{"id":313,"date":"2007-01-04T12:13:52","date_gmt":"2007-01-04T12:13:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/patberry.net\/wordpress\/?p=313"},"modified":"2007-01-04T12:13:52","modified_gmt":"2007-01-04T12:13:52","slug":"no_weapons_in_s_1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/patberry.net\/wordpress\/?p=313","title":{"rendered":"No weapons in space?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Federal Aviation Administration is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.spaceref.com\/news\/viewsr.html?pid=22786\">establishing rules<\/a> for human space flight that will affect the passengers and crew of private civilian spacecraft. That&#8217;s all well and good, but the FAA&#8217;s Notice of Proposed Rulemaking document includes the following statement (in section C.6, &#8220;Security Requirements&#8221;): <strong>&#8220;A space flight participant may not carry on board any explosives, firearms, knives, or other weapons.&#8221;<\/strong><br \/>\nNow wait just a minute. I can understand why carrying firearms or explosives on a spacecraft is a bad idea; those things can easily make a hole in the ship and let the air out, which will ruin <em>everyone&#8217;s<\/em> day. But you can&#8217;t require the passengers and crew to be totally defenseless. How are they supposed to defend themselves against space pirates? (Come on, you <em>know<\/em> there are going to be space pirates. It&#8217;s inevitable.) All the crew of any space vessel should be armed with <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Cutlass\">cutlasses<\/a> and daggers, and passengers should be allowed to bring their swords as well.<br \/>\nSpacecraft should also be designed with racks of belaying pins in various locations; these may not have any actual function in the operation of the ship, but they make handy improvised weapons during hand-to-hand combat. And despite the lack of sails, there should be rigging. You can&#8217;t have a good swashbuckling battle without some rigging to climb around in.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Carrying firearms or explosives on a spacecraft is a bad idea; those things can easily make a hole in the ship and let the air out, which will ruin everyone&#8217;s day. But you can&#8217;t require the passengers and crew to be totally defenseless.<br \/>\n <a href=\"https:\/\/patberry.net\/wordpress\/?p=313\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/patberry.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/patberry.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/patberry.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patberry.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patberry.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=313"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/patberry.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/patberry.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patberry.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patberry.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}