NASA Expands Role of International Space Station 153
coondoggie writes "NASA is looking for a few good experiments to run in space. The space agency this week said it was seeking research ideas (PDF) from private entities who want to do research on board the International Space Station. NASA said it was looking to expand the use of the ISS by providing access to the lab for the conduct of basic and applied research, technology development, and industrial processing to private entities — including commercial firms, non-profit institutions, and academic institutions. NASA said using the ISS as a national lab could help develop a number of applications in areas such as biotechnology, energy, engineering, and remote sensing."
They should put an ad on Craigslist (Score:5, Funny)
Re:They should put an ad on Craigslist (Score:5, Funny)
Penthouse apt for rent. Very cozy efficiency. Fully furnished. Magnificent view. Reserved parking for your vehicle. Onsite gymnasium. Great weight loss program (disclaimer: weight is not the same as mass). Exclusive community in a unique private out-of-the-way setting. Heat and utilities included. No pets. $40,000,000 a week.
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Sounds like typical California real-estate prices
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Hmm... sounds like the Super Adventure Club [wikipedia.org] from South Park...
No thanks. ^^
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Turn in your geek card, please.
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You and AC are more or less correct. You may recall that gravity acts as though it was a point source at the center of mass; the difference in distance from the center of the earth between you and the ISS is relatively small.
Google [google.com] puts the radius of the earth at 6378 km, and Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] puts the ISS orbit at about 340km (perigee / apogee in the sidebar, if you don't know the terms), which is only about a 5% increase. So if earth is 1 Gee (and it is [wikipedia.org]), at ISS height you would get (1/1.05) Gees = .95 Gees, mo
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Weight doesn't mean just any force, it means the force you exert upon whatever is holding you up in steady-state. In the ISS, the steady-state is no force against the support.
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Nope. Grandparent _specifically_ said 'weight' which IS near zero on the ISS.
Your mass also does not change on orbit. And gravity force does become a little bit smaller on the ISS, but it's irrelevant because it's counteracted by the centrifugal force.
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You're not really in microgravity
Free fall makes a perfectly good microgravity environment. There may be gravitational forces present, but they are compensated for by the free fall, and therefore you are in a microgravity environment.
But, let's take your definition of "microgravity" which apparently means "no body close enough to have its gravitational field felt regardless of compensation" for the sake of argument. It's not what the term means, but let's assume it did.
Bear in mind that I never used any term containing the word "gravity"
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One good experiment would be to drop a rope and see if an astronaut could climb back to terra firma.
Whoops!
Art Bell? (Score:3, Funny)
Tell me we're not doing remote sensing experiments on the ISS!
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They need those people up there to whack a malfunctioning device with a hammer. It's hard to teach a monkey when to stop.
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Oooh, Oooh, Idea! (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Oooh, Oooh, Idea! (Score:5, Funny)
Oh come on a LOT better idea list.....
1 - how long do lawyers last in space without a space suit.
2 - effects on lawyers when exposed to explosive decompression.
3 - effects of solar radiation on a lawyer in a space suit.
4 - effects of solar radation on a lawyer without a space suit.
5 - effects of amoebic dysentery on a lawyer in micro-gravity.
6 - how long do lawyers last as an ablative shield during re-entry.
7 - what is the maximum ballistic speed a lawyer can reach.
etc...
Oh and as a control do the same experiments on MPAA and RIAA executives.
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1. The researchers don't begin to feel attached to the lawyers.
2. The SPCA and PETA won't bother you.
...the 100 mile high club? (Score:3, Insightful)
Come on, we all want to know how sex in space works. Its probably the simplest experiment that would generate tons of interest.
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Yes, "zero-g sex!" was my immediate reaction to this article as well.
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Do you have any idea how difficult it is to clean "bodily fluids" out of the air in zero-g?
No. And neither do you, but I bet there's anime that has already solved this problem for us.
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actually quite easy. all you need is a rapid air turnover in that area with an absorbent air filter. all the floating "goo" will travel to the filter and stick.
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Or your mom. Breathing in and farting at the same time. Nothing ever gets out of that black hole again. /ducks :D
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That has already happened and it works so move on to something that hasn't been done.
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Already been done on a plane like they use for astronaut training I think, but from what I gather it was more like floating together because the motions of sex lead them to drift apart. I'm sure you could make it happen by pinning against a wall but then it'd probably be like on earth except much more awkward. And even if they hadn't, I think this generation has seen too much porn to care about porn in space. At least moviesex in space, if not the real kind.
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A few loops of elastic would take care of that problem...
Case in point (Score:1, Insightful)
I know, I know, the "get off this rock" crowd will now inundate us with their magical-religious space adventure cult emotional arguments.
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as a "get off this rock"'er, personally it's a logical conclusion to come to, The planet has limited resources. the universe, eh not so much. Robots don't do so well when you leave the solar system, Just try doing surgery across the country more or less send commands that will takes years to get there. sending a person just makes more since, granted it will probably have to be a generation ship. manned exploration is pretty important prereq for building a generation ship.
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Creating large scale habitation is also always expensive in direct proportion to the inhospitability of the environment and its distance from vital resources.
Right. So if we never spend the time and money to learn how to make it work right here in LEO with a small population we will never learn how to make it work on a larger scale. New industrial technologies are expensive. For example: Can you imagine how costly the first functional farm tractors were to small time farmers that hoed their few acres with animal power? But do you see how the development and refinement of those technologies have led to wonderful advances in how farms are managed?
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Right. So if we never spend the time and money to learn how to make it work right here in LEO with a small population we will never learn how to make it work on a larger scale. >
Make what exactly work? Self-sufficient sealed ecologies running on nothing but vacuum, sunlight, radiation and recycled water?
It seems like it would be a whole lot cheaper to learn to do that right here on earth where we have plenty of all those, plus gravity, plus lots of free rock, plus a huge margin for error if you screw up. All you'd have to do would be build some sealed domes like Biosphere 2 [wikipedia.org]. Build them in the Antarctic or Sahara, and if the technology works, build thousands of them. There's your O'
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This observation seems so obvious there must be a formal science-fiction law for this somewhere. But in case there isn't:
Cull's First Law of Space Colonisation:
Any conceivable technology capable of making space even marginally self-sustaining is capable of turning Earth into an ecological paradise, for far cheaper.
So no-one gets to go into space to 'escape the crowded and over-polluted Earth'. We might have outposts in space, but compared to anything reachable out there Earth is already paradise. Those who
Re:Case in point (Score:4, Insightful)
Nobody is saying that it will be cheap or even easy in the remotely near future. But is that really a valid reason to not even make the attempt? You have to start somewhere, and it will NEVER be cheap/routine if we as a society don't start working toward that goal. Along the way, we can use the technological advances derived from such exploration to (hopefully) better life for those here on Earth. Even something unrelated to ship construction or propulsion systems (such as a self-sustaining food/oxygen supply) could be scaled up to benefit people in the more remote regions of the world.
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That's an excellent analogy since the New World didn't have oxygen, water, plant life, gravity or indigenous lifeforms either.
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And indeed, the same argument can be made for the plan for a Popsicle Skyscraper and Giant Escalator to Nowhere. Nobody is saying that it will be cheap or even easy to freeze a humungous Cordial Skyscraper in the remotely near future. But is that really a valid reason to not even make the attempt? You have to start somewhere, and it will NEVER be cheap/routine if we as a society don't start working toward that goal. Along the way, we can use the technological advances derived from such engineering challenge
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Don't bother. Way too many /.ers have been raised on science fiction bullshit to ever really contemplate the scale involved or the challenges involved (or impracticality of) actual space colonization. It doesn't do any good to point out that it would be MUCH easier to build a sustainable colony at the bottom of the deepest ocean on earth than to build one anywhere out in the black.
Barring some amazing discoveries, it's pretty unlikely that any other body in our solar system could ever support even a small c
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This is actually quite false.
Building an air tight pressure vessel capable of supporting an internal pressure 1 atmosphere higher than the outside pressure is a solved problem. Hell, we can even make it inflatable and almost but not quite arbitrary size and shape.
Building an water tight pressure vessel capable of supporting an internal pressure over a thousand atmospheres less than the outside pressure is a ridiculously hard problem that is almost but not quite solved for a 6ft wide sphere with a skin takin
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I did read the parent post. Did you?
Tell me how you can put 10 million people at the bottom of 7 miles of ocean for a hundred years (and have them not be dead in a fraction of a second).
That is a much harder problem to solve that building a space station capable of supporting the same population in orbit for a hundred years.
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Pressure is the ONE big problem of colonizing the sea. Colonizing space has *hundreds* of problems, pressure being just one of them (and a minor one at that). The biggest problem of colonizing space is resources. You make the presumption that there are sufficient resources out there to even build an infrastructure in any practical manner, but that's FAR from clear. And even if there were large quantities of water out there somewhere, and it was practical to mine it, and we had a way to convert it efficientl
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The planet has limited resources.
Says who? The planet may have "limited resources" the way we are using them now but who says there won't be renew-able energy discovered or developed at some point? Why couldn't we find a super-efficient way to harness the energy from the sun to power everything and stop using the "limited resources", for example? I personally believe we have everything here we need. If we make it to another planet and find a way to make it habitable then cool, but we need to focus on finding a way to survive here indefinit
Re:Case in point (Score:5, Insightful)
NASA emphasizes the utter uselessness of the ISS by asking people what interesting things can be done with it.
Yes, and the HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is useless as demonstrated by NASA asking people what interesting things could be photographed with it. Manned stations, robotic probes, equally useless!
P.S. I agree, more robotic probes. But seriously, sending out a call for researchers to propose experiments is not an indication of uselessness.
Re:Case in point (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, you said that asking for suggestions on research to be done just emphasizes its uselessness. That's not a strawman, that's what you said. It's not my fault that same logic applies equally to things you like such as MRO or Hubble.
Let's not assume that manned and unmanned missions can do the same thing, because they can't. Manned missions can't visit Saturn or Mars yet for that matter. And there are plenty of experiments that are much more easily performed with human supervision than without, and with pre-existing infrastructure than without. ISS is already up there, and contains space-shuttle-payload size bays designed exclusively for research. It isn't useless, the space agencies involved are already performing experiments on it. Expanding the number of experiments done is expanding its usefulness, not admitting it isn't useful at all as you claimed.
Again, we're in agreement that robotic probes are cheaper and better for exploring the solar system and beyond. I disagree with your stance that the ISS is useless. And your statement that asking for research to be conducted on it demonstrates this uselessness is factually and logically wrong.
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Perhaps it's also a nice bonus of progress? iniaturization have taken its toll and the typical experimental equipment is now somewhat smaller slightly faster than expected, with more place for experiments (there was a story recently about miniature experiment containers for the ISS). Or maybe some better communication with the ISS won't mean overburdening the crew with excessive amount of experiments.
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Perhaps it's also a nice bonus of progress?
Certainly. I agree with the other post you made about how the ISS was anything but an ideal project partly due to being saddled with the role of make-work for the Shuttle. Yet we can't go back and fix that (or not build it at all), it is what it is, and it's a unique science platform. It wasn't that long ago that missing modules meant there was little room for science and a lot of the inhabitant's days revolved around operating the station. Now that it's near c
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I know, I know, the "get off this rock" crowd will now inundate us with their magical-religious space adventure cult emotional arguments.
And what is the use of that knowledge to a rock bound species that just sits in its own wastes watching its resources dwindle?
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Sure, construction of the ISS was flawed & expensive (most likely also largely because of the costly mistake which was the Shuttle and the push to save its face...to make it usefull for something; so "hey, why don't we design a space station around modules meant to be launched by Shuttle?!"); could be done much cheaper via autonomous rendezvouz of modules probably. And that's how few upcoming, certinly in some aspects better (and cheaper) space stations will be built. Better also thanks to ISS, our trai
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Its part of Obama's plans to commercialize space.
Commercialize manned launchers, commercialize the target for those launches.
If companies start seeing benefits from experiments conducted on their behalf in the ISS, then they will be willing to put more money into extending its life & getting more people up there - which will hopefully bring more money into the space program.
lava lamp (Score:4, Funny)
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"Can it blend... in Zero G?"
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Don't even need the glass container
Pull my finger . . . (Score:1, Offtopic)
. . . in space?
It might figure out that missing methane mystery.
You mean to say (Score:1)
That they are just now doing what they were supposed to be doing since the beginning?
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Out of interest (Score:2)
What kind of work is useful to experiment on in microgravity?
I know there's some material science stuff but what else?
Re:Out of interest (Score:4, Interesting)
Don't know how useful it is, but Japanese astronaut Naoko Yamazaki has demonstrated that soap bubbles retain their color in space [mainichi.jp], answering a scientific question from her daughter.
Again, how useful this is will depend on the person.
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Suggestions (Score:4, Interesting)
Sadly since I pissed off 1 to many NASA engineers in the past (blah blah Crusader project by UDLP, blah blah trying making some money... blah blah blah remote mining and processing project... sub orbital meteor mining is a stupid idea...)
Anyway they'll no likely to talk to me (ever again) so here are my suggestions. Please feel free to run with them:
1: Sex (Duh. We all want to know.)
2: Artifical ring construction via centrifical force =
Take a spinning sphere and launch a tethered satellite while still spinning. from the teathered satellite launch another teather out such that the secondary teather is long enough to have the circumfrence of the satellite's oribital circumfurance. See if you can get it to hook up back to the original satellite to create an artifical ring on which we can construct stuff. (may required 2 satellites at opposite sides.
3: Behavior of molten metal in low gravity for crystal structure analysis (see if effect is more brittle or harded.)
4: Better estimate of open space survival time of a human being.
5: Field test atmosphering re-entry capable space suit for orbital deployment of troops (GETA LL WARHAMMA 40K ON YA!)
6: Polymer extrusion and blown film line test in low gravity for polymer chain linkage testing.
7: Smoking in the cargo bay in low-G (Can you blow smoke rings in low-g)
8: Will a paper airplain with a weight of less then .5 lbs survive re-entry to Earth?
9: Subspace structural testing to see if spacial structure exists (e.g. test if space itself has an actual shape, e.g. a quantum of space itself (rather then an infinitly divisible continum))
10: Test if the bullshit in DC is so thick you can really smell it on the ISS.
Just a few...
Re:Suggestions (Score:5, Funny)
centrifical
teather(ed)
oribital circumfurance
atmosphering re-entry
is more brittle or harded
paper airplain
infinitly divisible continum
The first requirement of submitted proposals to NASA is to do so in English. We all know how well foreign languages (or measurement systems) work out. C'mon, this isn't rocket science! :)
It does lead me to one important question, however...
Polymer extrusion and blown film line test in low gravity for polymer chain linkage testing.
How do you spell "polymer", "extrusion", "gravity", and "linkage" correctly and use them in a coherent-sounding sentence, then get "airplane" wrong? ;)
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There is a difference between poor English and lazy English. I'm more inclined to be lenient of grammar and flow issues than I am of systemic failure to even begin to care about spelling, especially because I don't know what languages the OP speaks and what their English proficiency is.
The poster you are replying to has a point in that "The first requirement of submitted proposals to NASA is to do so in English". If the author does not care so much about their ideas to make sure they are spelling words
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lack of coffee. I spit out /. posts in the morning while drinking coffee waiting for the wife to get ready (we car pool) so I write in a hurry. No time for spell check.
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Ohhh I like that idea... a REALLY FRICKING HIGH HALO jump...
I guarantee they can get a few marines with more balls than brains to try that one.
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This high enough?
http://blogs.howstuffworks.com/2008/02/01/world-record-9-the-fastest-human-and-the-highest-skydive/ [howstuffworks.com]
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.6: Polymer extrusion and blown film line test in low gravity for polymer chain linkage testing.
Nanotubes too. We need to figure out about lowering the tether from space.
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I used to work for a company that dealt with additives for (Hod help my spelling) Flurothermalploymers. I did computer matenance on a rehometer that they used to see if they got "shark scales" when extruding basically fishing line. The chemist Ludima was always curious on how when pulling the raw line out what extruding in low-g would do.
I bet there is more then 1 Dyneon employee that would be interested in those results.
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4: Better estimate of open space survival time of a human being.
I think the ethics board might have something to say about that one...
Whose lab is it anyway? (Score:2, Insightful)
Wait, they want to turn the International Space Station into a national lab? What about all the other countries with a stake in this real estate?
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Same deal as the Russians taking tourists up, I suppose. Many of the support systems are common, but as I understand it each country has some allocated space. The science experiments would probably be subcontracted out to NASA and NASA would do them in its allocated space.
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Weren't these kinds of ideas... (Score:2, Troll)
I'm sorry, but I'm a big fan of NASA and I find this whole effort to be ridiculous. The ISS was sold as a tool that would provide all of these critical capabilities and now, all of a sudden, they have to drum up business.
Sorry, but the ISS has officially become a Solution In Search Of A Problem.
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I am in complete agreement. I don't want to be forced to pay for those things. I can pay voluntarily, thus if those institutions want my money, then they shall have to take part in activities that benefit me.
'Moral good' is no justification for breaking the law, and all of such spending is in violation of the Constitution. States are free to spend as their constituents desire.
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[citation needed]
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Article I, Section I: "All legislative powers herein granted..."
Nowhere after that statement is Congress granted the authority to do whatever it wishes. Congress is extremely limited in its powers. As James Madison said, "The government of the United States is a definite government, confined to specified objects. It is not like the state governments, whose powers are more general. Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government."
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Nowhere after that statement is Congress granted the authority to do whatever it wishes.
Err, huh? Collecting income taxes is already legal under the 16th amendment. And the part you cite talks about *legislative powers*. Nothing in that text limits about how the federal government may spend that tax revenue once it's been collected.
Re:I'd rather keep my money, thanks. (Score:4, Insightful)
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It's not ad hominem, he pointed out that he's using the fruits of his tax dollars as we speak, so they weren't wasted. The proper counterargument is to argue that the space program didn't really provide these things, probably since they would have come about through private enterprise eventually. I don't actually believe that would have happened by now, but that's pretty much the only way to claim it was "waste" when you are using the fruits of that waste.
Re:I'd rather keep my money, thanks. (Score:5, Insightful)
I do not need my government to give me stuff. By the pursuit of happiness, I mean of course things like keeping monopolies from abusing their positions and encouraging real competition in the market place. So I can get rich if I really work at it.
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Wow you're a major socialist...
I only want 3 things.
1 - to actually own the property I paid for... no your plot of land and your house are not yours, they belong to the feds,state,and city. any one of them can come and take it when they please.
2 - to actually be free to do what the hell I want as long as I dont hurt others.
3 - to get the hell off my lawn!
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Wow you're a major socialist...
I only want 3 things.
[items 1 and 2 deleted]
3 - to get the hell off my lawn!
You want to get off your own lawn? Be my guest.
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1 - to actually own the property I paid for... no your plot of land and your house are not yours, they belong to the feds,state,and city. any one of them can come and take it when they please.
I think you forgot 'landlord' in there.
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1 - so...who owns it "originally"? Why the one you bought it from was the "owner"? Who and why decides that?
2 - who decides what does it mean "not hurting others"? You?
3 - I'm sorry, you might not want to realize this, but for the two above points, and generally for your comfy standard of living, you need the society (ohhhh, that's already close to the scary word)
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Does pursuit of happiness include an education? Millions of extremely hard working but uneducated people would suggest that this is the path to being tired and poor, not rich.
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If only the world would be so simple...
"Paying for the poor" helps to keep the place nicer all around, meaning you have more chance at all of "pursuing happiness". BTW, inancing first two things inevitably gives more opportunities for that pursuit to quite small group of people. And as to your ability to pursue happiness...people have shown time and time again that they generally have a hard time at moderation, a hard time not living on the credit of future generations (this graph [wikipedia.org] is especially "inconvenien
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Libraries? Schools? A police force to catch your mugger?
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Carrying a weapon (and lack of public police) was the standard for vast majority of human history. And it was a lot less crime then, right?...
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I just want the Government to give me 3 things. A standing military... and to protect my ability to Pursue happiness.
Good luck getting those two to coexist.
The purpose of a standing military is 1) to route your tax dollars to defense contractors, and 2) to stop you from doing anything the military-defense complex doesn't want you doing.
Oh, you thought all those high-tech weapons would only ever be used against brown people in foreign countries, who don't count? And that building a highly armed totalitarian order-giving hierarchy would increase democracy in your country? You didn't want Iraq war graduates using their newfo
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I should not be forced to pay for the intellectual curiosity of others.
Actually, it's intellectual incuriosity that I'm tired of paying for.
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We'll them on the one with Rosie O'Donnell and send it to the sun.
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Fully-laden? What do you mean, and African or European Shuttle?