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From: elt@astrovax.UUCP (Ed Turner)
Newsgroups: net.space
Subject: Re: Scuttle the Space Program?
Message-ID: <741@astrovax.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 24-Feb-86 17:21:15 EST
Article-I.D.: astrovax.741
Posted: Mon Feb 24 17:21:15 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 26-Feb-86 20:33:05 EST
Distribution: net
Organization: Princeton Univ. Astrophysics
Lines: 53

Andrew J. Fine writes

>Does humanity (men and women) really *need* to populate space?  Do we really
>need to explore, in person or otherwise, other planets?  Historically, 
...
>The main problem with all of us is we are still essentially barbarians at
>heart.  The Viking who was the explorer was also the Viking that also raped


From net.poems

>FIRST STEPS
> 
>On the cool September morning
>after rain
>in an old house
>shuttered against the unexpected weather
>the baby stands over and again
>and walks and falls.
>Though it is much easier to crawl
>from one point to another, more efficient, safer
>the baby stands over and again
>and walks and falls.
>I see in her how many millions?
>Man must walk, man must raise
>the aristocracy of his hands
>reachers for far, high things,
>man must sieze his Adam.
>On the cool September morning
>with this one gesture the jungle is put by,
>the ritual of our deepest instinct
>repeats itself: the race rises from its knees
>to claim dominion: the baby walks.

I think that this poem both answers Fine's question as stated in the first
excerpt and agrees (in its last line) with his evaluation of our motives
stated in the second excerpt.  It rings true to me.  To make the same point
in prose: Whether we deserve to or not and whether it is a "good thing" or
not, we will surely try to populate space.  Some think that our success is
inevitable, but this is merely hubris in my opinion.

Ed Turner
astrovax!elt

PS - On a side issue, several people have offered the opinion that dispersal
of people throughout the Solar System and/or to the stars would offer us
protection from self-destruction.  Surely this is a failure of imagination;
it seems inevitable to me that our capability for destruction will grow as
fast (faster if history is a guide) as our other capabilities.  Of course,
the time scales may change but that is a different issue.  I imagine the
various historical colonizers of remote regions of the Earth must have felt
that putting "eggs in a different basket" would guarantee the safety of
their societies in a similar way.