macleod@drivax.UUCP (MacLeod) (09/03/88)
In article <688@nancy.UUCP> krj@frith.UUCP (Ken Josenhans) writes: :In article <1988Aug29.172104.10823@utzoo.uucp: henry@utzoo.uucp :(Henry Spencer) writes: ::Then we'll have to ground the shuttle permanently. There is no way to ::fly it without risking loss of another orbiter. The NRC report on ::shuttle frequency put it even more strongly: if the shuttle continues ::flying, another orbiter *WILL* be lost eventually. :Unfortunately, in the wake of the Challenger explosion, no one has done :the necessary *political* work to get the message out to the US public :and Congress that spaceflight entails risks, and there are reasons for :taking these risks. Instead, we've been fed a steady diet of "Safety :first!" messages, and the public has been led to believe that there :will be no more shuttle accidents. What I fear this means is the next :shuttle accident will be the *last* US manned spaceflight, at least for :several decades. There are limits to everything, and my opinion, much as I dislike it, is that the political attitudes, values, and attention span of the US public simply will not support the sort of manned space program we need to be a presence in space. I remember how galvanized the country was in the early sixties; now US space exploits are trated as if they were one more Olympic event, one in which the USSR is getting all the gold medals. There's an old phrase, "shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations", which is a commentary about how a family can fail to pass on the qualities that enabled generations one and two to wear suits and ties. I think something like this is true of cultures as well. A mature culture like the USA becomes jaded and cynical, incapable of strong feelings about anything, and certainly incapable of the exertions its forefathers made. This is why I am continually ranting about anarchism and libertarianism and the need for frontiers. It's almost a circular notion, but I believe that the *unprecedented* lack of an Earth-based frontier society has left the more or less statistically constant percentage of dreamers, Lazarus Long - types, anarchists, adventurers, and so on to ferment and seethe in their parent cultures, causing friction and division. Worse, when such people are dispersed in a democracy like the USA, they will be checked by the inertia of the masses. To be really effective, there must be a (basically) lawless frontier society to repair to. The poster above fears that the next shuttle disaster will halt the US manned space program for many years. I think that it will probably end it permanently, unless you count guest rides on Soviet craft. Michael Sloan MacLeod (amdahl!drivax!macleod)