Daily Archives: March 24, 2004

Hotel on the Moon

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Let’s start by thinking about the reasons anyone would want to visit the moon:

1) It’s the moon!
2) Low-gravity sex – and, uh, other activities

Number 1 means that when someone looks out the window, they expect to see pristine lunar landscape, not the tracks left behind by the construction equipment. Brian’s offer to head up the lunarscaping crew notwithstanding, any marring of the terrain (lunain?) will be permanent.

So how does one create a structure without touching the surrounding land? My thought is to learn from the mushroom – pop up from underground overnight.

Man, I wish I had a napkin scanner now.

Anyway, the idea is to start by going underground. For health and safety you want most of the complex beneath a layer of rock anyway. Way deep you bury your reactor; it’s going to take a lot of energy to build the place. Then above that you put the living areas.

Here’s where it gets good. From a shaft in the ground you extend a giant umbrella, open it. Its reach extends far past all the destruction caused while digging the shaft. Set it down gently. Beyond that plastic bubble the moon is untouched, looking exactly the way it did when dudes were spitting painting onto cave walls. Good viewing!

The actual umbrella will probably have more than one layer, and some sort of optically-neutral gel between the layers to plug micrometeor hits well enough until a better patch can be applied. But I’ll leave those details to the engineers.

There would, of course, be a location where guests arrive and depart; that will likely not be as pretty. It would be out of sight of the main city, connected by tunnel or – Ooo! – by a graceful elevated rail to give spectacular views as guests arrive. Building that without ruining the surrounding countryside would be tricky, but probably worth it. In the low gravity you could build something that really defied imagination, something that our common sense would say must fall down. Definitely worth the effort.

As far as point 2 above, Brian V. already has dibs on the astro-jump concession.

Thanks!

Terrorism Preparedness: Is not! Was too! Nuh-uh! Yuh-huh!

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What it all boils down to is that Osama would still be enjoying the protection of the Taliban in Afghanistan had he and his followers not attacked the US the way they did on 9/11.

For all the posturing by the current administration that they are tougher on terrorists, the United States would not have had the political will or sufficient support from Afghanistan’s neighbors to mount an invasion. Likely we would have continued to funnel support to enemies of the Taliban, and lob in the occasional cruise missile, but you would not have seen US ground troops in there. We would still be using incentives and threats to try to undermine support for Al-Qaida in nations like the United Arab Emirates. In short, we would be doing the same things we have been doing for a decade. When it comes to fighting terrorism, it doesn’t really matter much who the president is.

Iraq, on the other hand, is not about fighting terrorism. At first the Bush administration tried to frame it that way, but no one bought it. so he switched gears and began to rail about Weapons of Mass Destruction. Now that that argument seems to have been a mistake at best and an outright lie at worst, we are hearing about freedom for the Iraqi people. It’s harder to argue against that one, since they certainly were not free before and were suffering greatly, but it’s also the hardest promise to keep. I am skeptical that we will be able to let the Iraqis have complete control over their country without dissolving into civil war, and it will be a long, long time before that changes. I have hope for the Iraqi people, but I can’t help but be skeptical about our eventual success in fostering democracy in the region.

All that notwithstanding, would we have invaded Iraq without the false boogymen of terrorism and WMDs? Many of our allies in that fight have made it clear that they would not. Spain and Poland have both said they feel bamboozled. And what was the hurry? Iraq had been known to have WMDs long before, but suddenly the danger was so urgent that it was necessary to invade immediately. The reason was as simple as an approval rating of over 70% for the president. Strike while the polls are hot.

Which leaves Afghanistan incomplete and neglected. In Afghanistan the real terrorists are still hiding, and in some areas regrouping. Al-Qaida leadership continues to elude us. Pakistan, our so-called ally (you know, the one with weapons of mass destruction) has been shipping dangerous technology all over the place, while bin Laden hides within their borders. If they took some of the troops out of Kashmir, I bet they would have the resources to track him down.

Would a Democrat have invaded Afghanistan in response to 9/11? Hard to say for sure, but I think so. I doubt, however, that a Democrat or even a McCain or Powell-style Republican would have invaded Iraq. Iraq would still be a sore spot in the region, a constant source of frustration, but Americans would not be dying daily — the victims of terrorist acts. Indeed, rather than reduce the threat of terrorism, the invasion of Iraq has made terrorism so routine that it often goes unreported.

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Thanks!