joels@tekred.UUCP (Joel Swank) (02/08/86)
Imagine:
Columbus returns from discovering America having lost a third of his
ships and almost half of his crew. Queen Isabella says:
'Sorry Chris, but this is just too dangerous, we'll have to send robots'
The greatest benefits that will be realized from space exploration
are, as yet, undreamed. Many of the great discoverys of mankind have been
made by accident. People were looking for something else and just happened
to find something far greater than what they were looking for. This will
be repeated many times in space. Because space is such a radically
different environment from where we now live, the many uses of this
environment will never be apparent to earth-bound people. Only by people
living and working in space will their minds be spurred to the creative
thinking necessary to take greatest advantage of the environment of
space. Many years of accumulated experience will be necessary
for people to make the intuitive leaps to great new discoverys. If we
never send people into space, we will never make these discoverys.
Failed experiments will provide as much advancement of knowledge
as successful ones, but only if people are there to make the most of
them. Robots working in space with people watching on TV will not do it.
Currently, the Shuttle is the only way to take people into space
and return them to earth on a regular basis. It is the only way anything
can be brought back from space. It is an order of magnitude more advanced
than anything else available. The USSR, Japan, and Europe are all working
on, or considering an imitation. The Shuttle is not the last word in
space technology. Some day it will viewed in the same light as the
Wright brothers flier. But the discoverys leading to the obsolescense
of the Shuttle will be made in space not on earth.
Yes, people will die during the opening of space. The construction
of the space station will probably cost lives, but so has every major
construction project ever undertaken. This has never stopped us before
and should not stop us now.
Joel Swank
Tektronix, Redmond, Oregon