<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>I’m in total agreement w/ you that Uncle Sam is good at hiding things from the rest of his family, and sometimes for good reasons. There are some who argue that it was not necessary to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and if the U.S. had bombed one of the surrounding unmanned islands of Japan the emperor would have got the message loud and clear. In fact it was the international press of thousands of victims who later died from the fall out, and black rain that outraged the world community; making all the major powers race back to their respective physics labs in order to build their own nuclear devices. Which brings us to present day; where we find developing countries gaining access to nuclear devices, although I would be the first one to tell you that the really weapon of mass destruction is the AK47/M16.<br /><br />My point being this is why Uncle Sam knows how to keep a secret. He has learned from his past mistakes. One year after he bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki; the USSR announce they to had a nuclear weapon. As for my speculations on an OSP armed w/ a warhead it has been said that there is no place to hide in orbit. I would have to disagree with that statement. With the constant advancements in stealth technology and the fact that GEO, MEO, and LEO are littered with countless satellites and space debris a nuclear platform could remain hidden for decades in orbit.<br /><br />Finally we come to the topic of the metric system: While doing a research paper for my MS in Telecommunications I came across the average cost of design/build, and launching a satellite at 150 million dollars U.S. Part of the expense is because rockets are used only once; the other part of the cost believe it or not is that a large majority of the parts come from oversea and are measured twice. The components are measured, tooled, and manufactured in factories using the metric systems and a unit cost is assigned to these parts using the sa</p></blockquote> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>