"I say to Mr. Obama: Let's get on with it. Let's invest in the future."

[Pcola04/30]

On a lighter note......Now I know who to thank for hours and hours of pain: CBT's... THANK YOU NASA

INTERACTIVE COMPUTER TRAINING - Known as Interactive Multimedia Training (IMT), originally developed to train astronauts and space operations personnel, now utilized by the commercial sector to train new employees and upgrade worker skills, using a computer system that engages all the senses, including text, video, animation, voice, sounds, and music.

NASA 1. My brain 0.

 

[HH-60H]

1. We need to be there first to claim the property rights...including all of the mine-able/usable assets that we will find there.

2. We need to establish our squatters rights early, so we can be sure to own the good parts of the planet and not get left with the arid (unlivable) areas.

3. We will run out of room on this planet. Not in my lifetime, not in my kids lifetime, but it WILL happen. We need to be established elsewhere sooner, not later, when we start colonizing the next "New World."


I believe that the move to Mars will not even be pioneered by the government. Some private company will make the move first, and then have the sole proprietorship to the raw materials on another planet, as well as the means to get there. We need to be the country that has that company, and then we need to be sure to not tax/regulate/nationalize them into insolvency like we do to every other good company in this country.

Unfortunately, most of your ideas have been preempted by this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_Space_Treaty

 

[Cobra Commander]

I believe that the move to Mars will not even be pioneered by the government. Some private company will make the move first, and then have the sole proprietorship to the raw materials on another planet, as well as the means to get there. We need to be the country that has that company, and then we need to be sure to not tax/regulate/nationalize them into insolvency like we do to every other good company in this country.

Pickle

I'm going to start that company, and I'm going to call it Weyland Yutani. However, I'm going to outsource a bunch of the engineering to India and China to save money. BTW, anyone want to be a settler?

 

[picklesuit]

Unfortunately, most of your ideas have been preempted by this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_Space_Treaty

Treatises are awesome until someone says bullshit and pulls out. Besides, who would enforce it, the UN?

 

[scoolbubba]

...awesome until someone says bullshit and pulls out.?

Probably the same way I'll end up with my first curtain climber.

 

[BACONATOR]

Probably the same way I'll end up with my first curtain climber.

God I hope that's not the case for me. And please, I prefer to call them ankle-biters or failed abortions.

 

[torpedo0126]

Ours is around I think 65% or so of GDP right now. Japan's is like 200%, and the European nations on average have larger debts too.

I am not economics expert, but I think the problem has more to do with that more and more debt is devaluing the currency. The percent of GDP isn't as imporant, because as you pointed out, it varies per country. Since our currency is only worth something because our government says it does, there has to be some sort of demand for in.

In effect, all these people who are financing us have to want our currency. Right now thats the case--countries reserves are kept in dollars, the IMF is based on dollars, even oil must be traded in dollars. If there comes a time where those factors change (say switch to the Euro), each dollar essentially becomes a check that bounces.

However, at the moment its in no one's interest to see the economic collapse of the US.

Another point of interest--in the 90s Saddam Hussein was ridiculed for investing in the Euro because the dollar owned in. When he made a killing on it just prior to the Iraq invasion, he and several other countries expressed interest in switching to the Euro(Venezuela and I 'think' Saudia Arabia). After Iraq was occupied, a suggestions were subsequently dropped