🚀 go-pugleaf

     guess it's time to chuck in my two bits. i've been following this
war for a while now, and am astounded at the floods of thinly veiled
invective that have poured across this issue. now i know why they call
it flaming.
     let me start by saying outright that i am an advocate of manned
spaceflight, and for truly bad reasons. i think it's neat. i want to go.
if i can't go, i want my son to.
     the problem is, of course, that the unmanned advocates have every
statistical reality on their side. jfk in fact did us all a great disservice
by making a man on the moon a national agenda without first providing for a
stable infrastructure for research and exploration. we advocates of manned
travel pay for that through our guts now, because there simply is not all
that great a return on the dollar. arguments about technological return are
just hair-splitting, on *both* sides of the fence. the returns are real,
but it as spurious to overestimate their value as to try to post-predict
when they would have occurred had not manned travel been their source.
more important, the manned advocates are in a bizarre soicial bind in which
what to them are the most profound arguments in their favor are not allowed
in serious public debate. because public money is at stake, they cannot simply
say *because it's there* and be heard. simply put, they have no case.
      on the other hand, the umanned folks lean on rationality as their only
argument. they take refuge in the resolute, logical unassailability of their
position. in other words, they commit the fallacy that c.p. snow was warning
us about in The Two Cultures. their contempt for the irrationality of their
opponents' words ignores the fact that the dynamics of our culture are not the
sole property of scientists any more than of artists. few, if any, great acts
are truly rational. fiscal responsibility has little to do with sheer monkey
curiosity.
     not that i disagree, you understand. money's tight, and education and
housing really are more important.
     but i **reeeallly** would like to go.
     oh, and lastly... there will always be type A personalities willing to
take a risk for the sake of that curiosity. don't confuse rhetoric with
insanity. a little enthusiasm is good for anybody, and should not necessarily
equate one with a coke-head.

           Eric Harnden (Ronin)