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Do you believe they put a man on the moon.?

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ArishMell · 70-79, M
Yes - a magnificent achievement, with the first landing well celebrated in various ways by BBC Radio this year.
swirlie · 31-35, F
@ArishMell
[c=#008099]
How do you know they actually made it to the moon?[/c]
ArishMell · 70-79, M
@swirlie

What makes you thinki they didn't? Are you confused by those who delight in trying to convince themselves and others, that the expeditions never took place?

I was around at the time, it was covered by the Press, TV and radio services from most countries around the world - including the USSR, during the Cold War and the Space Race. Any suggestion of the expedition having failed or never taken place at all would have been seized on immediately.

The astronauts on the first and subsequent Lunar expeditions, and the engineers and scientists who supported and operated the missions, have never been shy about talking about it in a serious fashion, and always cohesively.

It was not the hoax as claimed by conspiracy-fantasists, who did not take long after the event to emerge. It would have been impossible to stage and sustain a lie like that.

What is strange about those knockers, is that many if not are American, trying to demean one of their own country's most positive achievements! Maybe they are jealous because they are not personally capable of achieving anything of any note even at a small scale.

++++

I forget its title, but there was a film made in the early 1970s that examined the impossibility of such a lie; although it was a fictional tale about the first manned Mars expedition. It used the premise of NASA filming the landing etc, in a desert film-set in which the agency's actors would effectively have to be imprisoned for the real time such a return voyage would take. It had a simple flaw that would soon be spotted in reality; the lack of delay increasing with distance, in radio conversations. However, the film was realistic in showing the sheer difficulties and utter futility of even trying to fake such a project, and sustaining the lies for years to come.
samnsi · 41-45, C
@ArishMell well said.
swirlie · 31-35, F
@ArishMell
[c=#008099]
So in other words, you don't know for sure if they actually made it to the moon from your own personal witnessing accounts, other than what you witnessed on your black and white TV as you sat comfortably in your living room at home, right?

But I have another question for you while you continue to ponder a suitable answer that more accurately addresses my first question:

When Neil Armstrong was being filmed by the camera as it focused on him stepping down from the Lunar Entry Module to make his very first historic step onto the moon's surface, the camera itself was positioned outside the LEM as well as being pre-located some 20 to 40 feet away from the LEM so as to film him coming down the ladder for the very first time.

My question to you is, WHO put the camera 40 feet away from the LEM if what you were witnessing was Neil's first steps being taken as he exited his craft?[/c]
ArishMell · 70-79, M
@swirlie Oh there is no doubt of the landings (although I know there are some people about who want to deny it, for whatever are their own reasons... if they have any!)

Two men landed on the Moon, and though obviously the camera could not have been there previously it would been easy enough to stage a repeat of the alighting - or even simpler, for the pictures actually to have been of the second man down (Aldrin I think). After all, you can't recognise anyone in those suits.

Anyway, does it matter? Why decry the achievement over something as trivial as wondering how they photographed each other?
swirlie · 31-35, F
@ArishMell
Anyway, does it matter? Why decry the achievement over something as trivial as wondering how they photographed each other?
[c=#008099]
Really Arish?! You think that an unexplained, albeit convenient camera location coincidentally in place beside the spot where the LEM allegedly landed, as being "trivial", as you sit there and pound your chest about an unproven American accomplishment, a so-called accomplishment which was marginally convincing at best? What you are saying is laughably naive!

Anyway, YES it does matter! What matters is that Neil Armstrong was filmed as he came down the ladder, precisely showing him to be the first one out! As evidenced by the voice-pairing within that historical filming, it most definitely was not someone else! Neil did not film Buz Aldrin coming down the ladder as if Neil had suddenly been relegated to camera crew duties, believe me!

Question then remains, who set up the camera? Could it have been the person who got to that lunar location before Neil Armstrong made his debut? There was either a Russian cosmonaut already standing there when Neil popped his head out the door who offered to take a 'selfie' of America finally getting there, or the person who set up the camera wasn't even wearing a space suit, nor did he actually require one as he stood in the sand most probably in his sneakers!

Think about "what it matters" because what matters is the validity of the apparent "achievement" which America has been flogging to the rest of the world for many decades now.

Could it be that all the so-called "fake news" that is generated daily in the USA, could have actually been started as far back as Eisenhower, then Kennedy? Eisenhower was a known bullshit artist from the get-go and he generated more American propaganda than even Americans themselves could process as he taught them how to fall in love with themselves.

Why would a lunar landing and the manufactured American bullshit that went along with it, be any different for Kennedy, especially when even Russian scientists knew as well as American scientists have acknowledged since the 1960's, that human passage through a 300 mile wide radiation belt between the earth and the moon, is physically impossible to survive.

But here comes the USA to prove science wrong again! Not only did a 1950's technology American space craft made of metal and ceramics all held together with rivets make it through that radiation belt once, they landed on the moon without incident, walked around for a while, shot the shit with Houston Control, gathered some souvenirs, loaded back up, blasted off and passed unscathed once again, through that same 300 miles of non-survivable radiation one more time! And arriving back on earth, door pops open and astronauts are just fine! Hands waving, big smiles, thumbs up from the crew as they smile for the camera! No cramps, no complaints, in fact they were even filmed standing up on their own two feet while on the Navy's recovery ship without assistance! lol!

So then, "why decry the achievement", you ask? Because the alleged achievement didn't happen on any surface in the solar system, except planet earth... that's why.

It was that entire lunar landing fiasco being pushed hard by Kennedy that revealed the integrity of the USA as being a collatoral victim of it's own infamous 'Pinocchio Syndrome', but not as viewed as such by America, but by the rest of the world whom could see the distinct absence of truth. [/c]
ArishMell · 70-79, M
@swirlie I can believe that some American politicians tell lies, just as many other country's (including my own) politicians have been known to do. However, they lie about really very shallow matters, mainly maintaining their own political careers, but they find it very hard to maintain the lie and are usually soon revealed.

However, do you honestly think even a nation that was as powerful as America was in the 1960s, could actually sustain for half a century now, of various governments, an extraordinarily complicated lie with that would have required the complicity of hundreds of people directly involved? And required those people not to even hint it was all a lie, for decades afterwards?

If your accusation is true then why has it not been rumbled by now?

If it is I would have expected some disaffected ex-NASA, White House or Pentagon staff-member with an eye on the resulting money and "fame" to have blabbed to the world's Press or written a book exposing it, by now. Disloyal yes, but the USA tells all us foreigners it respects free speech, and the Lunar landings were not and are not matters of national security that genuinely need to be kept secret.

Conspiracy fantasies (they are never "~ Theories!) are fun! One trait they have is the inventing of very convoluted and complicated answers to simple questions whose real or most likely answers are usually equally simple.
swirlie · 31-35, F
@ArishMell
However, do you honestly think even a nation that was as powerful as America was in the 1960s, could actually sustain for half a century now, of various governments, an extraordinarily complicated lie with that would have required the complicity of hundreds of people directly involved? And required those people not to even hint it was all a lie, for decades afterwards?
[c=#008099]
Let me ask you this... Why was JFK assassinated? It wasn't as a result of a disgruntled American citizen who was having his 2nd Amendment Rights jeopardized, thereby slipping him into retaliation mode!

There was a reason JFK was assassinated BY the US government and we will likely never be privy to that dossier. Those involved at the time including JFK himself however, are now dead or deeply intrenched in a state of dementia while being spoon-fed by a 20 year old personal aide in a nursing home. Anyone who was therefore directly involved in any lunar landing coverup will have taking that info to their grave. There were very few people involved to begin with. Everything you saw in the Houston control room during that alleged lunar landing, shows no evidence whatsoever of a lunar landing actually taking place. We see a lot of men standing around smoking cigarettes and cheering, but they all did that with every mission that ever took off successfully from earth anyway! So then, what exactly are we witnessing when we see them all reacting to the apparent lunar success in the Houston control room?

And for those who may have been theorizing about the lunar landing occurring being 'staged' in the Arizona desert, let me bring to their attention that the astronaut training ground for walking on the moon was not conducted in the Arizona desert. It was actually conducted in a place called Sudbury Ontario Canada, which is or was a nickel mining town.

The reason Sudbury Canada was chosen was because there is no where else on the face of the earth that resembles the exact topographical features of the moon, as is found within a 20 mile radius of the City of Sudbury. The place looks like the moon's surface even to this day, because of the acid-laced smoke that came out of the smelter's enormously tall smoke stacks during the 1930's, which destroyed everything on the ground within 20 miles in all directions of the mining site.

Even the lunar vehicle was tested in the open landscape of Sudbury and failed miserably at first because it could not negotiate the rugged terrain mixed with sand and granite rock. But did the US government inform the tax-paying American public that NASA astronaut training was actually being done in Canada?

Not very likely, because the USA would never extend credit to any foreign country in America's attempted achievements, because they would ultimately have to share that so-called 'Glory' with that other country. And the sharing of glory is absolutely NOT what America is about as a Nation. [/c]
ArishMell · 70-79, M
@swirlie I can't comment on John Kennedy's murder: I was too young at the time to have understood America's complicated politics around his Presidency, and I am no expert on todays. I do know that conspiracy-fantasies about the assassination abound, and any official secrecy beyond normal Police and Judicial processes tends to fuel rumours.

I do agree with your last statement on general principle. Attitudes towards America elsewhere in the world are ambivalent to say the least, and she is hated by many countries. The hatred goes deeper but the ambivalence is partly due to the reason you give; part of a history of hegemony and an attitude of "What's mine is mine and what's yours is mine".

The USA's star is fading, just as those of the British, French and Spanish Empires and the USSR faded (and they eventually went out!). In the 1960s though, America strutted around pretending to be the only country in the world ever capable of inventing or achieving anything worthwhile, technical, social, cultural or political; and then only on its own. Safely isolated by two oceans, it would never acknowledge anything to foreign nations it barely understood and generally looked down on; but was quick to take over anything foreign it liked and foster a belief that it was always American.

The USA and the USSR were the only powers wealthy enough in the 1960s to have mounted manned Space flights including Lunar expeditions, but since then the USSR has gone and the Russian Federation is not very wealthy; and the USA does now participate internationally in Space exploration and other scientific endeavours, because they are so costly.

+++

I didn't know the Lunar landing training-ground was in Canada, but
you do say that was a State secret - apparently so as not to acknowledge Johnny Foreigner's help. (I hope the CIA is not monitoring your SW posts! :-) )

You say photos of the Flight Control room often show people apparently doing nothing. Perhaps because of the sheer number involved, doing many different things, not everyone is needed at his or her desk all of the time?


Assuming though that your allegations of a massive set of lies is true, I would ask:

- The first and later Space flights themselves could not have been staged. A gigantic rocket taking off is a pretty obvious spectacle for miles around. So what did the astronauts actually do? Just orbit the Moon for a day or so then come home? That's a trip for no real purpose, at very considerable tax-payers' expense.

- How has the White House under several different administrations, NASA, and many hundreds of their employees including of course the astronauts themselves, managed to maintain a coherent, cohesive but utterly false narrative for fifty years? The personal strain on individuals would be enormous, and the chances of someone cracking and revealing it a lie, even just by an accidental slip of the tongue in the wrong place, is quite high.

- What do you think might happen if it was all revealed to be a lie?
swirlie · 31-35, F
@ArishMell
- What do you think might happen if it was all revealed to be a lie?
[c=#008099]
Every point you make in your last post is a strong sentiment that I too have felt in my travels among individuals whom are more highly evolved than the average tax payer. Quite frankly and with deep honesty, I do not think that anything would happen "if it was all revealed to be a lie".

There are two reasons why I think nothing would happen:

1) American citizens themselves who respectfully, represent nothing more than the equivalent of individual pawns on a game board with no voice extending beyond a singular vote of which the majority do not exercise that civic duty, whom do not possess the collective wherewithal as a culture to rise up in mass demonstration toward their Elected Officials in holding them accountable for deception of intent and outright lying.

American citizens themselves will organize rallies to protest an untested ice cream flavor of the day or will have mass sit-ins to protest things like America's involvement in Vietnam (i.e. Woodstock), but they will remain silent on the sidelines anytime they are lied to or openly deceived by their government.

Therefore, to only learn 60 years later what the motivating factors were behind the assassination of JFK ..or perhaps something less meaningful to the more modern American, such as only now discovering the hoax behind the story of a flush-riveted tin-can Made of Course In The USA and how that craft was once thought to make it to the moon and back with a ton of heavy camera equipment on board to then bring back a suitcase full of rock samples, yet make it all happen on one tank of gas with not a single complaint from the space crew bitching to Houston about the smell of incinerating bodies in the cabin as if radiation was something else America had single-handedly conquered prior to leaving earth in the first place, would be as irrelevant to the average iPhone-texting American today as another mass shooting conducted with a store-bought automatic weapon.

2) The second reason I think nothing would happen "if it was all revealed to be a lie", is because the rest of the free world itself is more aware of what America 'IS' and what America is pretending to be all about, than American citizens are. The world has been laughing at the antics of the United States since the Election of Eisenhower and they haven't stopped laughing. Most of the stuff America gets its sorry ass involved with today is not only dumb at best, but deadly at worst. The world doesn't laugh at that deadly stuff, but the world does have great compassion for the gross ineptitude that America usually demonstrates of itself to the rest of world, which again is really not laughable stuff at all. But it is sad and pathetic to watch without a doubt, no different in context really than watching an elderly person with dementia trying to feed themselves with a spoon but no longer understanding which end of the spoon to hold in their hand. Not funny at all on any level of understanding, but viewed nonetheless with a deep sense of helpless compassion.

It would therefore be very understandable to the rest of the world if it was suddenly discovered that the lunar landing was a well-orchestrated hoax. If it were any other country in the world other than the USA who eventually came clean with this truth of its alleged achievements, there would be a global protest unfold even 60 years after the false fact.

But because that truth would actually be coming from the confessions of 'America, The Self-Perceived Great One', the rest of the world would just shake their heads once again as it always has done since those deceptive days of Eisenhower, knowing with great compassion of the probable reason 'why' America absolutely had to 'lie' to the rest of the world in the first place 60 years ago. America had to lie because it couldn't convince itself not to.[/c]
ArishMell · 70-79, M
@swirlie That's a very despairing view of America and American society - a PM correspondent from Utah, on here, tells me of other problems, too. I doubt those faults are confined to the USA.

Every country has its faults, but the US has always tried to portray itself to the world as more perfect than anyone else, and to persuade them if they all live, eat and talk like Americans, they'd be fine.

I remember Woodstock as a rock music festival, not a mass sit-in, although there was huge and growing opposition at the same time to the USA's continuing but futile intervention against the Vietcong.

I am well aware Great American Commerce as well as politicians loves to lie. Hollywood is famous for discrediting and lying about other countries, but it's just as bad with American history. When it's not taking over film rights to books published elsewhere and suggesting the work was original to itself.

Not long ago I read something I cannot actually verify, but in a source with no axe to grind, that the Wright brothers' manned flight was [i]not[/i] the first. That was also in America (some doubt that too) but about two years earlier. When the Wright family gave the aeroplane to the nation it was on strict condition the brothers were credited as the first. The poor bloke in Connecticut never got a look-in.

When I asked that question though, I also thought of of the likely answer. I agree it might raise little interest, but perhaps a lot of weary cynicism, among Americans, certainly those born after the 1960s. It would also be extremely humiliating for the people actually involved, especially the astronauts, to admit all they did was fly round the Moon and were filmed "landing" on it, on a training ground not even in the USA.

Abroad though, it would reduce the nation to the world's laughing-stock and be an absolute propaganda God-send to the countries that hate Uncle Sam and all he stands for. This would be a risk so great that that is another reason to believe the Moon landings were real.
swirlie · 31-35, F
@ArishMell
This would be a risk so great that that is another reason to believe the Moon landings were real.
[c=#008099]
You make a very valid argument that some things are best left unsaid, or at least hidden until everyone just goes away bored. Good advise! I like it!

Something you said earlier about the eventual demise of the American Empire being not unlike all those other failed Empires you referenced, is an international monetary effort that has been quietly, although not secretly taking place in the host country, Canada.

When Trump was Elected and long before any political scandals got started in his Administration, it was very much acknowledged that the USA's economy was on the brink of financial collapse due to the 22 Trillion they owe on their National Debt. Trump's known ineptitude at financial matters from a Corporate perspective despite his claim to the contrary, is what illuminated the red 'idiot light' on the country's dashboard, as further quasi-secretly acknowledged by other G19 Member Nations.

Back in the winter of 2016, former President Obama rallied together with the Leader of Germany and the Prime Minister of Canada (Trudeau) and the Leader of China while being hosted by Canada in the Nation's Capital, Ottawa Ontario Canada.

The purpose of those meetings involving 3 countries with extremely strong economies relative to that of the USA, was to come up with a new currency as well as a new name for that new 'world standard' currency, which is intended to replace the US Dollar as it slowly falls with the American Empire as you so aptly described will take place.

That new world currency was not yet given a name, nor was it in reference to a country-specific like the US Dollar obviously is. It was more benign in nature, but which is a true representation of value of the 3 strongest economies in the world which would financially represent the true value of that 'new world dollar', to which the US Dollar will be converted to.

That US Dollar conversion factor however, will be converted at a rate that is consistent with the true net value of the American economy, which when you remove the American self-perception of value of itself, doesn't leave much residual value from which to apply the conversion factor. I'm sure you read where I am going with this, but I won't be the one to say it.

Because the US Dollar stopped being linked to the gold standard when Nixon abolished that standard back in the 1970's, the US Dollar then became linked to virtually nothing except the good old integrity of the USA. But as time went on, the financial integrity of the USA proved itself to be essentially worthless, notwithstanding the 22T in debt load the US Dollar is currently being backed by, if you can even imagine the insanity of that.

Part of the underlying although not obvious issue with Brexit and the EU, is the final tally or 'fine tuning' that will come of this 'new world currency' I speak of. Neither issues are complex, but neither cart can be put before the horse that will eventually pull both carts into the sunset. So fear not! America The Great will not be in charge of that one, thank Christ!
[/c]
ArishMell · 70-79, M
@swirlie Interesting times ahead...

Incidentally I didn't mean America has an empire in the way Britain and other countries had - a set of colonies - but it has long acted in similar ways by trying to run other countries and turn their societies and cultures into versions of its own.

The New World Power is very likely to be the People's Republic of China, and I am afraid our own nations have played a significant part in helping its ambitions by encouraging its taking over of industry etc.

The basic reason was simple economics, but few if any people who are paid to think and analyse ahead, did so; looking only at short-term, balance-sheet motives based on relative manufacturing costs.

There is another reason, also not thought through. I don't know if this happens in the USA but successive British governments, both Conservative and (ironically given its trades-union backing) Labour, have long welcomed what they call "inward [sic] investment". This results in British companies including the privatised utilities becoming owned by foreign companies and even countries - so large parts of the profits go abroad. And the three major ones of those are America, France and more now, China.

For example, a new nuclear-power in S.W. England is being built by the EDF (Electricitie de France, and State-owned there), and a Chinese company. Many of Britain's passenger and goods rail transport are run by D.B.Schenke, Germany's State-owned railway company.

For years, US companies acquired British and European manufacturing companies, sometimes keeping them going with or without their original brand-names; sometimes to destroy or to take back to America. In the last century, Japan replaced the West for a lot of mass-production manufacturing. Its prices rose, and Taiwan and India (and Mexico?), and to a lesser extent, former Soviet-bloc countries, began to take over. Now, almost any mass-manufactured item apart from vehicles, but probably including what you are reading this on, is labelled "Made in China", I think that's true too, of my two Hewlett-Packard printers, yet HP is a leading US company.

Meanwhile, China is quietly but busily gaining important commercial and political footholds in Africa and South America, and has even proposed building a railway from Tibet to Nepal - a potential back-door to India, Bangladesh and Pakistan. I don't know if Nepal itself holds any valuable mineral reserves the Chinese will be very pleased to "help" it mine.


If the new base-currency you describe ever comes about, I wonder how that would work in a world having to deal with a massive move of commercial and political power to the People's Republic of China. How too, would it work for the international oil and gas trade, presently using American Dollars.

And further ahead still - though possibly as little as 50 years - a world that has no more petroleum and natural-gas to trade anyway.
Abqfunguy · 56-60, M
@ArishMell The movie was Capricorn One. Good movie and a really interesting premise.
swirlie · 31-35, F
@ArishMell
I wonder how that would work in a world having to deal with a massive move of commercial and political power to the People's Republic of China?
[c=#008099]
Although China was a major player of 3 countries in total at those meetings hosted by Canada, those meetings were never conducted with the assumption being that China would takeover the reins of the so-called, "New World Power" machine. But China already knows that a single country like the USA or like Russia, did not do well nor would ever do well for very long in trying to proclaim itself to be the "New World Power', which was demonstrated by George Bush Sr after he invaded Iraq in 1990, inferring with conviction that the USA is now that "New World Power".

Only the arrogance of the American ego would have led Bush Sr to believe that the ineptitude of USA of all Nations, actually possessed the military wherewithal to pull off such a scam and sell it to the world like snake oil at a circus.

Eisenhower himself was a pretty good bullshit-salesman in his day as he spoon-fed his 'fellow Americans' the notion that they were better than anyone else in the world, but when Bush Sr ran with that same psychology as he invaded Iraq in `90, but invited the rest of the world to watch as America rushed in with their tanks, America very quickly revealed their own incompetency at conducting war games to the world as the world looked on, because America got out-gunned by men wearing turbans and carrying Russian-made rifles and somehow communicating with their own kind without the use of cellphones or radios while hiding out from the Americans onslaught in rock caves.

Imagine that! America got beat at it's own game not once, but twice in modern history... they got beat by men who lived in caves in the Middle East and they got their asses kicked severely by men who lived in the jungles of Vietnam. But it doesn't seem fair! America fully expected to be met with an enemy who wore different war game uniforms than those of America's troops and expected the enemy to meet them in an open field just like everyone did during the American Civil War as each faction opposed each other, similar to a scene from kick-off time in an American football game.

What the USA didn't and still does not understand however, was that those Middle Easterners' as well as those folks whom were resident to Vietnam, both played the game of war from their own script, not from the playbook of some chest-pounding American war hero who got promoted beyond the scope of his intellectual understanding of himself. Yet that is why America lost both wars, which is why America will always be perceived by the rest of the world as being way too short to see over the steering wheel of the "New World Power" it has been trying its best to steer between the lines as the real world observes from the comfort of their living rooms with deep compassion for America.

The "New World Power" will be comprised of a financial collective of countries in the future, whom collectively flex their financial might for the good of all, not for just the good of a single Nation. The "New World Power" will no longer represent the needs of a single Nation nor will that "Power" be a shadow Nation flexing its silent muscle from under the covers of its straw-filled bed.[/c]

How too, would it work for the international oil and gas trade, presently using American Dollars.
[c=#008099]
As I've eluded to, the conversion factor from the eventual abandonment of the US Dollars for world trade will use the true 'real' value of the 'new currency' from which foreign currencies will be making oil and gas transactional conversions TO, as all such world trade that was previously based on the US Dollar will now be based on the 'new currency'.
[/c]
And further ahead still - though possibly as little as 50 years - a world that has no more petroleum and natural-gas to trade anyway.
[c=#008099]
The Oil and gas industry along with red plastic gas cans will probably go by the way of high-button boots, no differently than the 'fur trade' became extinct when the Hudson Bay Company was running the world. Yes, some people still wear furs and think they look cool and yes, some American cattle ranchers still think there's a market for raising Mink for a living. But as I look out my window on any Saturday morning I realize that my neighbors are cutting their grass, but I can no longer hear their machine at work anymore.

The fact that I actually have to go outside to witness my neighbors using almost silent, electric battery-powered lawnmowers instead of a lawnmower that uses an internal combustion engine of which boasts a fuel efficiency percentile comprised of a whopping 40% efficiency compared to 100% efficiency from a rechargeable lawnmower battery, would tell me that the oil industry, not so much the gas industry, will eventually meet it's demise over time, not unlike the fur trade becoming extinct when a better idea came along when some of us needed summer clothes.

Eventually, a shelf within a household garage will contain a set of rusted license plates from someone's now super-historic old car, several pairs of high-button boots, an empty gas can for grandpa's lawnmower and at least one fur coat hanging from it's own dedicated plastic hanger off to the side which grandpa's mistress use to wear, which of course grandpa bought for her after he ditched his first wife, but which only occurred after grandma found out about grandpa's floozie and kicked the silly bastard out of his own house as advised to do by grandma's Lawyer at the time.

But we won't talk about that family travesty anymore, but instead will remain focused on how to get that petrol-powered lawnmower started after 99 yanks from the nylon pull-cord as potential collectors of fine things gather `round, especially after having gone to the trouble of finding a reputable place that actually still sold gasoline. But like fossil coal distributors, petrol distributors are getting harder and harder to find.

That's what I think will happen![/c]
ArishMell · 70-79, M
@swirlie It's becoming harder to buy fuel in the UK too, or more accurately, there are far fewer filling-stations; but that's a matter of economics. High taxes and distribution costs so cut the retail profit per litre of petrol or diesel, that the supermarkets found it easy to price many of the independent garages out of at least the fuel business.

America's military reputation abroad is shoot first, ask later; and if bombing does not work, throw more bombs at the place. As you say, it failed in Vietnam and elsewhere because its Armed Forces are not attuned to guerrilla tactics, especially where most of the guerillas are fighting on and for their home soil. However odious the regime they want to impose, they resent what they see as foreign interference or control in their own countries.

My point about running out of petroleum goes far beyond just the fuels it gives, because those are only a fraction (literally, in refining terms!) of what the mineral provides.

Frankly, humanity faces a very bleak future, fortunately for me not in my, and probably not in your, lifetimes; but very possibly in only a few generations to come.

And then, to refer to the OP, Space exploration will be a matter of history impossible to reprise.
swirlie · 31-35, F
@ArishMell
[c=#008099]
You make excellent points here in your post. Looking forward to hooking up with you somewhere else in here where will undoubtedly meet again!

Thanks for the education, so far![/c]
ArishMell · 70-79, M
@swirlie A pleasure - thank-you for the compliment, and I await the world's future with interest. Or foreboding.