Moagricultuin zero-g

From:
To:
Sent: Thursday, September 20, 2001 4:27 PM
Subject: Re: [spacesettlers] More agriculture in zero-g

[snikt]
What is your perspective on the Alcantara issue?

For those who are not familiar with the referred issue, I would suggest
reading
http://www.cnn.com/2001/TECH/space/09/10/brazil.us.space.ap/index.html as a
startpoint.

The most polemical points in the Alcntara issue are:

1) There will be *no* transfer of astronautic technology from Americans to
Brazilians.
2) Brazilians would not be allowed to inspect American sealed containers
entering the facilities; also there would be "Brazilian-free" restricted
areas for Americans only.
3) Brazilians would no be allowed to use the money from the rental to
further develop the embryonic Brazilian astronautics.

I think that item (1) is perfectly reasonable. Everyone knows that the same
technology that allows people to go to space can also be used to drop bombs
over the heads of people somewhere, so Astronautics was always considered a
strategic technology and therefore each country has to build it from
scratch. As for items (2) and (3), well... I know that there are many
Americans here in this list and I hope that you will not be offended by my
"empathic" opinion, but... Items (2) and (3) are OUTRAGEOUS!

As congressman Waldir Pires pointed out, item (2) has the potential to
threaten the fairness Brazilian relationships with other countries. For
instance, Brazil has normal diplomatic relationships with Cuba, a country
that is not, let say, one of America's best friends. What if some of the
"sealed-containers-that-cannot-be-inspected" has a spy satellite that will
be used, among other things, to inspect Cuba? (Yes, I know that in the
present world scenario that does not sound very likely, but it is a
possibility anyway.) We would be unwillingly contributing to an unfriendly
action committed against a friendly country.

Item (3) sounds kind of strange when proposed by a nation that is often see
as the champion of Capitalism, free market and free enterprise. Suppose that
America is a car driver that wants to rent a park area from another guy,
Brazil. However, America will sign the contract only if Brazil promises to
not use the money to buy a car for himself. In *any* rental situation like
that, the landlord would dismiss the unreasonable guy and continue to rent
his property to more reasonable people... And, indeed, I don't think that
our Congress will authorize this rental.

That's it. Again, I hope that I did not hurt any patriotic feelings that you
may have - that was not my intention at all - but I was asked to expose the
situation from my (Brazilian) perspective...

Ron Menich

Lucio Coelho

P.S.: Here's a URL that may be of interest to you re your side issue:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/08/010808135444.htm .
[snikt]

Interesting article. However, I think that the same reasoning would not
apply to alcohol from sugar cane as used in Brazil. I've never seen any
scientific study saying that the sugar cane alternative was energetically
unviable, that is, saying that the process to make alcohol uses more energy
than the one given by the alcohol. (Of course that may be biased by the
following factors: (a) until recently, most of agricultural work in sugar
cane fields was done not by machines, but by human workers and (b) our
electricity is mostly hydro and therefore very cheap.) Anyway, I think that
sugar cane would not be viable for the case of the United States: it is a
tropical plant, and also the total amount of vehicles in the United States
is enormously larger than the corresponding number for Brazil, so the whole
US surface area would have to be covered with sugar cane to power American
cars...