🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <JMC.92Jul25123947@SAIL.Stanford.EDU> jmc@cs.Stanford.EDU writes:

>The reason for the space station is only marginally science and
>even more marginally prestige.  The space station is a start on
>human expansion into the solar system.  That is what generates
>the public support for it.  It may not be the best design, but
>it's the only design we have

But it's not the only design we have!  We still have all the designs
for space exploration and colonisation the VfR produced in the 1930s.
We have the von Braun satellite designs.  We have the 1956 designs
for the manned mission to Mars proposed for the 1971 opposition.
More recently, there is the 'Mars Direct' proposal in Analog that
would keep a permanent human colony on the Red Planet for (hold on
to your slide rules) less than the annual cost of Fred.  All of
which designs are, in my opinion, better than the one you are
supporting.

But we have something far more significant than any design.  We
have a real, live, working space station in Earth orbit right now.
It's called Mir.  And for about 5% of the cost of Fred, the Russians
would put up another one for us, next week (well, maybe next year).

So, why is the US spending billions to do expensively, badly and
very late, what has already been done cheaply, well, and on time?
Not for science, and not for the human colonisation of space.  Not
even for prestige.  For one reason only: inertia - the mindless
inertia of all large bureacracies that have forgotten their purpose.