Yuzuha. Actually, I liked his eyebrows...my dad had the same kind. With regards to the nuke-powered rods grasing...more interest has been garnered in kinetic kill weapons...but don't think that out-of-sight means out-of-mind..
Pete.

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A third rate theory forbids.
A second rate theory explains after the fact.
A first rate theory predicts.
A. Lomonosov

The most powerful weapon is the spoken word. With that you can launch thousands of bombs. Mobilize armies. Convince people to deny the other, thus denying ourselves. Words are dangerous and anyone can wield them.

Kizarvexis
- Who is stangely thinking deep thoughts after watching the Mentos and Diet Coke show. Weird.

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"We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary." - James D. Nicoll

My words can't do anything like that

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I met this wonderful girl at Macy's. She was buying clothes and I was putting Slinkies on the escalator.
-Steven Wright



My Website: The Black Cat's Web Page

You need a wierding module.

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"What you think you thought you saw you did not see." Agent J, MiB - Manhatten Bureau

Although I understand what you mean, if I am standing in front of you and you in front of me, and I have a rocket launcher, you have your words...I am pretty sure I am going to win.

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Until your opponent opens his truck to reveal the nuclear missile he has pointing at you.

"NOW, I said, DO...WE...HAVE...A...PROBLEM?! HMM?!"
-Loc Dog, DBAMTSSHWDYJITH

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I met this wonderful girl at Macy's. She was buying clothes and I was putting Slinkies on the escalator.
-Steven Wright



My Website: The Black Cat's Web Page

That depends on how you define winning in that situation.

Kizarvexis

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"We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary." - James D. Nicoll

Biological weapons could theoretically be very nasty. (On the order of wiping out percentages of total human population, the way natural diseases did in the past before we developed vaccinations for them). The good thing about them is that, since they can't be targeted, they're not useful for anybody. No one but a suicidal death cult will want to spend the resources on bioweapons required to make them truly civilization-ending.

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http://amssolarempire.blogspot.com

ROFL, yes... I know it isn't really rational but it bugs me like guys with tufts of hair sticking out their nose, or those actresses who get lip implants (they remind me of carp!... just want to lick their lips and stick them to a window like a suction cup)

Yeah, I figure they're still working on gasers, and at least they made more sense than those big orbiting solar lasers that could be knocked out with $3 worth of nuts and bolts in the right orbit. Beam weapons seem cool, but the biggest problem with them is that the delivery system has to contend with a lot more energy than is actually delivered to a remote target, which can be rather inconvenient unless it is a disposable system (like nuking a bunch of foam coated aluminum rods... wouldn't want to use one too close to home!)

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Sue ikki
mi hatenu yume no
hotsure kana---Choko
(This final scene, I
I will not see to the end.
My dream is fraying.)

I don't know about the 3 bucks worth of nuts and bolts. You have to have an LV, and even so hitting things in space is a near-superpower level of tech.

Ground based assets are what are more vulnerable to simple attack. One reason I prefer space-based defenses to earth based ones. A CaLV can be used by both military and civilian purposes and is thus prefereable.

Fighters and ground based KKV interceptors have no use beyond the military and siphon money that could be used for exploration.

That's the kind of thinking that could destroy humanity, not save it. The flaw in your argument is the "off chance" part-- we should actually be more concerned with the on chances, and what the daily news proves to us about human foibles. (To put this more scientifically, what does it tell you when a gun in a household is far more likely to be used on someone in the home than outside it?)

It doesn't tell me anything. Compare the number of times a firearm is never used--the number of times its prescence prevents an assult and that far outweighs the number of times it is misused by folks with, say--high risk. Penn and Tellear had a nice program on that.

Asteroids are probably what any H-bomb will be used against--or some smaller device crammed atop some lousy Delta II.

I think we first need to develop a capability of getting to their home planet. The ability to do that implies the ability to rid a planet of multicellular life - both require similar amounts of energy.

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http://amssolarempire.blogspot.com

Guns prevent assault? Crikey, imagine if the Japanese all had guns. Then they'd have practically no crime at all.

Good point. Maybe we could just thrust an moderately large asteroid up to .1c and crash it.

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"What you think you thought you saw you did not see." Agent J, MiB - Manhatten Bureau

Much easier: Pick out a *good* sized KBO and plant a nuclear reactor on it with tanks and rocket nozzles. Melt a bit of ice, fill the tanks with water. Then shoot off the nuclear heated water rockets for long enough to put the KBO in position to intersect the planet in a few decades. Take a look at that recent Japanese animation to get an idea of what that would do . . .

Naturally, if they have technology a bit beyond ours at that time, we'd be unlikely to surprise them, and would be in big trouble if we tried. Assuming we find another technological species, I doubt that we would have enough to fight about to be worth the trouble, but more important, I'd be amazed if our technological levels were close enough to be able to have a real battle. One or the other of us would likely be far beyond the other.

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I say there is an invisible elf in my backyard. How do you prove that I am wrong?

Disclaimer: Avatar is not an official NASA image and does not imply any specific interplanetary or interstellar capability.

The Leif Ericson Cruiser

If that is true, then answer me this-- why have you never seen someone with a concealed firearm in their home post a sign that says: "Caution: firearm present"? Hmmm? (Maybe they should, but only if they did would your point hold any weight.) The reality is, nobody knows when someone has a gun in their house. Oh... except the kids.

That is even better, if every freindly neighbor have gun and you dont have it, you are much safer that if nobody have guns. but you do not suffer problems that arise if you want to have it.

Everything becomes statistic, if you go to rob some house you think know if you will stay alive, so you maibe will not do that.

War is just wide scale robbery, terrorism ir more like blackmail or vandalizm so it can use more options.

Let's expand the principle. You can get robbed in your car too, we need guns in our cars as well. That won't dramatically increase the murder rate due to "road rage" I'm sure, it's all just good protection.

Maybe need a new thread to discuss packing heat?

Not likely on this BBS.

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"What you think you thought you saw you did not see." Agent J, MiB - Manhatten Bureau

Yeah, too political. I raised it only as an analogy to discuss the OP of developing mega weapons and the various reasons why this is a really bad idea.

It seems anymore that the sheer destructive power of a weapon isn't nearly as useful as it's ability to precisely take out a target. The most useful weapon, then, would be something that can snipe someone in realtime after you've found them. Finding them becomes the object of difficulty then.

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http://amssolarempire.blogspot.com

That is true if the goal is to take out an individual or group. But of course the most powerful "weapon" is to be able to change the behavior of a large population. One has to open one's mind a bit as to what is actually the best way to do that. The spoken word was already mentioned in that context, and there are others too.

Uranium 233 can be produced by irradiating Thorium 232 in a nuclear reactor.
It can be used to make bombs--the U.S. tested one bomb with a U-233
core, and it is believed that most of India's nuclear arsenal is based on U-233
rather than U-235 or Plutonium. The gun assembly method, which does not
work with Plutonium, can be used with U-233, although, of course, spherical
implosion is much more efficient and requires less material. The U-233 bomb
tested by the U.S. had a slightly lower yield than a bomb with a corresponding
amount of Plutonium--22 kilotons as opposed to 33 kilotons if Plutonium had
been the primary fuel. But this is still about the same destructive power as
the bomb used on Nagasaki which collapsed most residential and light
industrial buildings within 1.5 miles (2.5 km), and caused widespread injuries
and fatalities at this distance.

The most powerful weapon in the world is Chuck Norris. Everybody knows that.

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I want to go back to the moon.
I don't care which rocket you use, whichever one you pick, I'll like it, I swear.
"If you think the LHC will create black holes, you might as well believe Hobbits are at the bottom of your garden."- Dr. Mike Inglis
Rovers forever! - ToSeek

I was going to say it's Internet, through which some of the nonsensical ideas like what's been mentioned above can be reduced to rubble, hopefully before demagogery can rear it's ugly head.

Then again, look at how many insane ideas float around the Internet...

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If I set the budget, we'd have Ares and more. Unfortunately, I don't set the budget, and Ares is just too expensive and too far out for us to accomplish our goals within the budget we were given.

If we halt the ISS, all versions of Ares, and transport Orion and Altair aboard DIRECTv3's Jupiter family of Shuttle-Derived Launch Vehicles, we just might make it back to the Moon by 2020.

The most powerful weapon in the world isn't explosive, its psychological.


Public opinion.

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The last time I felt a warm fuzzy feeling, I was informed by my doctor that it was just gas.

If a person is a genius he/she would not waste time desiring power or demagogy. The Law of Conservation of Energy seems to have one application to human life. We can only exchange energy (power) with the universe, we cannot make any gains. By not having a love life nor wasting time pursuing political office, Newton realized the free time to pursue science without interference. However, he suffered socially.

This applies to financial funds available as well.

"During WWII Yakof Zeldovich and Yuli Borisovich Khariton were having trouble getting a stubborn dictator to provide enough funding for the bomb. The whole reason that the Soviets spied on the Americans was provide proof to Slalin that an enormous amount of investment was necessary. When Hiroshima went up in smoke Stalin lost his temper and then conceded any amount they needed. He further appointed secret police chief Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria to provide an all out effort to make the bomb. He would use forced labor of millions from prison camps to construct uranium mines, uranium purification factories, nuclear reactors, theoretical research centers, weapons test centers, and self-contained small cities scattered all over the country to support all the above facilities."
(pp. 224-225, Black Holes and Time Warps, Thorne; not an exact quote but close enough).

With all that effort and still running on a tight budget they became successful. Where does a bankrupt government (with fewer citizens to tax and way fewer prisoners) come up with the spare cash to fulfill the claims of the OP? All the billionaires in the world don't have enough cash to realize it.

The most powerful weapon is the human brain. It was from this 1.5 kilograms of matter with the constancy of runny Jello, that all other known weapons that ever have been and possibly ever will be have spawned. Destroy this, and the world would be forced to go back to tooth and claw.

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