I see an economic diasater coming...

[triffid]

Hyperinflation is bearing down on us fast.Our governments misguided attempt at flooding the market with money only condemned our country and other countries around the world to financial disarray   and radically devalued the US dollar.A dollar bill from 100 years ago has only about three cents of purchasing power today.
triffid

[triffid]

If you are on the train tracks and see a train headed your way you should have common sense enough to get out of the way.Now that baby boomers are entering retirement they will spend less and start downsizing.Gone will be the tax revenue from this generation.Down goes the GDP.From now through 2029 more than 70 million people will be entering entitlement programs,SS,medicare,etc.How will our our government pay for all of that without borrowing it? Generation X can't make up the shortfall,there are only 51 million of them.So maybe the train hasn't come to where you are playing on the tracks?When you and the train meet the train has always won.I would bet money on the train winning 100 % of the time.triffid

[triffid]

There is silver on the moon. http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19609-lcross-mission-may-have-struck-silver-on-the-moon.html
To create the observed spectral lines, the silver would have to be much more concentrated than the 100 parts per billion measured in rocks returned by the Apollo astronauts. On Earth, silver is concentrated by geologic processes such as flowing water, but such processes do not operate on the moon.

So what might be concentrating the silver? One theory holds that volatile elements, such as mercury and magnesium, may hop along the moon's surface one atom at a time until they hit a "cold trap" â€" such as the permanently shadowed crater LCROSS smashed into â€" and stick.

Silver is not usually considered a volatile, but Robert Wegeng of the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington, who is not a member of the mission team, says it probably behaves like one in the vacuum and temperature conditions on the moon. Other useful metals, such as tellurium, indium, and selenium, may behave the same way, he says.

Paul Spudis of the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, Texas, cautions that the spectral lines are not definitive. "We really need a surface rover mission," he says. "We can argue about emission spectra from now until doomsday, but I want an on-the-spot measurement before I'll finally believe it."

Journal reference: Science (vol 330, p 468)

[triffid]

This link talks about water on the moon being more valuable than gold  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-diamandis/gold-rush-on-the-moon_b_301273.html
If you've been wondering where the next gold rush is going to take place, look up at the night sky to our closest celestial neighbor. The next economic boom might just be a mere 240,000 miles away on the bella luna.
Exactly what I have been trying to say!triffid

[triffid]

From an economic point of view, water on the Moon is the equivalent of finding "gold in the hills of California." Translation: there is the potential for a California gold rush to hit the space community in the years ahead, and the teams building robotic exploration vehicles in the Google Lunar X PRIZE are constructing the shovels and picks on the leading edge of this potential boom.

So what's so interesting about water on the Moon? After all, it's in boundless supply on Earth. The value of water is its actual physical location on the Moon, a place that is very expensive to travel to. The utility of the water is both as a propellant for rockets and for the maintenance of human life in space. With sufficient water on the Moon, solar energy can be used to split the water into hydrogen and oxygen. The oxygen is, of course, critical for humans to breathe and the water important for us to drink. As it turns out, hydrogen (H2) and oxygen (O2) together are also one of the most efficient propellants we know. The Space Shuttle Main Engines (some of the most powerful rocket engines in existence), for example, burn O2 and H2 to blast our astronauts off the Earth into orbit. You can think of water as the petroleum of spaceflight. Rather than oil that powers our cars, H2 and O2 power our rocketships.

Today's launch costs are, unfortunately, extremely expensive. On the average it costs something on the order of $20,000 per pound to get supplies into low-Earth orbit (where the International Space Station is located) and, optimistically, 10 times to 20 times that cost -- or approximately $400,000 per pound -- to land something on the Moon's surface.

So the cost of transporting water to the lunar surface, or oxygen, or hydrogen, is about $400,000 per pound or $25,000 per ounce -- about twenty-five times the price of gold today!

Revealing water in significant quantities on the Moon could truly be a turning point in space exploration. Who will set up the first water mining plants? Given low-cost availability of water, hydrogen and oxygen, what type of off-Earth economies and exploration will this enable?