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From: mmt@dciem.UUCP (Martin Taylor)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Uses of Space
Message-ID: <528@dciem.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 1-Dec-83 18:24:39 EST
Article-I.D.: dciem.528
Posted: Thu Dec  1 18:24:39 1983
Date-Received: Thu, 1-Dec-83 19:31:09 EST
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Organization: D.C.I.E.M., Toronto, Canada
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Usually I agree with Michael Turner, but on the use of Space, I don't.
Space is both a psychological and a real opportunity to relieve the
tensions that plague the world, much as the North American West was
a century ago for European Americans. Not many people would go there,
but the IDEA opened their minds. There WAS an escape. The symbolism
of space, Moon landings and so forth, made us (not just USAmericans)
proud in the 60s, and the flybys of the Gas Giants have excited us
in the 70's and so far in the 80s. (Uranus still to come). Politics
is largely symbology, as any good politician knows. Space is good
symbology.

In the real sense, Space is a good investment, provided we keep
weapons out of it. Space stations would be very vulnerable, and
probably not worth building if there was a good chance they would
be destroyed quickly in a war. But if we could continue the existing
prohibitions against space weapons, the colonization of space makes
good economic sense NOW. It probably won't be possible 50 years from
now. One permanent space station doesn't mean much, but once there
is one, and a reasonable transport infrastructure (shuttle-like
things that never need to return to Earth), it is energetically
cheaper to get materials from the Moon than from Earth. Space
agriculture is feasible in principle, and if the stations and soil
could be built from Lunar materials, only the seeds and need be
brought from Earth (I seem to remember reading that Lunar soil
was incredibly fertile when tested in Earth atmosphere).

For more on these matters, read the two volumes of "The Endless
Frontier" edited by Jerry Pournelle (Pourne @ MIT).
-- 

Martin Taylor
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