A great many international agreements work very well because, properly designed, they work in everyone's interest.

What puzzles me is your assumption of the inevitability of confrontation with China. All that clash of civilisations stuff. You have not presented any evidence in support. Perhaps because to do so may take us into forbidden territory. But in that case should shouldn't bandy such highly debatable statements with such abandon.

Jon

Still awaiting a retraction of your statement insinuating I was racist, JohnClarke.


CJSF

__________________
Two years ago moved from my town
I was looking up past the city lights
But the city lights got in my way

See the constellation ride across the sky
No cigar, no lady on his arm
Just a guy made of dots and lines

-from "See The Constellation"
by They Might Be Giants

The neat trick is properly designing them. Haven't seen much of that, lately.

I've said on a number of fora, and now say it here, that I do not believe that there will be a Third World War. Economic interdependence the likes of which did not exist during the Cold War has become the new MAD directive. Honestly, with 1 trillion in US dollars sitting in their possession, I really doubt its in China's best interest to see the US take too far a fall. It sure as beans isn't in the US's best interests. A cartoon I saw during the recent stock market drop was as telling as it was humerous. On a globe where New York should be there was a bull burned to a crisp with the caption "Gesundheit" with an oriental dragon over Beijing sniffling. We're connected at the hip.

However, that doesn't mean its a match made in heaven. There exist some pretty fundamental differences in culture and government that make this khumbaya future you paint a little hard to swallow. The political differences are as abrasive as the economic ties are adhesive. It'll be a Cold War game of proxies and populism, one step from the powerkeg of financial ruin. Armageddon without the nuclear winter.

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

Although swords and spears would work, you have to get close to your opponent. The advantage, though, would be that there would be less collateral damage. Therefore, I would favor shotguns firing slugs or buckshot over high powered rifles. Since guns in space are probably banned by space treaties, I can imagine astronauts toting around crossbows for personal protection.
Consider this: the first country that could get to the Moon and set up an antimissile defense system next to their colony would have a huge strategic advantage because they would be able to prevent any spacecraft from Earth from reaching the Moon, whether it was a manned craft or an enemy missile. Since the same side of the Moon always faces Earth, a single base could provide coverage for the whole Moon.

Then stealthy spacecraft invisible to radar would have to be developed. Since lunar real estate is so expensive, it would be much better to capture any enemy facilities, rather than blowing them into bits. So a stealthy manned craft would land over the horizon from the antimissile base. Then a team of Navy SEALS will hop on board their lunar rovers and show up at the doorstep of the antimissile facility, probably during the lunar night, and get the drop on the people living there.

The people manning the missile facility would then get a chance to surrender peacefully, get into their escape pod, and be sent back to Earth. If they chose instead to go down in a blaze of glory, a fierce gun battle would ensue, and the facility would be damaged, but probably not beyond repair, which is better than destroying the place with a missile. So there might be a role for small, crack teams of infantry in future lunar military history.

...until someone deflected a multi-kilometer wide asteroid smack dab into the place.

Wouldn't even have to get close to do that.

The rest of your post reads like bad SCI/FI.

__________________
"The facts gentlemen, and nothing but the facts, for careful eyes are narrowly watching." Isaac Asimov

I did not insituate that you were.

Jon

I don't know. Most binternational agreements work extremely well, and there are thousands. It's only the few that cause difficulties that don't. Of those that cause dificulties only a subset are fudamentally flawed, they are the ones that don't last.

I agree

I don't see this as a khumbyaya future at all, but quite a realistic one. Most countries don't see future relations with China as being a cold war. It is a view that seems to popular mainly in the US. the best of us see an increasingly stable and prosperous China as a very good thing indeed.

Jon

Perhaps you were talking to Doodler, but as I was involved in that exchange, I certainly felt like you were.

I'm willing to forgive and forget it... not worth getting worked up over.

CJSF

P.S.
Sorry for spelling your name incorrectly in a previous post.

__________________
Two years ago moved from my town
I was looking up past the city lights
But the city lights got in my way

See the constellation ride across the sky
No cigar, no lady on his arm
Just a guy made of dots and lines

-from "See The Constellation"
by They Might Be Giants

I'm assuming you meant "rest of us", and following that assumption, I'd reply with: Unless you're Chinese and care about attaining personal freedom in your grandchildrens' lifetime. However, probably best to table it there, that is begging to cross the borderline.

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

If I were, why should I object to China's becoming increasingly prosperous and stable?

__________________
"A witty saying proves nothing" Voltaire.
"All your bias are belong to us" Ara Pacis.

With respect to the forums rules, not that I don't have a paragraph or two to respond to that with, I'm not gonna go there.

Not that I'm telling you that I don't want to answer you. It just that I read that and there's a tension in the back of my neck pinging over any answer I could realistically come up with.

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

Well, now that I think about it there might be one or two reasons to wish for temporary instability which I hadn't considered. But you're right that this is too off-topic.

__________________
"A witty saying proves nothing" Voltaire.
"All your bias are belong to us" Ara Pacis.

Deflect a multi-kilometer asteroid? Smack dab into place? Do you realize the delta-v that would be involved? Who's talking bad sci-fi now? At least my idea would make a good James Bond movie. So just leave the screenplay to me, OK?

If I were Chinese and knew my history I would know that the greatest chances for personal freedom in my own time, let alone my grandchildren's, would be a stable and prosporous China. if I were not Chinese, but wanted the Chinese people to enjoy increasing freedoms, I would still want a stable and prosporous China. The only reason I can think why people would not want China to be increasingly propserous and stable would be those who would want it to be poor and unstable and thus conditions where personal freedoms find it hard to flourish.

If you don't want to discuss these matters (which I quite understand as it is completely OT), perhaps in future don't wave red flags about "clash of civilisations" when talking about relations between China and the rest of the world.

Jon

They are not. Every Soyuz crew carries pistols for defense against wolves in the event of off-course landing. At least one Salyut station carried an anti-aircraft cannon (not sure what for, exactly).

__________________
Fiction has to be plausible. Reality is under no such constraint.

Shooting down capitalist pigs that tried to board the station I would assume. Given that some of the Salyuts were military stations its likely they would've become targets in the event of a war.

__________________
"I worry that, especially as the Millennium edges nearer, pseudo-science and superstition will seem year by year more tempting, the siren song of unreason more sonorous and attractive." - Carl Sagan, 1995

Wow, so that means there are guns aboard the ISS.

I hope they never have a serious fight aboard...

__________________
What brings us together is stronger than what pulls us apart

There's probably no vodka allowed.

That's all we need. Guns and cosmonauts drying out.

No worries!

Jon

Officially, that's the policy. In practice, as long as they do not smuggle too much, RSA looks the other way. It's cruel, not to mention futile, to keep a Russian man completely sober for months at a time.

Oh, and champaign is not banned even officially -- or at least was not in Soviet times.

__________________
Fiction has to be plausible. Reality is under no such constraint.

Talk about some expensive champaign!

I've heard that Buzz Aldrin used to like a few nips of the good stuff every now and then, and he took some wine with him to the Moon where he became the first person to take communion on the Moon.

Please forgive as I am answering a post that is months old...

Your right. There is no need for such a sizable object. A piece of "rubble" properly directed, need be only a few meters in size to cause A LOT of damage.

I find this comment to be insensitive to the fact that Mr. Aldrin is a recovering alcoholic...

...but that's just me.

__________________
"The facts gentlemen, and nothing but the facts, for careful eyes are narrowly watching." Isaac Asimov

It's no secret, as Buzz himself will be the first to admit. But Buzz wasn't the first to drink in space. Apparently, the late Wally Schirra smuggled whiskey on his Mercury flight.

Cite?

Schirra's version, Whatsa Gotcha:

__________________
0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 ...

link to 777's blog that I found on this forum.

But I wasn't there, maybe he really did wait until he got to the aircraft carrier.

Probably not impeccable. In light of this, I wonder why the blog didn't get updated.

__________________
0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 ...

Indeed. . . .