On Thu, 30 Jan 2003, Howie Goodell wrote:
> Tim May wrote:
>
> > For example, the space program. The Moon Flag Planting cost about
> > 100,000 slave-lives (about $125 thousand milliion in today's dollars) to
> > finance. It distorted the market for things like single stage to orbit,
> > which might have happened otherwise. And it created a bureaucracy more
> > intent on spreading pork to Huntsville, Houston, Canaveral, and other
> > pork sites. (Surprising that Robert Byrd failed to get WVa picked as the
> > control center. He was too junior then, probably.)
> I read that the otherwise unimpressive International Space Station is
> utter genius in one respect: it has a subcontractor in *every single
> one* of the 435 House member's districts.
Which is a better example than one could hope for the efficiency of a
three party social/economic system. The free market effect at near maximum
efficiency. The folks pushing for more funding should shout this one to
the hills. The ISS touches everywhere. To fail it now is to say we all
failed. And the only -real- meaure of that failure is our will.
The real problem is with the expectations of those who don't understand
the -long term- need for this sort of work. The reality is that if we
don't spend money on space and other cutting-edge tech's the people who
are dying now from starvation and such are dying in vain, and everyone
dies in the geological near term. The Earth can -not- sustain a
technological society. The future of mankind is a space based society that
isn't surface based. That window of opportunity will be about 250 years
and we're about 50 years into it.
To not spend in space is societal suicide.
Ethically the push should be -one way, out-. Personaly, I'd shoot for a
3-way plan; Moon, Mars, Jupiter or Saturn. Involve every country on the
planet that wants to play.
--
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We are all interested in the future for that is where you and I
are going to spend the rest of our lives.
Criswell, "Plan 9 from Outer Space"
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