REM@MC.LCS.MIT.EDU (Robert Elton Maas) (02/22/86)
D> Date: Sun 16 Feb 1986 10:15:52 EST D> From: Paul Dietz <dietz%slb-doll.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa> D> Subject: Long Term Goals D> Seeing how supportive the public has been of NASA during the current D> difficulties, it seems to me the support would be even more D> overwhelming if NASA could come up with a long term, easy to D> understand set of goals that would be immediately relevant to the D> average person. NASA could then argue backwards from these goals (to D> get to this point we need to do this) rather than planning towards D> more limited goals of less obvious desirability (if greater practicality). I agree. Now is the time to tell the public what our long range goals are, get them fired up, and then they'll want NASA to get some real funding directed toward what's needed now to get those goals someday. D> -- To have, sometime in the first half of the next century, a self D> supporting extraterrestrial economy. That's still a means to an end. Tell them why you want that. D> -- To reduce the cost of a trip to space to less than 10% of the D> average American's annual income. You also have to include the safety factor. In addition to being cheap, it must be as safe as current airliner travel. D> -- To have at least one million Americans living in space by the D> year 2050, and to have more Americans living off the earth than D> on before the end of the next century. Again, why? Is this just a wild fantasy, or a means to an end? Why would one million Americans want to live in space? Why just Americans? Why not also Europeans, Africans, Asians, and Australians?? Of course my goal of colonizing the Virgo Supercluster would be incomprehensible to most random citizens of the world. We need something longer range than yours but more comprehensible than mine, for the general public. D> Imagining one's children or grandchildren living in space, away from D> the potential problems of pollution, nuclear war and resource D> shortages could be a powerful motivator. That's a handwave. There's as much potential for pollution in space colonies as there is on Earth, and fewer natural mechanisms for detoxifying the pollution without human effort. On Earth you can avoid pollution by building cities in domes and recycling the air and water, except it's too expensive. You have to state why it would be any more feasible in space. (Yes, I know 99% of the people you talk to will believe anything you say without thinking, but is that how you want to get funding? Eventually they'll turn their ears elsewhere, whereas if you had the arguments right from the start the 1% who understand you will also accept your argument and will keep promulgating the dream to the other 99% so they won't turn their ears elsewhere.) D> If these goals became default assumptions about how the future would D> look there could be a REAL space race, since the prize would now be D> colonization of living area far larger than that of the earth, rather D> than just a demonstration of national technical superiority. I think this is where you must start your argument, rather than the means to that end you listed earlier. -- Draw a little circle in the center of a large sheet of paper. Draw a tiny dot a couple inches from it. That tiny dot is the Earth, the inside of the circle is the Sun, the sheet of paper is the inner solar system where we could develop this new frontier using all that energy radiating from the Sun that otherwise would just go out into deep space and be wasted. (Appeal to the ecologists by saying that 99.9999% of the Sun's energy is being wasted now, and we want to stop wasting it and put it to good use instead.) D> I hope the National Commission on Space makes some proposals of this D> kind, although their charter is limited, I believe, to planning for D> fifty years in the future (maybe they'll be less conservative). Stating briefly what we might like to be doing in 200 years and in 1,000,000 years, then carefully planning what we should do during the next 50 years to head in that longterm direction while also providing payback during the first 50 years, would seem to be appropriate for that commission. Attempts to actually design a prototype of a generation ship for colonizing Epsilon Eridani or Tau Ceti would be the sort of things they should NOT attempt due to their 50-year limit. But briefly saying that we want to eventually colonize the regions around nearby stars other than the Sun, and probably the whole Milky Way Galaxy (except for parts if any that are already occupied) and maybe beyond, don't seem out of line. Side idea: Ask somebody on the street or at a party etc. "What do you think we should do about the rest of the Universe besides the Earth?" If they say "leave it along, mind our own business", we say "but what if we're the only life in the whole Universe, and all that big Universe except the Earth is being wasted?" to get discussion started favorably.