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From: ethan@utastro.UUCP (Ethan Vishniac)
Newsgroups: net.flame
Subject: Re: Reagan's Giant Tennis Racket in the sky . . .
Message-ID: <413@utastro.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 24-Jul-85 15:43:23 EDT
Article-I.D.: utastro.413
Posted: Wed Jul 24 15:43:23 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 26-Jul-85 03:16:04 EDT
References: <3230@decwrl.UUCP> <231@SCIRTP.UUCP>
Organization: U. Texas, Astronomy, Austin, TX
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> >                                                 the growing consensus is that
> > it CAN be built and WILL be effective ( that it, or anything, will not be
> > 100% effective is a red herring)
> 
> Growing consensus??  Substantiation, please.
> 
There may be a growing consensus among Young Republicans that the thing will
work.  There is not one among working physicists.  I don't know enough people
at the government labs to get a reading on the trends of opinion there.
My impression is that the people who think it will work are the people who
thought it would work at the beginning.  None of the reasons they have
mentioned in public sound even faintly plausible to me.  There are a lot
of people who want to use the money to do things they would like to do
regardless.  Very few of them actually think the thing will work.
-- 

"Don't argue with a fool.      Ethan Vishniac
 Borrow his money."            {charm,ut-sally,ut-ngp,noao}!utastro!ethan
                               Department of Astronomy
                               University of Texas