<HTML><BODY style="word-wrap: break-word; -khtml-nbsp-mode: space; -khtml-line-break: after-white-space; "><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV>(Bird-to-Stone ratio: 2)<DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>There is a giant gap in Geo between roughly 150W and 170W.</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>I believe Hawaii is in it, among other things...</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>]3<DIV><BR><DIV><DIV>On Aug 3, 2005, at 1:58 PM, Jay Dugger wrote:</DIV><BR class="Apple-interchange-newline"><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><BR></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><FONT face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">Stick a pin on the equator of a Mercator projection of Earth. Call the</FONT></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><FONT face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">whole shaft of the pin "restricted space." Look at what you have left</FONT></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><FONT face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">over. Yes, the pin goes outward a very long way, about 10E5 km. If</FONT></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><FONT face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">your scale gets big enough, this starts to look one-dimensional.</FONT></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><FONT face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">Enough hand-waving on that. I don't know orbital dynamics well enough</FONT></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><FONT face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">to argue this. (Where's Szabo?)</FONT></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><BR></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><FONT face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">Ocean basing allows its own advantages. For instance, transfer cargo</FONT></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><FONT face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">directly from container ships to SE and vice versa. If the economics</FONT></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><FONT face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">work out you might even see super-container ships far too large for</FONT></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><FONT face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">any canal that transfer to go up a Pacific SE, orbital transfer to an</FONT></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><FONT face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">Atlantic SE, down that SE, and transfer back to a container ship.</FONT></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><FONT face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">Totally speculative, I admit. No worse than teleportation, however. :)</FONT></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><BR></P> <BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Mike Lorrey <<A href="mailto:mlorrey@yahoo.com">mlorrey@yahoo.com</A>> wrote:</DIV></BLOCKQUOTE><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 10.0px"><FONT face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">ISS. No Hubble, No Bigelows Budget Suites, and IMHO it puts access to</FONT></P> </BLOCKQUOTE></BLOCKQUOTE></DIV><BR></DIV></DIV></DIV></BODY></HTML>