Re: The Dangerous Liberty of Engineering vs. Lukewarm Dominionism

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UPGRADING AND IMPROVING THE MALFRAMED
SPACE COMMUNITY

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confirmed existence of water on the surface of Mars? We've known
that there is water locked under the surface of Mars at the
poles and at other various spots, but this is the first instance,
that I know of, of a frozen lake being found on the surface.

If we are going to go to Mars someday, it's important to know
where the water is. It's a resource that we'll need above all
except oxygen. A ready supply, on the surface, is very important
for any future endeavors we make on Mars.

As for comets, of course they have water on them, we've known
that for decades. But how often does a comet or asteroid that is
large enough to be worth mining for material come to close enough
to earth to make the effort in sending out ships, even automated
ones, worthwhile? The costs would out-strip the gains until we are
able to mine the asteroid beltd itself, and we are a lot closer
to Mars than the belt (both physical proximity and the technology
to make it to the location).

There are, of course, Near Earth Crossing Comets just like there
are Near Earth Crossing Asteroids. Many are due to arrive to
within a few lunar distances... the key is to choose those that co-
incide with plans for a double rendezvous, and then plan the
delta-V's around that...

Now there is non-harmful radiative nuclear power available for
nuclear pulse power"

er. care to enlighten? Never heard of such a technology.

"Even 500 tons to orbit (4x the Saturn V), which may be pos-
sible with hardware derived from Space Shuttle technology at rea-
sonable costs, you're still 1/2,000th the payload of a moderate-
ly large Orion which can lift 1 million tons into orbit (4x a
superfreighter) AND BEYOND!"- (From William Mook, Subject: Re:
Asteroid mining Newsgroups: sci.space.tech Date: 2002-09-18
17:19:37 PST).

(But this is only the beginning). A nuclear pellet used in pulse
driving a "superfreighter" consists of 3 sub-spherical parts: For
the first sub-sphere, a DT (deuterium Tritium "gas" core surrounded
by a thin shell of Plutonium-239, surrounded by Beryllium, which
is all surrounded by a chemical "lasive" explosive, encased in me-
tal combed cladding. For the second sub-sphere, a miniature U-235
core surrounded by D3He, with a 1 mm thick boron-lithium nanofibre
shell casing. These shell casings are themselves clad in U-235 me-
tal, and the U-235 metal clad unit itself is surrounded by metal
combed cladding, which is itself encased in U-238 metal. The en-
tire U-238 metal sub-sphere is itself coated with a 1 mm sputter
deposited boron-lithium nanofibre over the entire surface. The
third sub-sphere consists of a chemical explosive encased in a
1mm thick shell of sputtered boron-lithium nanofibre, with its
shell tangent chemical "wick" open to the 3-spherical chemical ex-
plosive, all encased again in a 1mm thick shell of sputtered boron-
lithium nanofibre. The chemical explosive is designed to be laser
ignitable, and the entire 3-sphere encased pellets have an O.D.
of 3.94 cm.

Current nuclear technology prevents the accidental ignition of a
nuclear device by lightning, so that the chemical explosive can
only be detonated by a "tuned" laser. Other "non-sensitive" detona-
tion techniques, such as a rifle bullet or secondary explosive
(incl. fire or other incendiary device) are non-resistant to the
metal combed cladding. In addition to these measures, electro-
mechanically preset codes prevent each pellet from being detona-
ted until the pellet's transducer recieves the correct code.

***

Water can be easily extracted from intersecting a outer belt
moon, where you could extract, centrifuge, and filter out the
contaminating particulates.

***

I would think that the centrifuging of water at the asteroid
in question would be rather inefficient. You'd need to 1. get
a behemoth of a centrifuge to the asteroid (the smallest ones
I know of that would fit the requirements are VW-Beetle-sized
behemoths), 2. find a way to keep the water liquid throughout
the entire process 3. find a way of stabilizing something spin-
ning, with a considerable amount of mass inside, at 1000 to
10000 g.

There are reasons the industrial centrifuges are bolted into
place. You'd have no such luxury in space.

If you understood the dynamics of nuclear propulsion, then you
also must understand that we are, in effect, launching a small
refinery of sorts into orbit, along with teams of space technic-
ians and engineers to take care of a great deal of the logistics
of such an operation. The spinning centrifuge operation requires
a soils lab processing system: 0.25% cyanide solution is com-
bined with coarse charcoal in a high speed centrifuge while ac-
cepting regolith from the storage cannister. The 0.25% quantity
is subject to an ore 'test for fitness' prior to refining the
entire cannister. Climate controlled storage tanks for both hot
cyanide concentrate and H2O are pumped simultaneously into a
mixing tank for the refining operation.

***

The refining process for outer and Jovian moon H2O, as well as
precious metals has already been brainstormed" by many people who
are very interested in this type of exploration, as well as
extraterrestrial resource development. What is really needed here
is to convince the numbskulls in Washington that it is a very
much needed and worthwhile venture.

***

Not saying that it could not be done, but it seems to me that it
would make a hell of a lot more sense if you were to do this at
all to simply melt the ice out there, and purify it at some sort
of home base. And if we are mining the asteroid belt for materials,
then the closest logical base for that would be in orbit around
Mars. Hence we'd need bases on Mars, and thus we'd need water for
us humans to drink while we built said bases. Hence the finding of
water on the surface of Mars is still an important finding.

I'm certainly not saying that Mars could be useful in the long
run, but why not *hijack* the space program for a clear path to
the stars from earth orbit? There are even plans on the board
for faster-than-light craft (Check out Dr. Chiao's website at:
http://www.physics.berkeley.edu/research/chiao/welcome.html)

The real object here is to find some earth-like planet that sur-
rounds a G2V spectral class star, which average about one in every
70 parsecs from our own sun. The technology to do it is *here*.
Yet, there are those friends of the Dominionists (cronies) who
are friends of the rich, pure-bred brown-nosers both in govern-
ment and the private enterprise who "kiss up" to the first oppor-
tunity to recieve their blessing from them. They represent earth-
bound transnationalist Dominionism, world economic control through
burdensome environmental scare-tactics, One World Government and
religion, and world class military dictatorship.

Are governments around the world tied too strongly to oil that
"all for one and one for all" has become the motto of transnational
energy diplomacy? Aren't we exporting energy idiocy instead of
energy industry? The gold standard has been replaced by the oil
standard because of the popularity of the automobile, but if the
internal combustion engine should be replaced by the magnetoflux-
gate, isn't the new gold standard bismuth? Only one tried, true,
and tested science is all that is needed to convince a new consti-
tutional convention that our current economic system is too tied
to an antiquated 'highway' civilization that imprisons rather than
liberates the free will of space exploration.

Rhetoric is a result of the "grey area of generalization" that
Dominionists use to descibe the most "relevant technology" in terms
of "what is needed" verses "what is required" (for whom?) that is not
being communicated. It is a problem that most *intellectual capital-
ists* share independently of the Dominionist's ideology.

God commanded Moses to return to Egypt, not because Moses needed
to contact Pharaoh, but because Moses needed to gather up all the rest
of his people before they could move into the "promised land". Many
of those who would leave with Moses into the wilderness would com-
plain. Their natural desires would become barren in the wilderness,
but their renewed aspiration of truth would become a pillar of cloud
during daytime, followed by a purification, or pillar of fire by
night. This would be enough to raise them from their despair. While
in Egypt, Pharaoh insisted on punishing the Israelite foremen by re-
quiring them and their people to gather their own straw for making
bricks, rather than providing the straw, as they were used to doing.
The foremen could not keep up with producing the same quantity of
bricks while having to search for their own straw, as Pharoah
had insisted:

The Israelite foremen realized they were in trouble when they were
told, "You are not to reduce the number of bricks required of you
for each day." When they left Pharaoh, they found Moses and Aaron
waiting to meet them, and they said, "May the Lord look upon you
and judge you! You have made us a stench to Pharaoh and his offic-
ials and have put a sword in their hand to kill us."
(Exodus 5:19,20, Men's Study Bible, NIV, Zondervan, (c) 1997)

This passage represents the culmination of the workings of the Holy
Spirit in the natural world (Egypt). In the same sense that our
current Dominionist research in aerospace design represents the
Egypt of old, no effort that becomes sidetracked by liberal poli-
tical or unscientific compromise will achieve spacefaring to the
degree that believers can enter into the promised land of an in-
terstellar economy. In fact, current longsuffering in the aero-
space industry requires a greater resource for economically boot-
strapping a heavier earth-to-orbit technology, rather than requir-
ing Space Access lobbyists to beg for their own straw. (See status
of H.R.5382 "Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act"
(H.R.5382)).

Primarily, those who reject additional funding in order to re-align
the research for earth-to-orbit technology, also reject the God of
promised lands in the universe. These people represent the Senators,
Congressmen, and Legislators who are the Pharaohs of our time.
They try to make a "stench" of anything that is contrary to their slave

driving of the economy! Their slavish acolytes of our current mili-
tary industrial complex actually promote the marginalization of sci-
entific research in earth-to-orbit technology by marginalizing fun-
ding and grants necessary for real competition and common ground
to exist for venture capitalists. Case in point: The monopolization
of influence peddling by the Aerospace Industries Association for
slush funding the $15 billion Defense Export Loan Guarantee (DELG)
program. Thirty four nations have already defaulted on their loans,
amounting to $34 BILLION in credit liability! So why are we export-
ing technology when we should be creating advances on our own?

"There is nothing that is a more certain sign of insanity than to
do the same thing over and over and expect the results to be
different." - Albert Einstein

FROM THE CIVIL ENGINNEERING REFERENCE MANUAL,
P.87-2,3,4:

ENGINEERING ETHICS:

An engineer should not attempt to maliciously injure the profes-
sional reputation, business practice, or employment position of
another engineer. However, if there is proof that another engineer
has acted unethically or illegally, the engineer should advise the
proper authority.

COMPETITIVE BIDDING:

Engineers and their societies may actively and aggressively lobby
for legislation that would prohibit competitive bidding for design
services by public agencies.

DEALING WITH THE PUBLIC:

Responsibilities to the public demand that the engineer place ser-
vice to humankind above personal gain. Furthermore, proper ethical
behavior requires that an engineer avoid association with projects
that are contrary to public health and welfare or that are of
questionable legal character.

WILL SOMEBODY PLEASE HIRE ME?

In a sense, the United States suffers from an arrogant sense of
economic pride much the same way the British did during the revolu-
tionary war. With U.S. based foreign investments increasing the
prospect of a new world economy, this century will usher in the
birth of international gadgeteering, which is more or less an oli-
garchy of product and service imitators, and export of inventions
and ideas that is only a banished minor socialist characteristic
that is held in contrast to a real team based entrepreneurial asset
of western ingenuity and innovation. This new world economy is
quickly being transformed into a serpent that eats its own tail
(the consequences making it impossible to wind up in the higher
and more diversified economic growth that is a result of careful
planning and investment for long term research and development)
and eventually will devour itself, leaving only a bureaucratic head
that the unrewarded innovators of industry must eventually *emulate
or become economically trampled to death!

*The word EMULATE in the above paragraph corresponds to reprobate
mind in the sense that there is probably a great body of knowlege-
able men on the planet who have misapplied their knowledge towards
an inchoate expression of existentialist groupthink, that includes
the arbitrary dumbing down of those who don't agree with the party
mantra of the good 'ol days.

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