Re: Global wireless hotspot

On 29 Jan, 00:42, Willie.Moo...@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
On Jan 28, 2:57 pm, Ian Parker <ianpark...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

BTW - The decision to have a small number of Saturn flights (LBJ) and
the decision to completely cancel Saturn and go for the Shuttle are
decisions of a completely different nature. The one is comprehensible
on cost grounds, the other completely incomprehensible. You go for new
systems when you are flush with cash.

  - Ian Parker

ITs incomprehensible because you refuse to accept the notion that
Nixon's goals in space were not what yours are.  His goal was to in
effect twiddle the thumbs of the civilian space program - keeping our
technical capacity while not doing something that would create
problems because of space development.

I believe that all the problems that Nixon and Eisenhower saw, were
actually opportunities for greatness that we sidelined, and we may pay
the ultimate price.

There is always risk in change.  There is certainty in no change.
That certainty is called death.  Think about it, total lack of change
is a feature of something that is dead.  Life entails accepting and
dealing with the change life brings you.  Hiding away and lying to
yourself about the world, may seem like the easier way, but it
foregoes the pain of growth by avoiding growth and ceding the growth
to others.

Now the US has powerful means at its disposal to create disparities
between itself and the rest of the world - in economics and technology
and so forth.  So, the US can in this way export this propensity for
death.  So, rather than lose out to others who might challenge us in
space - we see space programs fail - and with it the idea that space
is useful for anything is undermined - so what is the result of that?

Obvious

The whole world dies with us.

And that's what we are seeing surrounding us today.

And people without a thing to lose - will do anything - including
flying planes into buildings, or spending their lives getting their
hands on a loose nuke, and setting it off in the center of a powerful
city.

In the end, we will have created the very problems we hoed to avoid by
our inaction.  And we would have avoided these problems had we
accepted the challenges of growth and worked through them.

Its stil not too late.  Later perhaps than when I started writing this
in the 1990s.  The loose nukes can still be brought under control.
Enhanced proliferation goals can still be propose.  The world can
still be united under a program to do a manned grand tour of the solar
system using nuclear pulse rockets fueled by cold war weapons.

Once, God forbid, the loose nukes go off in our cities - once the
Chinese unload their debt - then the US is down for the count for a
generation at least - and the Chinese will be holding all the
resources - and we will find it very difficult to move forward after
that.

I think we are talking slighly at cross purposes. I am talking about
how you spend a fixed sum of money. The Shuttle in fact cost a lot
more than keping Saturn ever would have done. In terms of philosophy,
yes standing still is suicidal. In fact the Shuttle has allowed ESA to
very much close the gap. In fact ESA/Soyuz will actually be IN ADVANCE
of America. If I had a large/medium sized pot I would have developed
nuclear and ion propulsion for the upper stages. To LEO would of
course have been non nuclear. A smaller pot and just solar powered ion
drives.

I think you exaggerate the impact that America now haws. ESA has had a
relatively small pot, but a pot which is consistent year in year out.
ESA money has on the whole been well spent.


- Ian Parker
.