Stephen A. Lawrence wrote:
. . . I find [Park's] little newsletter to be frequently entertaining and/or informative.
Me too. I enjoy the Scientific American too, despite their harsh attitude toward cold fusion and the fact that there editor is a fool. (See http://lenr-canr.org/AppealandSciAm.pdf)
_Most_ things he's skeptical about appear to deserve it (again, much like Randi).
Yup. But that is because he picks easy targets, and even when he does he often makes dumb mistakes because he is lazy, and does not do his homework. For example, he opposes the Space Shuttle. Many scientists agree. Richard Feynman wrote about his role in the investigation of Challenger explosion: "In the newspapers I used to read about shuttles going up and down all the time, but it bothered me a little bit that I never saw in any scientific journal any results of anything that had ever come out of the experiments on the shuttle that were supposed to be so important. So I wasn't paying much attention to it." Park is safe attacking the shuttle. He may not be in the majority, but he knows that many powerful decision-makers are with him. I do not think he has ever attacked a stupid idea that has universal support, such as ethanol fuel from corn. He is full of false bravado, thinking himself a daring iconoclast when he is only parroting the views of powerful people.
Park has only surface knowledge of the shuttle; he does not even realize how bad it is. He recently endorsed the idea of flying one more mission to repair the Hubble space telescope. Apparently he does not realize that one shuttle mission costs far more than it would cost to fabricate and launch a brand-new Hubble. (See "The Hubble Wars.") The so-called rescue mission that was performed previously was nothing more than a dangerous publicity stunt. Its purpose was to rescue the shuttle, not the telescope. (Note that it would cost much more to design, fabricate and launch a brand-new, improved telescope. It would be cheap to launch another copy of the old design.)
Park has opposed all manned exploration. I suppose that a sensible given the extreme expense and danger of present-day technology, but a space elevator would change everything. It would reduce the cost by a factor of 1,000 right off the bat. But I do not think Park has mentioned the space elevator. He is good at denigrating things but he does not propose any new ideas, or daring initiatives. His idea of space exploration is to keep repeating robot planetary exploration with chemical rockets. I am all in favor of robot exploration -- who wouldn't be? -- but far more could be done with an elevator. Or even with cheaper, more reliable rockets.
- Jed
