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

[KellySt@aol.com]

In a message dated 9/19/03 5:53:01 AM, zkulpa@ippt.gov.pl writes:

>> 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...

An economist would say that was obvious.  Pay money for something and you get 
more of it.  If unwed motherhood becomes a automtic qualkification to get a 
long term welfare support -- you get more girls deciding to go that route.

And yes I find folks livid over wasting a couple billion a year on some space 
tech research program, saying it should be added into the hundreds of billion 
s a year spent on their pet welfare group.



>
>> 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?

Comercial of some scale is the only possible hope.  no gov program will ever 
help.  Thats not what govs do.


>
>-- Zenon Kulpa