Nov 092011
If you guessed “White House Internal Memo,” or “NASA Future Planning Committee,” or “NORAD Planetary Defense Emergency Meeting,” you’re wrong (I’m assuming). If you guessed “website for biggest left-wing magazine in the US,” you are correct.
6 Responses to “Guess where I’m quoted”
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
Congrats! You are the premier aerospace historian on the internet. I have to admit some of those ideas are pretty wacky, though Project Orion and the space-based defense ones are really not that off the wall.
> some of those ideas are pretty wacky
I disagree. All of the idea presented were perfectly sensible, at least in terms of the times in which they were produced. Some became obsolete pretty fast, like the atomic cannon… a nuke carried by a jet or a small missile wasn’t practical at the time, but quickly became far more practical than a cannonshell.
And Plowshare is exactly the sort of thing we should be studying… and implementing.
The only one that really is wacky is the one that’s actually current: prompt global strike. Using an ICBM to launch a conventional warhead certainly sounds like a dandy way to blast the crap out of someone on the other side of the planet in short order… and it’s also a dandy way to cause Russian launch detection systems to go bonkers.
Ok, you can disagree with me, but I never said the ideas didn’t have their uses or have some potential future use.
I can see a few good uses for Operation Plowshare. Such as a tool to help with space exploration. Perhaps as a tool to mine asteroids or the Moon or Mars. The thing with wacky ideas is that they may have great potential and may be if use at some later point in the future. Wacky today, a great innovation tomorrow.
At one time, aircraft and computers were “wacky” ideas. Who could have imagined 100 years ago the impact those technologies would have on our everyday lives?
I have the book “The Constructive Uses of Nuclear Explosives,” by Teller, Talley, Higgins, and Johnson. Plowshare is the subject, and it’s explained in great detail. Yeah, let’s get back to that.
(I should keep the book right next to “The History of Orgies.” Both of them trigger fascinating reactions.)
Well, they didn’t portray _you_ as crazy.
The tripod on the Davey Crocket looks like it will take off with the weapon.
Now the Russians have used their ICBMs as sat launchers, so I don’t have a problem with prompt global strike as long as a few phone calls are made. Might as well do something with those missiles.