On Tue, 4 Feb 2003 10:55:44 -0600, Brooks R. Robinson wrote: > > | How the US can justify spending so much money on Space while > | 33 million US citizens live below the poverty line amazes me. > > The ideology of capitalism puts people with money into power. > Benevolent as the may want to be, power corrupts, and they are > corrupted by power. From this point of view, the impoverished > only have themselves to blame. The impoverished should go get > jobs or an education, then jobs. It does not occur to those in > power to aid in education, but to cut it. Those in power are, > to a certain extent, educated and no longer require education. > It's their money and they can spend it how they choose (after > all it is capitalism). There are potential economies of scale > and new opportunities to make money to be had from space. What > better way than to get to those potentials than by getting your > government (which you control) to pay you to get to do it! > Space shuttles are expensive and you can share the burden with > your fellow man. I can suck those tax dollars into my own > coffers and still get the space research I desire. It's a win > win situation. > > As hard as they try, putting a socialist blanket over > capitalism will never work. There will be class warfare sooner > or later, the question is when. The only thing those of us > stuck somewhere in the middle can hope for, is that the > research paid for by our government accidentally stumbles upon > that magic energy formula, bringing us into the Stak Trek > economy.
Really, I always thought it was the communists that ushered us into the Space Age ;-). The US space program was an attempt to blunt the impact of Sputnik. With the Soviets out of the picture, I believe the fastest way to get bipartisan support for a manned mission to Mars is to convince the politicians that the mainland Chinese are going to get there first. [1]http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/china_manned_030102.html -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]