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From: jwm@stda.jhuapl.edu (Jim Meritt)
Newsgroups: sci.space
Subject: Re: Spinoffs
Message-ID: <2176@aplcen.apl.jhu.edu>
Date: 20 Jul 89 20:05:15 GMT
References: <2151@aplcen.apl.jhu.edu> <1501@ns.network.com>
Sender: news@aplcen.apl.jhu.edu
Reply-To: jwm@aplvax.UUCP (Jim Meritt)
Organization: JHU-Applied Physics Laboratory
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In article <1501@ns.network.com> logajan@ns.network.com (John Logajan) writes:
}jwm@aplvax.jhuapl.edu (Jim Meritt) writes:
}> Thousands, perhaps millions, of people owe their lives to something that
}> you can only do with a space program.
}
}Pardon my late entry into the spinoff debate -- but one must always remember
}that resources that went to the space program were therefore not available
}to go toward other uses.  We cannot know what advances would have resulted
}if those resources were not in fact diverted toward space.  A good guess would
}be that the advances would have been different -- but not necessarily less
}important.  The possibility always exists that in diverting resources toward
}space, we have actually harvested less important spinoffs than we might
}otherwise have gotten.
}
}Since this we obviously cannot predict such matters, the spinoff argument
}becomes pointless.  The best we can do is leave such matters up to the choice
}of individuals in the form of the free-market.

Since what I am thinking of can ONLY come from a space program, and NO 
other method could handle it, your opposition is unfounded.

Besides - the free-market DOES want a space program.


"In these matters the only certainty is that nothing is certain"
					- Pliny the Elder
These were the opinions of :
jwm@aplvax.jhuapl.edu  - or - jwm@aplvax.uucp  - or - meritt%aplvm.BITNET