BeGreen said:
[soapbox]
Want a more longterm, lofty goal? How about achieving antigravity for a tireless vehicle in 25 years?
[/soapbox]
Isn't that what maglev trains are?
Heck, we can't even get the population to agree to expand the rail system here, and that is 200 years old technology! The most obvious train routes like up the Hudson Valley to Albany and from Boston to Albany (bullet trains) would be quite amazing. I could step on a train in Springfield or Westfield and be at Fenway in 45 minutes! Or, Albany to NYC in a hour or less.
Space may have pushed us, but consider that we may have been fooled (this is just a wild guess) by the fact that the military use of space is perhaps the most relevant. From spying to targeting, and from ICBM's to Star Wars, the single biggest consumer of real space value seems to be the government....
Rush likes to say that Roosevelt is dead and we should get over it (translation - every rich man for himself), but the fact is that certain peacetime social programs in this country are some of our best legacies. Remember when we virtually wiped our poverty in Appalachia?.....it was during our lifetime!
It is pretty obvious that our government is not going to save us. They came up with a great resolution this week "That we will prevail on the Global War on Terror" and then took a vote on it! I am willing to bet any amount of money that "terror", in other words social and political situations which marginalize entire populations, will not cease to exist. Of course, the government can win the war on terror in one week if they want - just like this:
1. Since it is largely fabricated, they can just stop paying attention to it.
2. When the situations occur (which they have always done through history), they should say "just like you can't stop murder and other such crimes, you can't stop this except by building more fair and equitable societies.
There, it is over!
To get a taste of how this works, look at the Bush Admin over the past couple weeks. They have carefully scripted things to make it seem that, all of a sudden, the tide is turning and we will "win". And a lot of people buy it. Never mind that the same people were told by Cheney himself that the war would probably be a matter of "weeks, not months" and would cost about 60 billion, of which we would get paid back by oil.
This is like coming home and discovering your spouse in bed with someone for the 10th time, and he/she says "trust me, this is the last time".
