Re: starship-design: Grumpy Old Men: The Future Ain't What It Used To Be (Sequel to come)

[Zenon Kulpa <zkulpa@ippt.gov.pl>]

> From owner-starship-design@lists.uoregon.edu Fri Sep 19 01:29:17 2003
> From: KellySt@aol.com
> 
> I'ld disagree with much of this.  It really is NASA folks hiding cheap safe 
> access to space, and many current issues are related to science and tech 
> (polution, resources, wealth for all, etc); but those don't seem to intrest as 
> much as social issues - or rather that as a society no one feels they belong here.
> Not just persecuted minorities, everyone.  Its a era where folks are not only 
> not taugh about how science can solve tech problems.  They are assured hoping 
> for solutions means you a bad person and should acept your limits.  Where 
> kids are tauight our culture is bad to evil, and destroying the world.  
> Where the rules are so focused on accepting even the most extreamly "alternative" 
> lifestyles and values; that folks that want to hook up, have kids, build 
> something, fel right and wrong arn't just maters of oppinion, 
> feel alienated/persecuted.
> 
Can't be more in agreement. Add also the way of thinking/acting I call
the "Black single mothers" syndrome. Space (science, whatever) is an
extravagance, they say, first we must take care for the poor Black single mothers 
(or unemployed coal miners, poor drug addicts, whatever).
So they cajole or force taxpayers to fund a giant care system for them. 
And they succeed spectacularly - the number of Black single mothers 
is dynamically and steadily growing. And so is, of course, the number
(and pay) of bureaucrats managing the system...

> These arn't issues that space will solve, and NASA has done its best to prove 
> space is impossibly inacccessable for any use.  Private groups proving the 
> later is wrong might surprize folks enough to rethink their fatalism -- but its 
> not real likely.
> 
But what other hope remains?

-- Zenon Kulpa