Original post in this thread, to sum up, was asking folks to support NASA in trying to fly by Pluto. This was to be done by influencing politicians in congress to vote for the projects funding.
There are those that believe that huge government projects are not he way to go. The belief is that small business and competition will spawn innovation and make space travel cheaper and more accessible to a larger portion of people. This adds an interesting element to the ERPS experiment. Is ERPS primarily trying to prove the truth of a social mode of organisation or just trying to get into space. It's one of those means and ends type arguments which puts it in the realm of philosophy. Ideology can hinder science.
Space exploration has not been done before, it is quite recent and totally unique in history. The idea that first comes the calvary and then the settlers looking for a new living might not be the way things come down. We really don't know what will happen in the future. We do know that somehow NASA has been successful in putting a man on the moon. The bloated milk cow of the aero space industry has actually blundered it's way into space. The old Soviet whatever you call it system blundered it's way into space. Inefficiency might be the key element to space travel ;-) I wonder when (or if) ERPS will blunder into space?
David Masten wrote:
On Tue, 2003-08-26 at 06:38, Alex Fraser wrote:
OT is good till the sparger works ;-)<snip>
There is no magic about the "market". The market causes
Who said anything about the "market"? I stated a moral principle, nothing more.
Dave
Sean R. Lynch wrote:
On Mon, 2003-08-25 at 20:55, David Masten wrote:
Before I continue on my comments, I wish to stress that ERPS has no
official position on NASA, Congress, or anything else resembling
politics. All of my comments below are my personal opinion.
ERPS is devoted to *private* exploration of space. Personally, I would like to see *any* of NASA's missions done instead as private ventures. Also, I'm really not that interested in Pluto. I'm far more interested in the moon, Mars, and Europa; the first two for colonization purposes, and Europa because of the possibility of life there.
I agree with Dave that attempting to force your neighbors to pay for
something you like is bad.
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