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From: jlg@lanl.ARPA (Jim Giles)
Newsgroups: net.space
Subject: Re: nearby supernovas etc.
Message-ID: <73@lanl.ARPA>
Date: Tue, 4-Mar-86 12:49:39 EST
Article-I.D.: lanl.73
Posted: Tue Mar  4 12:49:39 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 8-Mar-86 06:01:55 EST
References: <8603020306.AA00249@s1-b.arpa>
Reply-To: jlg@a.UUCP (Jim Giles)
Organization: Los Alamos National Laboratory
Lines: 26

In article <8603020306.AA00249@s1-b.arpa> REM%IMSSS@SU-AI.ARPA (Robert Elton Maas) writes:
>I beg to differ. If current theory says we have only 200 million years
>before we roast, and that isn't enough time for fossil fuels to be
>re-supplied, ...

Not true. Most of the oil and gas in Texas, The Gulf of Mexico, the Middle
East, and the North Sea come from vegetation living in the Tythes Seaway
which was a shallow strip of warm seas lying between (what became) North
America and (what became) North Africa and Europe.  This seaway existed
(to various extents) between 120 and 80 million years ago.  60 to 80
million years is plenty of time for oil and gas formation.

Besides, if the fossil fuels run out, we can use the (increasing) solar
power to make hydrogen and oxygen from seawater.  Or we might have home-
made fusion soon.  Of course, all these advances may not be able to keep
pace with population pressure.  Our culture may note survive the loss
of will to advance.  Someone in the future will continue though, and
it WILL be possible for them to.

This is not to say that I oppose the space program - I support it.  I think
we should devote more resources to it than we have.  But, if we don't, we
will become somone else's dead past - like the Romans, Greeks, Assyrians,
Babylonians, and Egyptians before us.

J. Giles
Los Alamos