If the European Union were anything like the United States, this would have been a Federal law and every family in every European nation would have had to ante up to pay for a Political Broadcast System portraying the evils of "right-wing extremists" who want their own country back.
"No formal theory," Heflin wrote in his proposal to NSF, "has considered how ontologies can be integrated and how they may change, or the role of trust in integration."
Yes it has.
See Relation Arithmetic Revivedand Structure Theory. These two papers were written as a result of Hewlett-Packard's E-Speak project's support of a continuation of work begun at Paul Allen's thinktank, Interval Research. These then led to an understanding of the importance of identity theory in performing logic with what we were calling "attributed assertions" aka digitally signed speech acts. After the E-Speak project terminated we continued work on identity theory with partial support from the Boundary Institute leading to a reformulation of the foundation of mathematical logic with The Expressive Power of Equality.
I don't get the idea that they are totally separate projects from the link you gave. What I get is that they're considering using a biprop engine with higher exhaust velocity for the orbital work -- not that this will replace the mixed monoprop methanol/peroxide first stage.
With enough diversity of people and technical objectives,
there would be a "fuzzy" gradient of incentive created for ever higher
performance amateur rockets, not dependent on the credibility of any one
organization's political structure for "fairness" or good technical
judgement.
It's great what the X-Prize committee has accomplished but they shouldn't be the "World" (as in "World Technology Network") of prize awards lest they become another single point of failure.
The X-Prize criterion was established in 1995. Funding came later. Hopefully someone will write up a history of exactly when who contributed what and in what form. For example, a dollar early in the life of the X-Prize was more valuable than a later contribution of a dollar in the form of insurance.
In any case, its clear the Ansari's did something incredibly important in meeting the final goal of $10M.
PS: There was some ambiguity about the actual funding available to the X-Prize early in the project which was damaging to its credibility. Hopefully this sort of thing will not be repeated in the future.
The infosphere wants to be in orbit, and soon, it will be.
In
space there is no need to lay optical fiber nor to obtain right-of-way
from an international committee, you simply point a laser and shoot at
the destination of your message.
The vast majority of digital
communication traffic is from server to server. The big problem
is "the last mile" of communications, and that is because of the
difficulty of laying cable around urban areas.
You can go
wireless from home or office to a local Ka-band ground station that
uplinks direct to an on-orbit infosphere consisting of servers and
routers.
This will unfold approximately as follows:
1)
Wireless will replace cable in urban areas, thus dispensing with "the
last mile" problem and waking people up to the fact that you pay heavy
hidden taxes for trying to lay cable that crosses terrestrial
bureaucracies.
2) Existing satellite Internet systems (note here that Iridium was _not_ an Internet system) will expand, possibly including the deployment of Teledesic.
3)
The success of these wireless systems in previously underdeveloped
areas such as China will further establish the viability of this
general approach.
4) Launch prices lower as western
protectionism over the launch industry is finally removed.
(Interesting, isn't it, that even as the West was trying to figure out
how to get hard currency businesses to employ Russian military
personnel in commercial capacities, the West was bullying Russia into
raising its launch prices so that Western government-subsidized launch
firms could compete? Just goes to show you the Soviet public
sector was more efficient than the West's public sector which isn't
surprising when you think of it in those terms.)
5) With lowered
launch prices, satellite prices will, at first drop gradually, and then
plummet. Satellite prices will plummet when launch prices are low
enough that satellites can create internal "office environments".
This will not be for people -- it will be for the "office environment"
mass produced electronics that go into servers and routers. Note:
This will occur much later for geosynchronous satellites which must
carry far more massive shielding from Van Allen belt radiation.
6)
As the infosphere is going through the most rapid movement from the
biosphere to Earth orbit, the most economic means of fixing a satellite
will be to replace it. The increasing, industrial capacity,
launch volume will drive launch prices to levels comparable with other
transporation industries.
7) With launch prices lowered to
industrially rational levels, human presence will become permanent on
the various orbital planes in order to service the satellites on those
orbital planes.
NCR at the1963 World's Fair
on
Fluid Logic Chips
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Thomas Etter's background is in mathematics and philosophy. He has worked in various ways with computers, holding several early patents on integrated circuits, one of which was demonstrated by National Cash Register Inc. at the 1963 World's Fair.
Etter's integrated circuit demonstration was of a fluidic device.
Re:I kicked coffee accidentally with creatine
on
Coffee is Addictive
·
· Score: 1
Thanks for the heads up on the renal panel. Will do.
Anyway, until I see something come up on my renal panel or something to countervail the following study, I'll probably continue to take creatine monohydrate in moderate amounts.
Creatine monohydrate is one of the few sport supplements that when used properly, produces measurable results. Research has found that creatine monohydrate helps increase muscle mass, muscular strength, and power when as little as 3 grams are taken per day for thirty days. Many people have suggested that creatine monohydrate, although proven as an ergogenic aid could possibly cause damage to the kidneys. Fortunately, science is beginning to produce answers to show whether or not creatine monohydrate supplementation causes kidney damage.
One recent study compared kidney health in creatine users and non-users. The creatine group consisted of competitive athletes that had been using between 1-20 grams of creatine monohydrate for an extended period of time (10 months to 5 years). The non-user group consisted of men and women from the universities graduate program. Blood and urine tests were performed on each subject from both groups to determine the effect of creatine on kidney health and function.
Results from the study indicated that creatine monohydrate supplementation did not have any adverse affects on kidney function or health in any of the subjects in the creatine user group. While this information suggests that creatine monohydrate does not cause kidney damage in healthy men and women, individuals with kidney or other health problems should consult their physician prior to using creatine monohydrate.
Source
Poortmans J, Francaux M. Long-term oral creatine supplementation does not impair renal function in healthy athletes. Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, Vol. 31, N0. 8, pp. 1108-1110, 1999.
Basically I just look at the weekly box office for each movie divided by the number of screens squared and that tells me how much acceleration the market is placing on the distribution channels for the movies.
It works pretty well. Playing the Hollywood Stock Exchange with this metric does a pretty good job of detecting bargains.
Is there anything likely come along in the near future that could take
paylods to 100km and mach 12?
Clue: Someone just went 100km this morning.
A key to the Rotovator(tm) is getting hub mass in place to keep it out
of the atmosphere while it picks up mass -- but that
mass can be any old space junk for the hub where it counts the most for high strength materials like carbon nanotubes.
Can you think of anything really massive that is likely to end up as space junk soon?
Clue: This/. article concerns such a hunk of junk.
Nice thing about Rotovators(tm) is that they can be built with much
lower capitaliztion over a much shorter period of time using existing
commercial materials. All you need is a bunch of mass orbiting near
earth, some quite-doable tethers, and sufficient manuverability and
speed in the atmospheric leg to hook up with the tether as it reaches
the nadir.
Well you're making a couple of big presumptions that:
the editorial "you" isn't already having less kids -- a lot less kids. The birth rate in the developed world has plummetted well below replacement rates. Big globalist organizations like the NYT and UN are going hysterical about the need to import huge populations from developing regions to the depopulating developed regions to make up for the population losses, so don't preach at the editorial "you" about population control until you have come up with a realistic story about how the population problem is made better globally by expanding the influence of peoples who are not containing their population growth rates. BTW: Don't rely on the mere faith that their birth rates will drop or you are merely putting the planet at risk for nothing better than your faith in globalist policies control population growth.
when space migration opens up there will be no realistic option to shut down technological civilization within the biosphere. Gerard O'Neill's projections show that with a space transportation industry only a little bigger than the airline industry, you can, in theory, depopulate the planet: The potential emmigration rate is much higher than the birth rate. You want to stop destruction of biospheric heritage? Remove technological civilization from the biosphere. There are a huge number of advantages to technological civilization itself to locate where there is no weather, no gravity and constant 1kW/m^2 solar energy available.
All fusion energy really does for you is provide higher density energy sources for the demanding sorts of processes you need to run a non-terrestrial technological civilization on limited feedstocks.
Carmack's team also has a better shot at Bigelow's $50M America's Space Prize than any of the other Ansari X-Prize contenders. The 90% peroxide delay resulted in a more economical and safer methanol/peroxide(50%) mixed monoprop booster that is ideally suited for first stage reuse during orbital flights.
That's going to light a fire under a lot of asses... big ones.
Congratulations are particularly in order for Anousheh Ansari's family without whom the X-Prize would not have been funded.
Hopefully guys like Paul Allen and Bill Gates will get the idea they can do a lot more with their philanthropy money if they put up prize awards than if the schmooze it up with toadies. If they do they will start making major advances not just in space migration but in life extension, intelligence increase and fusion energy which will finally embarrass the government into doing what it should have been doing all along the right thing as well:
If administration officials testified before Congress with falsehoods that were known to be falsehoods by their authorities, the authorities with said knowledge are subject to criminal prosecution.
Re:I kicked coffee accidentally with creatine
on
Coffee is Addictive
·
· Score: 1
Will do -- if I take enough creatine to do that. I don't take creatine religiously and haven't noticed withdrawl on the days I don't. Besides, there is hardly a strong connection between moderate creatine intake and kidney disease. There's a stronger connection between drinking beer and liver disease. Do you drink beer?
I kicked coffee accidentally with creatine
on
Coffee is Addictive
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I was a 6 cup a day coffee addict when I decided to start using creatine for other reasons. In the directions they give you for creatine, they tell you to stop caffine intake. I'd never been able to stop caffine intake without withdrawl symptoms, but this time, loading creatine doses of 5 heaping teaspoons a day, I suffered no noticable withdraw.
I'm now taking 1 heaping teaspoon of creatine a day and on those occasions I drink coffee at all it is about 1/2 to 1 cup early in the morning.
The United Nation's policies on self-determination have failed to equitably support the right of self-determination for all peoples. "Peoples" has come to be defined by the UN in restrictive ways that are politically correct. Hence the UN cannot effectively address the need for humanity to have frontiers for peoples of like mind to live out their beliefs.
To have an entity that so violates the need for self-determination be "married to the Internet" would be theocracy's dream and freedom's nightmare.
We're in the early stages of the transformation of civilization greater than that which occurred after Guttenberg's press started churning out books without the intervention of the Church's infrastructure of monks to scribe them.
First to fall away is control of the flow of ideas. That flow has been bottlenecked by the recentralization of control of mass media in the 20th century leading to a new form of theocracy.
The events following this release of theocratic control over thought occur with a great deal of interrelationship including all manner of "amateur":
religions (protestantism)
governments (the US Constitution)
exploration (the Dutch East India company, for example, was far less about theocracy and governmental control than was the financing of the early Spanish expeditions to central and South America)
Liberalism in its original form from the Reformation and Enlightenment, meant human experimentation (e.g.: "laboratory of the States") but experimentation requires experimental controls. Therefore the prime cause for concern was not that there be agreement between parties but that disagreeing parties find ways to separate from one another to form experimental groups, allowing control groups to preserve older ways. The Age of Exploration was therefore consequent to the Enlightenment.
In the present instance we can take a not too emotional issue such as cloning as a probable "heresy" over which such issues are arising. (There are other, far more motional issues such as homosexual marriage, racial separatism, pedophillia, infanticide, etc. that we can address similarly.) There are attempts in the UN to ban cloning globally under protocols similar to bans on nuclear weaponry. Like most other social experiments people are conducting or wish to conduct, the various entities are proposing that they have world-wide jurisdiction. The conflict isn't over the technologies but over the social experiments allowed or disallowed.
This is a legitimate concern as the globe becomes smaller due to transport and communications technologies. Preemptive controls will increasingly impose on all aspects of life for security's sake. Liberty will dissipate just as it has been with the increase of all forms of centralized control. Soon there will be no more experiments in social forms save those dictated by the sort of individuals attracted to the centers of power, hence the only legacy of humanity will be the destruction of the planet.
The solution is to make the globe bigger and leave earth to the true control groups.
Humanity must find ways of dispersing life to lifeless environments, there to take up residence and leave the earth to the true conservatives -- perhaps limited to hunting and gathering with stone-age technology. Anything else would continue the destruction of vital control groups, not just hunter-gatherers but entire species such as great apes, while depriving humanity of the liberty to conduct its experiments.
The real question of legitimate use of central power isn't over whether to allow this or that experiment but whether the central power is doing everything in its power to disperse life.
By this criterion there is not a single legitimate central point of power in the world, but the worst offenders of all are those nations of European diaspora who are destroying their pioneering heritage with supposed "liberal" policies that dictate universal open borders, "diversity" via EEOC regulations down to the granularity of small mom and pop businesses, by subjecting such an enormous proportion of a family's income political redistribution that all are forced to focus their energies on politics rather than pioneering. All of these things are dictating the social experiments that are politically correct for those pioneering populations and are endangering not just those populations, but life itself as technological civilization is bottled up in an increasingly dangerous pressure-cooker.
Remind me what that one is again? The right to construct nucular weaponry in your basement?
The fact that the government "forgot" to follow procedures to amend the Constitution when nuclear weapons were developed is neither here nor there. The law is a social contract. When that contract is violated there are serious problems -- and some nuclear bombs going off in major metropolitan areas are not the most serious problems.
Having lawless criminals controlling the government is far worse.
Diane Feinstein was also the US Senator who said, "the doctrine of prior restraint is one we have to look at" with respect to web sites that describe the construction of weapons because such information "isn't what this country is all about."
I suspect Thomas Jefferson would have a few choice speeches to make to the Senate about the First Amendment as a rejoinder. Then again if he saw folks like Feinstein running the Senate he might just bypass the exercise of his First Amendment rights and proceed directly to the Second Amendment.
There is a live motion web cam in nearby Stevenson, WA -- which was covered in a fairly thick layer of ash during the last eruption. It's low framerate but at least you can see updates at most every few seconds during bad periods. (Not including if it gets/.'ed of course.)
PS: We installed a Qorvus Meshcam(tm) on the top of the Skamania County Government building as part of the Stevenson Wifi Project, which was the first municiple public access mesh network to go live in the US.
A large air breathing first stage, makes far more sense than a conventional rocket. The mass and volume of oxider is wasteful and reduces the payload.
Well, you're now talking more like a 0th stage - and if you want a really good 0th stage you should be looking at steam canister launchers ala the Peacekeeper missile.
Anyway, you are confusing altitude with orbital proximity. The main barrier -- by far -- is velocity. The big conventional jets just don't give you much velocity. Also I didn't say Rutan can't scale his system up -- he just can't scale it up as economically as can a monoprop vertical takeoff rocket such as the one Armadillo is developing.
Slashdot Mirror
If the European Union were anything like the United States, this would have been a Federal law and every family in every European nation would have had to ante up to pay for a Political Broadcast System portraying the evils of "right-wing extremists" who want their own country back.
Yes it has.
See Relation Arithmetic Revivedand Structure Theory. These two papers were written as a result of Hewlett-Packard's E-Speak project's support of a continuation of work begun at Paul Allen's thinktank, Interval Research. These then led to an understanding of the importance of identity theory in performing logic with what we were calling "attributed assertions" aka digitally signed speech acts. After the E-Speak project terminated we continued work on identity theory with partial support from the Boundary Institute leading to a reformulation of the foundation of mathematical logic with The Expressive Power of Equality.
I don't get the idea that they are totally separate projects from the link you gave. What I get is that they're considering using a biprop engine with higher exhaust velocity for the orbital work -- not that this will replace the mixed monoprop methanol/peroxide first stage.
In any case, its clear the Ansari's did something incredibly important in meeting the final goal of $10M.
PS: There was some ambiguity about the actual funding available to the X-Prize early in the project which was damaging to its credibility. Hopefully this sort of thing will not be repeated in the future.
From Infosphere to the First Inforb
The infosphere wants to be in orbit, and soon, it will be.
In space there is no need to lay optical fiber nor to obtain right-of-way from an international committee, you simply point a laser and shoot at the destination of your message.
The vast majority of digital communication traffic is from server to server. The big problem is "the last mile" of communications, and that is because of the difficulty of laying cable around urban areas.
You can go wireless from home or office to a local Ka-band ground station that uplinks direct to an on-orbit infosphere consisting of servers and routers.
This will unfold approximately as follows:
1) Wireless will replace cable in urban areas, thus dispensing with "the last mile" problem and waking people up to the fact that you pay heavy hidden taxes for trying to lay cable that crosses terrestrial bureaucracies.
2) Existing satellite Internet systems (note here that Iridium was _not_ an Internet system) will expand, possibly including the deployment of Teledesic.
3) The success of these wireless systems in previously underdeveloped areas such as China will further establish the viability of this general approach.
4) Launch prices lower as western protectionism over the launch industry is finally removed. (Interesting, isn't it, that even as the West was trying to figure out how to get hard currency businesses to employ Russian military personnel in commercial capacities, the West was bullying Russia into raising its launch prices so that Western government-subsidized launch firms could compete? Just goes to show you the Soviet public sector was more efficient than the West's public sector which isn't surprising when you think of it in those terms.)
5) With lowered launch prices, satellite prices will, at first drop gradually, and then plummet. Satellite prices will plummet when launch prices are low enough that satellites can create internal "office environments". This will not be for people -- it will be for the "office environment" mass produced electronics that go into servers and routers. Note: This will occur much later for geosynchronous satellites which must carry far more massive shielding from Van Allen belt radiation.
6) As the infosphere is going through the most rapid movement from the biosphere to Earth orbit, the most economic means of fixing a satellite will be to replace it. The increasing, industrial capacity, launch volume will drive launch prices to levels comparable with other transporation industries.
7) With launch prices lowered to industrially rational levels, human presence will become permanent on the various orbital planes in order to service the satellites on those orbital planes.
Anyway, until I see something come up on my renal panel or something to countervail the following study, I'll probably continue to take creatine monohydrate in moderate amounts.
Does Creatine Supplementation Cause Kidney Damage?
by Curt Pedersen
December 20, 1999
Creatine monohydrate is one of the few sport supplements that when used properly, produces measurable results. Research has found that creatine monohydrate helps increase muscle mass, muscular strength, and power when as little as 3 grams are taken per day for thirty days. Many people have suggested that creatine monohydrate, although proven as an ergogenic aid could possibly cause damage to the kidneys. Fortunately, science is beginning to produce answers to show whether or not creatine monohydrate supplementation causes kidney damage.
One recent study compared kidney health in creatine users and non-users. The creatine group consisted of competitive athletes that had been using between 1-20 grams of creatine monohydrate for an extended period of time (10 months to 5 years). The non-user group consisted of men and women from the universities graduate program. Blood and urine tests were performed on each subject from both groups to determine the effect of creatine on kidney health and function.
Results from the study indicated that creatine monohydrate supplementation did not have any adverse affects on kidney function or health in any of the subjects in the creatine user group. While this information suggests that creatine monohydrate does not cause kidney damage in healthy men and women, individuals with kidney or other health problems should consult their physician prior to using creatine monohydrate.
Source
Poortmans J, Francaux M. Long-term oral creatine supplementation does not impair renal function in healthy athletes. Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, Vol. 31, N0. 8, pp. 1108-1110, 1999.
42,815 people were killed in auto accidents in 2002.
Basically I just look at the weekly box office for each movie divided by the number of screens squared and that tells me how much acceleration the market is placing on the distribution channels for the movies.
It works pretty well. Playing the Hollywood Stock Exchange with this metric does a pretty good job of detecting bargains.
Current proposals for implementation of the Moravec's design rely on a hypersonic air-breather of advanced aerodynamic design like the Boeing DF-9 (that exists only on paper).
Is there anything likely come along in the near future that could take paylods to 100km and mach 12?
Clue: Someone just went 100km this morning.
A key to the Rotovator(tm) is getting hub mass in place to keep it out of the atmosphere while it picks up mass -- but that mass can be any old space junk for the hub where it counts the most for high strength materials like carbon nanotubes.
Can you think of anything really massive that is likely to end up as space junk soon?
Clue: This /. article concerns such a hunk of junk.
Nice thing about Rotovators(tm) is that they can be built with much lower capitaliztion over a much shorter period of time using existing commercial materials. All you need is a bunch of mass orbiting near earth, some quite-doable tethers, and sufficient manuverability and speed in the atmospheric leg to hook up with the tether as it reaches the nadir.
- the editorial "you" isn't already having less kids -- a lot less kids. The birth rate in the developed world has plummetted well below replacement rates. Big globalist organizations like the NYT and UN are going hysterical about the need to import huge populations from developing regions to the depopulating developed regions to make up for the population losses, so don't preach at the editorial "you" about population control until you have come up with a realistic story about how the population problem is made better globally by expanding the influence of peoples who are not containing their population growth rates. BTW: Don't rely on the mere faith that their birth rates will drop or you are merely putting the planet at risk for nothing better than your faith in globalist policies control population growth.
- when space migration opens up there will be no realistic option to shut down technological civilization within the biosphere. Gerard O'Neill's projections show that with a space transportation industry only a little bigger than the airline industry, you can, in theory, depopulate the planet: The potential emmigration rate is much higher than the birth rate. You want to stop destruction of biospheric heritage? Remove technological civilization from the biosphere. There are a huge number of advantages to technological civilization itself to locate where there is no weather, no gravity and constant 1kW/m^2 solar energy available.
All fusion energy really does for you is provide higher density energy sources for the demanding sorts of processes you need to run a non-terrestrial technological civilization on limited feedstocks.Carmack's team also has a better shot at Bigelow's $50M America's Space Prize than any of the other Ansari X-Prize contenders. The 90% peroxide delay resulted in a more economical and safer methanol/peroxide(50%) mixed monoprop booster that is ideally suited for first stage reuse during orbital flights.
Congratulations are particularly in order for Anousheh Ansari's family without whom the X-Prize would not have been funded.
Hopefully guys like Paul Allen and Bill Gates will get the idea they can do a lot more with their philanthropy money if they put up prize awards than if the schmooze it up with toadies. If they do they will start making major advances not just in space migration but in life extension, intelligence increase and fusion energy which will finally embarrass the government into doing what it should have been doing all along the right thing as well:
Fund prizes, not proposals.
Does this extend to the President?
The same question dogged Nixon to resign.
They should have done a reality TV show about how the real Kirk will be from a long line of Mexican-Iowans.
Will do -- if I take enough creatine to do that. I don't take creatine religiously and haven't noticed withdrawl on the days I don't. Besides, there is hardly a strong connection between moderate creatine intake and kidney disease. There's a stronger connection between drinking beer and liver disease. Do you drink beer?
I'm now taking 1 heaping teaspoon of creatine a day and on those occasions I drink coffee at all it is about 1/2 to 1 cup early in the morning.
The United Nation's policies on self-determination have failed to equitably support the right of self-determination for all peoples. "Peoples" has come to be defined by the UN in restrictive ways that are politically correct. Hence the UN cannot effectively address the need for humanity to have frontiers for peoples of like mind to live out their beliefs.
To have an entity that so violates the need for self-determination be "married to the Internet" would be theocracy's dream and freedom's nightmare.
There is a live Condorcet Presidential Poll. Source code is available too.
First to fall away is control of the flow of ideas. That flow has been bottlenecked by the recentralization of control of mass media in the 20th century leading to a new form of theocracy.
The events following this release of theocratic control over thought occur with a great deal of interrelationship including all manner of "amateur":
Liberalism in its original form from the Reformation and Enlightenment, meant human experimentation (e.g.: "laboratory of the States") but experimentation requires experimental controls. Therefore the prime cause for concern was not that there be agreement between parties but that disagreeing parties find ways to separate from one another to form experimental groups, allowing control groups to preserve older ways. The Age of Exploration was therefore consequent to the Enlightenment.
In the present instance we can take a not too emotional issue such as cloning as a probable "heresy" over which such issues are arising. (There are other, far more motional issues such as homosexual marriage, racial separatism, pedophillia, infanticide, etc. that we can address similarly.) There are attempts in the UN to ban cloning globally under protocols similar to bans on nuclear weaponry. Like most other social experiments people are conducting or wish to conduct, the various entities are proposing that they have world-wide jurisdiction. The conflict isn't over the technologies but over the social experiments allowed or disallowed.
This is a legitimate concern as the globe becomes smaller due to transport and communications technologies. Preemptive controls will increasingly impose on all aspects of life for security's sake. Liberty will dissipate just as it has been with the increase of all forms of centralized control. Soon there will be no more experiments in social forms save those dictated by the sort of individuals attracted to the centers of power, hence the only legacy of humanity will be the destruction of the planet.
The solution is to make the globe bigger and leave earth to the true control groups.
Humanity must find ways of dispersing life to lifeless environments, there to take up residence and leave the earth to the true conservatives -- perhaps limited to hunting and gathering with stone-age technology. Anything else would continue the destruction of vital control groups, not just hunter-gatherers but entire species such as great apes, while depriving humanity of the liberty to conduct its experiments.
The real question of legitimate use of central power isn't over whether to allow this or that experiment but whether the central power is doing everything in its power to disperse life.
By this criterion there is not a single legitimate central point of power in the world, but the worst offenders of all are those nations of European diaspora who are destroying their pioneering heritage with supposed "liberal" policies that dictate universal open borders, "diversity" via EEOC regulations down to the granularity of small mom and pop businesses, by subjecting such an enormous proportion of a family's income political redistribution that all are forced to focus their energies on politics rather than pioneering. All of these things are dictating the social experiments that are politically correct for those pioneering populations and are endangering not just those populations, but life itself as technological civilization is bottled up in an increasingly dangerous pressure-cooker.
The fact that the government "forgot" to follow procedures to amend the Constitution when nuclear weapons were developed is neither here nor there. The law is a social contract. When that contract is violated there are serious problems -- and some nuclear bombs going off in major metropolitan areas are not the most serious problems.
Having lawless criminals controlling the government is far worse.
I suspect Thomas Jefferson would have a few choice speeches to make to the Senate about the First Amendment as a rejoinder. Then again if he saw folks like Feinstein running the Senate he might just bypass the exercise of his First Amendment rights and proceed directly to the Second Amendment.
PS: We installed a Qorvus Meshcam(tm) on the top of the Skamania County Government building as part of the Stevenson Wifi Project, which was the first municiple public access mesh network to go live in the US.
Well, you're now talking more like a 0th stage - and if you want a really good 0th stage you should be looking at steam canister launchers ala the Peacekeeper missile.
Anyway, you are confusing altitude with orbital proximity. The main barrier -- by far -- is velocity. The big conventional jets just don't give you much velocity. Also I didn't say Rutan can't scale his system up -- he just can't scale it up as economically as can a monoprop vertical takeoff rocket such as the one Armadillo is developing.