Got Lifeboat?

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/2009/…n0624.html

“The low-key launch of the new military unit reflects the Pentagon’s fear that the military might be seen as taking control over the nation’s computer networks.”

“Creation of the command, said Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn at a recent meeting of cyber experts, ‘will not represent the militarization of cyberspace.’”

And where is our lifeboat?

“An inventory of deadly germs and toxins at an Army biodefense lab in Frederick found more than 9,200 vials of material that was unaccounted for in laboratory records, Fort Detrick officials said Wednesday. The 13 percent overage mainly reflects stocks left behind in freezers by researchers who retired or left Fort Detrick since the biological warfare defense program was established there in 1943, said Col. Mark Kortepeter, deputy commander of the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases.”

The rest of the story appears here:
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory?id=7863828

Given that “The material was in tiny, 1mm vials that could easily be overlooked,” and included serum from Korean hemorrhagic fever patients, the lack of adequate inventory controls to this point creates the impression that any number of these vials could be outside their lab. Of course, they assure us they have it all under control. Which will be cold comfort if we don’t have a lifeboat.

Another friend, filmmaker Meg McLain has noticed that orbital hotels and space cruise liners are all vapor ware. Indeed, we’ve had few better depictions of realistic “how it would feel” space resorts since 1968’s Kubrick classic “2001: A Space Odyssey.” Remember the Pan Am flight to orbit, the huge hotel and mall complex, and the transfer to a lunar shuttle? To this day I know people who bought reservation certificates for whenever Pan Am would begin to fly to the Moon.

In 2004, after the X Prize victory, Richard Branson announced that Virgin Galactic would be flying tourists by 2007. So far, none.

A little later, Bigelow announced a fifty million dollar prize if only tourists could be launched to orbit by January 2010. I expect the prize money won’t be claimed in time.

Why? Could it be that the government is standing in the way? And if tourism in space can’t be “permitted” what of a lifeboat colony?

Meg has set out to make a documentary film about how the human race has arrived four decades after the Moon landing and still no tourist stuff. Two decades after Kitty Hawk, a person could fly across the country; three decades, across any ocean.

Where are the missing resorts?

Here is the link to her film project:
http://www.freewebs.com/11at40/

“We have the serious opportunity in our hands right now of terminating the era of government absolutely, and so of removing from the human race the threat of ever more brutal tyranny ending only with WMD annihilation–while opening up vistas of peaceful prosperity and technological progress which even a realist like myself cannot find words to describe. ”

http://www.strike-the-root.com/91/davies/davies11.html

Avoiding those terrible events is what building our Lifeboat is all about. Got Lifeboat?

Rational Review carried a link to this story:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,526460,00.html

“After more than 120,000 years trapped beneath a block of ice in Greenland, a tiny microbe has awoken. … The new bacteria species was found nearly 2 miles (3 km) beneath a Greenland glacier, where temperatures can dip well below freezing, pressure soars, and food and oxygen are scarce. ‘We don’t know what state they were in,’ said study team member Jean Brenchley of Pennsylvania State University. ‘They could’ve been dormant, or they could’ve been slowly metabolizing, but we don’t know for sure.’”

It is yet another interesting possibility against which humans should prepare to protect ourselves. Where is our Lifeboat?