The Future of Man in Space: A Modest Proposal

Greg Gutfeld at Big Hollywood proposes weaponizing space to make it more fun. My proposal is more specific:

Turn self-replicating robots loose on the moon and sell robot hunting licenses.

I'm sure the many advantages of this simple idea raced through your mind the instant you read the above sentence. But you may have been too dazzled by the sheer brilliance to recognize them. So:

An earth-to-moon transportation system and moon-base facilities will be built by private enterprise, funded by Colonel Blimps with .375 H&H Magnums, and good ol' boys with lever-action .30-30s. Cape buffalo and whitetail deer will be able to relax a little with those guys offworld, not to mention the occasional Maine housewife hanging up clothes in the backyard in a deerlike way. The license fees can go to support Homeland Security personnel surfing porn in their offices. Robot evolution will progress rapidly.

I call on the 111th Congress to act immediately. Don't read the bill, just pass it. I'll settle for 1% of the license fees in perpetuity.

Battlefield mechs

Neatogeek quotes an analysis of "mechs," soldiers wearing armored powered suits, which concludes that they will never be cost-effective. I have no objection to the technical points that are raised, but the conclusion goes too far.

This is more an argument that mechs will never be dominant on the battlefield, not that they won't exist at all.

One of the painfully learned lessons of modern war is the necessity of "combined arms," of more than one type of warrior, working together. Even the most powerful, heavily armored tank has vulnerabilities -- e.g. poor vision and lack of fine-grained situational awareness -- that the humble foot soldier can cover. When you fight a combined arms team, one of the things you really really want to do is to separate their armor from their infantry, because defeating them separately is easier than defeating them together.

As long as there is some necessary task on the battlefield, for which mechs are better adapted, mechs will have a place. If history is a guide, there will be such a role.

Even in ancient times, armies combined infantry, cavalry, archers, etc. I wouldn't jump to the conclusion that it will be different in the future.

Two billion years ago, two galaxies were colliding

The World History Blog has an interesting post on how, shortly after WWII, the "Superman" radio show was used to knock the Ku Klux Klan down a peg. Reporter Stetson Kennedy gave the "Superman" writers inside information on how the Klan operated, to be used in scripts. The Klan attempted to pressure the show's sponsors but it wasn't enough to stop the scripts. I commented:

Also, the negative reaction was probably less than it would have been if the information had appeared in a more "serious" form. SF and fantasy have been useful to express ideas contrary to the zeitgeist for a long time, "1984" and "Animal Farm" being examples.

Back in the 1930s, when all "serious" writers were waving a sad farewell to weak democracy and making the best deal possible with their tough new fascist overlords, E.E. "Doc" Smith's Lensman stories subversively depicted the victory of a free, multispecies melting pot over the totalitarian Empire of Boskone.

When the original "Addams Family" TV series was on, with Carolyn Jones and John Astin, one critic noted that it was the only series with an intact family where everyone respected each other. And where but on "Smallville" do we get teenagers who are grateful to their parents.

No, I don't know if Stetson Kennedy was mild-mannered. The title of this post is a line from "Doc" Smith.