All an adversary would have to do is destroy a couple of satellites to create a chain reaction of wrecked satellites and we would have no power. They could even claim them as a military target, since the microwave beams could easily be used as a weapon. The Russians have weapons that can destroy objects on orbit. As do we. As I'm sure the Chinese do.
Orbital debris is already a problem, and we're not doing it on purpose yet.
We are going to have a Kessler Cascade anyway unless we clean up the orbital debris. A solar satellites program practically demands such a clean up anyway. It's a win win for the planet.
The possibility of hostile attack exists even if we withdraw all troops & businesses from the rest of the planet. There is no zero risk universe, period.
I lived through MAD and still have ICBMs aimed at my house. ( based on circular error probability of Soviet & Chinese missiles ) The Twin Towers are gone. Army shrinks murder in the name of Allah on our own bases. Gay nightclubs get shot up, same cause. Putin threatens nuclear war like I eat popcorn.
Just because it's a hostile environment doesn't mean we shouldn't try to make everyone on the planet richer and safer and free-er. Which cheap, readily available power will do. Without paying for terrorism in the middle East.
The bonus is lots of good paying jobs. An infrastructure that makes asteroid mining practical. More wealth created than in human history.
And we REALLY, REALLY want to hold the high ground, and not abandon it to, say, China.
Because they will build orbital battle stations and drop nukes in their enemies. It's an order of magnitude harder to stop an incoming nuke if the boost phase was months ago as part of a supply launch, and the re-entry burn took place over Siberia where our radars can't see.
Besides, the Death Ray scare is science fiction, propaganda from leftists, and the power frequencies can't be used as such. ( not saying we couldn't build orbital death rays, but it's impractical to do so with the world watching in a free society. Which, arguably, we still have. Maybe This is the thread about the Worst Person Ever Who Will Kill Us All. )
The lack of control of spending is one of the "hang em high" things I am very unhappy about.
[snip]
Trump has promised that he signed the last CR a very short while back. I'll believe it when I see it. He might make a real show over the illegality of the spending, and get some action. Good luck.
President Trump emphasized, repeatedly, that he reluctantly signed the continuing resolution to guarantee funding for our military.
There was then discussion in the days following regarding "rescission" in terms of how funds itemized in the CR are actually dispensed.
Which dovetails nicely with this tweet from P45 yesterday afternoon:
quote:
The HISTORIC Rescissions Package we’ve proposed would cut $15,000,000,000 in Wasteful Spending! We are getting our government back on track.
-- President Donald J. Trump, 4:06 PM - Jun 5, 2018
Or better yet, begin the First Effective Real Sustainable Energy Project. Building orbital solar satellites.
We are going to have a Kessler Cascade anyway unless we clean up the orbital debris.
As technology stands, at this point, the former all most certainly would result in the later. With no guarantee it would be practical in the first place.
Moreover cleaning up current orbital debris would be akin to cleaning up the remnants of every plastic shopping bag across the entire earth. Note: You would be trying to attempt this while dodging billions of bits of debris traveling at hypersonic velocities.
President Trump participates in the signing ceremony of the "VA Mission Act of 2018," a bill that will introduce sweeping reforms to the Veterans Affairs healthcare system - June 6, 2018:
Guarantee it to be practical? The technology was invented by Nikola Tesla. Tested near Colorado Springs. Has to be as "practical" as our best bird slaughtering technology.
I have noticed that the same folk who insist solar panels in cloudy Germany are practical insist the same things in orbit are not. Given the history of deliberate dishonesty by Greenies, I call that proof I'm right.
Cleaning up the orbital debris is necessary, and not dodging the hypersonic bits is how you do it. Of course, I expect problems, any engineers would. Heck, I can see the two headlines now. "New foam nets launched to clean up orbital hazards in NASA program" & "Foam debris greatest hazard in space today".
It's a binary problem. Don't try and we lose GPS, weather, and communication satellites. The ISS has to be evacuated and falls. Night watchers have a constant view of shooting stars.
Or we can try to clean up after ourselves and fail until we succeed.
I am well aware it is against United Nations regulations to even try, and that alone tells me it's a good idea.
I find moral choices easier than ever. Look to the desires of the most evil & power hungry and chose the opposite.
Just like "draining the swamp". When nearly everyone in Gomorrah hates you and tells you you can't fight sin, you can tell your cause is good.
Oh, it's an imperfect system. You end up with Game Show hosts running things, and the streets full of sewage as the drains overflow. ( consider that a metaphor for media commentary )
It remains to be seen if the swamp gets even temporarily lower, but it's more visible than ever, as the concealing waters recede, and we see they were only millimeter thick, not bottomless.
We just need to build an Orion with a ~100 foot diameter, ~12" thick steel disk on the front and some suitable netting around the perimeter to catch what you pulverize. Put that in orbit and bulldoze all the crap!
The technology was invented by Nikola Tesla. Tested near Colorado Springs.
I wasn't aware that Nikola Tesla invented the technology to launch anything into space. As for the Colorado experiment the results are largely unknown and undocumented.
"New foam nets launched to clean up orbital hazards in NASA program"
Even if it did work (without creating more debris than it collected) sweeping low earth orbits alone with any mechanical devise would take hundreds of years.
Colliding with even small bits of orbiting debris only causes it to spread and even a tiny piece is enough to disable a satellite. Satellites must by necessity be very light and are therefore very fragile, and yes we lose them more often than most people know to "space junk" collisions. One of the holy grails of satellite design would be to armor it without making it too heavy.
I understand the engineering challenges. I spent two decades designing satellites with a major part of it being modules (ORUs) mounted on the Space Station.
Too bad Tesla didn't invent a broad sweep gravity beam.
WATCH: Alice Johnson thanks Pres. Trump, Kim Kardashian upon release from prison after life sentence commuted: "I feel like my life is starting over again. This is a miracle day!"
Today we mark another milestone: the 74th anniversary of #DDay, the Allied invasion of Normandy. On June 6, 1944, more than 70,000 brave young Americans charged out of landing craft, jumped out of airplanes, and stormed into hell...
[video at link - FB]
-- President Donald J. Trump, 3:37 PM - Jun 6, 2018
U.S. Trade Deficit Narrowed Sharply in April; Big Net Positive for 2Q GDP PPD Staff - June 6, 2018
The Census Bureau and Bureau of Economic Analysis said the U.S. trade deficit narrowed sharply to $46.2 billion in April. That’s down $1.0 billion from a revised $47.2 billion in March and far under the $53.1 billion monthly average of the first quarter 2018 (1Q).
The 3-month average goods and services deficit decreased $2.2 billion to $49.6 billion for the three months ending in April. Average exports increased $2.9 billion to $209.3 billion and average imports increased $0.7 billion to $259.0 billion.
The report indicates a big net-positive for second-quarter (2Q) gross domestic product (GDP), which the Atlanta Federal Reserve currently forecasts at a whopping 4.5%.
American Job Openings Now Outnumber the Jobless By Eric Morath, The Wall Street Journal - June 5, 2018
The U.S. had more job openings this spring than unemployed Americans.
For the first time since such record-keeping began in 2000, the number of available positions exceeded the number of job seekers, the Labor Department said Tuesday, a shift that is rippling across the economy and affecting the behavior of employers and workers.
The figures are the latest sign the U.S. is facing a historically tight labor market. The jobless rate ticked down further in May to a seasonally adjusted 3.8%, the lowest since April 2000, the Labor Department said last week. The last time the rate was lower was in 1969, when young men were being drafted into the Vietnam War.
So grateful to President Trump, Jared Kushner & to everyone who has showed compassion & contributed countless hours to this important moment for Ms. Alice Marie Johnson. Her commutation is inspirational & gives hope to so many others who are also deserving of a second chance.
Greg, we should probably move this to the science thread.
The NASA foam comment was a mockery of NASA, deserved or not.
Tesla's power transmission experiment was...... Preliminary. It did succeed in lighting up light bulbs at a distance, the crudest proof of concept you can get. Not repeated, or instrumented, so no useful data. But! The first Brownout in history! As Tesla took all the available juice and hurled it across a valley. Gotta be points for that.
Modern experiments with drone power show promise. I think it's just sweat & money at this point. The big thing is infrastructure. Getting into orbit, lots of mass to orbit. Not just a space station, but also a moon base to build solar panels from native rock.
If you tell me it's all just a sneaky way to build the Luna Hilton and Space Patrol asteroid defense force...... I won't argue. Just don't tell anyone else....shhhhhh!
Subject: President Trump Commutes Sentence of Alice Marie Johnson
[snip]
Ms. Johnson has accepted responsibility for her past behavior and has been a model prisoner over the past two decades. Despite receiving a life sentence, Alice worked hard to rehabilitate herself in prison, and act as a mentor to her fellow inmates. Her Warden, Case Manager, and Vocational Training Instructor have all written letters in support of her clemency. [emphasis mine - FB]
Total Jobless Claims Running at Lowest Level in 44 Years By Joseph Lawler, Washington Examiner - June 7, 2018
The total number of workers receiving unemployment benefits is running at the lowest levels in 44 years, the Department of Labor reported Thursday in more encouraging news about the economy.
Over the most recent month, the total number of workers getting benefits fell to 1.73 million, the lowest such number since December of 1973.
[snip]
The low new claims "signal more than enough strength in employment growth to keep the unemployment rate trending down," noted Jim O'Sullivan, chief U.S. economist for High Frequency Economics.
Yet, at 3.8 percent in May, the unemployment rate is already as low as it has been since 1969.
Also, there are now more advertised job openings than there are unemployed workers. That hasn't been the case in decades.
I think the last civil conversations we had occurred just days before November 8, 2016. You were supremely confident Hillary Clinton would win the presidential election; you voted for her with glee. As a lifelong Republican, I bit down hard and cast my vote for Donald Trump. Then the unimaginable happened. He won.
And you lost your freaking minds.
I knew you would take the loss hard—and personally—since all of you were super jacked-up to elect the first woman president. But I did not imagine you would become totally deranged, attacking anyone who voted for Trump or supported his presidency as a racist, sexist, misogynistic, homophobic Nazi-sympathizer.
The weirdness started on social media late on Election Night, as it became clear Hillary was going to lose. A few of you actually admitted that you were cradling your sleeping children, weeping, wondering what to tell your kindergartner the next morning about Trump’s victory. It continued over the next several days. Some of you seriously expressed fear about modern-day concentration camps. Despite living a privileged lifestyle, you were suddenly a casualty of the white patriarchy. Your daughters were future victims; your sons were predators-in-waiting. You threatened to leave Facebook because you could no longer enjoy the family photos or vacation posts from people who, once friends, became Literal Hitlers to you on November 8 because they voted for Donald Trump.
I admit I was a little hurt at first. The attacks against us Trump voters were so personal and so vicious that I did not think it could be sustained. I thought maybe you would regain your sanity after some turkey and egg nog.
But you did not. You got worse. And I went from sad to angry to where I am today: Amused.
As the whole charade you have been suckered into over the last 18 months starts to fall apart—that Trump would not survive his presidency; he would be betrayed by his own staff, family, and/or political party; he would destroy the Republican Party; he would be declared mentally ill and removed from office; he would be handcuffed and dragged out of the White House by Robert Mueller for “colluding” with Russia—let me remind you what complete fools you have made of yourselves. Not to mention how you’ve been fooled by the media, the Democratic Party, and your new heroes on the NeverTrump Right.
On November 9, you awoke from a self-induced, eight-year-long political coma to find that White House press secretaries shade the truth and top presidential advisors run political cover for their boss. You were shocked to discover that presidents exaggerate, even lie, on occasion. You became interested for the first time about the travel accommodations, office expenses, and lobbyist pals of administration officials. You started counting how many rounds of golf the president played. You suddenly thought it was fine to mock the first lady now that she wasn’t Michelle Obama. Once you removed your pussy hat after attending the Women’s March, you made fun of Kellyanne Conway’s hair, Sarah Sanders’ weight, Melania Trump’s shoes, Hope Hicks’ death stare; you helped fuel a rumor started by a bottom-feeding author that U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley slept with Donald Trump. You thought it was A-OK that Betsy DeVos was nearly physically assaulted and routinely heckled. You glorified a woman who has sex on camera for a paycheck.
You have learned all kinds of new things that those of us who didn’t willfully ignore politics for the past eight years already knew. For example, we already knew that illegal immigrants were being deported and families were being separated. We already knew about misconduct at the Environmental Protection Agency. We already knew that politicians gerrymander congressional districts for favorable election outcomes. We already knew that citizens from certain countries had restricted access here.
But American politics became a whole new thing for you.
Some of your behavior has been kinda cute. It was endearing to watch you become experts on the Logan Act, the Hatch Act, the Second Amendment, the 25th Amendment, and the Emoluments Clause. You developed a new crush on Mitt Romney after calling him a “sexist” for having “binders full of women.” You longed for a redux of the presidency of George W. Bush, a man you once wanted imprisoned for war crimes. Ditto for John McCain. You embraced people like Bill Kristol and David Frum without knowing anything about their histories of shotgunning the Iraq War.
Classified emails shared by Hillary Clinton? Who cares! Devin Nunes wanting to declassify crucial information of the public interest? Traitor!
But your newfound admiration and fealty to law enforcement really has been a fascinating transformation. Wasn’t it just last fall that I saw you loudly supporting professional athletes who were protesting police brutality by kneeling during the national anthem? Remember how you fanboyed a mediocre quarterback for wearing socks that depicted cops as pigs?
But now you sound like paid spokesmen for the Fraternal Order of Police. You insist that any legitimate criticism of the misconduct and possibile criminality that occured at the Justice Department and FBI is an “attack on law enforcement.” While you once opposed the Patriot Act because it might have allowed the federal government to spy on terrorists who were using the local library to learn how to make suitcase bombs, you now fully support the unchecked power of a secret court to look into the phone calls, text messages and emails of an American citizen because he volunteered for the Trump campaign for a few months.
Spying on terrorists, circa 2002: Bad. Spying on Carter Page, circa 2017: The highest form of patriotism.
And that white, male patriarchy that you were convinced would strip away basic rights and silence any opposition after Trump won? That fear has apparently been washed away as you hang on every word uttered by James Comey, John Brennan, and James Clapper. This triumvirate is exhibit “A” of the old-boy network, and represents how the insularity, arrogance, and cover-your-tracks mentality of the white-male power structure still prevails. Yet, instead of rising up against it, you are buying their books, retweeting their Twitter rants and blasting anyone who dares to question their testicular authority. Your pussy hat must be very sad.
But your daily meltdowns about Trump-Russia election collusion have been the most entertaining to observe. After Robert Mueller was appointed as Special Counsel, you were absolutely convinced it would result in Trump’s arrest and/or impeachment. Some of you insisted that Trump wouldn’t last beyond 2017. You quickly swallowed any chum tossed at you by the Trump-hating media on MSNBC, the New York Times and the Washington Post about who was going down next, or who would flip on the president.
For the past year, I have watched you obsess over a rotating cast of characters: Paul Manafort, Donald Trump, Jr., Jared Kushner, Carter Page, Reince Priebus, Jeff Sessions, Michael Flynn, Steve Bannon, Sam Nunberg, and Hope Hicks are just a few of the people you thought would turn on Trump or hasten his political demise. But when those fantasies didn’t come true, you turned to Michael Avenatti and Stormy Daniels for hope and inspiration. It will always be your low point.
Well, I think it will be. Each time I believe you’ve hit bottom, you come up with a new baseline. Perhaps defending the unprecedented use of federal power to spy on political foes then lie about it will the next nail in your credibility coffin.
The next several weeks will be tough for you. I think Americans will learn some very hard truths about what happened in the previous administration and how we purposely have been misled by powerful leaders and the news media. I wish I could see you as a victim here, but you are not. I know you are smart; you chose to support this insurgency with your eyes wide open.
Senior Senate Staffer James A. Wolfe Arrested For Leaking Classified Documents To Multiple Media Outlets – Indictment PDF Below CTH - June 7, 2018
In a just released 11-page federal indictment (full PDF below) a Senior Staff official for the Senate Select Committee Intelligence, James A. Wolfe, has been identified as leaking secret and top-secret classified information to multiple media sources. Mr. Wolfe was arrested Thursday night by Federal Marshals. (direct link to Justice PDF).
According to the indictment, Mr. Wolfe, the former Director of Security, lied to the FBI when he was questioned about his involvement in leaking classified intelligence to the media. Last night the Senate Intelligence Committee agreed to release documents to the DOJ/FBI investigators.
Earlier today it was revealed a New York Times journalist [Ali Watkins, who previously worked for BuzzFeed News and Politico], and former three-year girlfriend to Mr. Wolfe, had her phone and email communication seized by investigators.
