mvp@v7fs1.UUCP (Mike Van Pelt) (01/20/89)
In article <93@beaver.cs.washington.edu> szabonj@right.UUCP (Nick Szabo) writes: >On the other hand, we can spend this $200+ billion sending out probes ... > ... With these we can explore every nook and cranny of the >solar system, from Pluto to Mercury, with dozens of probes to look at >each moon and major asteroid, and some comets as well. ... >This gives the scientist, the prospector, and the space settlement planner >orders of magnitude more knowledge and flexibility to work with. The >choice becomes no longer Moon vs. Mars (an odious debate), but pick a >spot from any part of the solar system. This certainly sounds reasonable. One little problem, though. By the time we have spent the next two decades studying the question to death, all the desirable real estate in the solar system is likely to have been snapped up by the Soviets, French, Japanese, Chinese, Israelis, Indians, Canadians, Brazilians, Australians, and Indonesians. (Have I missed any country with a space program? If so, it's an oversight.) This is not to say, of course, that scientific probes are a bad idea. We should be mass-producing them and sending them out by the score every year. But we should not be sitting on our hands waiting for the results from them, either. Because the information such probes send back is only part of the information we will need to get out there and develop those resources. The other vital information is how to live and work in space. Right now, only one country has much of this kind of information and it ain't the U.S. -- Mike Van Pelt Here lies a Technophobe, Video 7 No whimper, no blast. ...ames!vsi1!v7fs1!mvp His life's goal accomplished, Zero risk at last.
dmocsny@uceng.UC.EDU (daniel mocsny) (01/20/89)
In article <189@v7fs1.UUCP>, mvp@v7fs1.UUCP (Mike Van Pelt) writes: > By the time we have spent the next two decades studying the > question to death, all the desirable real estate in the solar > system is likely to have been snapped up by the Soviets, French, > Japanese, Chinese, Israelis, Indians, Canadians, Brazilians, > Australians, and Indonesians. (Have I missed any country with > a space program? If so, it's an oversight.) Let's see here, this is 1989 as I read this statement. In the next two decades no nation on earth is going to establish even one self-sufficient off-earth colony*, much less "snap up" all the desirable real estate in the solar system. I can only conclude one of the following: 1. This posting is actually a message from some time in the indeterminate future, proving that time travel is possible, and we had better start bracing for those paradoxes. 2. The solar system contains no desirable real estate beyond what these nations can now occupy. or perhaps another: 3. The author has already set his sights on some choice plot on, say, Io, and is thus redefining "decade" in terms of the Jovian year. Cheers, Dan Mocsny dmocsny@uceng.uc.edu * I am not particularly happy about this fact, but I can think of few that are so certain.
dietz@cs.rochester.edu (Paul Dietz) (02/16/89)
PJS@GROUCH.JPL.NASA.GOV (Peter Scott) writes: >What interests people the most, by far, is people. > ... >They lost interest in the Apollo missions because the astronauts weren't >doing anything *new*, as far as they were concerned, even though we know >there was more science performed. They lost interest in the shuttle >missions up to #25 because the astronauts were doing the same thing. >What will interest the public more than anything else is people doing >things that people haven't done before, which is a darn good argument >for not wasting money sending astronauts up on shuttles which don't >need them. I hope it is not true that public support of space is limited to short-run space spectaculars. If so, the space program will lurch from triumph to catastrophe as public support dries up. Progress consists of making things as routine and cheap (and therefore uninteresting) as possible. Many government programs are awfully boring, so there is hope a rational, if boring, space program could also be funded. People are also interested in acquiring wealth, and in protecting what they have. It might be possible to sell a program with the eventual goal of returing asteroidal materials for on-orbit defense use and for the strategic element content. Paul F. Dietz dietz@cs.rochester.edu
Ralf.Brown@B.GP.CS.CMU.EDU (03/08/89)
In article <67@enuxha.eas.asu.edu>, kluksdah@enuxha.eas.asu.edu (Norman C. Kluksdahl) writes: }A good PR man can write a poll which has leading questions which make the }result inevitably what he/she wants it to be. Psychology in action. And then there are phone-in polls, which are the worst kind, since only the most motivated will self-select themselves to be in the sample. And the most- motivated are usually the ones who are unhappy with the status quo.... -- UUCP: {ucbvax,harvard}!cs.cmu.edu!ralf -=-=-=- Voice: (412) 268-3053 (school) ARPA: ralf@cs.cmu.edu BIT: ralf%cs.cmu.edu@CMUCCVMA FIDO: Ralf Brown 1:129/31 Disclaimer? I claimed something? You cannot achieve the impossible without attempting the absurd.