The Death Star: A Pentagon Purchasing Nightmare

A great article. I loved the last line:<p><pre><code> ... maybe we can look forward to watching the Empire go bankrupt after convincing itself to buy two Death Stars, on the theory that different models will drive down costs. </code></pre> The article linked to a Navy project, but my mind went directly to the Joint Strike Fighter [1], which used the same (sensible sounding) rationale.<p>1: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Strike_Fighter_program#Program_issues" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Strike_Fighter_program#Pr...</a>

As a side note I wonder what our future will look like when we enter the age of humanoid robots with strong AI . Lets assume that we figure out how to maintain control over them so that they never revolt a la Terminator or Battle Star Galactica (re-imagined).<p>For one thing our purchasing power will go up. Or rather things will become so cheap to produce that we will probably lose our drive to hoard material possessions. There will probably be no excuse for poverty.<p>What new things will we fight about? Certainly not wealth anymore. Probably religion: one group trying to tell the other group what to believe in or how to live their lives. The future will probably be stranger than fiction. Hope I can live long enough to see it.

On a somewhat related note (especially given the anniversary coming up on Sunday), Condoleezza Rice was scheduled to give a speech on the importance of 'Star Wars,' ballistic missile defense systems, on Sept 11 2001.<p><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A40697-2004Mar31?language=printer" rel="nofollow">http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A40697-2004Mar31?la...</a>