🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <gables.232@umigw.miami.edu> gtww2z9z%gables.span@umigw.miami.edu (Jason Gross) writes:
>Now is our chance to do what should have been done all along: define what
>we want to do in space.  Do we want to go commercial?  Do we want a space
>station?  Do we want more planetary exploration (manned or unmanned)?

The _Ecomomist_ had a very good article about space recently.  They said that
there were really four reasons to go into space: Money, Power, Knowledge, and
Glory.  The suggested each be dealt with as follows:

1) Money.  Commercial exploitation of space should *not* be done by the
government.  The government might subsidize it or patronize it to help get
it started, but every effort should be made to privatize commercical launches
as much as possible.

2) Power.  The military should be free to persue their own objectives in space,
without strings attached to NASA.  This partnership has not served either
side very well.

3) Knowledge.  Universities and other research institutions should be free to
purchase launch capability wherever they wish (consistent with national
security).  Their budgets should simply include some amount for launch costs
for each project.

4) Glory.  Man exploring the universe is not a means to an end; it is an
end in itself, and the public is willing to pay for a certain amount of it.
NASA should pick a goal (Man on Mars, say), and, given a realistic annual
budget for it (what the public is *really* willing to pay for pure exploration)
plan out how to spend it intelligently over the time it will actually take.
If the USA alone won't foot the whole bill, go in together with the same allies
we're working with on the space station.

I think a great deal of NASA's problems come from the fact that it has always
been in business #4, but it has tried to justify things based on the other
three.  NASA's troubles with Congress are not the fault of Congress; they
stem directly from NASA's lies about the economic practicality of the shuttle.

Good steps have been made toward eliminating NASA's non-Glory functions.
This should continue.
-- 
Greg Hullender / 3511 NE 22nd Av./Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33308 / uunet!proxftl!greg

 "People get tired of being trampled on by the iron-shod feet of oppression."
		-- Martin Luther King, Jr.