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First I must say that I am for all the international treaties,
like the ABM
treaty unillaterally broken by who had an important role in
its creation (USA),
that promote peace and reductions of weapons. I consider Bush
an irresponsable
person for destroying one by one, these treaties that have
been the base of
world peace for years and could one day be the base for
working out our
environmental problems (like going against the Kyoto protocol,
another great
"big-mistake" from the Bush
administration). These, along with the "no trees
no forestal fires" (George W. Bush) and many others state a
great danger in
the hands of somebody so powerful as the president of the US
is.
I don't think the danger is on China (they are on the path of
Russia to gain
human spaceflight capability -- and that path is not nuclear
bombs as "propellant").
The danger is "at home". A few years ago, we would state that
"Poject Orion" is
simply not necessary and incredibly dangerous, and we would
seek wiser and
safer ways to conquer space. Now, we seems to be on the age of
"everything
can make it", we are back to the past. To the cold war era of
worshiping
something as silly and random, and unwise for its
uncontrolability as an
athomic bomb is. And folks, I just want to state my opinion.
We are not on
the right lane.
As for using space materials to build a "giant" antena instead
to using
devices that unfold, well, we don't have space manufacturing
capabilities
and we wont have them in years. And I can asure you that it
will come after
we are totally capable of unfolding any device, no matter its
size. Are we
forgetting about the brillint future of inflatable devices,
and more efficient
and reliable mechanics? Weren't we talking about "inflatable"
a few months
ago, before we run into this mad race to get things done real
fast, just
thinking that nuclear is the easy panacea, the easy way that
solves every
single problem of ours?
No way.
-- Hibai Unzueta
Conventional thinking insists that radioactive materials are only weapons if you can make them explode into big fireballs. Unconventional thinking realizes that a pound of low grade radioactive material could be merely pulverized, and put into the atmosphere or water supplies to be a terrible weapon. Presume that the radioactive material is such low grade quality that it only kills 1% of those it comes in contact with. So what? Mass panic and public paranoia will kill off an additional 5-10%, not to mention the enormous costs of a clean-up, resettlement of populations, economic shocks, and so forth.
Conventional thinking insists that you have to fold up your instruments into nice little packages, that hopefully unfold from their compartments in time to get the job done. Unconventional thinking realizes that with the amount of raw materials (iron, carbon, silica, etc) already floating around up there, you could simply manufacture an immense antenna. Why bother with a 10 meter folding antenna, when you can make a crude antenna 100 meters long? Key point: it ain't pretty, but it gets the job done. -- JH Byrne |
