Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!ames!xanth!ukma!mailrus!cornell!rochester!dietz
From: dietz@cs.rochester.edu (Paul Dietz)
Newsgroups: sci.space
Subject: Re: NSS and space settlement
Message-ID: <1989Jan27.075350.2215@cs.rochester.edu>
Date: 27 Jan 89 12:53:50 GMT
References: <3225@vice.ICO.TEK.COM> <258@corpane.UUCP>
Reply-To: dietz@cs.rochester.edu (Paul Dietz)
Organization: U of Rochester, CS Dept, Rochester, NY
Lines: 30

In article <258@corpane.UUCP> sparks@corpane.UUCP (John Sparks) writes:

>AMEN! I say let's just go! Dammit! To hell with all the practical 
>'reasons' for going to the asteroids or whatnot.

Never mind rational thought!  Let's just stampede!

>Or if you need a pratical reason ... how about the old:
>I would rather be in a (self sufficeint) Mars colony when Earth 
>decided to blow itself up with the big bomb.

This is not inconsistent with a program that would currently emphasize
unmanned exploration.  We are very far away from being able to set up
self sufficient ET colonies.  A desire to have people in space at some
point in the future does not necessarily justify manned spaceflight in
the present.

>besides, arguing about what will we get out of space travel is fruitless.
>before we went to the moon, did we know that the space program would
>bring us microwave ovens, computer chips, vcr's and let's not forget
>Space Food Sticks???

This spinoff argument is bogus.  We'd have had all of these anyway
(expect perhaps Space Food Sticks; small loss).  I believe studies have
failed to show any widespread technological impetus directly attributable
to the space program.  That does not prevent the argument from being
repeated by PR hacks and the credulous.

	Paul F. Dietz
	dietz@cs.rochester.edu