Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!AUVM.BITNET!EHARNDEN From: EHARNDEN@AUVM.BITNET (Eric Harnden) Newsgroups: sci.space Subject: the un/manned debate Message-ID: Date: 10 Feb 89 21:18:13 GMT Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Organization: The Internet Lines: 38 guess it's time to chuck in my two bits. i've been following this war for a while now, and am astounded at the floods of thinly veiled invective that have poured across this issue. now i know why they call it flaming. let me start by saying outright that i am an advocate of manned spaceflight, and for truly bad reasons. i think it's neat. i want to go. if i can't go, i want my son to. the problem is, of course, that the unmanned advocates have every statistical reality on their side. jfk in fact did us all a great disservice by making a man on the moon a national agenda without first providing for a stable infrastructure for research and exploration. we advocates of manned travel pay for that through our guts now, because there simply is not all that great a return on the dollar. arguments about technological return are just hair-splitting, on *both* sides of the fence. the returns are real, but it as spurious to overestimate their value as to try to post-predict when they would have occurred had not manned travel been their source. more important, the manned advocates are in a bizarre soicial bind in which what to them are the most profound arguments in their favor are not allowed in serious public debate. because public money is at stake, they cannot simply say *because it's there* and be heard. simply put, they have no case. on the other hand, the umanned folks lean on rationality as their only argument. they take refuge in the resolute, logical unassailability of their position. in other words, they commit the fallacy that c.p. snow was warning us about in The Two Cultures. their contempt for the irrationality of their opponents' words ignores the fact that the dynamics of our culture are not the sole property of scientists any more than of artists. few, if any, great acts are truly rational. fiscal responsibility has little to do with sheer monkey curiosity. not that i disagree, you understand. money's tight, and education and housing really are more important. but i **reeeallly** would like to go. oh, and lastly... there will always be type A personalities willing to take a risk for the sake of that curiosity. don't confuse rhetoric with insanity. a little enthusiasm is good for anybody, and should not necessarily equate one with a coke-head. Eric Harnden (Ronin)