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.