John, I've read those SF books, too, and even though the odds are long, we might attract unwanted attention, so I'd agree, it is a bad idea. Especially since we have no space fleet we could deploy to defend the solar system if a hostile race should arrive. Of course like in "Footfall", maybe we could secretly build Orion? Tough, esp since we've let all of our steel plants shut down and move to China. Finally, I'd be a lot more comfortable if we would actually use some of that "infrastructure" money that senile grandpa Joe wants to spend, to build Skybolt so we could at least have a non-Armeggedon chance to destroy any extinction event earth bound meteor, and perhaps that could have an anti-ship role as well.
John, I've read those SF books, too, and even though the odds are long, we might attract unwanted attention, so I'd agree, it is a bad idea. Especially since we have no space fleet we could deploy to defend the solar system if a hostile race should arrive. Of course like in "Footfall", maybe we could secretly build Orion? Tough, esp since we've let all of our steel plants shut down and move to China. Finally, I'd be a lot more comfortable if we would actually use some of that "infrastructure" money that senile grandpa Joe wants to spend, to build Skybolt so we could at least have a non-Armeggedon chance to destroy any extinction event earth bound meteor, and perhaps that could have an anti-ship role as well.