Our current banking system is not capable of sustaining a space program.

Remember when this tiny State in the 40's started building rockets.



We transplanted their scientists and launched trips to the Moon from Florida.

That was the 1940's, seventy years later and we should have at least twenty five rocket programs, not half of one. Our so-called Economy has had its face rubbed in social issues for so long, it doesn't even remember where the moons are. Let alone how to get there. These disposable plastic topics that are shuffled around every four years are so irrelevant as to be meaningless. Our current banking system is not capable of sustaining a space program. It certainly will never grow one.


Mike Grouchy

The systematic abuses, lies, and blood sucking that the banks have inflicted on people.

Does anyone remember when the banks started penalizing small accounts,


so they could confiscate the 5 dollars little Susie's Grandmother had used to start an account for her granddaughter.

Does anyone remember when the banks started heaping up fines and penalties.

Does anyone remember when the banks started using credit scores.

Does anyone remember when savings accounts stopped paying interest.

Does anyone remember the transaction fees.

Does anyone remember the small print used to change their contracts with customers, that said "and if you don't contest this we'll charge you X amount of dollars for no damn reason."


Does anyone remember when the pension funds were pillaged.



Does anyone remember all the off shore accounts, used to avoid taxes, that turned the Caymans into a banking mega center.

Recovering doesn't even begin to describe it.





The Economy might be entering a period of eternal torment.






The Economy is recovering like crops recover during Rains of Fire.








The Economy is as solid as A new Ice age, and just as flexible.






The Economy has recovered its place in the pits of hell.



Mike Grouchy

a reply to: mikegrouchy

You seem a little grouchy, Mike.

Not only have our children and our children's children been robbed,
but our parents and our grand parents as well.



[SNIP]


A friend once said "If I had a time machine I would open a bank account and be a millionaire today",
and I said "you mean the bank would have your million, through hidden fees and creeping penalties due to inactivity."


Mike Grouchy

Can someone design me a banking system that is capable of sustaining a space program?


Mike Grouchy

a reply to: mikegrouchy

Yes, they are not centralized, independently owned, decoupled from nation states (hence completely unregulated) and their only currency instrument is gold.

Also, if they fail, they die.

a reply to: mikegrouchy

Can someone design me a banking system that is capable of sustaining a space program?

Like that is going to happen they cannot even sustain or manage the population let alone space travel.....

It is not like it costs too much, or that we don't have the resources to do it. Even hungry people won't eat molybdenum disulfide, the stuff we use for space is a bit different than the stuff used to care for people. It is just that with our current banking system the will isn't there.


Mike Grouchy

a reply to: mikegrouchy

Everything government does is a mockery of the original idea and its intent.

It isn’t the availability of speculative funding or collateralized loans that prevents innovation, it has been the active prevention by the state of any private competition to the embarrassment we call NASA.

Release the strangled minds which currently hibernate within the cold and discouraging confines of one the least efficient and most politicized agencies.

Private unrestrained expansion is always how trails are blazed.

originally posted by: greencmp
a reply to: mikegrouchy

Yes, they are not centralized, independently owned, decoupled from nation states (hence completely unregulated) and their only currency instrument is gold.

Also, if they fail, they die.

Interesting. I had to look into this a bit. I was surprised to find that Nixon took us off of the Gold Standard in 1971, and one year later the last walk on the moon happened in 1972. I _was_ going to argue against a gold standard, but after checking it, I'm not so sure.


Mike Grouchy

originally posted by: greencmp
a reply to: mikegrouchy

Everything government does is a mockery of the original idea and its intent.

originally posted by: greencmp

It isn’t the availability of speculative funding or collateralized loans that prevents innovation, it has been the active prevention by the state of any private competition to the embarrassment we call NASA.

Release the strangled minds which currently hibernate within the cold and discouraging confines of one the least efficient and most politicized agencies.

Private unrestrained expansion is always how trails are blazed.

I agree. Man, do I agree. How many people have died penny-less because someone else took ownership of their invention. Who owns all the space patents now, and what the hell are they doing just sitting on them.


Mike Grouchy

a reply to: mikegrouchy

Yes, I think we should auction off the intellectual and physical assets of NASA directly into private hands.

We could have a space exploration renaissance.

a reply to: mikegrouchy

S+F for you. I like this kind of out of the box reflection.

Now realize this: the total GDP of planet earth is something around US$ 77.500 TRILLION !!!

originally posted by: ColCurious
a reply to: mikegrouchy

S+F for you. I like this kind of out of the box reflection.

Now realize this: the total GDP of planet earth is something around US$ 77.500 TRILLION !!!

What we were talking about in 1971.















What the banking system gave us instead.




Mike Grouchy

my hubby did a research paper on the topic of space mining. there are so many precious metals on a single asteroid, that we could emerse half the planet in splendour in months and the other half within a couple months after that. this doesn't count the huge resource of helium 3 and other precious metals on the moon.

sadly, all indications are that we have a secret space program running a break away civilization and we ain't invited to the party.

a reply to: mikegrouchy

Only one more step now.

If you put the worlds balance sheet on the table and see where it gets us, you have no other choice but to see that:

Any economic system, no matter how big or small, that is skimming off more of the real economic strength (via compulsory levies) than it puts back in (via creating more aggregate demand, or producing real value), is not sustainable, nor beneficial to its people.

That's not ideology, nor opinion. That's math.

a single ton of lunar regolith (to give you some idea of what a ton would look like, just imagine a single stone in the great pyramid, now cut into fifths and extract one fifth; that's a ton) could provide all the energy needs of the entire united states for a year. you might be able to track where they were discussing using it to provide water and air for lunar terraforming for a lunar base, as those two resources are the byproducts of extracting helium 3 from the regolith and also as a refueling station for trips to mars *like a helium 3 gas station

originally posted by: undo
my hubby did a research paper on the topic of space mining. there are so many precious metals on a single asteroid, that we could emerse half the planet in splendour in months and the other half within a couple months after that. this doesn't count the huge resource of helium 3 and other precious metals on the moon.

My kinda guy.

originally posted by: undo
sadly, all indications are that we have a secret space program running a break away civilization and we ain't invited to the party.

Yes. Reading this and contemplating even the possibility makes me sad. This is supposed to be an open society, and one without class distinctions. In the face of such eventualities my own dreams for the future of Earth born Life seem rather weak.


Mike Grouchy

i have a friend who's father worked on electro-gravitics for the government. i forget the name of the program he was working in. and he use to tell her as a child, how when she was an adult, we would have flying cars, floating cities and floating houses, intersystem space colonies and personal space ships. now what are the possibilities all of that tech ended up employed in that breakaway civ instead of on the earth? and, further, what are the possibilities that genetic modifications and high end medical breakthroughs are reserved for the breakaway civ instead? and that one day, some of them will come back to earth and be so entirely different from life on earth, that we will think they are aliens, gods or something