You make some excellent points. The moon mission was the highlight of our
times (aside from what the conspiracy-loons think) and the US dropped the
ball, no doubt for all sorts of political reasons. My feeling is that NASA
ultimately lost its "edge" as illustrated by the shuttle's nasty gasket and
detaching tiles problems.
Perhaps private enterprise - re the craft that touched the edge of space, a
short time ago, using private funding (and private intelligence) alone -
will continue the conquest of space.
Man is now back to keeping his eyes glued to the ground as opposed to
staring expectantly at the heavens.
P.
At 01:44 AM 10/1/2006 -0400, you wrote:
----- Original Message ----- From: "Standing Bear" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Saturday, September 30, 2006 10:50 PM
Subject: [Vo]: Chinese Tokomak Fusion
PS The Chinese are also interested in the Shawyer photonic drive device.
Wanted to buy the rights to it.
I think its interesting that, should a reactionless drive actually be
invented, (I do not know what is going on with Shawyer, the information
that I have seen is a bit troubling, possibly some big mistakes made),
that anyone will actually respect "rights to it." In any case, in my view,
should China ever get "rights" to something like this, we should ignore
it, and build ours anyways. Should they complain, tell them to go screw
off: its just back payment for everything they stole from the west.
In any case, its like trying to liscense the use of relativity.
Maybe this is the first puff of
wind from a storm that will blow us into a new era.
Consider the storms made by an impacting small asteroid, maybe pushed down
by a Chinese spacecraft? I do not like the idea of the Chinese having
"Space Superiority". There are plenty of rocks to find up there, just
waiting for someone to give them a nudge. I get a frightening thought of a
colony of Muslim fanatics in the asteroid belt....if most civilizations
produce backwards, fanatical cultures within themselves, it might explain
the Fermi paradox.
Space is the new high ground, and it will be a new battleground. But, I
suppose that is just our nature. We are explorers and conquerors. Maybe
that is what is causing the US to spiral down so badly; we have lost the
drive to go to new places, that spirit of conquering the unknown that puts
humans at their best. I do see one thing that might be good about the new
frontier of space: it is going to be an unparalleled challenge. If it is
so much harder to tame than what we have ever had to deal with before,
then maybe, just maybe, we might all work together in its conquest.
On that note, I think that if we do not move on to explore and conquer
space, we will eventually destroy ourselves one way or another; it won't
be from depletion of resources, or lack of new energy sources, or global
whatever. Apathy will set in, people will get further into the spirit of
today's youth, the "I don't care, lets just get stoned and have tons of
sex" attitude, and when the big problems come to face us, we won't have a
solution. Not because it doesn't exist, but because we just didn't give a
damn. The cold fusion situation might be a good example of this. If I were
to write the epitaph on some future gravestone of the human race, it would
be very simple. SELF LIMITING.
Me, I prefer what the fictional character of Khan Noonien-Singh said....
"And I got what I wanted. A world to win, an empire to build."
Man, I'm too young to be this depressing....
--Kyle
