woody@eos.UUCP (Wayne Wood) (07/12/90)
first off, i'd like to apologize for continuing an email discussion in this forum, but my mail server puked on the address and i'd like to continue with the individual in question. hit 'n' now if you don't want to waste your time. If you believe that you can ship off substantial fractions of the world population to other planets, think again. Birth control is a much more effective and cheaper alternative. We will have to make do with our planet for a long time, if not for eternity. give me a break... we don't currently have the technology nor the need to "ship off" any portion of the earth's population. But this is not a situation we will be able to count on forever. Birth control is cheaper, and currently it is more effective, but only because more people use birth control than space flight. How effective is birth control in the third world? those people look on their children as an investment on the future, they don't have social security or old age pensions. until such time as they do, they will continue to breed excessively in the hopes that a single child may be "successful" enough to care for them when they can no longer care for themselves. i agree, we will have to make do with our planet for a long time, but nothing lasts forever. would you prefer to condemn your descendants to death on a polluted world? ever heard of the Malthusian solution? you cannot count on zero population growth, and induction only works in mathematics. things will not continue as they have merely because cowards wish them to. And? What's the purpose of colonization? life. |>One might well have asked if the was a need for a permanent human presence on |>the high seas in the 15th century (and earlier). That frontier was every |>bit as alien and hostile as the one we currently are exploring. The scale is entirely different. It is also not clear that "presence on the high seas" was a good or necessary thing. So what if we hadn't colonized America? not at the time... it takes less time for us to go to the moon than it took the early explorers to get to the new world... therefore, the moon is actually "closer". if we had not colonized the new world, the old world would have been in economic and political collapse. i guess it's true, those who don't remember their history *are* doomed to repeat it. |>You say there may someday be a need for a manned presence in space, but not |>now. I say, if not now, when? Never. you sir, are a fool.... /*** woody **************************************************************** *** ...tongue tied and twisted, just an earth bound misfit, I... *** *** -- David Gilmour, Pink Floyd *** ****** woody@eos.arc.nasa.gov *** my opinions, like my mind, are my own ******/