Evening Wrap

Bringing that back today, but maybe for the day only.  I want to make an all around post about random topics.

First of all, the topic today was lying, more or less.  This led me to some thoughts about the duality of man.  On the one hand, people want to believe things.  On the other hand, people lie a lot.  I see those as opposites, a type of duality.  It also gives people the incentive to lie because people will believe the lies.  If people didn't believe lies, there would be no incentive to tell lies.  You have to be able to trust people in order to function, but that trust can be violated.  Not such a happy thought.

Moving on to a different topic, which I covered yesterday, which was the LFTR technology.  Something came out of that that could be the fly in the ointment for LFTRs.  That is, it may be at least theoretically possible to use this technology to make bombs.  So, I spent a little time on that.  This is one of those cases in which you have to decide whether to trust the source not to trust the source.  Up to this time, I figured that I would believe Sorensen when he says that there's little risk.  After what I saw yesterday, a little disquieting feeling has come into the picture.  I can't dispel it completely by studying it, so basically you just have to make a gut call on it.  Nothing in life is obtained without risk.  This just may be a slight risk that would have to be endured if LFTR technology is going to be implemented.  Unfortunately, we are living in a risk averse society these days.

Next topic is about SpaceX.  Actually, it is more about space in general.  As you may know by now, the Falcon 9 didn't launch as expected.  You may also know that the problem appears to be a faulty check valve, which could be repaired easily and another attempt can be made on early Tuesday.  But that's no biggie.  The big thing is in the way this thing is being perceived.  Since we are such a risk averse society, anything that looks like a failure is going to be bringing a lot of handwringing and knashing of teeth.  But why should it?  If people had this attitude about cars and planes, we'd all still be in the horse and buggy era.  If you leave it up to the deep ecologists, we just may end up there.  No risk, no reward.

Another thought about space is that I get the feeling that the Apollo Era wasn't all that it was cracked up to be.  The result of the program was that people think that space flight is always going to be too dangerous and too expensive.  Politicians seem to think that way too, relegating space to the "bread and circus" mode it now labors under.  But the Apollo Era should have led to space colonization.  The fact that it didn't indicates to me that something has gone very wrong even though the program appeared to be a great success.  The bad thing about it all is that nobody seems to understand the great opportunity that space offers.  Many of the problems that people seem to be so worried about could be greatly mitigated if there was a serious program to colonize space.  But I've covered that on numerous posts.  All that I can add here is what a shame.