Star Jump Probability Modelling

Unfortunately if you are being serious about exploring project Orion more deeply, you will not get much further based on what you discover because of some white elephants you will pick up from unqualified reading. This is what makes serious revision of Project Orion so difficult - those with permission to know those secrets are by definition not thinkers unless of retirement age and hence part of the original project work. This is possibly the biggest obstacle to the natural evolution of man's capacity to invent his way out of trouble.

The focus upon an orbiting Orion-Powered space elevator would provide reasons to recommend containment without star-travel suggestions but focus instead on elevator and elevator cable specifications. The strategy of discussing Project Orion Revisions under a "Space Elevator" framework avoids the problem of suggesting faster-than-light speeds. If Orion-style containment is achieved for any elevator, speed tests would eventually be conducted and hard evidence provided from space-craft performances.

 Any study of European history shows how most theories to do with the sun are eventually proved wrong. The medieval flat earth and the later "sun orbits the earth" being the most obvious. There is an element of "travelling faster than a sunbeam is heretical" shown in the following of Einstein. America also recently has wrapped up a newer idolisation of poor Einstein with a meaningless war-cry of defending a Judeo-Christian tradition. It is meaningless from the European perspective since most of the tradition before 1945 was not at times something to be proud of. So the tradition being invoked only refers to the post 1945 period. That might cynically be interpreted as the new use of religious authority to justify the continuing the preservation of nuclear secrets when a Cold War can no longer justify the initial grounds for creating them.

As a consequence of nuclear secrets, the use of smaller critical masses becomes a white elephant for most recent theorists seeking to comment on Project Orion. It is recommended instead to focus on considering the near zero gravity in space, zero atmospheric pressures and specifically lack of any gas particles in the containment chamber. It would make containment easier to achieve because the expulsion of the reacting elements would be very much quicker. Furthermore the "light bulb" approach of Thomas Edison with metal filaments (e.g. conducting many tests) might be possible provided an elevator or rocket system is works efficiently to place the required payloads in space cheaply enough.

Star Jump Probability Modelling continued

Containment testing (rather than a pusher-plate) is an urgent theoretical development issue. From 2009 there is a more potential risk in a new and serious military upgrade. This is based on the assumption that China will be under pressure once the 2008 Olympic Games are over to assume the head of a new political alliance to challenge the authority of the USA. It could herald a new military development period and some implications of the issues surrounding competitive SDI (Star Wars) shields are now further complicated by the new rise of Russia on the military stage. It is worth remembering that the Cold War ended precisely because Ronald Reagan proposed building such a shield that the USSR had no hope of mustering the technology to develop.

Hence the need to define a model for a proposed new academic discipline called "star jump science". It anticipates looking at the use of mathematical probabilities to compare and contrast the only two paths for not destroying ourselves in the long-term. That is upon the ending of the Cold War. The first concerns climate change and examines suggestions to lower consumption. This needs to take account of how switching economies away from meeting domestic needs is historically achieved via increasing war production or preparation for it. Therefore what is the probability we can control climate change in a useful and profound manner that will not unwittingly push us into new war production with catastrophic ends?

The much less understood but more favourable outcome is the comparative probability of reaching the stars. It is worth commenting that the discovery of previously unknown and vast territories (as star-jumps would mean) is part of the European experience but not part of the American, being itself discovered by Europeans. My preference (and book) is about reaching the stars but I also recognise a need to map the evolution of climate change control theory into areas for useful comparative analysis. To become a new academic discipline it will requires future proposals of a general framework for some new type of probability modelling. Unless proper consideration is given to Marxist modelling of why we go to war, simply pursuing a climate change control agenda may simply increase war production or preparation for it. Both environmentalists and "reach for the stars" economists would benefit from the development of side-by-side analytical tools to measure the comparative probabilities of mankind's long-term survival.