X-Message-Number: 17491
From: 
Date: Sun, 9 Sep 2001 15:39:01 EDT
Subject: Story time

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Stories With Morals
1.

    Once upon a time (1405 AD) there was a Chinese emperor named Yung-Lo who 
decided
that not enough people were paying attention to him. So he sent out great 
fleets, laden with
soldiers, treasures, and minor bureaucrats, commanded by the eunuch admiral 
Zheng He. These
weren't the pathetic, puny European caravels or carracks; the Imperial 
flagships were over 130
meters long and displaced over 1500 tons. Seven voyages were launched from 
1405 to 1433.
Their mission: to seek out new life forms and new civilizations, and force 
them to notice the
Emperor by handing out valuable Ming vases. To boldly go where no man, well, 
where no
eunuch.... well, on with our story.
    The first fleet sailed in 1405-1407 with sixty-two vessels carrying 
28,000 men, and
reached India, as did the second and third. The fourth voyage in 1413-1415 
reached Aden and 
Hormuz on the Persian Gulf. A fifth voyage also went as far as Aden. The 
seventh voyage
started out with 27,500 men and reached Hormuz again in 1431-1433. Chinese 
vessels visited
far down the east coast of Africa and seven Chinese reached Mecca in Saudi 
Arabia. (Zheng He
was a Muslim; he had been captured by Ming troops as a child.)
    The fleets brought back a giraffe for the Emperor; they also brought back 
a prince from
Ceylon (modern Sri Lanka) who hadn't looked sufficiently impressed. The 
fleets opened no
permanent trade routes, planted no colonies, and spent a lot of resources 
impressing (and/or
killing) Indian and African governmental officials. In 1433 the program was 
shut down, the
shipyards' budget cut, and even most of the records of the voyages were 
destroyed. 
    When the Europeans arrived in China in the 1500s bringing the benefits of 
opium and
cannon, it was illegal for a private Chinese citizen to own a ship with more 
than two masts. 

2.

    Once upon another time (1960) there was a powerful president named 
Kennedy who
decided that not enough people were paying attention to him. So he sent out 
great rockets, laden
with soldiers, scientists, and radioed bureaucratic advice (the bureaucrats 
themselves stayed
home this time), designed by the former Hitler employee Werner Von Braun. 
These weren't
pathetic, puny space shuttles (max payload 29 metric tons); the NASA 
flagships were over 120
meters long and massed over 3250 tons, with a max payload of 125 tons to low 
orbit. Three
different classes of nuclear rockets (Orion, NERVA, and the highly 
radioactive yet less useful
Project Poodle) were developed and tested, but not launched. Seven manned 
voyages were
launched from 1969 to 1972 (six landed; Apollo 13 didn't due to an exploding 
O2 tank.
Remember that it   s bad luck to be superstitious.) Their mission: not to seek 
out new life forms
and new civilizations (the US and USSR had already done that by broadcasting 
military radar
signals across the cosmos in a sphere expanding at the speed of light.) Their 
mission: to seek
out new rocks and new television images. To boldly go where many robots had 
gone before.
    The rockets opened no permanent trade routes, planted no colonies, and 
spent a lot of
resources. In 1972 the program was shut down and three unused Saturn Vs 
thrown away, as
were the never-flown nuclear rocket engines. Even the blueprints for the 
Saturn V rockets were
destroyed. 
When the Earth-crossing asteroid 2009Denver arrived in 2020 and blew up North 
America, it
was illegal for a private Earth citizen to own nuclear spacecraft (even with 
only one mast.) This
was a vast disappointment to the Borg invasion fleet of 2079, as they found 
the planet wasn   t
worth assimilating.


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