LIN%MIT-ML@sri-unix.UUCP (01/08/84)
From: Herb Lin <LIN @ MIT-ML>
As I think I pointed out in my last msg to REM, I retract my comment
about interchange, but let me respond to your comments anyway.
From: dietz%usc-cse%USC-ECL at SRI-NIC
I don't understand this objection. What is "interchange", anyway?
Interchange is informational, social or commercial intercourse.
Communication? Trade? And why should wanting to establish this
"interchange" be the only possible reason people could want to
undertake I.S.? It certainly isn't the motivation for the US planetary
exploration program -- curiosity (& pork barrel politics) is.
In the current climate, no one would send a probe without a way of
getting information back from it. The only question is how long it
would take. Can you imagine a current political leader authorizing
a probe that would take a million years to report its findings?
It wasn't the motivation for the Pilgrims to come to America. It
wasn't the motivation for Magellan to circumnavigate the world.
True enough on the Pilgrims. Are you suggesting that space will
become a haven for those that are oppressed and persecuted? Then
you have to find a way of funding the trip, and oppressed and
persecuted people usually have a hard time getting money.
Magellan? Would he have gone if he had essentially no hope of
returning in his lifetime, of his children's lifetime, or his
great-great-great... grandchildren's lifetime? I think not.
The fact that the data from these observations would take years to
reach earth is unimportant, since there's no other easy way to gather
it.
You have a far greater faith in the long-term perspectives of humans
than I do. Given that it is nearly impossible to get Congress to
even consider two year appropriations for ANYTHING, you are talking
about a climate for scientific inquiry that I cannot imagine in my
wildest dreams.
One can easily come up with other motivations. Political or religious
rivalry, for example. Some religious systems today have builtin dogma
that serves to increase the number of members of that religion
(catholicism vs. birth control, for example). A religion that had as
one of its precepts the idea of interstellar colonization would also be
self propagating. Motivation here could be that holders of certain
belief systems desire to have many others agree with them; what better
way to do that than to fill up the galaxy with 10^20 true believers?
Now this is something I had not considered. You're right about this
one. Religious fanatics will do anything.