Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!purdue!haven!cvl!eneevax!kerog
From: kerog@eneevax.UUCP (Keith Rogers)
Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle
Subject: Re: Letter to Congress, et. al.
Message-ID: <1765@eneevax.UUCP>
Date: 29 Aug 88 14:41:17 GMT
References: <1365@eos.UUCP> <13294@jumbo.dec.com>
Reply-To: kerog@eneevax.umd.edu.UUCP (Keith Rogers)
Organization: Elec. Eng. Dept., U of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742
Lines: 44

In article <13294@jumbo.dec.com> stolfi@src.dec.com (Jorge Stolfi) writes:
>
>I would rather see a better justification for the manned space program
>than "The Russians are doing it". 

	I don't know, it worked last time, so why not this time?  I, for
one, would not be inclined to be picky about why Congress might decide to give
NASA some decent funding.

>I note that you carefully avoid mentioning how much each country
>*spent* last year on their space programs, and how they divided the
>money between manned and unmanned missions.  

	I note that you, also, avoided mentioning these things.  What *are*
the real numbers?

>In other words, we must waste billions in pointless manned missions
>today, to develop the technology needed to waste MORE billions in MORE
>pointless manned missions tomorrow.  

 POINTLESS MISSIONS?!!!  How can you say that!  You know as well as the
rest of us that the space station could serve as a platform for establishing
a permanent manned lunar base, and that with a lunar base we could ship into
earth orbit almost all the materials necessary to build solar power satellites,
which are  far from useless.  It could also serve as a base for and help 
develop technologies for missions to go get high metal-content asteroids from
the belt to assuage future materials shortages.  The other *points* to 
establishing a permanent manned presence in space are far too numerous to go
through here.  Suffice it to say that you are full of shit.

>BUNK!!!! (in response to further comments about the usefulness of space)

Hey, nice logic there.  Bunk is such a lovely word, especially when it stands
alone without a word of support. 
>
>>   NASA's FY89 budget request of $11.488 billion seems very small
>>   when compared to [$300 billion for DoD, $50 billion for Texas
>>   bank bailout,] and other expenditures.  
>
>Now compare it to, say, the NSF budget... 

Now compare it to, say, NASA's budget in the 60's ...

Keith Rogers