keithl@vice.UUCP (Keith Lofstrom) (11/09/83)
The September 1983 "Acta Astronautica" (Pergamon Press, Elmsford, NY 10523,
$30/y for AIAA and AAS members) contains an article by Krafft Ehricke
describing the Slide Lander and the Drop Delivery systems for landing vehicles
on the Moon, which I mentioned in a previous article. It also had a quote
useful for amusing (or raising the hackles of) a typical orbital space colony
freak like myself:
"Just as solar energy tunnel vision concluded that the 14-day long
lunar night disqualified the Moon as basis of a comprehensive
extraterrestrial industrial system, dogmatically refusing to
consider the obvious advantages of nuclear power, so does failure
to consider progress beyond LM-type landing and ascent lead to an
appraisal of the future course of lunar activities that envisions
exactly the opposite extreme of the "colony" concept. While the
latter began with large numbers of peoples before considering what
they should do other than exist, the other concept envisions
essentially no people, only robots and self-replicating robots.
More likely, however, future astronautics will neither be an
existentially anemic orbiting Nirvana nor armchair industrialization.
Advancements in cislunar transportation can and will improve lunar
access so that an optimally cost-effective human-cybernetic mix
can be present during the lunar industrial buildup phase; thereafter,
permitting a lunar population to be supported by a strong, viable
industrial infrastructure and a commitment to advancing science and
technology - outgrowth of the potentially noblest dimension of
extraterrestrial advances, the evolution of a polyglobal civilization.
This presumes, of course, that such us still at all within the grasp
of a humanity being visibly alienated from cosmopolitan perspectives
and persistently traumatized into intolerance and hostile retrogressive
parochialism."
-- Krafft Ehricke, Acta Astronautica, Vol. 10 No. 9, page 644.
Well, I thought it was hilarious, but then, I get a giggle from the front
page of the newspaper. It's fun to see stuff like this in the middle of a
technical paper.
From the existentially anemic keyboard of:
--
Keith Lofstrom
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