Winnable Nuclear War

The real Dr Strangelove currently working at the Pentagon.

Keith Payne

There is certainly an argument that Nuclear Weapons used in small doses aren't necessarily a huge problem - uncontrolled use by lots of players is more of a problem. It's not something, however, I'd like to see too much of. At least not on the same planet that I live on.

Richard Morgan does go into some detail about battlefield nukes and their uses in Broken Angels, the follow on to Altered Carbon.

More Clueless...

Captain Clueless Strikes Again!

I was reading an article on line the other day on about how blogs will eventually take over the media.

Captain Clueless demonstrates the danger in that with a recent tirade on the concept of the space elevator. For those that aren't aware, a space elevator is essentially a cable from the surface of the Earth to a point anchored in geo-stationary orbit up which you can run cargo. It's a common thread in much science fiction, probably the most famous being Arthur C Clarke's 1979 classic "The Fountains of Paradise".

I digress.

Clueless recently published his thoughts on this. As an engineer he feels qualified to opine on many subjects and recently posted the following issues with space elevators.

I have serious doubts about the entire concept [space elevators] even in operation, which I may write about some time. But the biggest problem, once you've found the funding, and have all those hundreds of miles of Kevlar ribbon sitting on the ground in spools, and have built the anchorage, and have the elevator ready to go, then how do you actually put the ribbon into place?

If the good Captain had bothered to read the articles, many many articles on this sort of thing - the current thinking is you might be able to launch the entire arrangement to geostationary orbit and then you lower the cable through the atmosphere.

Those research papers tended to wave their hands and skip over that part, because it's an extremely tough problem and may require other kinds of technology which don't exist and which, if they did exist, would obviate the need for the elevator itself. Without such things as rockets capable of generating high thrust for weeks at a time without refueling, the problem becomes extremely difficult even if the anchorage is on the equator.

Agreed - but not for the reasons you list.

It is a technical challenge, but the material science of carbon nano-tubes suggests that we will soon be able to make the necessarily strong material. The unspooling and lowering through the atmosphere will be tricky but will not require launching - this is a top down approach, not the other way around.

I don't think we'll be building one of these any day soon, although there is a company Highlift Systems who are doing some serious research into it. My point is, Blogs are not serious critical journalism.

Bloggers are merely putting across their own position. There are no editorial controls or standards - for science and pseudo-science this makes the web a relatively dangerous place. Politics is not really that different. I regularly read a blend of Blogs - some left, some right, some centrist, some libertarian, some not. However, many of the Blogs are only read by people who agree with the agenda. That kind of polarisation is exactly the kind of thing the world needs less of.

In my opinion that is. I recommend everybody makes up their own mind. :-)

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