energetic attempts were made to get the income into the bank as early in the
day as possible. By the time I retired, that was up to about 97% of the
moneys received were deposited before noon of the day they were received. I
don't know the exact amount of income earned each day, but the effort was
worth it.
I've worked in law, and in insurance billing. With law, there's something
called an IOLTA account... client monies, held in trust. Several states
mandate that the micro-interests generated by holding client monies in trust
for a week or two be given over to free lawyer programs. Insurance?
Insurance companies for their part love to delay paying on accounts, even if
they're due, to collect that extra day of interest. Dimes make dollars.
So the ISS spent money. And so it soaked up more than pure efficiency in
design, construction, testing, et al., than it could have if administered
better. Could a private corporation done better?
Now THERE is the big question. I do not believe that government can
efficiently operate in space, unless there is direct competition involved
(ie, a war with another government). Therefore, we're thrown back on the
closest thing we have to a non-shooting war we have, corporate competition.
To get corporations up there, however, they must have dramatic incentives.
Then again, I do not believe that the future of humanity lies in big
government. We went down that road with Naziism and Maoism and Stalinism.
Rather, I think the future lies in a regulated system of micro-governments...
something akin to a weak parent regulatory government overseeing small direct
interest groups (like corporations, religious affiliations, or racial
groups). Put another way, we are now in the era of the deconstruction of
giant governments (when there is simply no economic advantage to being
giant). It is more advantageous to being smaller, and hyper-efficient (or,
more attuned to a special interest). This is the era when a small group can
terrorize whole countries, because bombs and internet scrambling and so forth
are widely available -- power has diffused away from big government
monopolies.
So, it we are at the dawn of an era when a group of like-minds (fanatics, or
stockholders, or what-have-you) can put their true interests into direct
action, by the creation of special interest groups (let's call them
'enterprises') for the realization of those interests. Space is the ultimate
playground for such efforts, because it's a very forgiving place. Basically,
if 'group A' goofs up, the whole world won't be threatened, like they would
be if 'group A' did so on planet Earth.
Ultimately, one path for humanity to take is to simply allow corporations or
special interest groups to strike out for places such as Mars or Europa or
Ceres. The alternative, of course, would be for governments to try to
prevent it... the result of this, I think, would be similar to what has
happened with governments trying to prevent the narcotics trade... a big, fat
failure.
Could a group of "Whiz Kids" like the Robert McNamara bunch at Ford did after
WWII? They got Ford up and running with their bean counting, but the same
thing didn't quite work as well in running the Vietnam adventure. Maybe
there's a big difference between private industry and government after all.
The significant difference? Human lives. You can't count people like you
can count bolts and beans and decimals. Governments have a monopoly on the
spending of lives, simply because they've kept to themselves the exclusive
right to own armies. But, it wasn't always so. For centuries, lords and
corporations maintained private armies. It may happen again.
If we're going to go into space in any significant way, we must be prepared
to spend human capital. Lives will be lost. But, we cannot sacrifice the
aspirations of all humanity for the Christa McAuliffes of 2015.
Well, duh! Satisfying stockholders is one thing--keep the profit up and
they're happy.
Satisfying taxpayers is quite another, partly because there is no agreement
on what "profit" is.T
Simple. Profit is 'gain'. But, gain means different things to different
people, never more so than today, when, for instance, the 'Heaven's Gate'
cult felt that their gain was to attain heaven by suicide. With such a
diversity of opinion, and such power now possible to small groups, I don't
see how the dedicated interest group can be held back from space efforts,
especially once it becomes apparent that it IS possible.
So you see, I don't see the ISS as a big hole in the sky into which money
is poured. I see it as an effort that much be made if we are ever going to
be a spacefaring race. I see it as one of the first faltering, limping,
stumbling, staggering steps we must take on the way "out there."
Queen Isabella did not sell her jewels to provide ships to Colombus so that
ships' carpenters would have jobs. She did it to give a future to Spain.
There's a lesson there.
I believe we will learn from our experience, and it may well be that we will
find other,
better, ways to finance the projects. I believe what we need to do is keep
the political pot burbling away by continuing to let our representatives
know that there are a significant number of voters who want the journey to
continue, and to keep the pressure on NASA to get their house in order and
keep it that way. A new space plane (the X40) is being tested, check out
Space.com for some interesting content on the whole subject.
Expecting NASA to act as efficiently as a corporation is asking the
impossible. As you say, the maintenance of checks and balances necessitates
inefficiencies. But, NASA can be our Isabella.
I
f I have exhausted the patience of the participants in this list, I
apologize, and I hope no one bails out because (a) this doesn't apply
directly to Europa, or (b) it's too long, or (c) both. I think it does
directly affect our willingness and ability to reach and explore Europa,
for we won't even send robots there unless the political side is firmly
addressed.
Watch the skies!
Gail Leatherwood
Speaking of watching the skies, I saw the Northern Lights over Anchorage last
night. Very beautiful, very ethereal...
-- John Harlow Byrne
