I am going to re-register Monday, and Edwards may just get my vote after all. Space is a BIG issue with me...
I just watched a NOVA on the history of dirigibles. Much like the Wright Brothers here, flight was developed by dreamers in workshops. I didn't see one government oversight and funding.
If the government, especially the federal government, is going to steal my money to do something, I want it to do it well. I'd rather see NASA disbanded than operating, but if it is operating, I want it operating well than as a crippled money sink. And I sure as hell want the federal government out of education.
They aren't incapable, but they are unwilling to sink the billions of dollars it would take for R&D and getting the infrastructure up and running for no immediate return on their investment. Realistically, if Microsoft or Wal-Mart wanted to set up a space division and send us to the moon, they could because they certainly have the cash on hand, but why would they want to spend the money for some nebulous gains?
*shudders. And to think I actually considered for 0.68 seconds that I would vote for him in the presidential election after Huckabee won Iowa.
I've worked with some NASA projects. Some of them have so much money, they don't know what to do with it. Each also lives in fear of not spending its entire annual budget, on the basis that it'd have a budget cut and might not have enough cash the next year. NASA could do with a little more fiscal responsibility, IMHO.
I don't see how private businesses could find any profit in space exploration at this time. Maybe someday, but where is their motivation to do this now? As far as cutting back the space program . . . I say that's damn near criminal. It's bad enough we let our ambitions slip as far as they have. Remember when kids dreamed of being astronauts? Humans are hard wired to view the unknown with a certain sense of wonder. We need a dream to aspire to. A vision to guide us. How else could a cheesy, low budget show like Star Trek ascend to such incredible heights of popularity? We NEED space, now more than ever. To abandon that is one more step to stagnation and slow decay.
Here's why I don't want private businesses taking over space exploration: We conduct expensive scientific experiments in space. Companies will not be interested in research - they will want big bucks and tourism! What scientist is gonna pay a corporation to support all his experiments for months on end? What's that gonna cost the research teams? Someone correct me on this matter, but it looks as though the most important part of space exploration, RESEARCH, would be thrown out the window.
Name of trade, but then they thought they knew all the science, having gotten it from a certain book...
They did it in the name of power. Power comes in many forms and through many vectors. Science is the pursuit of knowledge and knowledge is (and was) power.
They fucked up every country they visited, killed the natives, and took the gold. No important scientific discoveries came from the "Conquistadors." Your point?
Maybe nothing that seems important now, but at the time everything they documented was important. I'm still fascinated by some of the descriptions the Spanish gave of the peoples they encountered in East Texas. Of course, those peoples were wiped out by disease within a generation, but it's interesting anyway.
The first idiot to say we shouldn't commercially exploit space because it damages the environment or whatever inane reason they can come up with gets to die painfully and slowly.
Yep, on a government sponsored trip no less. But did Columbus sell the Spanish Queen on a wealth of knowledge, or a wealth of gold? You claim that private exploration of space would not include research and science, yet there is little historical backing that the motivation for state funded exploration would be any different. You chastise "big bucks and tourism" yet it was the quest for those big bucks, by European powers, that ironically led to untold scientific discoveries. Do not so readily dismiss the quest for wealth, we owe much of our modern world to it.
I thought Packard said that Europeans didn't haul much of anything back to the continent? :flow2: I'm told that when they needed to season their bland food, they actually grabbed their dinner plate and sailed all the way to Batavia
Like it or not, the ultimate result of our exploration of the solar system is going to be real estate development.
But space is mostly . . . space. Who is going to sell corporations on the idea that there is any wealth to be had out there? I mean, I'm sure there is, but nothing we could really point to right now and say "There's where the profit is".
