The Washington post's front page top head line was on the shuttle report. In the numerous articles there were some poll results. Public opinion seems to be going against NASA. The question is will all funding for space exploration suffer? Some people with a "business is good" idealogical bend will jump on the weakened NASA to prove a social engineering point. Catch phrases like " private enterprise" and "over regulation" will be used to explain why they could do better. Maybe they could or maybe they couldn't do better, but I'm sure all that would change would be the supposed motives for their mistakes in some future report.
How would ERPS behave with a $10,000,000,000 budget? Sure be neat to find out. Could Paypal handle the transaction ;-)
OK let me sum up as the coffee is wearing off. We must be carefully about jumping on the bash NASA bandwagon. It could back fire into a general anti space exploration movement.
Oh yeah I think ERPS is great. Times are tough, hope we can make it through. Space travel has often leaned toward the "guns" part of the "guns or butter" argument. I think ERPS is trying to get to space with the "Butter" part. This is good.
Randall Clague wrote:
On Tue, 26 Aug 2003 23:59:17 -0400, Alex Fraser <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
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.
ERPS exists because a bunch of people in the Bay Area want to go to space, and have concluded that the government is not going to send them - so they have to build the ship themselves. So they are.
The roughly aligned social/political views of ERPS members - and remember, these are the members' views; ERPS has none - stem quite simply from their self-selection into ERPS. Only gritty independent libertarian types will say, "To heck with the gummint, I'll build my own," and actually go do it.
That said, ideology can indeed hinder science, but it can *really* bollix up engineering. Some years ago, ERPS kept itself ideologically pure, at the cost of flight testing. It wasn't fun, and I dare say it's over now.
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.
Any system can succeed for a while if enough good people work hard enough at it. NASA has tens of thousands of dedicated, motivated, talented people working for it. That's how it keeps going. The same is true of what's left of the Soviet space program.
I wonder when (or if) ERPS will blunder into space?
I'm glad I'm not an ERPS executive any more. It means I can say openly that I find that remark offensive. You think it's easy? You try it.
-R
-- Son: Dad, I have a question about women. Suppose I Dagwood: Apologize anyway. Son: Yeah, that's about what I figured Dagwood: It saves time
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