> And you know... you've _got_ to do the WT-715 from "Things To Come"
> sooner or later:http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-08/uoc--cpm080206.php
> What a plane!
>> Whatever happened to the Spiral-50/50 model?
>>
>
> Too big and complex (i.e. expensive) for the limited interested
> expressed. Sits about 1/3 completed.
>
God, did they do a great packaging job on that space fighter:
http://www.buran.ru/htm/str126.htm
That would be worth a cutaway model in its own right.
Of course, I've never seen a cutaway of our X-24 based SAINT II, which
could have been damn near as slick.
>
>> And you know... you've _got_ to do the WT-715 from "Things To Come"
[quoted text clipped - 4 lines]
> Looks more like a cat parasite.
>
Just for that, you get a "Gas Of Peace" bomb on the head, like the Pope
fatally did in the book.
You should really read that book - the movie looks like your worst
nightmare of a UN controlled world; in the book everyone gets fed up
with that sh.t in short order, and tosses "Wings Over The World" out on
its a.s, ending up with a decentralized world government based on a
common economic system with only a minimal central authority telling
people what to do and think.
The bad guy in the movie - Theotocopulos - who wants to blow up the
space cannon - is the _hero_ in the book, in best Ayn Rand tradition.
Things go the way Karl Marx predicted, and the government _really does_
whither away once he verbally kicks it in its decaying a.s, giving all
the people of the Earth a maximum amount of freedom for each of them,
providing that they don't set out to do obvious harm to others.
In the movie, it's "Wings Over The World"; in the book it's "The Air
Dictatorship"...and it's pointlessly tyrannical, inefficient,
unimaginative, and suffocatingly hidebound and bureaucratic.
Adam Smith's "Invisible Hand" is then made manifest, and in a world free
of war, fear, and defense spending, everyone can set forth using their
individual abilities and effort to increase the overall abilities and
possibilities of humanity as a species, benefiting not only themselves
as individuals, but bettering the entire society they live in as a whole
- so that everyone's life is getting a bit better, day-by-day through
everyone's efforts. You don't come up with new ideas to make a buck, but
rather to be honored both in the present day and in memory as the person
who helped out the whole world...which is one hell of a ego trip when
you think about it, and probably a lot more fun than Bill Gates' tens of
billions of dollars.
Pat
scottlowther@ix.netcom.com - 30 Jan 2008 18:05 GMT
> scottlowt...@ix.netcom.com wrote:
> >> Whatever happened to the Spiral-50/50 model?
[quoted text clipped - 15 lines]
> Just for that, you get a "Gas Of Peace" bomb on the head, like the Pope
> fatally did in the book.
Not *my* fault you posted the wrong link.
> Adam Smith's "Invisible Hand" is then made manifest, and in a world free
> of war, fear, and defense spending, everyone can set forth using their
[quoted text clipped - 5 lines]
> rather to be honored both in the present day and in memory as the person
> who helped out the whole world..
A common delusionary utopian future amongst late Victorial sci-fi/
social commentary writers. I've read a number of books like that from
that general time period, looking forward to a day when people work
not for their own benefit, but for the "common good." The thing you
take from each of these books is that they're not exactly describing
*humans,* but brainwashed robots. Such systems would never work with
large numbers of real people. People like to see rewards for their
efforts. people don't like to see lazy bastards living like ticks...
unless they *are* the lazy bastards in question. Plymouth plantation
taught us that centuries ago.
.which is one hell of a ego trip when
> you think about it, and probably a lot more fun than Bill Gates' tens of
> billions of dollars.
I'll take a billion dollars over unpaid ego-stroking, thanks. With a
billion dollas, I can build new industries. With accolades, I can't do
anything but try to avoid paparazzi and crazed stalkers. Witha billion
dollars, I can build an orbital tourist craft and orbitting hotel.
With "memory" and "honors" all I can do is dream about such things and
in the end eat a bullet as a lifetime of unfulfilled dreams crash down
on me.
Pat Flannery - 31 Jan 2008 03:55 GMT
> A common delusionary utopian future amongst late Victorial sci-fi/
> social commentary writers.
Especially Wells - his later stories were basically "Something amazing
happens and then the world turns socialist."
What Wells basically wanted to happen was a world government of some
sort to evolve (didn't have to be a good government either; he was fond
of Napoleon and Stalin) then after that occurred and ended the necessity
for war, it would evolve with time into a more benevolent form.
> I've read a number of books like that from
> that general time period, looking forward to a day when people work
[quoted text clipped - 17 lines]
> dollars, I can build an orbital tourist craft and orbitting hotel.
>
I think it would cost more than that to do.
> With "memory" and "honors" all I can do is dream about such things and
> in the end eat a bullet as a lifetime of unfulfilled dreams crash down
> on me.
>
Let me take a wild guess that that spy satellite is going to fall on
your house in the next couple of months. ;-)
Pat
scottlowther@ix.netcom.com - 31 Jan 2008 13:44 GMT
> scottlowt...@ix.netcom.com wrote:
> > A common delusionary utopian future amongst late Victorial sci-fi/
> > social commentary writers.
>
> Especially Wells - his later stories were basically "Something amazing
> happens and then the world turns socialist."
His later stories were basically unreadable.
> > I'll take a billion dollars over unpaid ego-stroking, thanks. With a
> > billion dollas, I can build new industries. With accolades, I can't do
> > anything but try to avoid paparazzi and crazed stalkers. Witha billion
> > dollars, I can build an orbital tourist craft and orbitting hotel.
>
> I think it would cost more than that to do.
Doubtful. $300 million would get you the ship. The hotel would be
purchased from Bigelow.
Pat Flannery - 31 Jan 2008 14:45 GMT
>> Especially Wells - his later stories were basically "Something amazing
>> happens and then the world turns socialist."
>>
>
> His later stories were basically unreadable.
>
There's a story about how that happened; he was trying to do social
commentary with his stories.
He thought people would realize that the Martians in The War Of The
Worlds getting destroyed by germs despite their superior technology was
very similar to British forces getting walloped by things like malaria
and sleeping sickness in the far flung reaches of their empire and that
The First Men In The Moon was poking fun at the White Man's Burden
concept of showing up one day to civilize the natives, who in the case
of the Selenites had at least as much of a civilized society as the
Earthmen.
But people didn't get it (he should have seen this coming after Swift's
"A Modest Proposal" was taken seriously by some as a way of solving the
Irish overpopulation problem), so he started laying the social
commentary on with a trowel.
>
>>> I'll take a billion dollars over unpaid ego-stroking, thanks. With a
[quoted text clipped - 8 lines]
> purchased from Bigelow.
>
Although Bigelow is having pretty good luck with their inflatable
habitat prototypes so far, and I'm sure the Russians would let you send
a Soyuz to one for $300 million, actually "building" a space tourist
craft is probably going to cost in excess of $300 million by the time
everything is said and done. It implies the use of one of the private
space entrepreneurs, and outside of Orbital Sciences they haven't been
noted for producing workable hardware to back up their claims of new
orbital spacecraft at low prices. SpaceX is already building their first
Falcon 9 before they even have had a Falcon 1 work right.
Pat