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The issue is not whether the ISS is an invaluable tool in the future of
humanity, it is. But how do we convince the holders of the budgetary purse
strings that it is? The issue is not about the practicality of manned
(personned?) vs. un- space flight, but convincing the voters who elect and
re-elect those holders that they will personally benefit from it. The issue is
not about dangers of radiation and how to protect astronauts, but the danger of
losing the perquisites of power.
We have, in this discussion group, some of the finest minds extant on this
planet. I am truly honored by Hibai Unzueta to be linked with Bruce Moomaw (with
whom I may have engaged swords with as a writer of "Letters to the Editor" in
the Placerville Mountain Democrat when I lived in Pollock Pines, CA), whose
grasp of the science of space exploration is far beyond me. But I fear we are
simply "preaching to the choir" when we discuss the science. Yes! We all believe
we must go "OUT THERE!" James T. Kirk is alive and well in all of us! I
graduated from the University of Kansas, whose motto is "Ad Astra per Aspera,"
or "To the stars through adversity!" Our heroes, the ones we look to for
inspiration, are Heinlein, Asimov, Anderson, LeGuin, Clarke, Verne, et al.; I
can't even name them all. Perhaps it is we who have inherited the mantle of the
visionaries we revere. Moomaw said something to the effect that "...whatever we
can write about, Poul Anderson probably said it first..." Or Asimov, or
Heinlein, or Frank Herbert, or, or, or, and he's right.
The question is "How do we pool our collective genius and get it out to Joe
Lunchbucket?"
For years I have had the notion that if I really wanted to touch the pulse
of America, I would find a way to communicate with the guys (yes, still mostly
males) who push the garment racks down the streets of the garment district of
Manhattan from one dress manufacturer to another. The folks who make buttons,
and zippers, and lace trimmings. Who go home to a walkup flat in Brooklyn, have
a beer, and for kicks go to a baseball game on Saturday. Who ride the subway
hoping they won't get mugged on the way home. Or the farmer whose only crop of
the year just got wiped out by a freak hail storm. (It happened to the fruit
growers in the Sierra Nevada foothills just a couple years ago--Bruce, you'll
remember this.) How do we high & mighty scientific types reach them so they
will tell their elected representatives "We want the ISS continued, and we want
a new shuttle designed, and we want to send people to Mars and beyond!"? How do
we answer the inevitable question "What's in it for me?"
Help me out here. I understand that Jayme Laschke is a writer, and Moomaw
seems to have the ear of at least some of the influential in the
scientific/political community. Others have their own specialties which are
formidable in their own rights. I believe the scientific, cultural, social, and
economic considerations are, as the saying goes, "inextricably entwined."
Budgeting is the allocation of scarce human, material, and fiscal resources.
There is never enough of any of them to meet all the needs. Peter Drucker
observed that needs will absorb all of the resources no matter how vast they
are. Therefore, decisions must be made: "Shall we fund Project A or Project B?
How about part of A, part of B, with a little left over for C? Let's scrap A
(the renewal vehicle for the shuttle) and put the money into tax refunds? Joe
Lunchbucket would rather pay less income tax, which would make us look like
heroes and get his vote for reelection, so let's go that way. Oh, and if you
vote with me on this one, I'll vote for your subsidy of beer barley growers in
your district!" No, dammit, this is not fiction, this is reality.
I beg of you: If we want the exploration of space to continue,
if we want to see colonization of anywhere other than here, help address
the issues I have touched on here. Let's bring this group of fine minds to a
focus. Let's talk of tactics and strategy, and how we reach the decision makers.
How can we amass the political power necessary to revive the enthusiasm which
put humans on the moon? OK, Bruce, so the ISS is a multibillion dollar
boondoggle. Where do we go from here? I'm afraid if we just keep talking about
the sulfur content on Europa we'll never get there to find out. I'm afraid that
if we only debate among ourselves the risks of contaminating possible molecular
life forms on Mars, we might as well just recite "Om Mane Padme Hum" and wait
for enlightenment.
Got any ideas?
Watch the skies!
G. B. Leatherwood
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