🚀 go-pugleaf

nrh> Date: 6 Oct 86 05:06:00 GMT
nrh> From: pyrnj!mirror!gabriel!inmet!nrh@caip.rutgers.edu

nrh> ... What is important is that each shuttle flight
nrh> represents a loss to the taxpayers of something like $100
nrh> million. 

I have two rebuttals, one already stated by somebody else and one new:

(1) Most of the money goes to employees within our own nation,
recirculating into the tax base, only a small part for exotic
materials or foreign employees leaves our economy. -- What really
happens is that money is diverted from other employees to these
aerospace employees. If these aerospace employees would otherwise be
wasting their college education and years of expertise working at a
hamburger stand, hiring them to run the shuttle would be beneficial
even if the shuttle were virtually worthless, which it isn't. If these
aerospace employees would otherwise be building a private launch
facility, then we have a major decision to resolve, is the diversion
worth it??

(2) We aren't throwing the money away into a business that is failing.
We are conducting basic research in operations in space. We are
investing in the future, not blowing it on a poor choice of the
present. Every company must invest in unproven methods in order to
have something new, better then the competitors, in the future to turn
into a profit-making activity. The question is what fraction of profit
to pay to stockholders and what fraction to invest in the future of
the company. Our nation must do the same, and in addition being a
major nation in the world must consider investments which help the
human race at large rather than the United States alone.