[Moonbase-discuss] Re: NASA & privateers

[Randall Clague]

At 09:35 PM 10/01/2001, you wrote:

>However, politics is surely interwoven into the whole process of getting
>into space.  I don't think it can be avoided.

That politics has been unavoidably linked with space access in the past is 
one of the biggest problems we have had, and the dominant reason (IMHO) why 
we're so appallingly behind where everyone thought we should be by 
2001.  Getting into space requires taking risks, and politicians hate 
taking risks.  I gave up on that whole process years ago.  NSS would call 
for a letter campaign to save this program or that project, and Congress 
would cut the damn thing anyway - if not that year, then the next.  We the 
people were supplicants to the elected officials who controlled the purse 
strings, and we were - and still are - such a small minority that we could 
and can be safely ignored.  What I learned from that frustrating time was 
that waiting on Congress and NASA to do something toward getting me into 
space was fruitless, and trying to push them into it was fruitless and 
exhausting.

The biggest obstacle to getting into space is money.  Rockets are 
expensive.  (People are working on that, but rockets will never be as cheap 
as cars.  May never be as cheap as airplanes.)  So you need money.  There 
are three sources of money: government, commercial, and private.

We've had almost 50 years of government access to space, and they've done 
some awesome things.  We sent people to another world.  But were you one of 
them?  I wasn't.  Could you be in the future?  No.  No government has any 
plans to send people to the moon ever again.  NASA said a few years ago 
that to even try would take 15 years.  (An amazing statement from the 
organization that did it before in just over eight years - but those people 
have retired, and it isn't the same organization.)  Government funding will 
not get me into space.

A number of attempts have been made to get into space with commercial 
funding.  Almost all of them have gone broke.  It takes a lot of money, 
it's pretty risky as a commercial operation, and things go 
wrong.  Commercial funding will not get me into space.

What's left?  Private funding.  Hip pocket development.  You need to 
machine an engine?  Buy some steel.  You need some gyroscopes?  Buy some 
from Futaba.  It's slow.  Painfully slow.  It may not work.  But, this 
being a free country, as long as it's your money, no one gets to tell you 
that you can't spend it on getting into space.

>Science and engineering itself
>may be neutral, but ideology provides the fuel and direction.  I think it's
>healthy to be aware -- and make others aware -- of one's politics.

I have no problem discussing ideology, but I don't see the connection here 
between ideology and politics.

>Maybe I've been more sensitive to this issue because I am most comfortable on
>the (traditional) political left.  And maybe those who are on the political
>right are blind to their own biases and think that their politics is
>'transparent' to the main goal of getting into space.  I don't think it's
>that simple.

One of my standard proverbs is, "How can you identify the expert?  He's the 
person complaining, 'You don't understand.  It's not that simple.'"  I find 
that the person who holds that opinion is usually correct.

And yes, righties have a greater tendency to be blind to their own biases 
than lefties.  But I have no biases, you see.  ;-)

Seriously, I try not to hold a bias.  I have objectives, and I have reasons 
for those objectives, and at some point it comes to down to one of two 
things: either, "Because I want to, that's why," or, "Because that's how it 
works."  Or, of course, "Because I'm an idiot.  There's another way?  How 
about that."  :-)

-R

--
Clague's First Law of Troubleshooting:
If you see smoke, it isn't a software problem.
Randall Clague          rclague@rclague.net