Space travel not war

The United States since the end of world war two has aranged things
to avoid the possibility of another surprise attack in the nuclear
age. We have been largely successful in this regard.

This success has been achieved by exploiting the retail and banking
functions within the economy to maintain a large disparity of income
between the United States and the rest of the world. This derives
from the fact that shop owners and bankers make a lot more money than
tinkers, tailors bakers or craftsmen. And, all these fellows make
more money than famers and miners.

That is, its common knowledge that the US controls most of the trade
retailing and branding in the world, while US farming and
manufacturing have been sent overseas. Our allies control most of the
manufacturing, and everyone else supplies raw materials and food for
those allies to process into goods that are then marketed to the rest
of the world by the United States.

Not well understood is that the banking and trading systems set up as
extensions to the Marshall Plan were designed to enforce a trading
regime that was permanently favorable to the United States. It has
been known since the beginning that this advantage would be
temporary. George Kennan and others who authored these plans to
maintain peace in the nuclear age that they would one day fail. So,
alternatives would have to be developed. These alternatives include
'direct military action to maintain US superiority' or 'alternatives
to the present control regime'.

Unfortunately the United States cannot maintain a disparity of income
through trade if it is at war with those it is trading with - so this
direct military action angle wasn't well thought out. Also
unfortunate, is there appears that no alternative to the present
control regime has been seriously considered or pursued.

This leaves us in a bit of a sticky wicket.

I believe the development of industrial scale space travel would have
opened the Earth to off-world resources and allowed the United States
to maintain a disparity of income not by appropriating through trading
arrangements the bulk of the world's wealth, but by vastly expanding
the wealth of the world by augmenting it with off-world resources.
Furthermore, by using advanced technology to maintain ourselves as the
lowest cost producer of raw materials off-world, and off-shore, we
could easily maintain a more positive hegemonic control by supplying
the opposite end of the economc spectrum - by controlling nearly 100%
of the raw materials of the world, even while our 4% of the world's
population finally took only 4% or so of the wolrd's wealth.

That is, rather than maintain an untenable dominance in the world, we
could maintain necessary control by shifting our roles as we achieved
our goals of nuclear peace and developed off world resources..

This disparity of income has been used to support a continuous war
footing in the nuclear age.necessary to maintain global hegemony. The
money was used to support our military and intelligence operations
throughout the world which in turn was used to maintain our favored
trading position.

The world resopnse to this situation has been rational and
irrational. On the rational side, we have the emergence of markets
and trading regimes that are fairer to those we seek to exploit. The
rise of the European Union, the rise of the Chinese stock market, the
power of the Yuan and Euro are all challenges to the power of the US
markets and US dollar. Also, the first allies to benefit from US
transfer of manufacturing capital and know-how have given rise to
German and Japanese marques and brands that have challenged the
dominance of US branding and marketing. Nixon's opening to China not
only sought to divide the then monolithic Communist powers, but also
sought to extend our manufacturing base beyond Japan and Germany and
thereby undercut both as they built their brands in the US. On the
irrational side you have extremists who view the United States as un
deserving of ts role, and who seek to destroy it by direct military
action. Despite the abject lack of power and capabilities when
compared to the United States, lhe direct attacks against the United
States have been used by the Bush Administration to write their own
ticket in terms of military retaliation when and where they want -
irrespective of facts. The successful surprise attack of 9/11 has not
been seen as a failure of our control regime nor has caused anyone to
question it seriously. Any serious questioning has been subsumed in
specious arguments that seek to marginalize the dicsussion.

Yet the US faces serious challenges. Not from its extremist
adversaries. But from its own failed policies and lack of creative
solutions going forward.

Throughout this period from 1947 through 2007 - the US has had several
clear warnings that it was on the wrong track. We went from the
world's largest exporter in 1950 to the world's largest importer in
1960. by 1970 - with foreigners having nothing to buy with the
dollars we paid them for all our imports - inflation was rampant, and
we had to abandon the gold standard. The value of the dollar was more
or less constant - except in times of war - throughout the history of
the United States. At the beginning of the Cold War, our dollar went
into free fall and has never recovered. This had the predictable
effect of causing massive commodity price increases, but did not
change the income disparities that held the control paradigm in
place. By 1980, without a stable currency underlying it, low interest
banking sources went bankrupt. Without low interest loans, the cost
of major capital improvements skyrocketed, and public works became a
thing of the past, meanwhile bridges, hospitalls, schools,
universities, all stopped capital spending or got far less for their
capital spending than previously. By 1990 the United States once the
world's greates creditor nation, became the world's greatest debtor
nation. By 2000 we began suffering attacks from extremsts who viewed
the United States as undeserving of its position in the world. In
2001 a major attack succeeded. Expert opinion says that a handful of
the tens of thousands of nuclear weapons held by the former Soviet
Union are likely in the hands of terrorists today. They only lack a
delivery system to bring these weapons to the United States. Before
2010 one report writes, the United States has a 50% chance of
suffering a nuclear terror attack that could destroy one or more major
cities.

Meanwhile the US is unilaterally engaged in a series of costly
military actions that is causing its currency to decline at a rate of
20% per annum. If God forbid - a successful surprise attack
coordinated against major banking and retail centers (NYC, Chicago,
LA) by loose nukes in shipping containers then we can expect that to
cause the a period of hyperinlfation for US.

This unlike commodity price increases, destroys the US ability to
maintain its position in the world, and to do anything to recover from
it quickly. In the interim the US could permanently lose control of
its trading and retail empire, and would be powerless to mount any
sort of sustained military action to re-establish it. It should also
be noted that we attained our dominant position not by military
action, but by aiding others who engaged in military actions - so, its
clear that forbearance from military action is called for
regardless. Before New York, Vienna was the stock market capital of
the world. London and New York vied for control when Vienna suffered
a reversal it could not recover from. China, Japan, Europe, even
Sydney, are all potential future centers in the wake of a failure in
the US markets. A surpirse nuclear attack shoudl we be so unlucky to
survive one would accelerate the trends that are undermining the US
economy -it does not create it from whole cloth.

I mentioned earlier that the we could develop off-world resources as a
means to maintain control and maintain nuclear peace in the world. We
could have done that by agressive development of nuclear pulse
spacecraft. The same $5 trillion that was spent wiring our world for
nuclear destruction, could have been spent building thousands of
nuclear pulse spacecraft that opened the resources of the solar system
to humanity - and made the United States a gateway to the cosmos - and
cosmic wealth.

The world ships about 6 billion tons of cargo per year. 2/3 of that
is oil and coal. 2 billion tons are food, fiber, finished goods and
so forth. That's about 1 ton per person - or 1/3 ton per person
worldwide. The US consumes about 4 tons per person - apart from oil
and coal. The world's 9.5 million millionaires consume about 40 tons
per person - apart from fuels consumed.

By maintaining a disparity of income by being 'first among equals' in
growing an economy from raw materials forward - is a more positive and
more tenable solution to our problem today.

Can we really get materials cheaply from across the solar system?

Why not start with energy?

Terrestrial solar power arrives fresh from the sun every morning in
quantities that dwarf our industrial needs. Today we generate about
15 trilllion watts of industrial energy. Most of this is obtained by
burning fossil fuels. 28.3 billion barrels of oil each year, 5.5
billion tons of coal, and 1.1 billion tons of natural gas. All of
this will be replaced with 3.34 billion tons of hydrogen made from 30
billion tons of water, decomposed with 98 trillion watts of solar
panels covering 556,000 sq km. This system is easily expanded to
double the present US per capita energy use for the entire world by
adding 556,000 sq km of power satellite on orbit beaming laser energy
to the same solar collectors - raising continuous output to over 248
trillion watts. This trend may continue by orbiting power satellites
close to the solar surface and beaming high intensity energy across
the solar system. Bob Forward showed how laser energy may be beamed
from star to star to power interstellar voyages. This same technique
may be used WITHIN the solar system to power worlds. Why not power
the Earth? This last stage not only solves our energy problem, but
prepares us for low cost interplanetary travel, and also for
interstellar voyages and experimentation with anti-matter and black
hole dusts.

In conjunction with building large solar panels arrays, a reusable
heavy lift launcher is constructed, capable of placing 500 tons into
GEO. This small fleet of launchers, first puts up a network of
broadband iwreless communications satellites that provide global
wireless internet to the world. Through this channel, US companies
may offer a wide range of micro-banking and other financial services
to the world in addition to communications functions.

The US may then use its pre-eminent communications capability to
develop telerobotic systems. These systems may be used to build tele-
operated factories, managed by US labor, employing low wage labor
thorughout the world. Here, know how and capital is retained within
US borders,and shared among US workers, while foreign workers earn
less, but per Henry Ford's teaching,enough to buy what they make. In
this innovative way, we may maintain control even while we re-acquire
our manufacturing and mining and farming functions in the United
States.

Expand our tele-operated production off-whore and off-world to expand
our low cost access to raw materials other than energy.

Within 36 years of 9% growth world wide and 3% growth in the US, per
capita income rises to $180,000 per year on average - and energy use
rates and raw material use rates on a per capita basis - match that of
the US. Within 90 years of 9% growth - beyond this point - world per
capita income rises to $4,000,000 per year on average - with general
access off-world available to all - and private ownership of space
homes commonplace.

At the end of this period we can expect several developments to
obviate the need for continued military expenditures.

Why?

The first is that we will become tame if we allow ourselves growth.

Emergence of a 'tame' human in the absence of thwarting and
frustration of impulses toward life is assured. The experience of the
Russians in this regard is quite interesting;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tame_Silver_Fox

Second, the experience of even cislunar space travel has profound
psychological and emotional effects even upon hard-core jock fighter
pilot types

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_of_Noetic_Sciences#History

general access to solar system resources by thousands or even millions
of people, will no doubt result in profound insights among a handful
that will inform and organize the bulk of humanity in new and
wonderful ways. Ultimately, the bulk of humanity will live off world
aboard low cost pressure vessels complete with their own ecology -
leading many to similar insights.

These two trends taken together - will have a profound influence on
the politics of humanity in the future.

Rather than avoiding or resisting these trends, it would be beneficial
for the US to embrace these trends to continue to maintain nuclear
peace in the world, and eventually peaceful resolution of all conflict
as we enter the age of truly civilized human beings.
..
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Relevant Pages

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