leaders with the guts to defend civil liberties. One of the historical suspicions about the Bush family is they are in fact a remnant of Tory sympathizers which are still centered in Connecticut, the Bush families real power seat. They really didn't like all this equality and freedom. They seem to prefer the pre Revolution government with a wealthy elite with all the power and everyone else in indentured servitude and under control.
Well that is the point:
A. Either people faced with the harsh realities of a police state and having no civil liberties so they start to care about their government again
or
B. American's really want to live in a police state. Fact is a lot of people like police states as you don't cross the powers that be. There are plenty of people in Russia who want the U.S.S.R back. As long as you stay on the right side of the police, dictatorships do tend to keep order and make everyone safe. As much as everyone reviles Saddam he did keep order, versus now where 800 people a month are dieing in bombings and assassinations. Iraq isn't a viable country. Its a fabrication created by the British empire and it has such deep ethnic ad relgious division it will be a miracle if doesn't blow apart as soon as America get tired of the place. If you are going to make one country out of it pretty much need a ruthless dictator.
Its America's dirty little secret but a LOT of American's were very pro Nazi Germany in the 30's. Americans were rabidly anti communist, especially affluent and powerful Americans, and so was Nazi Germany. Lots of affluent Americans were aggressively investing in the economic miracle that Hitler brought to Germany in the 30's. George W.'s grandfather Prescott was the American banker for the Thyssen family, one of Germany's richest industrial dynasties during the 30's. Fritz Thyseen was integral in uniting Germany's big business behind Hitler and the Nazi's, and bankrolled their rise to power. Prescott's Union Banking was siezed for trading with the enemy after Pearl Harbor over it, much to the embarrassment of the Bush family.
It would have been interesting to see if Prescott or another Fascist leaning Republican had been in the White House then instead of Roosevelt. The world might be a completly different place.
In one of the sound bites I saw from the debate a blond lady Congressman whose name I didn't catch said, to paraphrase, "The Patriot act isn't about law abiding citizens, its about catching terrorists and she didn't want terrorists to have any rights.
She obviously didn't grasp the concept that she was in fact striping the rights of all citizens law abiding and terrorist alike, and was laying the groundwork for someone to be falsely accused of being a terrorist, disappeared, tortured and killed.
The problem with the House is they are pretty much always up for election so they tend to always pander to the people that will will always elect them in the next election. They know they will lose votes voting against the Patriotic act.
The Senate will probably be a little more delibrative and rational but the best you can hope for are a couple minor improvements. With 55 seats the Republican's can push it through unless the Democrats fillibuster, which they wont, because if they did the Republicans would try the nuclear option in a heart beat.
Dude, I think you are whipping a dead horse. Wasn't argueing that lightning isn't dangerous too and will scrub a launch, but thanks for the lecture. Wind shear in a thunderstorm will violate launch criteria too.
But, I'm nearly positive the Shuttle wont launch if there are moisture laden clouds in the area either. You can those with water drops in them bit enough to damage the fragile tiles and slim or no chance of lightning.
But, please let this horse rest in peace.
Proably wont win any karma for saying this but what exactly has Alan Kay done in like the last 20 years. If you read his HP bio there isn't really anything in there exciting thats happened after like 1980. Smalltalk was ground breaking and all, a great language, its fun to trash C++, and many other have built on his work, but how many of you have written any Smalltalk code lately.
A problem with gray beards in ivory tower research divisions, is sometimes they start puttering on things that amuse them but never transition that in anything of real world value, and especially something that can someday be turned in to a product a company can sell. Not saying thats the case here, maybe they have been doing revolutionary stuff and HP is shooting itself in the foot with this move. Advanced research is hard to pass judgement on but, you know, someday they you to produce something to justify the years of investment or its axed. Its irresponsible management to pour money in to something with no return, even if its not a near term return. For example what did this HP group do while SUN was inventing Java and Microsoft C#.
I'm of the school that this, the war in Iraq, Republican control of every branch of the government, restacking the Supreme court is the greatest thing to happen for democracy and civil liberties in the U.S. in at least 30-40 years.
You see for things to get better they have to get worse, much worse. The problem with America is its government is rotten to the foundation and the American people are completely indifferent and complacent. They ping pong between Republicans and Democrats seeking the lesser evil but finding neither is a lesser evil.
What America needs is a quagmire of a war or two where a lot of their children, friends and neighbors get killed an maimed, one with a draft would be best. What America needs is a newer, bigger Watergate where its exposed that the party in power is abusing its power to hold and expand its power so its becomes obvious we are in velvet gloved dictatorship under a facade of Democracy. We need the FBI and CIA to get even more out of control than they are, presumably after another 9/11 scale attack in the U.S and start rounding up people on a larger scale, torturing them, etc. We need a McCarthyist witch hunt like we got the last time the Republican's held power in Congress, and have it so sicken ordinary people that they will come to their senses and throw out anyone who have so completely lost sight of what our Constitution is supposed to stand for.
We need for this U.S. to turn in to a real police state, for all civil liberties to be eviscerated because its the only way the average American will remember that they had value, why they had value and why they were worth fighting for. American's have had it to easy for to long. They need to experience an old fashioned police state close up so they will remember why they are bad.
The goal is get enough people so disgusted with the status quo they will unite against both parties and start a movement for people and against power brokers, much like the Progressive movement was at the dawn of the 20th century. It could work but not with a bunch of lazy complacent people who could care less if they are living in a velvet gloved police state. That kind of people deserve to live in a police state and would probably be to ignorant to even notice.
To go off on a tangent there was an interesting comment on Charlie Rose recently about the Roberts nomination to the Supreme Court. The worst thing that could happen to the Republicans is for them to stack the court with far right idealogues who will overturn Roe V. Wade. Why because women who used to be 15-20% points for the Democrats and are now split 50-50 and giving the Republicans their power mow. If a Republican stacked supreme court takes away the right to abortion and sentances women to unwanted pregnancies they will turn on the Republicans in droves and drive them out of power. For things to get better they need to get worse.
"The cloud requirements (of which there are quite a number) aren't about rain; they're mainly about lightning,"
From the Houston Chronicle
"The tiles can shatter under finger pressure. In fact, the shuttle cannot be launched in a rainstorm because water droplets smacking into the ship as it hurtles toward orbit can damage the tiles."
Its somewhat beyond "rainstorm" since the rain doesn't have to hit the ground. I'm pretty sure NASA or Air Force planes fly in to any clouds near the launch trajectory and if there are water drops of any size in clouds that will be in the launch trajectory it will delay or scrub the launch until they clear.
When the shuttle first started flying I'm pretty sure water drops did damage tiles, and NASA ran a test program with a research aircraft with tiles strapped to that flew through clouds to establish how vulnerable they were to various droplet sizes at various speeds. Even if the droplets don't break the tiles they can damage them enough that they have to be replaced before the next launch.
There is a wind shear restriction as well which comes hand in hand with thunderstorms
There are so many Shuttle launch restrictions now its understandable that you can't keep track of them all.
Well yours is the pretty lame arguement.
When you have racism, violence and killing in games, especially immersive games you play for long periods, it desensitizes you to it, and is really promoting it as acceptable behavior in the right context.
You might not go out and murder people, but I assure you the military LOVES video games which is why they ship one of their own, because it gets kids early and trains them to kill and desensitized them to killing and being killed. It fact it makes kid LOVE to kill because they are pavlovian training devices with the goal of teaching you that if you kill you win and you get rich.
They are an especially good training aid to teach kids to kill remotely using stand off high tech weapons. Most pilots and soldiers who've manned modern jets and tanks will tell you how much like playing a video game it is when they are killing people miles away. Its a lot easier psychologically than bayonetting someone. Now that UAV's are here it is TOTALLY like a flight simulator video game.
The fact is if you are going to stoke up a nation, draftees and volunteers in the military especially, to go to war and kill people in large numbers you are going to use racism and its close cousin religion. Weather ir be viedo game or real war if you going to shoot, slash or hack the it has to be couched in its us or them, and we hate them, even if its for no real reason.
In reality most ware are fought over wealth, power, and control of land and resources. Those don't motivate enlisted soldiers to kill people though, since they don't reap the benefits directly, rich fat cats and politicians do. The fat cats and politicans get enlisted soldiers charged up to kill using rascism and religion.