This weeks New York Times Sunday magazine has an article about "space war". With some interesting comments regarding surveillance, GPS, ASAT and NMD as well as the following line from an Air Force colonel which seems very indicative of the current thinking in Washington: "increasingly the problem is not another superpower, but a guy with a credit card" http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/05/magazine/05SPACEWARS.html Jim Windle Join 18 million Eudora users by signing up for a free Eudora Web-Mail account at http://www.eudoramail.com
On Mon, 6 Aug 2001, Jim Windle wrote:
This weeks New York Times Sunday magazine has an article about "space war".
King George II seems intent on drumming up support for a space weapons platform. This is interesting for a couple of reasons. First, it looks likely to drive a massive wedge between the US and its current allies. Nobody who can't afford to put up their own orbiting weapons platform is going to be happy about the US doing so. Second, it pretty much means the US is going to have to withdraw from the space treaty of 1965, which bans space weapons. This latter is actually more interesting to me, because that treaty also bans national claims of sovereignty over off-earth property (or else Neil Armstrong would have been saying the ancient incantation, "we claim this new land in the name of...." when he planted that American flag on the moon in '69) and, more importantly, private claims of ownership on off-earth property. As far as I know there is no direct legislation banning such ownership in the US -- so it looks to me like the US withdrawing from that treaty would allow US corporations to do things like register mining claims or other claims on the moon or other off-earth real estate, or a US expiditionary force to make a national claim of sovereignty over the Moon or Mars or whatever the next time there's a government-sponsored landing on either of those bodies. If someone actually tries it, we'll se an interesting test. Although, perhaps not coincidentally, a space weapons platform orbiting Earth is also exactly what you need if you intend to *defend* claims of national sovereignty on the Moon, asteroids, Mars, etc. Bear
On Mon, 6 Aug 2001, Ray Dillinger wrote:
He did do that you silly goose. He claimed it in the name of the US for 'All mankind'... Check the web. -- ____________________________________________________________________ natsugusa ya...tsuwamonodomo ga...yume no ato summer grass...those mighty warriors'...dream-tracks Matsuo Basho The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage@ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------
On Mon, 6 Aug 2001, Jim Choate wrote:
I did, actually. Turns out I got the year wrong, it was 1967 not 1965. But the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, to which the US is a signatory, has a big fat anti-sovereignty clause, stating that no nation can claim off-earth territory. Discussion can be found at http://www.spacepolicy.org/page_mw0799.html Although I found this guy far too optimistic about the role of government, I believe he has his facts straight regarding the treaty. Bear
On Mon, 6 Aug 2001, Ray Dillinger wrote:
Check the web.
I did, actually.
You checked the wrong thing; you should check the moon landing and Congress' budget for NASA...I sent a URL to the list earlier. IF (big if) the US ever does drop out of the treaty they will still be able to claim the moon because ONLY the US flag was planted when it was claimed. China has plans to have somebody up there in 2005 and potentialy a simple moonbase by 2015. We'll see what happens... Enjoy. -- ____________________________________________________________________ natsugusa ya...tsuwamonodomo ga...yume no ato summer grass...those mighty warriors'...dream-tracks Matsuo Basho The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage@ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------
Is anyone working on the current RSA factoring challenge? $10K prize for factoring a 576-bit number; $200K for a 2048-bit number (other awards for 640, 704, 768, 896, 1024 and 1536-bit numbers.) See this page for details: http://www.rsasecurity.com/rsalabs/challenges/factoring/numbers.html They've provided me with the C source used to generate the numbers (though not the BSafe toolkit you need to link into the program.) Anyone can receive the source by asking RSA for it. I've decided to enter by using a factoring program which makes guesses about what the prime number factors are (by examining the last two digits, predicting the likely like of one/both factors, using lists of prime numbers generated by a second algorithm, etc.) So far, barring errors in my logic and code (always a possibility), I've completed a little over 5% of the "likely" candidates for the 576-bit number in a little over 2 days using a single CPU pentium III-600 with 512MB RAM. phillip
participants (4)
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Jim Choate -
Jim Windle -
Phillip H. Zakas -
Ray Dillinger