[Iris7]

You are welcome.

We could have had a permanent Moon Base now, and a manned Mars scientific base too. We might have built deep space ships. Our people knew how with numerical certainty in 1975. Jupiter's moons. Europa. Saturn's Titan.

Near Earth space with 10,000 full time people. Daily 500 ton launches.

F-22s have their place, but how about an orbital free electron laser battle station that could shoot down fifty enemy aircraft a second. Seriously.

http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/technology/fel_001023.html

The FEL is a baby now. Fifty bogies a second is a ways away. Several years. Maybe less. Look at this megawatt FEL study, from the DOD:

http://www.stormingmedia.us/80/8022/A802224.html

Those Lefties have stopped all of this for way, way, way to long.

[Iris7]

The second post is harder, am not convinced totally. Looks good though, 90% or more.

The below stuff is from reading between the lines and knowing a tiny bit of theory -

Long wavelength synthetic aperture space born sea reconnaissance radar. Pick up a hiding submarine a thousand feet underwater like you see a goldfish in a goldfish bowl. This approach combined with JSTAR technology - ah. Track a single man walking in the desert from a hundred miles up. Shucks, see his footprints a day later.

The American Indians were a formidable and extremely dangerous enemy in 1640. By 1880 they were just targets. G-G-G-G-Granduncles, some of them. Technology change. Why wait.

Oh, yeah, I have some 20% stuff in mind, extremely effective weapons. Way more effective even than a Free Electron Laser battle station.