Subject: BPL - UPLC -Repeat the lie three times and claim it for truth
From: PAMNO (N2EY)
Date: 6/30/2004 7:13 PM Central Standard Time
Message-id:

In article ,
(Steve
Robeson K4CAP) writes:


That's
the root reason we decry the space program..."Let's spend the money on
Earth!"

But we're not doing it.

Then if we're not spending the money now with no more than we're doing
in
space, how could this make it any worse?

Because it diverts money, people, and attention away from solving those
problems. Which gets priority - space or surface transportation?

Why not both?

The only difference here is that you're asking Joe Average to be ready to
give up his/her SUV (or at least keep it garaged a lot more) and they don't
want to do it.


I've heard that same argument used to finish off Apollo.

By Nixon...

By COngress who pushed him to cancel it.

We KO'd Apollo, yet schools are (in your estimation) no better off.

That's not what I wrote.

Not in those exact words, but that's what you have been saying.

And NASA is manhandling those school board members to the ground and
stealing the money from them?

No, but the Feds hand out unfunded mandates that the schools must meet. How
about this: Any Federal mandate must also carry with it funds to make them
happen?

Yes, they should carry the funds.

But "unfunded federal mandates" are not what are causing the problems in
ANY of the school districts around here.

I don't think so. Besides, why should defeating gay marriage cost taxpayers
any
money at all? Indeed, why should it be defeated - if gay people can get
'married' (in the legal sense), they'll pay more taxes because of the income
tax marriage penalty, thereby raising tax revenues.

Why, indeed.

BTW...

A Lesbian and a gay man share an apartment...there's an explosion in the
nighborhood and the fire department tells them to evacuate. Who get's out
first?

(Private e-mail for this asnwer, kids...)

Say, there's the money for your expanded space program!

Uh huh.

It WAS a problem then. It's a worse one now.

Yep. Because four presidents since then did not make it a priority.

Because they weren't the one's without water to drink or bathe in, nor
will the Predident's be without transportation.

Things are NOT so fine now, but not yet to disaster proportions, but
that
light at the end of the tunnel is NOT salvation! It's the on-coming
train!

What *are* you talking about?

Drought.

Where?

You have GOT to be KIDDING me, Jim...?!?!

How about just about everything west of Little Rock and south of Seattle?


Declining oil reserves.

Yep.

Internal security of our own borders.

That's because we play the game at both ends. On the one hand, we say we want
security. On the other hand, we want the cheap immigrant labor and the money
tourists and students spend here.

We can still have tighter security and keep those cotton-pickers and panty
raiders coming, Jim...

I wonder what they'd cost today to build? I wonder what the cost of
the
decaying cities will be when those cities can no longer sustain thier
populations, and the people go elsewhere to live?

Perhaps the bigger question is this: Why are so many people living in arid
areas? Why do they expect to live as if they are not in a desert?

Southern California wasn't that "arid" 50 years ago.

We will force the building of NEW infrastructure wherever these people
wind up, and the old cities will have to be refurbished somehow.

That's because people do not connect their lifestyles with the environmental
and resource costs.

Yet "they" blame it on "them" (the government) for not "doing something"
about it.

Ultimately I think they will have to still build the plants that should
ahve started in the 70's, and it will cost even more then.

And who will pay?

Who do you THINK will pay, Jim?

You drink water?

Like from 400MHZ to over 5GHZ.

Enough RF on a single frquency desenses the front end. That's all it takes.

I doubt that the military satellites are controlled on ONE discreet
frequency, Jim.

When was the last time a CNG tanker or railroad tank car exploded at all?

Well, I still see the Manned Space Program as beiong over forty years
old,
and only 17 Americans have died in direct space flight operations or
preparations.

Out of how many that have flown?

Hmmmmmm.....

Six Mercury Flights: 6

Ten Gemini Flights: 20 (12 flights...Only 10 were manned)

17 Apollo flights: 51

Apollo Soyuz: 3

Skylab (3 msns) 9

Shuttle Missions: 560 (112 missions, average 5 persons per mission)
_____
649 (give or take a couple)

Of course if you want to get REAL nit-picky, we can discount folks like
Storey Musgrave and others who have flown more than one, so we'll just give you
the benefit of the doubt here and say 640.

That's less than 3 percent of the American manned space effort to date.
That means that over 97 percent of all American manned space missions are
successful.

And that doesn't take into account the crews shuttled to and from MIR.

The boosters for the Shuttle exploded once, we fixed that problem.

Then another problem surfaced. Is it really fixed?

This time it was FOD to the leading edges of the wings.

Not the same...certainly not "over and over".

Dead is dead. Two orbiters and their crews a total loss.

Yes. Dead is dead. They were tragedies, and we learned from them. I
do
not consider thier sacrifices as a "total loss".

"Total loss" meaning "no survivors and all equipment destroyed"

NOT a total loss as in "lesson learned and not repeated".

Do you know if we employed this pattern of "completely stop and re-engieer
the problem" to the automobile, we wouldn't have over 50,000 a YEAR dead on
our highwyas...And most of them weren't doing a THING worthy of thier deaths,
Jim.

I know. I see a lot of them.

They never got there because they quit. They spent thier money
elsewhere.
It wasn't that they couldn't.

They couldn't do it in time.

And they STILL could have done it.

Only money and "priorities" stopped them. Too bad.

If they land ONE man on the Moon in the next decade, that will be one
more
than WE have done in the last forty years ! ! !

So? The moon isn't ours.

The Gulf of Siddra isn't "ours" either yet we patrol it with a Carrier
Battle Group regularly.

You might ask why that is necessary.

I may ask why it ISN'T important to advance manned space technology after
all it's contributed to modern science.

The differene with the Moon is that anyone who can get there can make
use
of what ever resources they find there. If it isn't us, it will be someone
else. I would rather it BE us.

Me too but until there is some resource worth getting, there are better
things
to spend the money and resources on.

How do you know the resources aren't there until we get there and REALLY
explore? So far all we did was a "pit stop", got a few trinkets and baubels
and moved on.

Then instead of tellingus what "can't" be done because of a lack of
funding, tell us what CAN be done WITH adequate funding...And money spent
SMARTLY, not just thrown into the pot and done with as you will.....

I'm telling you what is practical and what isn't. Blank-check spending isn't
practical.

If we don't even explore the OPTIONS, Jim, how will we ever know what's
practical?

Other people dream of doing great things. Engineers do them.

Engieneers do them when adequately funded!

How much has SpaceShipOne cost?

How far would SpaceShipOne have gotten if it wasn't bankrolled with
$25M...?!?!

How far DID it get? High altitude research balloons do the same thing a
lot cheaper AND since the 1930's or 40's.

DaVinci dreamed of a great many things that have only been made
practical
in the last 100 years...Because we spent the money on research to develop
the
materials to let the enginees make it happen!

DaVinci sketched vague ideas. It took a lot of time, work and development to
make real machines.

Uh huh.

The "Voyager" was a vague idea on a napkin.

DaVinci's "vague ideas" were pretty detailed for the era. Imagine what he
could ahve done had he had the materials with which to really do them.

I am not "avoiding" anything Jim.

You're avoiding saying how many more tax dollars you're willing to pay.
That's
the bottom line. People are all for all sorts of things until it comes time
to
pay for them. Then they scream bloody murder about being ripped off.

I point blank said earlier that I didn't have all the answers.

Then understand that you can't have everything you want for free.

Who said free?

I am willing to see my taxes spent on a practical space program!

I just know that we are NOT doing ANYthing to move the program forward
today.

I disagree. The Mars rover missions are a great step forward. Cassini/Huygens
is reaching Saturn - be prepared for a summer of wonders from the ringed
planet.

Pictures from a robot.

The same information that we've gained on prior fly-by's and with
terrestrial methods.

The recent deployments only bear that out.

They prove the technology is no damn good. It's a spectrum polluter. It's
just plain stupid.

They proved that THIS method is a spectrum polluter.

The *concept* is just plain stupid. Did you see my post about the stormwater
ditch? That's what BPL is electrically equivalent to.

Can there NEVER be a development that might work?

Depends what you mean by "work". The systems do "work" in the sense that they
transmit data from A to B. The problem is that they leak RF all over the
place
because the power lines are simply leaky at RF frequencies. They radiate.
It's
basic physics. Wires with RF in them radiate, and long unshileded wires way
up
in the air with HF in them radiate really well. Various forms of coding and
such simply don't fix the basic problem.

Now if someone wants to install shielded power lines and equipment, a BPL
system can work without interference. But such a system would cost more to
build than simply running new coax or fiber.

Yes, it will.

Steve, K4YZ