“Looks like they are preparing for war against us.”
Yes, yes it does. Also, of note, is the fact that superior technology does not always insure victory. We have lost good men in the middle east to rudimentary weaponry (However, I must add that if a nation were so inclined, they could have bombed them into oblivion, but irradication is seldom the aim of wars).
Also, often the U.S. can overcomplicate things that don’t need to be. I remember once hearing a story about how the space pen came about (I’m not certain if it is true). The lecturer (at a science forum), said that when the U.S. and the Soviets were in the space race the U.S. wanted to solve a problem of writing in space, with the problems of zero g’s for the ink, writing upside down, etc. He said we put a few million dollars into the project and came up with the pressurized cartridges for the space pens, with the ink that is viscous enough for the application (to not spurt out, I assume). He noted that the Soviets, facing the same dilemma, simply used a pencil.
We have to look for ways to protect ourselves in simple ways, and not merely the complex.
“the Soviets, facing the same dilemma, simply used a pencil.”
I heard that too.
Just did a search and Snoops says that the claim isn’t entirely true. NASA asked Fisher to make a prototype of the pen, but it wasn’t developed or used.
http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/spacepen.asp
And the Russians spent the next few months in space breathing in these little graphite filings. Mmmm good.