Re: Hillary needs to quit

In article <I7udndub1OlhFmfanZ2dnUVZ_hKdnZ2d@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
pv+usenet@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 (PV) wrote:

> Beowulf Bolt <abd.al-hazred@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> writes:
> >  Is it strong enough to withstand the inevitable terrorist attacks? 
> 
> Let's leave off the fear mongering, thank you very much.
> 
> >Can sufficient security be arranged for it, given that it would have to
> >be built on the equator rather than 'safely' within the continental US?
> 
> There is no reason to build a space elevator that is dependent on one
> strand. And a bunch of mopes with boxcutters aren't going to pull it
down.
> 
> I mean really, get some perspective here. Due to some fundamentally
stupid
> decisions on intelligence gathering, choices to not listen to people who
> knew better, and a belief that hijackers aren't generally suicidal, a
> really tragic thing happened. But only the biggest coward on earth sets
the
> priorities of the entire country, and the world, by the consequences of
> that act. Oh, wait. 

It'll never be financially feasible. With modern economics there could
never be a Paris sewer system or a New York subway system or a Panama
Canal. If the technology had existed a hundred years ago it might've
gotten done. The answers this technology's advocates come up with for what
they call an "investment" worth any cost no matter how astronomical range
from the delusional to the wild refusal to think in any practical or
realistic terms. And even the lunar-loonies who try to be advocates really
only fancy an elevator to the moon just makes it easier to see if there's
anything valuable out in the asteroid fields, as there ain't gonna be
nuttin' on the moon.

If you could play football on top of the space elevator while seating an
audience of thousands, or guarantee a very tiny number of super-rich all
proceeds from a mightily lucrative resource, then the helpless masses
might all get tricked into paying for it with masses of new taxes and
thousand year bonds.  But there are no gold mines and oil fields waiting
on the moon, so no reason to bankrupt the poor under the burden of
taxation plus incur the thousand-year-debt for one project that has no
financial bonanza for the few.

If benefitting the masses had anything to do with anything we'd all have
free energy gathered on our rooftops from the sun rather than the promise
of more super-polluting atomic plants and the future demise of all the
world's rivers for anything use beyond dynamos. The bad methods indebt us
all to the wealthy even if the whole planet is destroyed by it, but the
beneficial methods are invariably declared impractical or impossible. The
space elevator would be an attractive protject only if every human being
was willing to pay a high monthly rate forever to get nothing in exchange.
Indebted to the power authority at least gets us what we need to vegetate
in front of televisions and computer screens. What opiate will be get from
the space elevator in trade for further enriching the wealthy? If we
really, really, really needed grey beads made of glass to be happy, maybe
we'd swallow that boondoggle, but not until.

For it looks like the ingredients for a humongous glass-manufacturing
industry is the only thing mining the moon would provide, and until glass
is worth a thousands of dollars per ounce it's not enough. Even if glass
WERE worth enough, about fifteen new areas of technology would be required
because mining in low gravity is not the same kettle of fish as mining on
earth, it's going to take a heck of lot more than a magic space hook. And
no one is even on the page of the imagination where such a process might
begin, and no one expects it would have any viability in the cost to
profit ratio. Advocates confronted by the simplest realities have only
dreaminess in their replies, having mistaken their childhood fondness for
Star Trek for science.

-paghat the ratgirl
-- 
visit my temperate gardening website:
http://www.paghat.com.html
visit my film reviews webiste:
http://www.weirdwildrealm.com