Consitiutions of the High Frontier

On Nov 12, 2003, at 3:12 PM, Ian Woollard wrote:

>> The UN is impotent to stop wars because it has no teeth, specifically
>> because the big 5 made it that way (UK, US, USSR, France, and the
>> PRC).
>

It should be noted that the UN has played a role in preventing the war
it was really meant to prevent: World War III. Although you can
certainly argue that other factors were more or less important, the
fact remains that the UN was established with the specific purpose of
preventing a repeat of WW II, there has been no repeat, and it looks
like - with just a little luck - there won't be one.

Furthermore, the UN has played a role in slowing, stopping, or limiting
a number of small wars through its peacekeeping operations. Like the
wars of any one country, some of these operations are successful and
some fail. It should be noted that the UN has been far more successful
that its predecessor, the League of Nations. Stopping war is a tough
business, lack of perfection should not be confused with lack of
progress.

The materials in one asteroid (the largest ) are sufficient to make
orbital space colonies with ~150 times the surface area of the Earth in
usable real estate. See http://lifesci3.arc.nasa.gov/SpaceSettlement/
for details.

Al Globus
CSC at NASA Ames Research Center
http://www.nas.nasa.gov/~globus/home.html

Views expressed in this email are only my opinions and are not the
position of any organization I'm familiar with.