Booming China Devouring Raw Materials

Crown · Post by **Crown** » 2004-05-25 07:38pm

JME2 wrote:It's like Robin Williams said:

China has the bomb - or maybe not. Maybe they just have one billion people that go BOOM!

Wasn't that about India?

Post by **Gandalf** » 2004-05-25 08:15pm

Crown wrote:
JME2 wrote:It's like Robin Williams said:

China has the bomb - or maybe not. Maybe they just have one billion people that go BOOM!
Wasn't that about India?

Nah, I'm 99% sure that was China.

I remember trying to figure out if they'd have enough magnesium to simulate such a feat.

Crown · Post by **Crown** » 2004-05-25 08:18pm

Gandalf wrote:Nah, I'm 99% sure that was China.

I remember trying to figure out if they'd have enough magnesium to simulate such a feat.

Nope Robin Williams was talking about India in his Live on Broadway routine for HBO.

Post by **Gandalf** » 2004-05-25 08:26pm

Crown wrote:
Gandalf wrote:Nah, I'm 99% sure that was China.

I remember trying to figure out if they'd have enough magnesium to simulate such a feat.
Nope Robin Williams was talking about India in his Live on Broadway routine for HBO.

Bugger, sorry about that.

StarshipTitanic · Post by **StarshipTitanic** » 2004-05-25 08:34pm

Sea Skimmer wrote:
Col. Crackpot wrote:
Nonsense! Those Essex class carriers and Benjamin Franklin class SSBN's are vital parts of the fleet!
Those would have actual value, but anyway the National Defense Reserve Fleet contains exclusively merchant vessels. The reserve dates to 1946, and some of the ships have been there ever since (most of the vessels in it are WW2 Victory ships), the primary criteria for removing a ship from the NDRF is that it will sink from decay if not dry docked...

Do you know of where I could find a catalogue of the kinds of ships in the NDRF? I tried google but the official sites seemed to have taken down their's.

JME2 · Post by **JME2** » 2004-05-25 08:44pm

Gandalf wrote:
Crown wrote:
Gandalf wrote:Nah, I'm 99% sure that was China.

I remember trying to figure out if they'd have enough magnesium to simulate such a feat.
Nope Robin Williams was talking about India in his Live on Broadway routine for HBO.
Bugger, sorry about that.

It was primarily on India, but he was discussing who else had the bomb; the weapons programs of Pakistan, China, Russia, and France all became victims of his jokes that night.

Lonestar · Post by **Lonestar** » 2004-05-25 09:28pm

Col. Crackpot wrote:
Nonsense! Those Essex class carriers and Benjamin Franklin class SSBN's are vital parts of the fleet!

There is only one Essex left in the reserve fleet, the Oriskany at Beaumont. It's schedule to be sunk as an artifical reef off of florida by year's end.

Post by **Sea Skimmer** » 2004-05-25 11:50pm

Lonestar wrote:
There is only one Essex left in the reserve fleet, the Oriskany at Beaumont. It's schedule to be sunk as an artifical reef off of florida by year's end.

Warships like that are part of a different reserve force then the national Defence Reserve Fleet, it only holds merchants ships along with a handful of old logistics related amphibious vessel and auxiliaries.

Alan Bolte wrote:I don't get it, why haven't we sold them already? Even scrap value is better than having them just sit there.

You see the funny thing is that that isn't true. Because of environmental regulations and Congressional mandates the USN can effectively only scrap its old ships inside the US. And scrapping a ship inside the US costs significantly more then the value of its scrap. That means that to scrap something is a loss for the force. The USN would be quite content to let these pieces of junk sink and rust into nothing in some remote basin, but that would break environmental regulations as well.

Stofsk · Post by **Stofsk** » 2004-05-26 02:31am

Sea Skimmer wrote:The USN would be quite content to let these pieces of junk sink and rust into nothing in some remote basin, but that would break environmental regulations as well.

Why would it? Assume you take out the toxic materials from the power plant, what objection is left? It's basically no more than a big pile of metal arranged in an interesting shape. With no toxic waste to stink up the environment, what damage can be done?

Post by **Sea Skimmer** » 2004-05-26 09:58am

Stofsk wrote: Why would it? Assume you take out the toxic materials from the power plant, what objection is left? It's basically no more than a big pile of metal arranged in an interesting shape. With no toxic waste to stink up the environment, what damage can be done?

That makes the flawed assumption that you'll only find toxic material in the engine spaces and that even that stuff can be removed cheeply. Most of those old ships are insulated with aspestos amoung other things and the paint is lead and might be several inches thick in places.

Sarevok · Post by **Sarevok** » 2004-05-26 11:12am

I learned something new about the Chineese IT industry today. Appararently they are developing their own versions of global standards.

For example they developed the EVD (similar to DVD) and the TD-CDAM (similar to CDMA mobile phones). This is being done to protect the interesnts of domestic firms.

The problem is while trying to protect national interest the Chineese governent could make China incompatible with the rest of the world.