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From: jsq@ut-sally.UUCP (John Quarterman)
Newsgroups: net.space,net.taxes
Subject: Re: SPACE STATION ALERT
Message-ID: <1480@ut-sally.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 17-Mar-84 19:24:01 EST
Article-I.D.: ut-sally.1480
Posted: Sat Mar 17 19:24:01 1984
Date-Received: Sun, 18-Mar-84 08:31:54 EST
References: <2570@rabbit.UUCP>, <361@ut-ngp.UUCP> <214@qtlon.UUCP>
Organization: U. Texas CS Dept., Austin, Texas
Lines: 71

This is unfortunate enough to deserve yet another response:

	From: dave@qtlon.UUCP (Dave Lukes)
	Suggested alternatives to wasting money on a space station:
	
	1)	feed a few of the starving people in the world

The money would not go to feed starving people, it would go for arms.
Even if it would go to feeding people, remember that NASA's budget
has never amounted to a sizeable fraction of the existing social programs.
You don't eat your seed corn, not if you want there to be food later.

The space station is a large step towards the eventual industrialization
and settlement of space, possibly involving the use of solar power satellites
to supplant terrestial sources of power such as fossil fuels, the moving
of much ground-based and polluting industry into space, and access to
very large amounts of resources that are in short supply down here.
Not to mention the immediate development of production of pharmaceuticals
and other products that cannot be produced in quantity (or at all) here.

Any of these things will benefit the starving people of the world.
	
	2)	Give all politicians a lobotomy (semi :-))

The main reason Margaret Mead, for instance, was interested in the
settlement of space is that it would give a real chance for the study
of many medium to large scale societies in various stages of isolation
from each other:  something no longer possible on this planet.
This would, one would think, have a beneficial effect on the various
social sciences, and might perhaps lead to better political systems.

Considering the way politicians are leading us, societies off this
planet may well be the only ones to survive.
	
	3)	Build a mock up space station (did you see the movie
	Capricorn One?) since no-one will be able to tell the difference.

As Hans.Moravec%cmu-ri-rover@sri-unix.UUCP pointed out:

	    One of the most potentially lucrative markets in space is the
	manufacture of drugs that are expensive to make on Earth, but easy and
	cheap to manufacture in zero gravity. Industry projections show that
	space-made pharmaceutical products could generate annual sales of $20
	billion by the 1990s.
	    Two of the first drugs that will be produced in zero gravity in mass
	quantities are beta cells, expected to be a single-injection cure for
	diabetes; and interferon, used for treating viral infections, cancer
	and sexually transmitted Type II herpes.

While he was referring to private space vehicles, the space station would
be an excellent platform for developing just such pharmeceuticals.  One
would think a number of diabetics and cancer and herpes victims would
notice the difference.

again	From: dave@qtlon.UUCP (Dave Lukes)
	But seriously, folks, there ARE a lot more useful ways of spending
	that much money.
	Earth has enough problems: why not solve them before making new ones
	in space?

How about finding about what the space station is for before claiming it
will cause more problems than it will help solve?  You give no real arguments
against a space station; you just assert it's bad.  Why?

				Yours sadly,
					Dave Lukes (<U.K.>!ukc!qtlon!dave)

It's somewhat droll that, being in the U.K., you don't even have to pay for it.
-- 
John Quarterman, CS Dept., University of Texas, Austin, Texas
jsq@ut-sally.ARPA, jsq@ut-sally.UUCP, {ihnp4,seismo,ctvax}!ut-sally!jsq