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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: D. Long who wrote (78136)	10/16/2004 3:03:37 PM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793843

The fact that a certain intentionally caused risk has a small actual risk of harm doesn't matter - the creation of the risk is morally bankrupt and intolerable. There are lots of intentionally caused (immoral) risks that we don't feel compelled to obliterate, only to mitigate, to reduce to a manageable or, dare I say, nuisance level. Whether the risk is happenstance, like lightning strikes, or a function of immoral intent, like inventory shrinkage, we expend our energy to defeat it proportional to the damage it does and the cost of mitigation. I understand your reaction. Risks that derive from immoral acts are repugnant and harder to accept, but cost effectiveness still rules, IMO. The marginal value of eliminating that last immoral act is likely prohibitive.

To: D. Long who wrote (78136)	10/16/2004 5:11:21 PM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793843

Instapundit - HERE'S AN INTERESTING INTERVIEW WITH BURT RUTAN by Leonard David of Space.com. Lots of interesting stuff there. Here's the bit that will probably get the most attention: space.com Over the decades, Rutan said, despite the promise of the Space Shuttle to lower costs of getting to space, a kid's hope of personal access to space in their lifetime remained in limbo. "Look at the progress in 25 years of trying to replace the mistake of the shuttle. It's more expensive...not less...a horrible mistake," Rutan said. "They knew it right away. And they've spent billions...arguably nearly $100 billion over all these years trying to sort out how to correct that mistake...trying to solve the problem of access to space. The problem is...it's the government trying to do it." Governments are good at doing things like this first. Markets are much better at doing them cheaply, reliably, and frequently. He also has a prediction: "IBM didn't know in 1975 that they were going to build $700 dollar computers for people and that they were going to build them by the tens of thousands. But then came Apple," Rutan said, "and they had to." That being the case, Rutan made another prediction: "Lockheed and Boeing will be making very low-cost access to space hardware within 20 years. They just don't know it yet...because they're going to have to." I certainly hope so. Meanwhile, as FuturePundit notes, there are still signs of life at NASA. I'd like to see the R&D functions split off into something much more like the old NACA (National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics), entirely separate from the operational end and with the primary mission (like NACA) of helping private industry advance. Rob Merges and I wrote an article arguing for that back in 1989, but I don't think it's available on the Web.