Majority of Americans Believe It Is Essential That the US Remain a Global Leader in Space (pewinternet.org) 286
Pew Research: Sixty years after the founding of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), most Americans believe the United States should be at the forefront of global leadership in space exploration. Majorities say the International Space Station has been a good investment for the country and that, on balance, NASA is still vital to the future of U.S. space exploration even as private space companies emerge as increasingly important players. Roughly seven-in-ten Americans (72%) say it is essential for the U.S. to continue to be a world leader in space exploration, and eight-in-ten (80%) say the space station has been a good investment for the country, according to a new Pew Research Center survey conducted March 27-April 9, 2018. These survey results come at a time when NASA finds itself in a much different world from the one that existed when the Apollo astronauts first set foot on the moon nearly half a century ago. The Cold War space race has receded into history, but other countries (including China, Japan and India) have emerged as significant international players in space exploration. Another finding in the report: Most Americans would like NASA to focus on Earth, instead of Mars.
Moon? (Score:5, Insightful)
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But beware the danger of moon rocks [washingtontimes.com]!
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But beware the danger of moon rocks [washingtontimes.com]!
They don't have to be moon rocks [wikipedia.org]
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But beware the danger of moon rocks [washingtontimes.com]!
Brianna can be my harsh mistress whenever she wants.
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What does it mean to be a "Leader in Space"? (Score:4, Insightful)
If you look at History and the various technologies that have come along, you notice that there is one kind of technology that enables most others...transportation.
Whether it's inventing a wheel, canoe, ship, automobiles, etc. enabling someone to get from A to B quickly and easily is the key to creating the huge, glorious stuff once you are there.
So too with space. Don't try to be the first to Mars. Be the first to make getting to Mars cheap, quick, and easy. Don't be the first to put up a giant space station, be the first to make putting space stations up quick and easy. Don't be the first to establish a Moon colony. Be the first to make regular or on demand supply runs to that colony.
So focus on launch capabilities and, once in space, the ability to go from A to B without years of planning and relying on being shot across space on chemical rockets.
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Re:Moon? (Score:4, Interesting)
It cannot. Not enough gravity to retain an atmosphere. What people are talking about is building a self-sustaining (as far as possible) moon base as a demonstration humans can survive long-term without deliveries from earth. My personal guess is this will take at least 100 years to accomplish.
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Not enough gravity to retain an atmosphere permanently
Tens of thousands of years would be good enough for a start though. We can theoretically smash comets into it to create atmosphere, and again every ten thousand years to top it off.
The challenges are quite daunting, and expense likely makes it a non starter during any of our lifetimes. But impossible remains to be seen.
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Why would you say that? Mars is called the red planet due to the iron oxide and the Earth has the banded iron deposits from the great oxygen event, which took something like a billion years to finish oxidizing the iron. If nothing else, a good number of iron nickel meteors will have hit the Moon over the last 4 billion years.
Lots of other elements that oxygen will bind to as well.
Re:Moon? (Score:4, Insightful)
Mars makes more sense for a self-sufficient base because it has more resources. The greater gravity is also quite helpful for humans living there long term.
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The moon makes more sense because it is close enough that we can engineer emergency resupply or even rescue missions.
Economics (Score:3)
What people are talking about is building a self-sustaining (as far as possible) moon base as a demonstration humans can survive long-term without deliveries from earth.
Quite so. The real challenge in doing so is finding an economic reason to build such a moon base in the first place. It won't get done without a darn good reason. Either we need to discover something really valuable that can only be exploited on the moon or there would need to be some national/global defense reason to do it. Literally every really large expenditure (talking MUCH bigger than stuff like the ISS or LHC) made for exploration is made for one of those two reasons.
My personal guess is this will take at least 100 years to accomplish.
Unless it was declared to be
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How much more expensive is it to throw Cygnus after Cygnus at the Moon, rather than just to the ISS? The capital cost to build the colony is breathtaking, but the maintenance cost might be tolerable.
Of course we choose partners. Wisely.
Re:Moon? (Score:5, Insightful)
First things first -- space station in Earth orbit, able to be replenished with fuel (reaction mass) via automated spacecraft as well as accepting capsules loaded with people. Then use nuclear-rocket powered shuttles for the leg between station and moon.
Spacecraft designed for travel in space aren't optimized for launch from Earth into orbit, and vice versa. "2001" had it right in the 1960s.
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First things first -- space station in Earth orbit, able to be replenished with fuel (reaction mass) via automated spacecraft as well as accepting capsules loaded with people.
We have already done that.
Then use nuclear-rocket powered shuttles for the leg between station and moon.
Why use nukes? Solar is bright and plentiful in space, and can power ion thrusters.
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Why use nukes? Solar is bright and plentiful in space, and can power ion thrusters.
Because ion thrust is too low for this application. It might take 25 years to colonize, but we wouldn't want a single heavy-cargo flight to take that long.
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Better than nuclear? How?
You realise all that fuel had to be lifted at huge cost right? The multipliers make it look horrible to say the least.
Radiation is no so much of an issue, because there is plenty of that up there anyway, so you are polluting nothing (for a sensible design) and you need the shielding anyway.
Really there no comparison. Nuclear is many many orders of magnitude better...
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Moon colonization shout be the goal along with asteroid mining. That is the best way to build a sustaining space travel infrastructure. Mars can wait.
Holy contradiction, Batman! So you want people to fly to a place that's more difficult to brake down near and refuel on than Mars with its atmosphere and water (namely the Moon) and also to a place for which (due to the length of the trips) you need the same long-lived ECLSS as for Mars (namely the asteroids), with both places having more severe lack of gravity than Mars (and we already know how bad it is for humans), but for some reason, you really want to avoid Mars? Why?
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Asteroid mining isn't profitable, and neither is moon colonization. In fact, both of these are insanely expensive, with very little return.
If it ever becomes profitable, some private business will start doing it.
Re: Moon? (Score:4, Insightful)
Most great achievements of civilization are not "profitable". Accountants are notoriously myopic.
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If you want to make great unprofitable achievements, that's fine, but use your own money.
Glory vs. cash [Re: Moon?] (Score:3)
But the original implication was that basing our space plans on mining will be less expensive than alternatives such as Mars colonies because of the value of the ore.
It's still far cheaper to get precious metals from Earth mines than space, and it doesn't look like that economic reality will change any time soon. Digging and sifting many tons of dirt on Earth is still much less expensive than sifting less dirt on asteroids because big machines ar
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Let me tell you something about economy and profit.
There are things you need and want done, and there are things that somebody else wants or needs done. When you are unable to do things you want done alone, you have to pay others to help you or even do the whole thing without you. To be able to pay them, you have to do something somebody else needs done, for money. Now, you can also sit in the middle and connect various people doing what other people need done and collect a small interest in each such gig,
Motivation? (Score:3)
Moon colonization shout be the goal along with asteroid mining.
Asteroid mining is a ludicrous proposition. Either it requires returning a dangerously large amount of material back to earth (dropping a large rock on Earth from space tends to make a rather large boom - de facto a WMD) or it requires processing in space for which we have not the technology, the infrastructure, nor any demand. To make asteroid mining and processing in space we would have to build a huge amount of space based infrastructure, supply chains, and economy for which there is no obvious ROI. P
Econmic benefit? (Score:3)
I've got one:space based solar power.
Ok, devil's advocate here. Where is the economic benefit over terrestrial generation that would justify the immense expense of developing the technology (presuming it's possible) and deploying it to space? Terrestrial solar in principle can already cleanly provide more power than the global need multifold without even taking up arable land nor requiring any new technology to be developed. It's also not clear how you plan to transmit this energy safely to Earth... For space based energy generation to be
Re:Moon? (Score:5, Interesting)
Because in a century or two whomever dominates space will control access to resources that will become increasingly scarce or environmentally irresponsible to extract on Earth.
Europeans didn't immediately start sailing around the world and creating colonies and trade infrastructure. They started by creeping the coastlines of the Old World until marine technology had reached a point where opennsea voyages became possible. But the point is that those technologies were developed and advanced.
Probes serve their purpose, but it's clear at least that the Chinese have bigger plans, and it would seem prudent for the US to leverage it's nearly six decades of space exploration to meet the challenge, rather than sitting around and losing the race.
Need education first (Score:5, Insightful)
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Considering all that's happened, the US is still quite the top dog. China is our biggest rival, but their per capita GDP is about $15k versus $60k in the US. True, their sheer population size magnifies any trade or military threat, but that just means they have a big population, not that USA is going to heck in a handbasket. I don't see their threat as big as the Cold War. US and Soviet Union were on hair-trigger notice back then; it
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I agree the US is "top dog" for now, but when you consider the US relies on creating more and more debt to remain being "top dog", and the majority of major US Corporations are setting up shop offshore to not pay taxes, and prime themselves to leave the US entirely, how long will that last after China and the BRICS take the lead away?
At the very least it will result in a dramatic drop in the Dollar and the US Debt being given junk status. This will be huge for the BRICS and their New Development Bank as the
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Bring in 10000 skilled German engineers under Operation Paperclip and the USA was a space winner for decades in the 1950's.
No need to spread money around to educate the entire US population.
The Germans built new US production lines with real quality control, hired US staff on merit and had the advance German math needed to design the future in the USA.
Out
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Do you think America is more burdened with the poor than China? Or do you think China also struggles to "remain relevant"?
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Re:Need education first (Score:4, Interesting)
The difference being that China is on the way up and for the most people there life is getting steadily better, often much better. In the US it goes in cycles.
Actually there is a more fundamental difference than that. The Chinese government believes in making things better for as many people as possible (even if its methods are questionable), where as large parts of the US government think that is un-American socialist communism.
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Why are all these weird characters in your post? Don't you have a regular text editor?
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Dystopia-fearing voters is a large part of why T won: factories closing, growing trade imbalances, excess PC, "strange" immigrants corrupting/overridding evangelism and/or turning into terrorists. (These are alleged by the way, I'm not confirming nor denying them here.)
One could argue that increased polarization makes the other side more fearful when the other side is in power.
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Dystopia-fearing voters is a large part of why T won:
Interesting point.
Re: Need education first (Score:2)
In recent years Democrat partisans and the financialist establishment seem actively enthusiastic about dystopia. What the popular masses rightly fear, they invite and encourage.
That was no small part of the reason for President Trump's victory. Yet now it seems the Democrat party are doubling down on their anti-popular dystopian ideals. With opposition like that, surely the President will win reelection by a landslide.
Ignore what the public thinks (Score:5, Insightful)
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Actually, it's simplistic survey questions that are useless. People are quite useful, but you have to know how to extract insight from them.
I used to be the lead developer on a small vertical market app. The company was constantly asking people what they though the app should do, but despite trying to do the things people were telling us to do, the product never gained traction. Then when they brought me on, I added one simple question to every features conversation I had with customers: would you pay me a
Not quite (Score:5, Insightful)
fixed it for you
If that were true... (Score:2)
Theres my .02
At the risk of sounding like an idiot (Score:3)
Why?
I get a kick out of space stuff, but what's the return on investment? Could we realize a better return per dollar by spending it on other areas?
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Orbital manufacturing, manufacturing on the moon and asteroid mining could actually pay off handsomely in the long run, but that is speculation. Beyond that, it is unclear whether there are even potential payoffs.
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Space is so expensive that if an asteroid in the asteroid belt was made of pure gold, it would not be profitable to go get it.
It would be even more expensive to lug Earthly water, iron, aluminum and hydrocarbons out of our gravity well when those things will be available "locally" for building colonies. But once the colonies are built, sending asteroidal material back to Earth will be cheaper than underground mining for terrestrial uses. The deepest gold mine is already pushing four kilometers straight down. Just filing environmental impacts for base industrial metals is becoming exponentially harder.
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It would be even more expensive to lug Earthly water, iron, aluminum and hydrocarbons out of our gravity well when those things will be available "locally" for building colonies
Colonies aren't profitable either, so if we ignore those, what's the use case for expensive mining in space ?
sending asteroidal material back to Earth will be cheaper than underground mining for terrestrial uses
It's not trivial to send material back to Earth. You'd have to match Earth delta-v, and then manage to land it softly from orbit. Even for pure gold, that's a tough case. And in order to get pure gold, you'd have to launch and build an entire refinery. I'd like to see the price tag for that.
Those same Americans demand (Score:2)
Thought so... (Score:3)
Another finding in the report: Most Americans would like NASA to focus on Earth, instead of Mars.
Read TFA yourself of course, but note the following:
The questions shown about what should NASA have as its priority included:
"Monitor key parts of the earth's climate system"
"Monitor asteroids/objects that could hit Earth"
and
"Send astronauts to Mars"
Whether you believe man is changing the climate or not, it still is an obvious priority preference to monitor climate unless you are really fringe and don't think it changes at all.
Additionally, even that fringe is going to consider not getting whapped by rocks..from..spaaace.. higher priority than having someone take a joyride out to one.
Re:Thought so... (Score:4, Insightful)
"Monitor key parts of the earth's climate system"
Maybe it's just me, but this sounds more like a job for NOAA [noaa.gov].
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NOAA partners with NASA, but is largely terrestrial based. Moreover, it does not have international ties like NASA does to procure funding from foreign nations to assist in the science associated with the costly missions that are run.
Additionally, both JAXA and ESA and India's space organization push climate missions as well, so clearly it is a big bigger than just what NOAA does, or else these other space organizations would be foisting it on their national _weather_ service as well.
Pfft, global (Score:3)
What this poll doesn't say: (Score:3)
That's the problem with these 'polls': limited number of participants, how do you expect anyone to believe this truly represents the majority?
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I didn't see anywhere where it says how many people participated in this poll. I sincerely doubt that all 300,000,000 citizens responded. That's the problem with these 'polls': limited number of participants, how do you expect anyone to believe this truly represents the majority?
Even if you were right you'd still be wrong because the problem is never the population size. We know the confidence interval if you randomly pick 30m, 3m, 300k, 30k or 3k out of 300 million, it's just math. Of course in theory you could pick 30 million Trump voters and not a single Clinton voter, but the odds of that is like picking the right lottery number every week for the rest of your life. With >99% probability you'd get a result +/-0.1% of the actual election result, probably an order or two magni
Re:What this poll doesn't say: (Score:4, Funny)
I read the first 10 pages. Is that enough?
make it voluntary (Score:2)
NASA's annual budget is $18 bn. So, those 72% of Americans can accomplish their goal by paying $80 each every year, voluntarily.
Of course, what many of those people are really saying is that they like US space leadership and that others should be taxed to pay for it.
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you're hilarious, we're spending trillions attacking people that didn't attack us and you're worried about that 18 billion?
we all pay taxes, we only need to spend a tiny bit less on stupid shit.
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Because two wrongs make a right! You're not hilarious, you're pathetic.
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no, the tech alone from space exploration has made trillions in wealth and saved lives. fantastic investment
are they? (Score:2)
This week major European news (on euronews) news was successful landing of Soyuz and subsequent successful launch of Soyuz (with people on board in both cases)
Have you heard anything about in American media, the media of imbecile two-bit backwood degenerate parvenu country?
Majority of Americans... (Score:2)
Majority of Americans stopped reading after "essential remain world leader" and jumped up and down chanting '"Murica! 'Murica!"
You probably could have asked if it is essential to remain the world leader in obesity, people in jail or environmental pollution and people would have argued that it can't be bad to be the leader in anything - as long as you are leading.
Re:Problems (Score:5, Insightful)
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I would have no problem with that. But not happening. And fighting for it just distracts from solving the real problem. Many want you to fight for that.
My point is that military spending is not a part of the problem. If we ended all military spending, the wealthy would consume the windfall. The argument of spending on military and infrastructure versus welfare and education is just a distraction meant to keep your focus away from the real change in wealth allocation that has occurred over the last 50 years.
Re: Problems (Score:2, Informative)
Why not do both? The money drain is the military, not space exploration.
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Eliminating poverty within your borders is a far more noble pursuit than exploring space. Let's cure problems down here first and then worry about up there.
Had we waited to do that, Columbus himself would never have sailed.
I see two major reasons why we want to colonize space privately:
1. Going beyond LEO will require assuming major personal risk. Only private advanturers can undertake that risk.
2. The "priorities" argument does not apply in the private sector, and the violent and dystopian folks who hate science have no input to the process. It will go ahead whether they want it or not.
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Columbus's expedition was driven entirely by the prospect of profit. If there were profit to be made from deep space exploration, we'd already be there doing it. There is no profit to be made so private enterprise is not doing it.
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The electoral system is not the problem.
Americans are well aware of how that works and they accept it.
There's no disproportionate problem of any kind.
Voters are not banned from voting and that includes voting for politicians who would change the election laws.
For "problems," with voters, look to those who don't.
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The "system," is populated by ________. (hint: voters)
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Voters are not banned from voting
Isn't banning voters a common tactic used by Republicans?
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set up gives disproportionate priority to poorly-educated rural voters.
Yea! God forbid the federal government represent its people so that their needs aren't ignored. I mean, why should rural voters have a say at the federal level? The founders were a bunch of idiots for their time who didn't understand the rural-urban divide as a serious geo-political division of culture and government needs! Truly, b0s0z0ku ( 752509 ) of the internet in $CurrentYear is smarter and can come up with a mob rule to put those rural retards in their place that would benefit the educated cities.
Sha
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How about equal representation under law? Why is someone in Wyoming or Rhode Island more worthy of political power than someone in Texas or California?
Also, the population disparities between states were much smaller (percentage-wise) in the 1790s than in the 2010s.
And speaking to the electoral system, why not a direct popular vote in the 1790s? It wasn't because of technology -- vote totals could still have been brought by couriers. It was to avoid penalizing states that disenfranchised their residents.
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No, but you could figure that out if you cared to.
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No. It would give them exactly one vote, same as a resident of Wyoming or Rhode Island.
NYC metro area: 16 million people. Chicago: 8 million. L.A.: 16 million. SF: 5 million. 15% of US population. Candidates would still have to campaign nationwide. They just wouldn't be able to cherrypick states which have outsize influence.
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Enlightenment will come via suffering.
And we still have natural resources.
And our colleges are great, a few years won't impact that.
We have a lot of smart people, but less are coming here than in recent decades.
I'm not knocking anyone on Earth here, just making some generalizations. My kids are in a US based International Baccalaureate program focused on French. I would like them to school in Europe (I've never been).
Anyway, we could see a party-reversal on certain issues as happened around the Civil War
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Re:I know why (Score:5, Insightful)
Trump as president is just a symptom. Removing him will do nothing about the actual problem.
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Like it or not, but the 2016 election was a protest election where the electorate was simply sick and tired of the political establishment and as a result two people who normally would have been practically joke candidates (Trump and Sanders) got way further than they would have gotten in a normal election. Sanders got so close to the n
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Its a good start though.
In fact for many "diseases", fighting the symptoms is the only way forward,
The massive migraine that is America right now, could well do with some quick pain relief by ousting this clown.
A good start (Score:3)
Trump as president is just a symptom. Removing him will do nothing about the actual problem.
Quite so but it would definitely be a good start to solving the actual problem.
Re:I know why (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe we could blame him for appointing Pruitt and rolling back all the environmental regulations that we've so painfully established? Just so his buddies can make a profit while the rest of us drown in filth? How about blaming him for that?
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Hey!! At least the Republicans have (moon) rock-solid plans for getting back to space.
Newt Gingrich promised a moonbase full of citizens by his 2nd term if elected president
and Trump is building SPACE FORCE!! Woot!!
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Ignoring the fact that you trying so hard to troll that you felt it was important to post this drivel twice.
I'm going to go forward and say that at this point it seems space is pretty much out of hands of the U.S. tax payer. The way forward seems to be in the hands of private industry. I predict that in a few years NASA will be come what the FAA is now. Just another regulatory agency. Which I think would be a good move for NASA.
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... you felt it was important to post this drivel twice.
So, no wiggle room here that my cursor was spinning and that I got an error saying this object no longer exists so I copied my text, opened another tab, and successfully posted there.
Regarding the more civil part of your post:
What, precisely, is the point of contention? We're essentially taking a similar position but for different reasons.
Re:Doesn't matter ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Very good. I mis-interpreted your intentions. You have my apologizes.
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Yeah, I was wondering that too. I'm not sure what is interesting about admitting that I was wrong and making a public statement of the such.
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You don't know much about Venus do you? It's really hard to explore. Nasty envrionment.
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Are you suggesting that Donald Trump went to school in Canada? Why is this being hidden from Americans?
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It's taught in Canada that Canadians burned down the White House
As a Canadian, schooled in Canada, and whose children were schooled in Canada, I can tell you that this is absolutely not true. As most of you probably already know, it was British troops who razed the original White House, and that is what we were taught. (God, where does this nonsense come from?)
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While I think humanity needs to grow past anachronistic nationalism, US society is still technologically vibrant.