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From: notes@ucbcad.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Uses of Space - (nf)
Message-ID: <977@ucbcad.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 4-Dec-83 13:59:08 EST
Article-I.D.: ucbcad.977
Posted: Sun Dec  4 13:59:08 1983
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#R:dciem:-52800:ucbesvax:7500060:000:1299
ucbesvax!turner    Dec  4 05:51:00 1983

Re: Martin Taylor's "Uses of Space"

I agree with your basic statement.  But your basic statement is implicative.
It is "If <nuclear weapons are kept out of space> then <wealth will flow, peace and happiness will reign>".  In fact, wealth might flow (albeit in limited
directions) in any case.  But that's not my point.  I want to know just how
you plan to avoid the militarization of space, given that the superpowers
are entering into a screaming race upward in nuclear armaments.  There is
already a large enough contingent pushing the idea of "space, at any cost."
That cost is proving to be militarization.  For some, this is a necessary--
even an ideal--concomitant.  For me, it's the penultimate stage of a ghastly
drama--the winner of a war in space will then control the planet.  The losers
are locked on the surface.  Strategists and ideologues on both sides say,
"Better us than them."  Better *neither*, say I.

I'd be glad to die in (even, *for*) a world that put off cavorting in the
great playground in the sky to instead work out a peaceful settlement of
accounts at the bottom of the gravity well--BEFORE playing the game of
first-one-over-the-top.

There's escape, and then there's escapism.  Pournelle I consign to the
latter category.
---
Michael Turner (ucbvax!ucbesvax.turner)