Trump Administration Drafting 'Artemis Accords' Pact For Moon Mining (reuters.com) 133
The Trump administration is drafting a legal blueprint for mining on the moon under a new U.S.-sponsored international agreement called the Artemis Accords, Reuters reported Wednesday. From the report: The agreement would be the latest effort to cultivate allies around NASA's plan to put humans and space stations on the moon within the next decade, and comes as the civilian space agency plays a growing role in implementing American foreign policy. The draft pact has not been formally shared with U.S. allies yet.
The Trump administration and other spacefaring countries see the moon as a key strategic asset in outer space. The moon also has value for long-term scientific research that could enable future missions to Mars -- activities that fall under a regime of international space law widely viewed as outdated. The Artemis Accords, named after the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's new Artemis moon programme, propose "safety zones" that would surround future moon bases to prevent damage or interference from rival countries or companies operating in close proximity.
The Trump administration and other spacefaring countries see the moon as a key strategic asset in outer space. The moon also has value for long-term scientific research that could enable future missions to Mars -- activities that fall under a regime of international space law widely viewed as outdated. The Artemis Accords, named after the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's new Artemis moon programme, propose "safety zones" that would surround future moon bases to prevent damage or interference from rival countries or companies operating in close proximity.
What is the point? (Score:3)
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You know no one is going to pay the slightest attention when there is a buck to be made.
If there ever are bucks to be made then, yes, the accord probably won't be renewed. It is still good to have one. The Antarctic Treaty System has be very helpful, but no one has found a resource to exploit yet.
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There are resources there, I remember there being coal specifically, they're just not economically viable to exploit.
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There are resources there, I remember there being coal specifically, they're just not economically viable to exploit.
The coal seams are not economically viable because there is no molecular oxygen on the moon, so we can't burn the coal.
But seriously, it is not economically viable to ship anything from the moon to the earth, but it may be viable to produce materials for the construction of spacecraft in lunar orbit.
Launching from the earth requires 22 times as much energy as launching from the moon. Since the moon is in a vacuum, an efficient mass-driver can be used rather than inefficient chemical rockets.
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I meant coal in Antarctica, there's never been biological activity on the Moon to create fossil fuels. It's on the Palmer Peninsula, Chile and Argentina were squabbling about who was going to claim it in the '70s before the UN told them both to shut up.
NASA's on-orbit construction plans have always included the majority of materials being mined on the Moon. Plastics, chemicals and electronics will need to come up from Earth, but almost everything else can come from the Moon including foodstuffs which can
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You could send things from the moon to the earth economically. As you say, you could launch stuff off the moon for basically free, and it's all downhill, with a pillowy soft atmospheric landing, after that. Still kind of a silly idea though. The stuff is way more valuable building space and moon infrastructure, and solar panels to beam down energy.
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I guess eventually you might. For the nearish future, would you rather sell your aluminum girders in space, or drop them onto the surface and sell them at 1/10th the price? I expect the industrial capacity of the moon will be more than occupied building stuff in space, possibly forever.
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1/10th the price?
Aluminum on earth costs about $1.50 / kg.
Aluminum in LEO costs about $3000 /kg.
Aluminum in deep space costs about $10,000 / kg.
Of course, the space price will plummet as supply increases, so maybe a factor of ten in the longterm.
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You could send things from the moon to the earth economically.
One proposal is to put a payload on an electro-magnetic skid and launch it along with the skid on an earthbound trajectory, using a mass driver.
As the skid falls into the earth's gravity well, it picks up an enormous amount of energy (20 times more than the energy used to launch it).
It then passes through an inductive coil in LEO which harvests the energy, decelerating the payload in the process. The energy can then be beamed down to earth, and the payload dropped by parachute into the atmosphere.
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A mass-driver on the moon, aimed at Earth?
"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch!"
Real meaning of Artemis Pact (Score:3)
Re: What is the point? (Score:2)
What do you think these accords are for. It is so Trump can get a piece of the prize money
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And this is when the Space force comes in.
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You know no one is going to pay the slightest attention when there is military advantage to be made.
FTFY.
The Moon could become of strategic advantage in the future.
Space 1999 and Breakaway (Score:2)
No way (Score:3)
The point? (Score:2)
Is there anything worth mining on the moon that we have discovered so far?
Re: The point? (Score:2)
Re: The point? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because the chief side effect is probably going to be alienating almost everyone on Earth that is not American and/or already alienated.
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Re: The point? (Score:4, Funny)
âoewhat's the harm in having a feel good piece of paper? â
Yes, that is exactly what my ex told me before we got married. Big fucking mistake.
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From my understanding the Moon basically has the same stuff the Earth has, however the earth is much bigger, and mining the moon is prohibitively expensive.
The only logical point to mining the moon would be for the ability to make additional spacecraft. But for mining materials and sending back to earth, that is just crazy talk for the next hundred years. Unless they are going to build single use spacecraft on the moon then drop it on earth. Which may may recoop its cost in less than a hundred years.
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I would agree with your disagreement of my post.
I was trying to be optimistic figuring if they could make cheap earth landers on the moon and shoot them at earth, then there may be some cost savings, however unless the moon has something really valuable I doubt it.
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They are probably thinking of using the material on the moon itself, to for a moon base or to send rockets on to Mars.
Say an easily accessed supply of water is found, it would be unfortunate if one country monopolised it.
Re:The point? (Score:5, Interesting)
All the land area on the Earth combined is approximately equal to the surface area of the Moon. Since we don't mine under the ocean the Earth is effectively the same size as the Moon for mining purposes, plus there isn't an ice cap covering an entire continent.
The purpose of a lunar colony isn't to ship stuff back to the surface of Earth, it's to put stuff on orbit. You could launch an I-beam made of solid gold off the Moon to put into Earth orbit for less than it would cost to launch that same I-beam made of aluminum from here. If anything large is going to be built in Earth's orbit the vast bulk of it will need to come from the Moon, be it solar power satellites, an interplanetary spaceship or an O'Neil-style rotating habitat.
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You could launch an I-beam made of solid gold off the Moon to put into Earth orbit for less than it would cost to launch that same I-beam made of aluminum from here.
Umm, what? Are there I-beams made of solid gold laying on the surface of the Moon? I had not heard about them, if so.
What would it cost to make an I-beam out of locally sourced gold on the Moon?
Currently orbital launch costs are down to about $1000/kg and may go as low as $500/kg in the not too distant future. You are not making anything on the Moon at a cost of less than $1000/kg.
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Why do we need to send humans to live on the moon?
So we can mine it!
Why do we need to mine the moon?
So humans can live there!
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It basically comes down to the moon is a dangerous, dull place, but if we ever want humanity to "move to the stars" we have to do the tough work first and having even a mediocre circular logic reason is probably better than none. It is basically the same logic as playing minecraft (or better yet minetest).
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Re:The point? (Score:5, Informative)
Well, and that depends...
The moon is a source of aluminum and other light metals that just happen to be in a much shallower gravity well than any aluminum mine on Earth. Which makes it a great source of metals for orbital and interplanetary infrastructure.
Plus the oxygen, mustn't forget that. It's bound up as aluminum oxides, but producing aluminum will give us O2, again, in a much shallower gravity well (note that O2 is the majority of the fuel for a rocket engine burning H2 and O2).
Yeah, if you're only concerned with things on Earth and have no interest beyond comsats and weather sats in orbit, mining the moon is pointless. But if you're interested in doing much of anything other than what we've always done in space, it's extremely valuable....
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Helium 3
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The real money would be in the asteroid mining. On Earth most heavy metals (platinum, gold, iridium, etc.) sank into the core early during the planet's formation, but on asteroids they'll be easily accessible.
Re: The point? (Score:2)
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However, if you want to actually build a long term base then yes you need to be able to mine for water and materials that would need for the daily life on the base.
The problem was the old treaty would have placed limits that would be restrictive for that survival of the people working there so it had to go.
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as is being claimed by the liberals
What liberals? The ones regularly invented on Free Republic? I haven't seen any of them who live in the real world spouting garbage like that.
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Water that doesn't cost thousands per kilogram to get into orbit. Water that is necessary for life support, and that can be easily cracked into hydrogen and oxygen, for rocket fuel.
The idea is not to mine things on the moon and return them to Earth. The idea is to use materials mined on the moon to further the exploration of the solar system.
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Well, to quote the real-estate people, "Location, Location, Location."
No, there's no unobtainium on the Moon. The thing is, if you want to build buildings on the Moon or take advantage of the Moon's lower gravity to build spacecraft, you're going to want to get your raw materials locally rather than from a place 250,000 miles away which is expensive to lift things from.
It would be a huge initial investment--you're not just mining the ore but actually turning it into something useful which will require some
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"Is there anything worth mining on the moon that we have discovered so far?"
Cheese?
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The moon is basically covered with aluminum, iron, silicon and oxygen. Four of the most useful things you can have in space, along with water, nitrogen and carbon.
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Is there anything worth mining on the moon that we have discovered so far?
Yes there is. Moon rocks. They have value here on Earth. Lunar meteors are worth about $1000/gram, there are 190 kg of them that have been recovered. If you brought back 1000 kg of Moon rocks you might be able to sell them for a some hundreds of millions of dollars. Eventually the Moon rock market would saturate, but if you visited different parts of the Moon you might be able to extend the market for collectors who want different specimens.
Otherwise no.
Good (Score:5, Insightful)
As a species, we're dead if we don't work out how to move off the Earth. We know this. We know it's a bajillion years away too, so we keep putting it off. Next year, it will be a bajillion - 1 years away. The year after, a bajillion - 2. And so on and so on. Someone has to start. If this is it - well yep, it's imperfect. But we start somewhere.
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Do we?
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There are a million ways the end could come down... and it can happen at any time.
An interesting compendium of world ending scenarios [exitmundi.nl]
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I'm all for setting up bases on the moon. I can also support limited excavation for research purposes. I'm against mining the moon like we mine for coal. Asteroids, fair game... the moon.. can we just leave something (mostly) intact?
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Well - this is just a way to bypass the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. We cannot claim territory but we can designate "safe zones" that other countries must ask for permission before approaching...
Arguably it doesn't bypass the Outer Space Treaty—it just violates it. I've been expecting Trump to withdraw the US from that treaty for the last couple of years, ever since the 2017 announcement. If he gets a second term and Artemis looks likely to actually land Americans on the Moon by 2024 as intended, I bet he'll do it. If anybody suggests the possibility of creating US sovereign territory on the Lunar surface, Trump absolutely will go for it.
I kind of hope he does it. I'm not sure I'll be abl
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Republicans have never seen a need to withdraw from treaties, unless it's for cosmetic purposes like the Paris Accord. They just violate them at will, like the bio-weapons treaties, chem weapons treaties, anti-money laundering accord, nuclear reduction and ABM treaties, Geneva Conventions, etc.
I'm not optimistic about getting back to the Moon by 2024, since they're not actually allocating even a fraction of the funding necessary.
I'm not so sure (Score:2)
As for the sun exploding (what the "bajillion" refers to), there is such
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I actually agree. My biggest fear on Artemus is that it will find the perfect worst case of spending 10s of billions, but not actually doing the mission, or doing one mission, planting another flag, then quitting.
I really want to see a major effort in manned space with a goal of colonization - I believe its possible, but it takes a serious commitment.
Spending money slowly doesn't get there - programs just drag on with very little if any actual progress.
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Arguably recycling is a much more important milestone than lunar mining if your goal is to enable humans to live, unsupported by Earth resources.
Lunar mining is altogether the wrong model: dig stuff out of the ground, use it, then throw it away. Virgin resources are bound to be scarce and expensive for a human race unsupported by the planet we specifically evolved to thrive on.
Let's say you build your lunar civilization around extracting Helium-3. You need to crush about 500 tons of regolith to yield a gr
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As a species, we're dead if we don't work out how to move off the Earth.
Slashdot post from 2250:
As a species, we're dead if we don't work out how to move off Mars.
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A space mining treaty has been in the works for a long time. It's not a Trump thing anyway. It is getting a bit urgent, since the US intends to on the moon in a few years, and the Chinese a few years after that.
We're whalers on the Moon (Score:2)
Don't we own the whole thing? (Score:2)
Don't we own the whole moon in its entirety? I could have sworn Neil Armstrong said "I hereby plant this flag and claim the entire moon for God, king, and country. One small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind."
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A chicken and egg problem (Score:2)
I have a few friends that are a bit smarter in physics and space than me and this topic of mining in space has come up a few times in our discussions. One of the big points that gets raised pretty often is the fact that space mining will probably never compete with Earth based mining due to simple physics and logistics. Unless you are finding asteroids made of small mountains of pure metals and these metals are in high demand on Earth, you aren't hauling a rock back to the moon to mine and then slinging the
In related news ... (Score:2)
Partners (Score:5, Interesting)
FTFA:
In the coming weeks, U.S. officials plan to formally negotiate the accords with space partners such as Canada, Japan, and European countries, as well as the United Arab Emirates
Wat? UAE? The US needs to negotiate with that well known global space power, the UAE? Remind me again how many astronauts they have? Oh right. One. Hazza Al Mansouri was the first UAE citizen in space. Launched 25 September of fucking 2019, he spent less than 8 days at the ISS. Bully for him, great job, but he was a goddamned passenger. UAE has one "experienced" astronaut (for very small values of "experienced") and zero operational orbital rockets. Canada at least manufactures some space hardware. Wtf does UAE do? Seriously, I'm asking. What possible reason is there to involve the UAE?
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What possible reason is there to involve the UAE?
Campaign contributions, and a bunch of banks that participate with the big New York banks in money laundering.
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The UAE has plans to drill for oil on the moon. They want to make sure there's a legal framework that will protect their interests.
Thank you for that, AC. Space oil! I knew there had to be a reason.
And His Electric Massager (Score:2)
When I was a kid, by 1980 we should have had a moonbase, and maybe visitor hotels or even settlers. It's clear if I ever want to get there, I'm gonna have to build my own giant ship like Tom Swift.
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Instead we got his electric rifle.
But I'm right there with you on building a space ship.
Just don't use the Moon for a prison colony (Score:2)
If you don't then you've been reading the wrong books. xD
Silly inyalowda's... (Score:2)
...the real welth is in da belt. No papas or treeties der.
Beltalowda !
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Probably a helluva lot of Helium-3. If we ever figure out cold fusion, it could become very valuable very quickly.
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Probably a helluva lot of Helium-3. If we ever figure out cold fusion, it could become very valuable very quickly.
So the moon sounds like a great place to set up all our upcoming Quantum Computer revolution. Right after we get the fusion rectors fired up, and with all that free energy and endless supply of compressed helium-3 to use for cooling the computer hardware, what could possibly go wrong?
Oh, there is that nasty problem with ionizing radiation and no protective atmosphere to shield anything, or even breathe, but maybe we can just throw more money at that problem to make it go away. When do we start?
Re: Can someone please 'mine Trump'? (Score:3)
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There's only one way to learn how to live in space: go there. Even though there is still gravity it's much less and the resources are much more similar to those found elsewhere in the universe than what is found on Earth. Just like the Europeans first colonized the Azores and Canaries before taking the big leap to the Americas we'll need to start with the Moon.
Re:Can someone please 'mine Trump'? (Score:5, Interesting)
One thing the moon has a lot of is regolith, which happens to make a dandy radiation shield.
The helium 3 is, of course, not meant to cool anything, it is a fusion fuel. If you want to criticize the idea, just point out how incredibly scarce it is. You'd need to strip mine a huge percentage of the lunar surface to get usable quantities. But to criticize the idea in an intelligent way, you'd need to understand what proposals are actually under consideration. Which you obviously don't, so you don't end up sounding as smart as you may have hoped to.
The real treasure of the moon is plain old water that doesn't happen to be at the bottom of a huge gravity well. Just add sunlight to split it into hydrogen and oxygen. Water, hydrogen and oxygen are all things we need a lot of if we are going to be gallivanting around the solar system.
Re:Can someone please 'mine Trump'? (Score:5, Interesting)
The helium 3 is, of course, not meant to cool anything, it is a fusion fuel. If you want to criticize the idea, just point out how incredibly scarce it is.
You could also point out that He3 fusion requires much higher temperatures than D-T or D-D fusion. The containment difficulty goes up quadratically with temperature.
He3 fusion is a solution to a problem that mostly doesn't exist. Yes, D-T fusion produces some neutrons and requires handling radioactive tritium, but it is still way cleaner than a uranium LWR.
D-T is "good enough".
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If you want to criticize the idea, just point out how incredibly scarce it is. You'd need to strip mine a huge percentage of the lunar surface to get usable quantities.
How scarce is it? This paper [tandfonline.com] claims there is more that a million tonnes on the lunar surface. Since fusion energy doesn't use much fuel because it is so energetic, it seems to me like we could be quite well supplied with He-3 mining only a fraction of that. Current industrial use is only about 6000 liters/year. Of course, the usefulness presupposes fusion reactors that can actually use it as a fuel which have yet to be demonstrated.
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The real treasure of the moon is plain old water that doesn't happen to be at the bottom of a huge gravity well. Just add sunlight to split it into hydrogen and oxygen.
Then throw away the oxygen. While 2H2 + O2 is a good way to get out of Earth's gravity well, hydrogen propellant in a nuclear thermal rocket makes far more sense for interplanetary travel on the industrial scale that lunar mining implies. And no NIMBYs to worry about.
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A half meter of regolith will be sufficient to block any radiation, residents would actually be receiving a lower average daily dose than people staying on Earth. It's likely that lava tubes will be the sites of the first colonies anyway, since less construction is needed than surface habitats.
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Helium-3 isn't needed for cold fusion, it works fine in regular hot fusion. It's also not strictly necessary for fusion - you can run a reactor on hydrogen and deuterium just fine, but helium-3 has a few practical advantages. Easier to contain, higher efficiency. By the time we can use helium-3 for power, we might not need it.
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It has been theorized that any gold (and other heavy metals) from Earth's formation would be locked into the core (due to weight) and that all of the heavy metals that we find in the crust come from meteorite impacts, which have been slowly folded into the crust and then exposed by erosion.
If that is the case, then the Moon, with many more meteorite strikes and no crustal movement, would be a great place to to a lot of mining with limited excavation.
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"Top Gun : SPACE FORCE" confirmed! (Score:3)
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i tend to view trump as a symptom of the us destroying itself, but what should i know, i'm an european and we have our own morons in charge ...
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Just to put my
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It would be very convenient for the left-wing narrative if opposition to Obama was about his skin color and opposition to Hillary was about her sex... but other than perhaps a tiny fringe, it was neither.
In fact, the same party that opposed Hillary supported a female VP candidate against Obama/Biden. Meanwhile, Trump's big Superbowl advertising push was... to attract black voters.
People didn't like Obama because of his left-wing policies and attempts to stomp on individual liberty while doing his best to co
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Also fuck you sideways with a rusty chainsaw backwards on the freeway, motherfucker.
Re: We only have the one (Score:2)
But we should try and keep it as minimal as possible.
You know what's really beautiful when you're on the [sterile, desolate] lunar surface?The fucking Earth.
I'm all about protecting ecosystems but you're not talking about 'protecting' anything other than an abstract notion. Mine the fuck out of the Moon.
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If you're going to build a solar orbiting station you'll need to launch most of the materials off the Moon anyway. You can't drag that much material off Earth, and half a meter of lunar regolith will provide adequate radiation shielding for residents.
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Geology isn't like biology. The best way to do geology is to dig stuff up.
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Wow, that's an old straw man, did your grandpappy make that by hand?