The Aries/Constellation program was $97b over a 11 years years. Employed nearly 200,000 during that period. Actually it was two launch vehicles....a manned capsule system and a heavy lift vehicle.
Now you have a foreign contractor (from Australia) coming in to provide a new heavy lift vehicle...but not a manned capsule system.
NASA could add the manned capsule system (Aries) for a fraction of the $97b.
The moon is now important because of the water that has been found on it. Who ever gets there and controls the water, controls future deep space flight operations from the 1/6th gravity lunar surface.
It is not just the Moon.....it is manned deep space operations from the moon. Consider the lunar surface a jump off point for missions ala Star Trek in the distance future.
But.....I have a gut feeling that I am dead on with the assessment that the White House killed future lunar operations because of the Islam thingee. So it could cost a buck to do and the White House would still say no.
By the way ...one little thought on preemptive military strikes.
Had GWB learned with actionable evidence of the 911 attack prior to event. He would have cause for a preemptive military strike on bin Laden.
Obama just did a pre emptive strike (raid) on bin Laden in Pakistan. He struck bin Laden prior to his many planned mass murder attacks occurred. The US is not war with Pakistan or have Paksitani approval for military operations in the country.
So the bin Laden raid was preemptive in a sense. Nor did Obama go to the UN to ask permission on the bin Laden raid.
Now I will let you consider why we did not make a request for such permission from the Pakistani or the UN. All these friends of America seem to have the ability to share operational knowledge with American enemies. Just might be the reason.
Who did you say did in Milosovic and Serbia, when he was doing ethnic cleansing in Kosovo? Europe could not decide which way to turn. Clinton stepped on Milosovic like a bug. I know I was there.
But that was noble. For liberal thinkers, taking down Milosovic and his group of war criminals....that they are now placing in the Hague....everyone gives Clinton a pat on the back. Heck they made a statue of Clinton in Kosovo.
But take down Sadam Hussien.....who was more deadly to his own people than 5 Milosovics combined....the world castises a conservative Bush. The UN Report I referred to has Hussien killing about 495,000 Iraqi following the first Gulf war. Those mass graves that they found in Iraq were some of his and Chemical Ali work. But that is innoble....simply because of instead digging up WMDs, we were digging up Iraqi civilian killed by Sadam.
It is all which side of the political divide you stand on. That is BS. A conservative leader can act in a noble manner just as easily as a liberal leader can. See anyone accusing Obama of War crimes in Libya? No. But Bush gets the accusation all the time.
I am not trying to make us choir boys, or wash any war crime away here. If there is solid evidence to one, I want the SOB arrested and prosecuted. That includes the CiC. But do it with evidence and proof. In a court of law. Innocent until proven guilty. Making net inneudo just does not fly and is not worth the read.jmo
CS forums were never for clear thinking, Juan. They are for slice and dice political arguements
OK you wish a solution. Here is one.
We force reduce in Iraq and Afghanistan. Leave enough for manning border bases that operate the sensors and ELINT operations on Iran. Much like the Canadian radar line of the cold war. It doesnot cost a lot. Reduces our foot print in the region.
Back here at home. We increase our energy production of the shale oil and Gulf oil for export. Become 100% energy independent. Forget the environment for a time. Others have. It still here today.It is not going anyplace.
We increase our production technologies. Here Obama just placed a new proposal out to aid manufacturing technologies with government funds. This even the REP can support. Might even get down to home construction methods and materials production that get your home construction materials cost down.
We focus on technologies that we have a natural economic edge on.Trying to compete more in the world market place with them.
We reinstall Constellation and Aries program. We fly to the Moon and elsewere. Leave the Russian and Chinese in our dust. We join the Euroepean in their new rocket plane. 2.5 hour flight from Paris to Toyko. Said to be flying by 2040. Maybe sooner If we get onboard. But this bird need bigger and longer runaways. Meaning new airport construction. Here I have local proposal in for this county to make one.
We solve the Mississippi River flooding problem. Here the Chinese have developed a mountian hydro method that drops water thru tunnels into turbine generators for alternative energy. I already submitted the proposal to DoE and Army Corp of Engineers to look at.
We take another look at high speed rail. Not for regional transportation but for cross country route. The airlines are leaving to many on the tarmac for to long. They need some national competition.
There is more. But so far no-one has said 'no' to either of my two proposals here. No-one has all the answers. But we all have some of the answers. We just needs to share them.
The Iraq war had a positive US Congressional vote. The UN had made the US the Iraqi proterate after the first Gulf war...hence our no fly zone operations. Hence our UN presentation on Iraqi WMDs. Which none of the UN believed. Only Sadam had 500 ton of yellow cake ore for dirty nucs. Dirty nucs are a WMD.
Oh my gosh......were did this come from? Gleneagle......you sound like raging Navy Seal ready to eat nails and spit out barb wire.
But we got bin Laden....................
By the way. President Obama is CiC (Commander in Chief) and POTUS (President of the United States)...head of the US Military and head of the Country. It is his call to make.
Our military is under the civilian elected officials. Not independent of them. So the decision is made at the White House and not the Pentagon.
Just our funny form of democratic government there.......
I have to admit you saw the grid lock in government coming, Jaun. After the mid term. Both sides are using the debt ceiling for political reasons.
Heck....we should just print a new currency. Fold on the American dollar. Others have done it. We can call the plan....the Obama monetary solution. We do so like to give him all the credit right now.
Sniff all you want too.....playing the Iraq war death game that occurred back in 2002 and 2006.....tells me everything I need to know here.
By the way....did you see the news today? 40 Iraqi killed by some Islamic group in car bombings. Gee some things will never change there.
We made a noble effort to remove a brutal dictator in Sadam Hussien. Check the UN reports on the his death totals for us some time. The world hates us for it. Fine the world can sniff my rosy behind, all it wants.
Please don't call yourself American just because your relatives served. To me you are a foreign party. Just north of the border. Instead of south of the border.
Your evidence for Iraq war crimes is what? Opinions and research polls? Research polls made by phone call to Iraqi civilians......that are going to say what?
"I had relative or friend killed during the Iraq invasion by the US. Pretty sure it was a American....but it was night.....and it was a rifle shot and I never saw the man with the gun. But am pretty sure it was a American."
Not the Iraqi was under any pressure to claim it was a American. That his friends and family.....all Islamic were not placing any peer pressure on him. That the alQeada of Iraq torture house in his neigbhorhood were not making it hard to speak honestly. That Sadam henchmen were telling him.....tell them it was American or else your daughter will see us.
You are totally clueless to what went on in Iraq. Unless you were there....you don't know. If you were there, then you should have pressed the issue of any known crimes that you then and there. But you save it for the relative safety of the net.
So are you getting the drift here?
During and following the invasion, you had so many parties in Iraq doing the killing.....only the consciences of the men doing it know for sure.
But you will site your facts, because you wrote music for the documentaries on the Iraq war. I got it..................
Am saying that the US acted with a defensive invasion of Afghanistan after 911, Chris. Certainly within its rights as a country under both UN laws of war and the Geneva Conventions to defend itself.
Had the Taliban and alQeada been allowed to remain in power.....what do you think would have happened? That Omar and bin Laden were going to give reparations to the US and 911 victims for the attack? No, more major attacks would have been made. One was in the planning we now know.
If the US invasion of Afghanistan was illegal, the UN would have chastised it in a heart beat. It did not.
Here are some facts and stats. Read 'em, and tell me that the deaths of 3000 warrants this:
By Haroon Siddiqui Editorial Page (from the Toronto Star)
How many civilians have been killed, maimed and displaced in Iraq and Afghanistan? I spoke to four leading experts on this grim topic, which governments avoid and the media don't seem to care much about.
Gen. Tommy Franks, who oversaw the U.S. invasions of both Afghanistan and Iraq, famously said: "We don't do body counts."
His words now headline the website of Iraq Body Count, the U.K.-based non-profit group that does count the Iraqi dead.
Others do as well, albeit periodically. The latest is a British polling firm that puts the Iraqi dead at 1.22 million. That's roughly five times the number killed in the conflict in the former Yugoslavia.
Opinion Research Business conducted face-to-face interviews last month with a representative sample of 1,461 Iraqis.
Nearly one in two said their households had suffered at least one death by violence. Many reported multiple deaths. Projecting the findings on to Iraq's 4 million households, ORB estimated the death toll at more than a million.
The methodology is not universally accepted, though variations of it have been used to measure mortality figures in the conflicts in Congo, Kosovo, Sudan, etc.
Questions were also raised last year about a study by Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, done in partnership with Al Mustansiriya University in Baghdad.
Surveyors knocked on 1,849 doors asking if the household had suffered a death by violence. Projecting the responses nationally, the study put the toll at 654,965.
About a third of the deaths were attributed to coalition forces. Responsibility for 45 per cent of the deaths couldn't be determined.
The Iraq Body Count count, updated daily, stood yesterday at "between 72,596 and 79,187."
The group, run by academics and peace activists, insists on corroborating every death from two reliable sources – police, hospital and mortuary records, media and NGO reports.
The estimate is "irrefutable," says John Sloboda, professor of psychology at Keele University, and a co-founder of IBC. "Nobody can say that fewer people have died. There are many deaths that go unrecorded – kidnappings, assassinations, disappearances, etc.
"The death toll could be twice our number, but it could not possibly be 10 times higher," he told me, referring to the other studies. Just a question here. How many of those Iraq deathes and kidnappings were done by the Islamic foreign fighters, alQeada of Iraq, former Saddam Hussien henchmen, and Iranian agents that came into the country? Got any numbers for that?
Because when US forces did murder Iraqi civilians (and there were some)....under our UMCJ...they were charged and tried for the criminial act. Until you can define the actual acts of crime from one another.....you got a big problem in making criminal cases.
Me twist things? Yikes Chris. The Taliban were the government of a country....Afghanistan.....when 911 occurred. bin Laden 911 attack on the US was sanctioned and supported by the Taliban of Afghanistan, by the Iranians, and by the Pakistani.
The 911 v Iran court case has 135 pages of charges, testimony and evidence on Iran's participation in 911.
911 was a nation state attack. Just executed by a para military organization, alQeada.
Name of a few of those dead for us, please. Take their cases to the World court. Am sure it will be heard. Do a song a dance for your buddies, the Taliban and alQeada, that stone women to death and execute other under goal posts.
Chris, these guys use borders like they are private sanctionaries made for them. In Pakistan or in What ever it is Stan, bin Laden was going to be hunted till he fell.
Does the US owe Afghanistan a rebuilding? Did the Russians stay around to rebuild that country following the Afghan/Russia war? See any Rubles heading into Afghanistan for the damages done? They did not spend a ruble in reparations.
Maybe Iran and Pakistan should do the rebuilding here. They both aided bin Laden in the 911 attack. One harboring him post 911. The other aiding him with transit of the hijackers.
Today Pakistan hides Mohammed Omar the leader of the Taliban. He is the one that organized the students from the Jhadist Universities of Peshwar, Pakistan to kick out the Northern Alliance. Had the Northern Alliance been in power, bin Laden did not have a place to organize alQeada.
You want some blunt words on this? OK.......screw em. Yes screw the bloody Taliban, alQeada and the Pakistani/Iranians that support them.
They murdered 3000 people on 911 and you want to kiss and coddle them.
Any time....I get a chance to do just that.....which has been several times in my life and more in the future I hope. I do.
The Taliban came from the Mushadeen....a invention of one Perez Mushareff...who used them in operation Cargil on India. But believe what you will. Feel free to check that out independently.
Chris....so you try to say that 911 was not a attack? Come on Chris even you cannot be that blind. 911 was most definitely an attack. A military target was selected....the Pentagon. 1000s of civilians were killed.
So? The US was not going to Afghanistan on a bin Laden hunt with two sheriffs from Mayberry, USA (with only one with a single bullet in his gun).... just to be political correct for you or other European librals that want to play word games.
It took NATO two year to find Afghanistan on the map after 911, Chris. And if you read the NATO treaty.....'a attack on one NATO member is attack on all NATO members'.
Today when Syrian troops mass near the Turkey border.....Obama shouts out to Syrian President Assad a warning. Turkey is a NATO member. So if the Syrian troop cross into Turkey chasing the rebllious Syrian that live in the region......what should the US/NATO do?
Sit back and watch as Turkish towns and cities are ransacked by Syrian troops seeking the the leaders of the rebellion? Not according to the NATO treaty.
I just got a email from Laura Bush, Dude. It was to remind me that GWB birthday was in 30 days. She sent me a clickthru to sign his online birthday card.
If you want to sign it, too......I can post here and all of CS can sign GWB 65th birth card.
LOL looks like the Cookie Monster is going to get himself a drum ......and Bert and Ernie are going for white meat.....while the Count von Count is going for dark.....Oscar the Grooch is looking at the neck.....
One might note.....that Big Bird is not sitting at the table.....but rather might be on the table.
While speaking of 2012......the analogy is? )))
By the way.....President Obama has another economist step down. .....seems like someone in Washington is feeling the heat...... the crew is beginning to jump ship.
ttom500 Forum Posts (10,523)
going bavk on vacation till the 2012 starts for real
But we got bin Laden!!
RE: USA talks fail over Debt Ceiling !