Cap'n Refsmmat

For food, not for natural resources. If you want to be limited to celluloids. Plastics such as polystyrene are formed with petroleum products. There are a vast number of other natural resources you'd have to be able to collect as well. You also face the question of practicality: the mineral might exist on one of Mars's moons, but is it really practical to harvest it from there? There is already a significant risk in launching a spacecraft from Earth, and there would be a greater risk in launching one from a small spaceport on Phobos and landing it on Mars. You're assuming a level of sophistication we have not yet reached. "All we need to do"? How do you propose raising the atmospheric pressure? How do you propose to replace the 95% CO2 atmosphere with one of around 20% oxygen? How do you propose we raise the temperature of the planet? All of those really are big problems that would take many years to solve, even if we did have the technology. Replacing the atmosphere of a small planet is not something to sneeze at.

I don't even think the American colonies really were "self-sufficient" in any way - to produce sufficient food for themselves, they needed to constantly import slaves, for example. Trans-Atlantic trade was going from the very start.

According to Death by Black Hole, astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson has been contacted by several companies about similar ideas (billboards in space!).

What is meant by "pointlike."

The problem here is that in moderate amounts, alcohol is just fine. People can have a drink after dinner with no problem at all. With most drugs, however, the desired effect includes a loss of judgment - people aren't doing them just because they taste nice.

Hush, I'm the one with the logic textbook sitting in front of me!

Fair enough. But you'd have to quantify what rights people have, because what's in the Bill of Rights (at least in the US) is certainly not all we're guaranteed to. I believe the writers of the document made that clear. False dichotomy. I am advocating the illegalization of self harm when that self harm brings significant risk to others. Drunk driving is not illegal because you are damaging your liver, it's illegal because you may just end up killing someone. Because the illegalization of one thing does not suddenly make the US like the civilization described in 1984. There's a lot more that would have to happen that is all very unlikely. Such as the establishment of a mind-reading secret police force.

You're ignoring the fact that drug use is a crime. You'll have to justify what you consider to be "crime." You assumed that through making self-harm illegal, America would fall. That argument is based in the slippery slope fallacy, assuming that one thing will inevitably lead to something else even when a series of unlikely events would have to occur in the middle.

Slippery slope fallacy.

Weak analogy. Drug use is preventable. It can be outlawed. Anything can cause a fit of rage. Also, the subject is not if we should outlaw a lack of judgment. We are discussing the legality of drugs, which are but one way to induce a lack of judgment in a person.

Strawman fallacy. I do not think that harming yourself should be illegal, nor did I say that. I said it was not a right. The case here is that in the act of harming yourself, you lose your ability to judge if you will harm anyone else, and that is where the problem is.

As swansont said, you're making it as risky as mid-air refueling. If you miss the landing gear (or it misses you), you're in for a fun ride. I'm guessing the reliability of that system couldn't match the reliability of just having wheels.

Ah, didn't see that post. It's still a difficult maneuver to manage. You're introducing the possibility that the undercarriage might not connect properly, and you also have to manage to make a set of wheels capable of accelerating to 180mph and maneuver rapidly to dock with an aircraft. It'd need its own radar system and all that.

I see what you mean. But, one problem. How does the aircraft land? Does it rendezvous with the landing gear upon landing?

There have been several experimental aircraft with an undercarriage that was released as soon as the aircraft took off. I'm not quite sure if they reused the undercarriage, but it did save wait. The aircraft then landed on retractable skis. The problem with a scheme with undercarriages mounted in the runway is that you have to make the system standardized and capable of handling the varying weights of aircraft. If you need to handle the new A380, you'd have to upgrade your whole undercarriage system. It would save weight in aircraft at the cost of complexity of the airport systems.

Who said you had a right to harm yourself? All I remember are "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," and those are in the Declaration of Independence, not the Bill of Rights.

It must be Digital Rights Management: The Next Generation.

I've seen it done. Nothing exploded, but it was done for only a few seconds, and smoke started coming out even by then. No permanent damage done though, I think.

The IRC PDF stickied in this forum no longer exists. We should update it with the new server, I suppose.

Yes, but it no longer exists as such (domain name expired). Try cube.xyloid.org or blackcobalt.no-ip.org.

How are they infringing upon your inalienable rights? How is taking drugs a right?

That bookmark hasn't been valid since September 2006. But as for the old posts, yes, we can fix those links with a rewrite rule in lighty. I'll ask dave about it.

Numbers don't mean everything.

It's sciency looking, whatever it is.

Sure, that would be fine.