Dale.Amon@H.GP.CS.CMU.EDU (02/16/89)
Eric Harnden (Ronin): Well said. I would consider myself a certifiable type A. I've soloed a plane, spent most of my working life in struggling start up ventures, rappeled off a cliff, driven my jeep into a river (and got stuck in the middle), and so on. I want to go because I want to experience it. Pictures do me no more good than looking at a picture of some one else's jeep stuck in a river. They are interesting but have little intrinsic value to me. Other's may have a different set of values and not differentiate so strongly the difference between collection of data and human experience. The reference to C P Snow is telling. There are some of us who are engineers, but who actually fall closer to the other category. I am probably an engineer BECAUSE of the space program of the 60's. It is likely that if not for Apollo I would have been a full time professional musician rather than the occasional participant in bar gigs that I am now. My approach to science is not so much a love of the preciseness as it is a love of the experiences that it opens up, the richness of the new worlds that it makes available for HUMAN experience. Economics is simply book keeping. It defines what we can afford to do. It DOES NOT set the agenda. People set the agenda. People DECIDE when the economics of something are within reach, and the criteria is not necessarily a strict comparison of ROI's (return on investment). I am a staunch libertarian. Libertarian does not equate with money, it equates with a desire for choice. I may choose to utilize the resources that I honestly acquire to whatever end I choose. Those choices are not driven by what will necessarily make me RICHEST, but what will fulfill the higher purposes to which I set my life. The economics can not be ignored in so far as I must insure I have the resources necessary to live, and that I must collect enough extra to be able to afford to do those things I WISH to do. This is true of entrepreneurial companies as well. Small companies do not always get started because the founder wants to make as much money as possible in as short a time as possible. They are often started because the founder wants the freedom and independance of being their own boss. And the area is often selected based on what that person wants to work on, what they believe will be FUN to work on. IF they have the vision and enthusiasm, they will beat the pants off of other businesses that may have better ROI on paper, and they will talk venture capital into supporting them. I am against the use of public money's for either manned or unmanned space, although I am less bothered by research on basic aerospace hardware such as the NACA used to do in the 1930's. I have joined in on this discussion only because I feel that the light of "hard cold scientific reason" has almost nothing to do with why we will eventually colonize space. That mentallity is nothing more than a tool that will help us balance conflicting desires and assist us in deciding when to start. Remember, the optimum time to do things is NOT the time that is most optimum from a mere economic viewpoint, but the time at which the TRADEOFF's between conflicting desires brings it within reach. We will go when we WANT to go. The economics will be fudged after the fact to convince people we were 'scientific' about it. I'm quite sure that there will be more rantings about the necessity to do it all nice and hard and cold. Just remember though. I don't understand your way of quantitizing existance any better than some of you understand my non-quantitized experential approach. "I am, therefore I think" seems to be a more appropriate order of things to me. Logic is not everything. It has nothing to do with a sunset on a beach, or the feel of a breeze on a Pennsylvania hilltop on a spring day, or the feel of music floating from a campfire after a long day of hiking. Logic is a tool, only a tool. We must remember who the master is.