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Pastimes : Shuttle Columbia STS-107 -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: FrozenZ who wrote (158)	2/3/2003 9:59:15 AM
From: DMaA	Respond to of 627

You're doing a parody. Right? I don't even think the space program should end... it should just focus on a means of propulsion other than fossil fuel, the success of which would also eliminate our need to invade Iraq. Very amusing<gg>.

To: FrozenZ who wrote (158)	2/3/2003 10:59:58 AM
From: Raymond Duray	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 627

FrozenZ, For years I've been of the opinion that the manned space programs are a form of welfare for scientists and engineers. There hasn't been a significant advance that has come of this program for a very long time. OTOH, unmanned satellites have created multiple revolutions in our lives. Communications, intelligence gathering, and exploration of the cosmology have all been dramatically advanced by revolutionary new technologies in the unmanned segment of the space industry. I think it is a testimonial to our egotism that we still feel the need to send men to an extraordinarily hostile environment to which we are completely unsuited. You have hit the nail right on the head when you discuss the propulsion system problem. Today, it costs an absurd $10,000 per pound to loft the shuttle payloads. This is a huge number. Let's just try to imagine all the creative educational programs or social services programs that must not move forward because we burn up $10K/lb. every time we throw a minuscule number of joy riders up onto an elaborate white elephant a 100 miles above the earth (or whatever the orbiting elevation happens to be.) After 35 years of tossing men out of the influence of gravity, it seems high time there ought to be a commercial justification for doing so. Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge fan of the unmanned space flight programs, aside from the weapons systems developments. But manned flight seems to be a folly, and a damn expensive one at that. To me, it is the result of a cherished delusion, shared by many, that mankind is going to need to colonize space because of the rate at which we are using up the Earth. The delusion is that we'll be able to afford to save ourselves by such a means as colonization of space. It's a mathematical and economic impossibility without some huge breakthrough in the science of propulsion. Something from which we seem hundreds of years away from developing. -Ray