Date: Sat, 19 Sep 92 05:05:24 From: Space Digest maintainer Reply-To: Space-request@isu.isunet.edu Subject: Space Digest V15 #220 To: Space Digest Readers Precedence: bulk Space Digest Sat, 19 Sep 92 Volume 15 : Issue 220 Today's Topics: Drop nuc waste into sun (2 msgs) Ethics, again. Ethics of changing Mars Ethics of Terra-forming GAS Flight Opportunities Ion for Pluto Direct NASA working on Apollo rerun (2 msgs) Pluto Direct Propulsion Options Population Property rights (was Terraforming needs to begin now) PUTTING VENUS IN AN ORBIT SIMILAR TO THE ORBIT OF THE EARTH Radio ownership Space Platforms (political, not physical : -) (3 msgs) Welcome to the Space Digest!! Please send your messages to "space@isu.isunet.edu", and (un)subscription requests of the form "Subscribe Space " to one of these addresses: listserv@uga (BITNET), rice::boyle (SPAN/NSInet), utadnx::utspan::rice::boyle (THENET), or space-REQUEST@isu.isunet.edu (Internet). ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 18 Sep 1992 15:47:53 GMT From: BRAINS Subject: Drop nuc waste into sun Newsgroups: sci.space In article <1992Sep17.140540.26316@techbook.com> szabo@techbook.com (Nick Szabo) writes: >In article <2AB776BF.791@deneva.sdd.trw.com> hangfore@spf.trw.com (John Stevenson) writes: >>Why not drop all the longlived nuclear waste into the sun to permanently >>dispose of it. > >1. Transport costs to the sun would be c. $50,000/kg. >2. About 5% of launches go *boom*, to quote a previous post. > Radioactive materials must be packaged to survive > this, which can and has been done but is expensive for > large amounts of material. > > > >-- >szabo@techbook.COM Tuesday, November third ## Libertarian $$ vote >Tuesday ^^ Libertarian -- change ** choice && November 3rd @@Libertarian Assuming of course the container can survive 100% of the time which i'm not certain it can from a rocket explosion + landing on earth at terminal velocity, you have two BIG problems. The nuclear bit is a political hot potato and nobody wants to get their fingers burned. It will of course take a LOT of political will to get this going. And the anti-nuclear protestors who never listen to reason anyway just like the stoopid polititions would kick up such a storm over wot if and worse case senerios about droping plutonium on their homes that it would never happen! Even if this amazing unbreakable container where to work! Just another point..by the way... what happens if we start dumping on the sun and IT GOES OUT!!! ok not very likely but I hope we know what we are doing. It probably get completly vapourized right?......hope so. Achris/Gorth. ------------------------------ Date: 18 Sep 92 13:46:23 GMT From: Gary Coffman Subject: Drop nuc waste into sun Newsgroups: sci.space In article <2AB776BF.791@deneva.sdd.trw.com> hangfore@spf.trw.com (John Stevenson) writes: > >Why not drop all the longlived nuclear waste into the sun to permanently >dispose of it. The waste is a *very* expensive problem that will otherwise Two major reasons: 1) Most of the material is "waste" only for political reasons. It is valuable material with many uses including further energy production through breeder cycles or RTG use. Putting it permanently out of reach of our more technically advanced and less hysterical descendants would be a crime. 2) The state of the art in rocket science is too immature to economically or safely deal with this type of potentially dangerous material in large quantity. The odds of a launch failure are orders of magnitude higher than the odds of breech of containment for many of the storage and reprocessing options. Minor reason: The Sun is a difficult launch destination from Earth. Gary ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 18 Sep 92 16:48:39 EDT From: Tom <18084TM@msu.edu> Subject: Ethics, again. >>>they are accused of being both selfish and racist.... The world >>>collectively must first admit that human numbers need to be controlled. ^^^^^ ^^^^^^^ ^^^^ ^^ ^^ ^^^^^^^^^^ >>What this really translates into is "human *beings* must be controlled." >So what? War, murder and rape need to be controlled. To do so means, likely, ^^^^ >that human beings must be controlled - or more well educated. What's your >point? If those things NEEDED to be controlled, they would be, by the people that cause/start them. Since they don't control them, we conclude that they don't NEED to be controlled. Your belief that they need to be controlled only exists because they aren't. However, we can ascertain that you think there is someone (you) who can make grand decisions on the kind of scale you are talking about. The point is that you are a fascist, since you have intellectually set yourself as the pinnacle of all human life, with sole power to decide right/wrong, good/bad, and a host of other principles that translate into 'who get's controlled, and how'. >You are perhaps the only person on the planet who would identify concern >with the environment with either self-hate or racism. Personally, I am >concerned for the environment out of pure unabashed self-interest. It's quite easy. Many greens believe that humans are not as valuable as other species. The contradiction inherent in this beleif lead to a host of other contradictions. Not least of these is self-hate (guilt) and anti-life, like (Human)race-ism. See my previos posts for why. Keep in mind, you non-self-interested person, that not only do you LIE, since it is IMPOSSIBLE for ANY HUMAN to act self-lessly, without coercion, but the worst of all dictators are those that do things out of 'non- self-interest'. At least the admitted evil ones have a concience to stop them when their anti-life practices get particularly evil. -Tommy Mac . " + .------------------------ + * + | Tom McWilliams; scrub , . " + | astronomy undergrad, at * +;. . ' There is | Michigan State University ' . " no Gosh! | 18084tm@ibm.cl.msu.edu ' , * | (517) 355-2178 ; + ' * '----------------------- ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 18 Sep 92 16:37:45 EDT From: Tom <18084TM@msu.edu> Subject: Ethics of changing Mars >If we decide to colonize Mars with earth-developed life forms or >not is purely a matter of choice and ethics. Ethics tells me, at least, >that we should not interfere with any life that may already be there. Ethics does not tell you that; pathology does. Ethics means logic applied to values. Pathos means gut feeling. Since you cannot logically conclude that terra-forming Mars is bad, it must be a gut feeling, subject to the whims of your personal interests, digestion, and who knows what else that we can safely ignore. >We _know_ that should these groups desist their dangerous behavior >that AIDS would no longer exist as a threat. Give me a break. Are you suggesting that all humans are evil, since it is the act of shitting that causes dysentary? Not to mention the blatant empirical untruth of your statement... >We must clean up our own backyards >in order to have other backyards to dirty. I'm not sure what you do in your backyard, but mine is pretty clean. Even if it wasn't, we have no ability to hurt Mars, so our 'backyard's' condition has absolutley NO bearing on the question of terra-forming. -Tommy Mac . " + .------------------------ + * + | Tom McWilliams; scrub , . " + | astronomy undergrad, at * +;. . ' There is | Michigan State University ' . " no Gosh! | 18084tm@ibm.cl.msu.edu ' , * | (517) 355-2178 ; + ' * '----------------------- ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 18 Sep 1992 15:29:53 GMT From: "Phil G. Fraering" Subject: Ethics of Terra-forming Newsgroups: sci.space tomk@netcom.com (Thomas H. Kunich) writes: \So why is AIDS funding at almost the same level as cancer research /funding that (cancer) kills 100 times as many people each year and is \something that is only slightly related to behavior and life-style? Have you forgotten that one of the leading causes of cancer is linked to life-style (nicotine addiction)? Isn't lung cancer the leading preventable cause of death in the United States today? >And what has this to do with space? As I said before, this whole idea >of space exploration and space colonization requires a fairly stable >and economically (read energy) independant civilization. _All_ problems >that limit the economic well being of a given society threaten the >development of space travel. We must clean up our own backyards >in order to have other backyards to dirty. What about people who see economic possibilities in space travel? -- Phil Fraering pgf@srl0x.cacs.usl.edu where the x is a number from 1-5. Phone: 318/365-5418 SnailMail: 2408 Blue Haven Dr., New Iberia, La. 70560 "NOAH!" "Yes Lord?" - Bill Cosby "HOW LONG CAN YOU TREAD WATER?" ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 18 Sep 1992 15:59:10 GMT From: "Kieran A. Carroll" Subject: GAS Flight Opportunities Newsgroups: sci.space In article henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes: > ...Assuming you could even get a GAS flight >opportunity; last I heard they were so horrendously backlogged that >it was "don't call us, we'll call you".... Henry; Things must have changed since the last time you looked at this. My company is planning to send up an experiment in a GAS, and checked with NASA about flight opportunities; we were told that they were readily available, and that if we had something ready to fly now it could go up "right away". -- Kieran A. Carroll @ U of Toronto Aerospace Institute uunet!attcan!utzoo!kcarroll kcarroll@zoo.toronto.edu ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 18 Sep 1992 15:33:54 GMT From: "Phil G. Fraering" Subject: Ion for Pluto Direct Newsgroups: sci.space steinly@topaz.ucsc.edu (Steinn Sigurdsson) writes: >I honestly don't know what that test from a couple of decades ago It was the SERT II test. >you referred to consisted of, but it cannot have fired long and hard, >and there are known lab problems with continuous firing ion thrusters, >one I know of is erosion of the electrode which degrades the >performance severely after N hours of operation. Which mechanism are you referring to? The ionization mechanism, or the acceleration mechanism? There has been tested here in the lab on earth an ionization mechanism without the erosion problem of previous designs: the electron cyclotron plasma generator... This test did fire long and hard, over a period of several months. I've been thinking lately, though. The people running the Pluto mission are dead set on using experimental sensors and never-before -at-that-scale solid rockets on their probe to avoid having to use ion rockets. So could another probe be used to test this out? What about a probe to look at Chiron, or 1992-QB-1? Maybe we could finally find out whether or not it's Planet X... ;-) -- Phil Fraering pgf@srl0x.cacs.usl.edu where the x is a number from 1-5. Phone: 318/365-5418 SnailMail: 2408 Blue Haven Dr., New Iberia, La. 70560 "NOAH!" "Yes Lord?" - Bill Cosby "HOW LONG CAN YOU TREAD WATER?" ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 18 Sep 92 20:31:17 BST From: amon@elegabalus.cs.qub.ac.uk Subject: NASA working on Apollo rerun > >Commercial purchase is certainly the only way to go. I think it would be > >silly for NASA to go out and start an R&D project to build a new SV. Far > >better is to simply say "I want N tons of my cargo delivered to lunar > >surface coordinates X,Y,Z by no later than time T". Then buy the service > >from whoever wishes to supply it... > > The real problem with this is going to be convincing potential suppliers > that you mean it and will keep your promises. It's rarely possible to > buy insurance against government policy changes, so that's a big risk... > especially given the US government's recent history. > Agreed. The inherent instability of politically based systems is one of the primary reasons I have my doubts about the whole enterprise. But if Goldin CAN change the way things are done and put real stability into programs, such things would become possible. IF Goldin succeeds in his efforts the long term repercussions in Washington and in the USA in general are .... large. :-) ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 18 Sep 92 21:11:47 BST From: amon@elegabalus.cs.qub.ac.uk Subject: NASA working on Apollo rerun > Pet lunar rocks we're suggested, but that may not be a very > large market; after all we have thousands of space-rocks in the form > of meteors which aren't that pricy. One near-term lunar industry > s It's all a matter of marketing... Start off getting lunar jewelry and desk ornaments, rings, brooches, etc set with other less precious stones (you know, diamonds and such). Put them in catalogs like "The Sharper Image" for the Christmas season. The next year, as more are available, start going for the kid market. You know, Mickey Mouse Moon Rock watches, etc. Then how about a stone house made from dressed moon rocks? A BARGAIN at ONLY $50,000,000!!! So what if you only sell one or two. The superrich have done sillier things with their housing. There are a lot of very rich people around who managed to hit the novelty market like this. To many of us engineering types it seems, well, silly. And the silly ones who think of it laugh all the way to the bank... Pet Rocks. Gold plated cadillacs. Hula Hoops, vials of arabian sand, the list goes on and on... ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 18 Sep 92 20:49:50 BST From: amon@elegabalus.cs.qub.ac.uk Subject: Pluto Direct Propulsion Options > The problem is that the Pluto mission budget is extremely tight. Goldin > wants another 20 kg trimmed from the spacecraft mass, and we thought the > Pluto spacecraft was already a real lightweight (compare with the Clementine > spacecraft, which has been described as a lightweight spacecraft, and > I'm afraid I'll have to agree with him here, Nick. The problem is not that this planetary probe is not using an Ion drive. The problem is that there is no agency who has the job to produce and do enough engineering tests to make the device "off the shelf". I've long argued that if NASA has ANY job at all, it should be that of the old NACA, ie doing the nitty gritty hardware testing and flight test data of basic hardware. (NACA did cowlings, airfoils, etc). It is really a bad idea to mix hardware tests with science research unless the prices of the probes come down a lot, ie to the point at which congress and the media hardly notice that a couple of the several hundred probes launched in the last few years have failed due to new hardware. I applaud what they are attempting to do, and I understand the reasoning behind it. If they get a real scientific return from PLUTO, the farthest out planet, and they do it for what is a miniscule budget under current megaproject standards, and they do it in a couple years instead of a career-time, then there will be more projects like this. If they do a lot of them and do indeed do it smarter, we'll finally have the mass produced probes I (and others) have suggested for many years. Get the cost under $100M or so per probe+launch, and you will start to see some real risk taking again. Carry that far enough and the probe projects will be at a level fundable as large research efforts by university and private institutes. It's the right direction. Go for it guys! ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 18 Sep 1992 15:40:07 GMT From: "Edward V. Wright" Subject: Population Newsgroups: sci.space In <17SEP199215003347@csa1.lbl.gov> sichase@csa1.lbl.gov (SCOTT I CHASE) writes: >So what? War, murder and rape need to be controlled. To do so means, >likely, that human beings must be controlled.... What's your point? Oh? Well, the best recent examples of societies that controlled people tightly were the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. Both societies that totally eliminated war, murder, and rape, right? >You are perhaps the only person on the planet who would identify concern >with the environment with either self-hate or racism. Personally, I am >concerned for the environment out of pure unabashed self-interest. No, I equate racism and self-hate with racism and self-hate. I also resent the smug attitude of people like you who imply that anyone who doesn't buy into their chicken-little doomsday scenarios is "not concerned about the environment." You take your own political agenda, wrap in the cloak of science, then try to shut off legitimate scientific debate by saying that anyone who doesn't agree with you wants to destroy the Earth. Like NASA, Al Gore, and the ozone holes that were supposed to open up over the United States this summer. Based on a single day's data, a bunch of NASA scientists overreacted and called a press conference to announce their "findings," coincidentally giving the head of the Senate subcommittee responsible for approving NASA's budget an additional chance to demogogue on national TV. In between plugs for his book (which doesn't prove that the Earth is in any danger, only that US Senators can't add, subtract, multiple, or divide three-digit numbers), Sen. Gore told Ted Koppel and the American people that there was "no longer any doubt whatsoever" about what would happen and attacked the character of legitimate, careful scientists who said that he and NASA were full of hooey. Slime magazine picked up the environmentalist trumpet with a cover story the next week. Even though new data showed this to be yet-another false alarm, Senator Gore never admitted that he was wrong (although NASA did) or publicly apologized to the American people who he had unnecessarily alarmed or the scientists whose reputations he had slandered. Being an environmentalist means never having to say your sorry. Some of us believe that there are better ways to help the Earth than by succumbing to a mixture of pseudoscience, ignorance, and superstition. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 18 Sep 92 21:30:19 BST From: amon@elegabalus.cs.qub.ac.uk Subject: Property rights (was Terraforming needs to begin now) I'll respond to this, but lets either bring it back to space or send mail to me offline to argue it out. > No, it does not even apply if you are a white christian in the U.S. > In the 1860's thousands of white (and some black) christians (and > non-christians) were deprived of their "property" by an executive order without > any compensation. This order is commonly refered to as the Emacimation > Proclaimation. After the fighting was over the states that had withdrawn from > the U.S. were "helped" for several years (read pillaged/looted) with most of > the "natives" not allowed to vote in elections. > You make a very gross assumption that a human being can be property. I would refer to Tommy Mac's arguments on the source of value. They are also applicable in this case. There are also alternative views to the causes of the American Civil War. The southern block was willing to negotiate an end to slavery in return for peaceful separation. However, the Northern business interests needed the southern markets. Lincoln, instead of responding to peace feelers set up a "Tonkin Gulf" incident: Fort Sumter. The shot heard round the world was a setup if I've heard of one. The end result is as you state. And the reaction to the pillage of the carpet baggers was the formation of organizations for self defense against the interlopers, organizations which became more blatently violent and racist than even what had passed before. The origins of the Klu Klux Klan are in this post-Civil War era, as were the "Jim Crow Laws" which prevented the newly emancipated blacks from competing economically with their former masters. > Was the U.S. goverment wrong to step on the "property" rights of the > slave oweners? If not, how do you reconcile that with your property rights > argument? > There are three points involved. One is that one human being cannot own another human being. Another is, that under the Constitution, the southern states had a legal right to peacefully leave the union. In that sense the Civil War was not a lawful action. Thirdly, it was not fought to emancipate slaves. It was fought for economic reasons and emancipation was tossed onto the heap as a sop to make it all seem a just and moral cause. Please direct further discussion on this issue directly to me unless you want to talk about future Civil Wars in space settlements. :-) ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 18 Sep 92 20:05:09 BST From: amon@elegabalus.cs.qub.ac.uk Subject: PUTTING VENUS IN AN ORBIT SIMILAR TO THE ORBIT OF THE EARTH > Chaotic orbits don't necessarily imply a situation where a small change > could send planets flying off in all directions. It is quite possible > for an orbit to be chaotic, in the sense that you cannot predict *exactly* > I'm afraid I'll have to differ strongly with you here. Moving Venus from the current Venus orbit to a orbit near that of Earth is not a minor change by anyone's definition. Additionally, the authors found the study surprising because most studies done on chaotic orbits with asteroids and such had an end result of bodies being tossed out of the solar system. And yet their results showed a chaotic but STABLE solar system. The stability was the surprise, not the lack of it in the other case. And wait, there's more: Small changes in the conditions in a chaotic system can push it from one chaotic state into an entirely new one. If the fellow was talking about changing Venu's orbit slightly, ie 5% or so, chances are large that it would not change the state of the system (although there is a small change that it would). Moving it to near Earth is going to cause all kinds of resonance changes, and fairly large ones at that. You are correct in one sense: we don't have the knowledge to say that things would change or not change with any degree of confidence. It might be an interesting experiment for the authors of the paper to try: put a planet in a different orbit and run a -500M year integration to see what happens. I really have no idea, but I've got a bad feeling about it... ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 18 Sep 92 16:32:04 EDT From: Tom <18084TM@msu.edu> Subject: Radio ownership >??? My understanding on the radio was that if you wanted to pay the >money to outpower someone on a frequency they either had to ante up >or buy you out. So why couldn't the cubans turn on their counter to >Radio Matri (sp?) - which under current rules the US has indicated >they'd bomb if turned on... My understanding is that since radio waves exist in a medium, the questions is who owns the medium. Say I don't want your radiations over my property? Turn it off, or get a pollution suit, perhaps a tresspass violation. Maybe I broadcast only strongly enough to cover my town, whose inhabitants have paid me for my programming. When your radio intereferes with *Their* proerty, information encoded into the medium which they own, you are guilty of trespass, open for prosecution. Obviously, people with a desire to broadcast will work out a peaceful compromise, rather than muscle each other, intensity-wise, and end up not brodacsting, with a host of civil suits, since the peaceful way is the prosperous one. So who needs the FCC? -Tommy Mac . " + .------------------------ + * + | Tom McWilliams; scrub , . " + | astronomy undergrad, at * +;. . ' There is | Michigan State University ' . " no Gosh! | 18084tm@ibm.cl.msu.edu ' , * | (517) 355-2178 ; + ' * '----------------------- ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 18 Sep 92 21:52:40 BST From: amon@elegabalus.cs.qub.ac.uk Subject: Space Platforms (political, not physical : -) I feel competent to answer this. I actually wrote one small plank in the party platform when I was a Pennsylvania state delegate in 1987. :-) > ??? My understanding on the radio was that if you wanted to pay the > money to outpower someone on a frequency they either had to ante up > or buy you out. So why couldn't the cubans turn on their counter to > Radio Matri (sp?) - which under current rules the US has indicated > they'd bomb if turned on... > Absolutely not. The most basic tenant of libertarianism is non-initiation of force. If KDKA Pittsburgh owns 1020 KHz for use within the current radius (ie it is a 50KW station), then it is has a property right for that which is no different in law from the property right it holds to the land under its studios in Gateway Center or to its broadcast antenna on Mt. Washington. Broadcasting over top of their signal, within their current broadcast region in the way you suggest would be tantamount to sending armed agents into the station to demand protection money. This, to put it mildly, is not a libertarian doing things. It's really much closer to the way things CURRENTLY work. Someone goes to the FCC with an idea for using a frequency. The FCC puts out an NPRM. The current user then has to put up enough money and resources in lobbying to counter the efforts of the group wishing to take over their frequency. If the original users fail there, they then have to try the same expensive influence peddling game at the next WARC meeting. > as to the satellite slots, if the treaty is abrogated and no slot > assignments are allocated, why not just muscle out your favourite > slot? > Because it would be no different at all from moving your own production equipment into someone else's factory. The term for this is theft. This means that radioastronomy could consider it's frequencies safe in perpetuity, or until such time as the consortium vested with ownership felt that sale of Earth based slots to commercial ventures could fund radio work on the moon that is of more value than the research on Earth which would then have to be foregone. And if any company, researcher or government were to trespass, you would have the same legal rights as you currently have on land trespass. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 18 Sep 92 22:09:05 BST From: amon@elegabalus.cs.qub.ac.uk Subject: Space Platforms (political, not physical : -) > You're avoiding the big question by talking about conversion from > *now*. How do you address the question of frequency ownership (from a > purely private view) absent an initial government intervention? > This is very close to the question of property rights on any "virgin" territory, ie the moon, Mars, asteroids, etc. If there is no original owner from which to buy rights, then laws must be written which define such property rights. There are suggestions of doing this for pollution certificates, as an example. If a resource is currently in use, you simply define the current users as having property rights over the resources they are using. If the resources has been government owned, you can follow one of the Eastern European models. If it is virgin, you need a legal framework. This probably will be, but need not be, governmental. Land titles were handled by private organizations in the american west in areas that had not yet become part of the US. Basically you allow homesteading. If a resource is not owned, you can claim a piece of it by putting it to use. You cannot just claim it all. That this is a difficult issue, I will readily admit. I will also admit that this is one area in which lawyers are very much needed. And in fact there are a number of lawyers writing on these issues. (Art Dula among others) One must define in law what is meant by "use" and every one of the other terms. Even libertarian anarchist philosophy requires legal frameworks. There is just a different, non-monopolistic way of implimenting it. As I said, these issues are identical to those of lunar homesteading. Can a mining interest go out and claim 100x100km at random? Or should the Bennet/Drexler approach of randomly assigning hexagons to a set of land consortiums with stock ownership vested in every human then living be used? There are many approaches to virgin property other than that of state ownership and regulation as a commons. ------------------------------ Date: 18 Sep 92 16:56:00 GMT From: Mark Wilson Subject: Space Platforms (political, not physical : -) Newsgroups: sci.space In isbell@ai.mit.edu (Charles L Isbell) writes: >Let us posit that Star Trek had the right idea and subspace >frequencies exist. When Widget company invents a sub space >communicator, do they immediately own all of the subspace frequencies? >Isn't this, by definition, a monopoly? Must a governmental body first >divide up the frequencies and assign them before a free market >mechanism can be employed? Merely possessing a device that is capable of transmitting in subspace does not give you ownership of the spectrum. You must also actually set up transmitters that transmitt in the spectrum. To own the entire spectrum you would have to blanket the entire spectrum with your transmitters. You must also make the transmitters powerfull enough to reach everywhere. (Ex. Different people can own the same frequency in Hong Kong and Los Angelos. Since the two transmitters do not interfere with each other (due to the seperation) there is no problem.) OK, now we have the Widget company which owns and operates a huge number of transmitters, an effective monopoly. Now another company wants to buy a frequency. Problem the frequencies are worthless because their are no recievers. Why haven't the consumers bought receivers, because their is nothing for them to listen to so why should they. Now the Widget company has to go to the trouble and expense of developing programming so that they can sell receivers so that the frequencies that the posess will have value. They also have to come up with varied programs to attract a wide audience. I'm losing track of where this analogy is going so I will bail out now.\ But basically while the Widget company may have a monopoly, the monoply is of no value until they start selling some of the frequencies. But once they sell some of the frequencies, they no longer have a monopoly. (The way to make the big money is to be the biggest player in the field, not the only player in the field.) BTW, radios were around an awfull long time before the FCC was invented. My reading of the early days is that the problems of interference were already being worked out in private *before* the government stepped in. -- --Mark My opinions are mine, all mine. Unless someone else claims them first. ------------------------------ End of Space Digest Volume 15 : Issue 220 ------------------------------