Highly useful? There's a pretty limited need to fly single-seat aircraft in battle conditions. I'd say bomber, transport, or tanker pilots' skills translate more closely to the "real world."
Real immunity is often lifelong, though the often re-vaccinate every 10 years just to make sure. Re-vaccination is cheaper than taking antibody titers.
We have enough resources ON US SOIL ITSELF to survive a long time, especially if we invest in automated extraction and manufacturing. Go with clean nuclear and renewable power for energy, not oil.
Russia and China won't invade us -- Russia's average age is rapidly increasing. Besides, we have ICBMs and SLBMs for deterrence. Both are cheap and effective at deterring an invasion or nuclear strike.
Agreed about "wonder-weapons" -- what we should be doing is building many F-16s with updated propulsion, controls, and electronics.
On the plus side, isn't there a lot of tech that's commodified now, that wasn't around when Apollo was being designed? e.g. high speed computers and electronics. You can save a lot of development costs if the tech is already commonly available.
Smallpox immunity is lifelong, so you may very well be protected, or at least protected enough to get a less severe form of the disease. The real problem is that a synthetic smallpox could be designed to evade the antibodies that common vaccines produce, so the vaccine might still not be very protective in immune people.
Fortunately, it's not actually that simple: some humans will likely have a mechanism (or develop one) to get rid of the virus. Even things like Ebola and rabies which are nearly 100% fatal aren't 100% infectious -- i.e. some unvaccinated people will have some sort of mechanism (be it a strong immune system, a missing surface antigen, etc) that will keep it from infecting cells.
Except that a lot of military spending is paid for by "emergency funding" that's outside the official US budget. Most of the spending on the Iraqi and Afghan wars wasn't counted as part of the official US budget.
Those retirement funds typically keep up with inflation on average. It's the Wall Street parasites who really benefit. The 25,000 employees could find work in other industries that don't involve building murder weapons.
They're worth exactly the same as the life of any other American. Though it's sad when 17-18 year old kids are recruited, often pushed into joining by bad economic or home environment, without really knowing what they're in for. (not talking about USAF pilots here, but about enlisted)
$18 billion per year divided by 3.8 million births per year = about $4,700 per new family. Give it to them as a tax credit, let them use it to defray medical costs, take unpaid time off to recover from birth, etc, etc, etc. And a tax credit wouldn't be in conflict with anything. Point being, there are ways to spend the money that don't involve building murder weapons.
At a billion dollars per unit, it had better be good:)
Also, even if it did avoid a few deaths (say 10), $32 billion per life saved is awfully high. Put the money into something like biomedical research or infrastructure improvement, and you could save more lives for less money.
And no, military lives aren't worth more than the lives of anyone else in the US.
You mean the largest and most expensive welfare program for defense-contractor parasites. FTFY.:D
It's a reverse Robin Hood -- stealing from the average working American and giving to Lockheed-Martin stockholders.
F-35 was money thrown down the toilet. You're Portuguese -- when your government does corrupt and wasteful things, people turn out into the streets and shut things down. It's a shame that Americans aren't as proactive when seeing government waste and graft.
Blah, blah, blah... remember the General Welfare Clause?
Also, why not use the $320 billion to pay down the national debt or lower Federal taxes further. No one can argue that that's out DC's scope. If blue states didn't have to send as much money to Washington to pay for military parasites, they'd have enough money to create their own social programs, independently of DC.
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone."
President Dwight D. Eisenhower -- as a former general, guy knew of what he spoke.
After what Saudi agents did in Turkey -- frankly, this real estate should be expropriated. Plenty of homeless vets in NYC who need housing, after all. Fair is fair, many of them lost their mental health fighting to prop up Saudi interests.
Only those that can run a good amount of local apps. Many Chromebooks are just glorified WebTVs. No room to save locally, no control over local apps == no privacy, Scroogle controls everything. Ta hell with that model.
$320 billion that could have been spent for well-baby programs for everyone born in the US, or for improved infrastructure, or for paying down the national debt. But no, it has to be spent for murder weapons that don't even work properly. America! YEAH!
Then again, an electro-mechanical timer will wear out, a well-designed microcontroller talking to some solid-state power switches with a few sealed buttons for input should last decades.
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Highly useful? There's a pretty limited need to fly single-seat aircraft in battle conditions. I'd say bomber, transport, or tanker pilots' skills translate more closely to the "real world."
Real immunity is often lifelong, though the often re-vaccinate every 10 years just to make sure. Re-vaccination is cheaper than taking antibody titers.
We have enough resources ON US SOIL ITSELF to survive a long time, especially if we invest in automated extraction and manufacturing. Go with clean nuclear and renewable power for energy, not oil.
Russia and China won't invade us -- Russia's average age is rapidly increasing. Besides, we have ICBMs and SLBMs for deterrence. Both are cheap and effective at deterring an invasion or nuclear strike.
Agreed about "wonder-weapons" -- what we should be doing is building many F-16s with updated propulsion, controls, and electronics.
On the plus side, isn't there a lot of tech that's commodified now, that wasn't around when Apollo was being designed? e.g. high speed computers and electronics. You can save a lot of development costs if the tech is already commonly available.
Smallpox immunity is lifelong, so you may very well be protected, or at least protected enough to get a less severe form of the disease. The real problem is that a synthetic smallpox could be designed to evade the antibodies that common vaccines produce, so the vaccine might still not be very protective in immune people.
Fortunately, it's not actually that simple: some humans will likely have a mechanism (or develop one) to get rid of the virus. Even things like Ebola and rabies which are nearly 100% fatal aren't 100% infectious -- i.e. some unvaccinated people will have some sort of mechanism (be it a strong immune system, a missing surface antigen, etc) that will keep it from infecting cells.
Nothing. We have enough resources on our own soil to survive 100+ years. Yeah, more expensive to extract, but hey, that's what automation is for...
Except that a lot of military spending is paid for by "emergency funding" that's outside the official US budget. Most of the spending on the Iraqi and Afghan wars wasn't counted as part of the official US budget.
The people who serve as enlisted men and women are also often poor people of color, though. The victimization doesn't end with people outside the US.
Those retirement funds typically keep up with inflation on average. It's the Wall Street parasites who really benefit. The 25,000 employees could find work in other industries that don't involve building murder weapons.
They're worth exactly the same as the life of any other American. Though it's sad when 17-18 year old kids are recruited, often pushed into joining by bad economic or home environment, without really knowing what they're in for. (not talking about USAF pilots here, but about enlisted)
$18 billion per year divided by 3.8 million births per year = about $4,700 per new family. Give it to them as a tax credit, let them use it to defray medical costs, take unpaid time off to recover from birth, etc, etc, etc. And a tax credit wouldn't be in conflict with anything. Point being, there are ways to spend the money that don't involve building murder weapons.
At a billion dollars per unit, it had better be good :)
Also, even if it did avoid a few deaths (say 10), $32 billion per life saved is awfully high. Put the money into something like biomedical research or infrastructure improvement, and you could save more lives for less money.
And no, military lives aren't worth more than the lives of anyone else in the US.
FDR, actually.
You mean the largest and most expensive welfare program for defense-contractor parasites. FTFY. :D
It's a reverse Robin Hood -- stealing from the average working American and giving to Lockheed-Martin stockholders.
F-35 was money thrown down the toilet. You're Portuguese -- when your government does corrupt and wasteful things, people turn out into the streets and shut things down. It's a shame that Americans aren't as proactive when seeing government waste and graft.
Blah, blah, blah ... remember the General Welfare Clause?
Also, why not use the $320 billion to pay down the national debt or lower Federal taxes further. No one can argue that that's out DC's scope. If blue states didn't have to send as much money to Washington to pay for military parasites, they'd have enough money to create their own social programs, independently of DC.
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone."
President Dwight D. Eisenhower -- as a former general, guy knew of what he spoke.
After what Saudi agents did in Turkey -- frankly, this real estate should be expropriated. Plenty of homeless vets in NYC who need housing, after all. Fair is fair, many of them lost their mental health fighting to prop up Saudi interests.
Only those that can run a good amount of local apps. Many Chromebooks are just glorified WebTVs. No room to save locally, no control over local apps == no privacy, Scroogle controls everything. Ta hell with that model.
$320 billion that could have been spent for well-baby programs for everyone born in the US, or for improved infrastructure, or for paying down the national debt. But no, it has to be spent for murder weapons that don't even work properly. America! YEAH!
Then again, an electro-mechanical timer will wear out, a well-designed microcontroller talking to some solid-state power switches with a few sealed buttons for input should last decades.
ASME standards were often adopted by local governments as either regulatory codes or best practices for approval, though.
Fast-dry epoxy or a knitting needle into the mic-hole, tape over the camera. Problems fixed.
Acer was always synonymous with mid-90s "junk laptops" for me.