Laying the Groundwork for Mars

You may have a good point here. There's definitely some kind of catch-22 as
things stand now.

It's tempting to invoke the government here, but their track record for
producing cheaper access to space is not impressive.


Ever consider voting for Lyndon LaRouche? I've read some magazine articles by
him and it appears that he is a very big booster of Fusion research and Space
Travel. Lets face it, John Kerry is a very weak Presidential Candidate, he
tailors his message to too many audiences and he's not very consistent. George
Bush seems to think the solution to energy independence is drilling for more
oil wells, building more refineries, but so long as Saudi Arabia is sitting on
their mountain of oil, we still have a problem. Its not that we pay a lot for
gasoline, its that the Saudi's are making money off of this energy resource and
some of that money is diverted toward terrorism. One way to fight terrorism is
to make crude oil less valuable and hence reduce their source of revenue. The
problem is their monopoly over this natural resource, we need an energy
resource that is not easy to monopolize. All the Saudis have to do is hire
foreigners to pump oil out of their land, the Saudi leadership just tells them
how much to pump. Saudi citizens have very little to do, the government makes
work for them, but the most productive people in Saudi Arabia are foreigners.
Saudis are lazy, they sit around and spend their time reading the koran, or
they irrigate the desert to grow grain using subsidized water from
desalinization plants. They can keep up their traditional lifestyle and receive
welfare, which they feel is not enough and then the look to the United States
as the source of all their problems, they spend alot of time in front of the
boob tube as the Arab Media gives their one-sided account of what's happening
in the West Bank and Gaza strip and some terrorist group passes the collection
plate in the mosque while some cleric delivers a firery sermon about the need
to fight a holy war against the West.
I'd like to pull the plug on this activity by drying up their revenue stream,
forcing them to work so they don't have as much time to worry about the
Palestinians, and don't have the spare cash to give to their favorite terrorist
charity.
In short I'd like to see all the cars in production to be hydrogen fuel cell
cars and later down the road we can have fusion power plants to power
electrolysis plants that extract hydrogen from water and thus have a 100%
hydrogen economy.
I don't know much about Lyndon LaRouche, perhaps someone else knows more.

Tom

In article ,
(TKalbfus) wrote:

Ever consider voting for Lyndon LaRouche? I've read some magazine articles by
him and it appears that he is a very big booster of Fusion research and Space
Travel. Lets face it, John Kerry is a very weak Presidential Candidate, he
tailors his message to too many audiences and he's not very consistent.

Not that this has much of anything to do with s.s.p. at this point, but
the above statement is utter bunk. John Kerry looked a roomful of UAW
representatives in the eye and told them he supported NAFTA and would
continue to support it because he believed it was the best thing for the
country in the long run. That's not a politician who tells his audience
whatever they want to hear, nor one who is inconsistent.

Of course at this point I'd vote for pretty much anybody who isn't Bush.
But I'm glad that anybody is Kerry, because I think he can do a good job.

I don't know much about Lyndon LaRouche, perhaps someone else knows more.

He's irrelevant, politically speaking. It's either Bush or Kerry for
the next four years.

,------------------------------------------------------------------.
| Joseph J. Strout Check out the Mac Web Directory: |
| http://www.macwebdir.com |
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Mike Combs wrote:
"Sander Vesik" wrote in message
...

Yes - but that is economies of sccale that apply to the next user - you
first need the initial "sacrifial user" who pays for the full
infrastructre
but doesn't get the benefits. At least as things stand.

You may have a good point here. There's definitely some kind of catch-22 as
things stand now.

It's tempting to invoke the government here, but their track record for
producing cheaper access to space is not impressive.


I'm not sure if it is a catch-22, but teh only reasonable way to get
"there" appears to be increased sustained demand from *multiple*
sources. Otherwise whoever wants the increase pays the capital costs
and the following availability depends on whetever it would be profitable
to continue to use the increased facility or scrap it. The same as with
any business. Imagine that instead of 'cheap launchers' we were talking
about 'cheap de loreans'.

Unless the follow-on demand exists, it will almost certainly be more
profitable to scrap the additional facility (remember, they dind't
pay for it) and go back to offering less but higher priced launches.

The only alternative would be true international competition - which
you won't get until everybody who started serving in pentagon or
state depertment or cia before sometime in teh 90s has not just
retired but left the scene. Which will take a long time.

--
Sander

+++ Out of cheese error +++

He's irrelevant, politically speaking. It's either Bush or Kerry for
the next four years.


Oh come now! You know as well as I do, that Kerry is at best lukewarm in his
support for space travel. I remember seeing a few elections back a LaRouche
campaign commercial with a grandeose scheme to build a Moonbase. I've seen
articles of his giving massive support for an ambitious Fusion research
program, were talking about $100 billion worth here.

Now what does Kerry bring to the table?
he's a great tightrope walker. The primary process in the Democratic party is
flawed. Kerry is the best candidate for places like New Hampshire, or Iowa; the
contested states in the electoral system. In other words the extreme wings of
the party selects the candidate and in the General election the general voters
have to choose from what the two parties offer. With an incumbant its a
different matter, usually the incumbat party chooses the incumbant in office so
at least that candidate has a track record as president and he doesn't have to
appeal to the right wing of his party this time around to become the nominee.
the problem is the mainstream votes don't participate in the party's primaries,
since moderate voters are more concerned with choosing the right president
rather that seeing that the party they happen to be a member of wins, they
often sit out the party primaries leaving the extremists partisans to vote in
the primaries and select the candidate. John F. Kerry is a creature of this
process, and the process tends to select candidates who tailor their message to
two different groups of voters. First he has to get chosen by the Democratic
party's leftwing primary voters and convince them that he believes enough in
their leftwing ideology so they vote for him, and then he has to prove that he
is moderate enough to the general voter to actually be elected President.

A better process would be Regional Primaries. You can have one for the South,
One for the Northeast and Mid Atlantic States, One for the Midwest and Mountain
states, and one for the Pacific Coast, Alaska, and Hawaii.

Now you have a second round of primaries one is conducted in the Eastern United
States between the South and the Northeast and Mid Atlantic States; and another
round between the Midwest Mountain vs the Pacific Coast Alaska and Hawaii and
finally we have two candidates running in the general election with no national
parties, only local parties of each state. The voting should be non-electoral,
simply be one voter per vote.

The election process ignores the residual voters in each state. The Republicans
of New York and the Democrats of Texas have no say in choosing the US President
as it now stands. The we have the annoying problem of Gerrymandering the
congressional districts every ten years. Instead the congressional districts
should have fixed borders that do not change from decade to decade, instead the
vote of each representative should be weighted the reflect the population of
each congressional district. Everytime a new census is conducted each
representative for each district gets a new weighting for his vote in Congress.
I think at most the congressional districts should be redrawn every 100 years
to get it close to 1 district one vote for congress. New States are an
exception of course. The Moon is a potential New State. I think at a minimum
every state should have at least two Senate votes and one congressional vote.
So Making the Moon into a State would produce 3 votes for development of the
Moon with Federal dollars.

Tom

In article ,
(TKalbfus) wrote:

He's irrelevant, politically speaking. It's either Bush or Kerry for
the next four years.


Oh come now! You know as well as I do, that Kerry is at best lukewarm in his
support for space travel. I remember seeing a few elections back a LaRouche
campaign commercial with a grandeose scheme to build a Moonbase...

snip

None of which has any bearing on the accuracy of my statement. I'm all
for space development too, are you planning to write in my name in
November?

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| Joseph J. Strout Check out the Mac Web Directory: |
| http://www.macwebdir.com |
`------------------------------------------------------------------'

Joe Strout wrote in
:

In article ,
(TKalbfus) wrote:

Ever consider voting for Lyndon LaRouche? I've read some
magazine articles by him and it appears that he is a very
big booster of Fusion research and Space Travel. Lets face
it, John Kerry is a very weak Presidential Candidate, he
tailors his message to too many audiences and he's not
very consistent.


I don't know much about Lyndon LaRouche, perhaps someone
else knows more.

Lyndon LaRouche is an evil opportunist of the lowest and
worst sort. I'd as soon vote for Hitler.

No, I mean it. Evil, as in a skin cancer on the face of
American politics that needs to be excised as soon as possible.

I don't like the mainstream choices myself, but Bush seems
the best of several unpalatable choices.

--Damon

Damon Hill writes:
Lyndon LaRouche is an evil opportunist of the lowest and
worst sort. I'd as soon vote for Hitler.

I though this was common knowledge... I must admit it's kind of surreal
actually seeing posts where L.L. is taken remotely seriously.

Has he just been in jail for so long that people have forgotten who he is?

I don't like the mainstream choices myself, but Bush seems
the best of several unpalatable choices.

Bush has ****ed things up pretty badly so far; it seems time to give
someone else a chance (to **** things up :-)....

-Miles
--
`The suburb is an obsolete and contradictory form of human settlement'

Bush has ****ed things up pretty badly so far; it seems time to give
someone else a chance (to **** things up :-)....


He has in fact done quite well considering the crap he inherited. I'm voting
for him.

None of which has any bearing on the accuracy of my statement. I'm all
for space development too, are you planning to write in my name in
November?


I just want to know who Lyndon LaRouche is? So far no one has explained beyond
calling him evil. Some people call George Bush evil too, but what I want to
know is why?
The explanation that George Bush is evil because he wanted to remove Saddam
Hussein from power is not very convincing.

Tom

None of which has any bearing on the accuracy of my statement. I'm all
for space development too, are you planning to write in my name in
November?


So he's not the candidate of either party, so what does that say exactly? Kerry
is not the best candidate either, Liberman would have been better. It was all a
matter of chance who was selected to be the Presidential candidate, and it all
has to do with which states were selected for the first primaries. This method
doesn't choose the best candidate and it is unrepresentative of the American
people.
Many people would vote for candidate 'X' instead of candidate 'Y' because 'X'
was higher in the opinion polls than 'Y' and they don't want to waste their
vote, the is the political equivalent of a speculative bubble. People buy a
stock because its price is going higher and fail consider the underlying value
of the company it represents.
Now how about you? are you considering the value of the candidate himself
rather than just the fact that the Democratic party selected him? Maybe the
Democrats made a bad selection, isn't that possible? There is an opportunity
for third-party candidates to win in November.

Tom