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Originally posted by Harry:

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Originally posted by First of Two:
Except the concept of Al Gore trying to fight the war on terrorism really IS scary.

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Scarier than Zombie Overlord Rumsfeld?

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How 'bout Zombie Overlord Liberman?
Having someone named "Liberman" as VP would have gone over soaringly with the muslim nations we're supposedly trying to work with.
....and you think middle-east paece is a pipe dream now....

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Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering.
-Aeschylus, Agamemnon

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Originally posted by First of Two:
Doing it right:

My plan would go something like this:

#7 Mass drivers. Capture comets, asteroids. If H20 absent on moon, jump this priority up and drop a couple small comets onto the Moon's south pole.

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I think the next step in our space program should be to create a floating launching pad for manned and unmanned missions to the Moon, Mars and beyond. This is not a task for the unfinished International Space Station, which is intended to be a floating laboratory rather than a bridge to the heavens.

A much more practical destination than the moon or the space station is a region of space called L 1, which is more than two-thirds of the way to the moon and is where the gravity fields between the Earth and Moon are in balance. Setting up a space port there would offer a highly stable platform from which spacecraft could head toward near-Earth asteroids, the lunar surface, the moons of Mars and wherever else mankind decides to travel.

Unlike the Moon and the International Space Station, which is in low-earth orbit, L 1 is not the site of strong gravitational pulls, meaning that spacecraft can leave there without using much energy. Thus L 1 would be the most sensible position for a base that would function as a test area and way-point for robotic flights as well as a support station and safe haven for human exploration of the solar system.

It would also be relatively cheap, at least in terms of space travel. To create a port at L 1 we can use the building methods that have already proved successful for Skylab and the International Space Station � and we can probably get it up and running for $10 billion to $15 billion, significantly less than the International Space Station, which will likely exceed $100 billion in the end. We can also save money by shifting away from using the space shuttle as the transport vehicle and by developing a new, more flexible launch vehicle and crew module to get people and cargo up to the L 1 port.

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