Here is a portion of an article that is a followup to a previous post, the one about 3d printing of guns and gun parts. I guess it scares people to think that it might not be controlled.
You don't bring a 3D printer to a gun fight -- yet
...
I am become death, the destroyer of my garage
The obvious retort to any discussion of the legalities of making your own firearms or firearm components, 3D-printed or otherwise, is that criminals don't care about gun control laws. And even if it's impractical, if not downright impossible, to make your own plastic gun now, as 3D-printing technology improves and grows you might envision a near-term future where crooks regularly arm themselves with cheap, easily reproduced plastic firearms.
Even if you dial down the scare rhetoric, 3D printing at the very least seems like it could disrupt the idea that a government can regulate guns or their manufacture. Defense Distributed outright claims that kind of disruption among its goals.
"In a sense, every dollar [that you donate to their project] is a statement to these international kleptocrats that this isn't in [their] control anymore."
Here's the problem with that idea. As Washburn pointed out, you can already make a cheap gun with a trip down to the hardware store. And with only a little training, you can already use relatively affordable, widely available machine tools to mass-produce functioning weapons.
This is not to say that zip guns and other illegal homemade weapons don't currently exist. Yet despite the widely distributed means of production and low financial and knowledge requirements, the regulation-shaking, homemade gun-making revolution hasn't happened in this country.
Washburn, the ATF, and gun rights attorney Stephan Halbrook all believe current U.S. legislation is already well-equipped to handle the prospect of a plastic, 3D-printed firearm. You never know, of course. "You might find a legislator somewhere who wants to do something about it," Halbrook said. But the federal government has been regulating alternative gun designs, the Any Other Weapon, since the National Firearms Act of 1934. Wilson counters that if his group can design an effective, easily distributed plan for a printable plastic gun, "there is just not enough manpower to control it."
"3D printing 20 years from now is a different animal," Washburn said, allowing at least the possibility that printing a functional firearm might one day become more practical. Even if it does, it will only offer another means to an end that we can already accomplish easily. "This has all been done before," Washburn said, "and there are smarter ways to do it."
Meanwhile, Defense Distributed is going forward with its testing.
http://news.yahoo.com/you-don-t-bring-a-3d-printer-to-a-gun-fight----yet.html
The Knoxville / Turkey Creek Chick-Fil-A has NOT posted itself as a “gun-free zone” / victim-disarmament zone. I drove by the store yesterday, and neither of its two entrances were posted with anything even approximating a “gunbuster” sticker, “no guns allowed” sign, or anything of the sort. Better yet, it does not look like they are going to post, per a conversation Liston Matthews had with the store manager.
Given the franchisee agreement CFA reportedly requires of their managers, and given that CFA’s stated position is that they will respect whatever laws allowing or banning open/concealed carry there are in whatever state their stores are located in, I cannot say as though I am greatly surprised by this turn of events.
So, considering that CFA was not turned into a victim-disarmament zone due to one manager’s overreaction to the peaceful and lawful open carrying of a private firearm, how about all of the knee-jerk open-carry-haters in the audience just go ahead, sit down, and take some deep breaths, lest you burst a blood-vessel, eh? If nothing else, this situation worked out to be a net positive, since this manager is now more than aware of how many of his customers are interested in patronizing his business while simultaneously exercising their rights, and further aware of corporate’s policies towards his store and their working relationship.
http://www.wallsofthecity.net/2012/09/knoxville-chick-fil-a-respects-your-rights.html
Im glad im not a conspriacy type person, but this is a bad move.
Nuclear waste set to power spacecraft
By Andrew Bounds, North of England Correspondent
Britain’s nuclear waste could be used to power spacecraft as part of government attempts to offset the huge cost of the atomic clean-up by finding commercial uses for the world’s largest stock of civil plutonium.
A £1m pilot programme by the European Space Agency has shown that nuclear batteries for use on deep space missions could be made from an isotope found in decaying plutonium at the Sellafield waste storage site in Cumbria.
Britain’s National Nuclear Laboratory has harvested americium-241 from the plutonium, produced from reprocessing fuel.
The ESA believes this could replace plutonium-238, only available from Russia and the US, and provide an independent source of energy for planned deep space missions to Jupiter and other distant planets.
Tim Tinsley, who manages the programme for the NNL, said the space battery was an unforeseen benefit of past inaction, which has left 100 tonnes of plutonium in ponds at Sellafield.
“It is available due to a twist of fate,” he said. “We have been able to extract that americium and prove that it works.”
Full-scale battery production would be “worth hundreds of millions of euros” and provide skilled jobs in west Cumbria, an area of high unemployment, he said.
Nuclear batteries – each containing about 5kg of nuclear material – have been around since the 1950s and are used in Nasa’s Cassini and Voyager probes as well as Curiosity, which landed on Mars in August.
As the isotope decays, it gives off heat for several decades. This can either be used to keep instruments warm in the cold of deep space or converted to electricity for power. Once spacecraft fly beyond Mars, out of the sun’s rays, solar power is not available.
Mr Tinsley said: “The ESA would be able to go to places and do things they currently can’t do.”
Carla Signorini, ESA head of electrical engineering, said Sellafield was one of few places where the work could be done and that progress was “excellent”.
The department for energy said the programme could generate “considerable income”.
Other possible uses for the batteries would be in sea buoys or underwater equipment for the oil and gas industry.
“There are export opportunities,” added Mr Tinsley. “A lot of countries such as China and India have interests in space.”
The US may also need a fresh supply. Plutonium-238 can be made only in reactors dedicated to weapons, now shut down, and Nasa’s stocks could run out in 2018, according to the US National Research Council.
“It is a win-win,” said Graham Fairhall, chief scientist at NNL. “You are reducing a liability by getting external funding in. You have this material you have to find a way of treating, so why not use it for potential benefit?”
The programme’s future depends on how much money the government allocates to the UK Space Agency, which funds it via the ESA. The agency said it would like to press ahead but the batteries were lower priority than a new telecommunications platform and weather satellite.
The clean-up costs of Britain’s nuclear programme are estimated at up to £100bn, with £3bn spent annually, while the plutonium alone is a £4bn liability.
NNL, a government agency run under contract, has joined Systems Engineering & Assessment, a specialist engineering group active in the space sector, and the University of Leicester, which has a large space department, to run the programme.
Britain’s National Nuclear Laboratory has a pipeline of money-spinning products as well as its vital role in maintaining the safety and security of Britain and the world’s nuclear capability, according to Graham Fairhall, its chief scientist.
The government-owned NNL is run under contract by Battelle, the non-profit research group which also operates US nuclear laboratories, together with Serco, the facilities management group, and Manchester University.
Its recent innovations include the RadBall, an alternative to the Geiger counter in detecting radiation. The grapefruit-sized polymer-based device has been tested at Sellafield and shows “tremendous promise”. It can pinpoint radiation sources in an area without needing to send in a person and can reduce clean-up costs by targeting tiny sources of emissions.
The NNL, based near Warrington, with labs at Sellafield, Preston and Workington, was spun out of BNFL when the state-owned nuclear group was broken up in 2008 and employs 780 people. It is enjoying a new lease of life as the UK prepares to start building nuclear power stations again, Prof Fairhall said.
It is making the business case to commission never-used labs – mothballed a decade ago – that could handle the world’s most radioactive materials. They feature five cabinets with leaded glass and robotic manipulators that could experiment on spent fuel and waste.
The amount the government spends annually on nuclear research has dropped from £450m in 1972 to around £20m now, but NNL has £80m of income from winning commercial business.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/2ea069f2-f830-11e1-828f-00144feabdc0.html#axzz264AAIZpR
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