Dale.Amon@H.CS.CMU.EDU (11/13/86)
I wished to comment on your statement about the nature of L5 literature. What you say is to a great extent true, and for very good reasons. We are not targeting highly trained engineers. We are aiming for the general public. All of us (Space Digest) know that these things can be done. We might argue about the particulars, but most of us agree that our civilization will move into space over some disputed time frame. The average housewife, insurance salesperson, officeworker, doctor, nurse, or mill worker doesn't know any of this. They are not educated to understand the technical arguments even if we made them. And yet these are the people who really control where the government side of the space program will go, and at the very least will decide whether the government will allow private enterprise to even try. Regardless of what DC wildlife thinks, they only run things so long as the grass roots don't get too terribly annoyed by them. If we gave out the info that would excite you, we would not reach this audience. You, Paul, already know the importance of the issues. You know even enough about the details and the problems to have valid disagreements with my stands. So we don't need to target you with our literature. I'm sure that if you think about it, you'll see that we are taking the right approach for our market. You have to make it exciting enough at a gut level and splashy enough to make uninformed nontechnically trained people WANT to learn more. Given that they start the learning process, they will eventually understand the deeper issues. NOBODY does this better than we do. It is our (L5's) ability to get the average Joe where he lives that is one of the major reasons NSS is interested in a merger. I'm sorry you don't like our materials, but I'm sure you will do active things toward a strong space program whether you are one of us or not. Just the fact of your taking the time to HAVE positions on the issues we argue about makes you more like one of us than you probably think. Our job is to get a few million people to the same level as you. It's a hard job, and nobody else is doing it.