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

To: LindyBill who wrote (290503)	2/2/2009 1:27:54 AM
From: KLP	Respond to of 794268

Haven’t read that one by Heinlein so had to look it up…. en.wikipedia.org And this from Amazon… amazon.com “The Man Who Sold the Moon" is the longest piece here. D. D. Harriman is a man who not only has a dream of traveling to the moon, he has (almost) the financial means to do it. Harriman's schemes to not only raise the necessary money but to ensure that he will retain control of the moon once he gets there are convoluted, devious, devastatingly logical - and almost the complete antithesis of the way NASA has actually gone about it. You might think that this story is hopelessly outdated - after all, we've actually been to the moon! But the story has much to say about the world of today. Government financing of space travel will only go so far. Private financing and people figuring out how to make a profit out of this frontier will be the ultimate driver - and a very large amount of the points this story makes are very applicable to such an approach. But perhaps more important than the actual method Harriman uses to achieve his dream is the very fact that he has such a dream. Heinlein invariably presented the point that without dreamers there would be no progress, no hope for an eventual better world. Perhaps this is flaw in his writing, but I, for one, would much rather read about heroes, the dreamers, those who are attempting to change things for the better, than yet another story detailing the tribulations of a semi-neurotic Joe everyman.