Realistic newpaper article about US JobsEconomy 3094

Max,

Thanks for the response. The link on butanol was very interesting, as I hadn't studied it before. I think, though, that ethanol is probably going to win out in the US as a gasoline replacement since we already have a few million vehicles that can run on it and a large and growing production base for it. Do you have any good links on how to produce butanol? Could I make it in my garage similar to ethanol?

As far as the space program goes: Yes, I see space tourism as an important revenue stream. Ultimately, though, the moon-mars-asteroid bases need to be profitable in terms of productivity, i.e. manufacturing and energy production. Tourism moves a lot of money around but it doesn't really create any wealth. In college, I did a paper on space manufacturing: There are a lot of things you can make in low and zero g that you can't make on earth... perfect ball bearings, certain metal alloys, etc... The idea is you'd orbit factories around the Moon, mine the raw materials from the moon surface, shoot them into moon orbit ( the energy required to acheive moon orbit is exponentially less than putting the same object in Earth orbit ) manufacture the items and then send them to Earth for sale. You could do the same thing with asteriods.

And, I agree that Bush and Blair are both TOOLS. We can't trust the government to do anything right for us. Since the US and Britain both sent troops into combat in Iraq, they feel it is a political necessity for them to placate the Islamics and various far left radicals. I'm sure your local Islamics have accused Blair of trying to re-start the Crusades, so he is going to throw money at them and be very PC for at least as long as Brit army troops are in action. So, basically he is trying to purchase political capital using your tax dollars (I mean, pounds). Now, if your politics are anything like ours, what he fails to realize is, you CAN'T build political capital with these guys. Fanatics, by definition, are not reasonable. Your far left kooks and person wannabes are going to hate Blair no matter what he does. Same for Bush. Again, tools.

Anyway, all of that said, the items (1) and (2) from my original post need to be pursued at the grbuttroots level. And, not just pursued politically but pursued in real-time. Sometimes, people ask me what I'd do if I won a billion dollars: I'd create my own alternate energy empire and pursue a space program on my own, that's what I'd do. OK, I'd have to pull in some other millionaires and billionaires. I believe if enough concerned people from around the world got together we could make this happen.