Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!harpo!seismo!hao!hplabs!sri-unix!TMCGUINNESS@USC-ISIE
From: TMCGUINNESS@USC-ISIE@sri-unix.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.space
Subject: MAYBE WE NEED A NEW DIRECTION
Message-ID: <3278@sri-arpa.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 20-Jul-83 17:33:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: sri-arpa.3278
Posted: Wed Jul 20 17:33:00 1983
Date-Received: Fri, 22-Jul-83 13:43:20 EDT
Lines: 32

From:  TOM MCGUINNESS 


   Has anyone ever really considered just how expensive space exploration
really is?  I know that we could run three programs for the amount of 
money that we spend on cancer sticks,cosmetics or video games, but when you
look at Government spending (non defense and non "human services",I 
mean the 11% that's left to run everything except DOD and HEW), NASA soaks up 
alot of that money.  What have we got for that money?  NASA says that it hopes
that it will have a permanent 4-6 person space station in orbit by 1991, 30 years after Alan Shepard first took his sub-orbital flshows a committed interest in a human presence in the solar system.  It seems
to me that our space program has evolved into a program for developing big
military or big science projects rather than viewing space as a "place"
as most of us view it.
     I'm not against the expenditures of funds for military space programs,
or for  things like Space Telescope or IRAS but these projects all represent
a sort of Big Think that will keep space as an area where you place sensors or
weapons rather than an area for resource exploitation or human development.
   Perhaps we need a program, non governmental to see what the cheapest
systems that could be developed; ie what is the cheapest man carrying 
vehicle that we could develop,or what is the least expensive space suit that
can be developed.  Of course the cost of this would be systems that may be
considerably riskier to fly and use.  Anybody know the probability of
catastrophic failure that the Shuttle operates under when it flies?
Try this thought experiment on yourself or someone who claims to be a 
"space-enthusiast",  what is the maximum percentage probability of
fatal accident that you would accept to live on an L-5 colony or 
participate in a manned lunar base?  Maybe I'm missing the point but
if the development of the New World in the 16th and 17th century 
went the way we are developing space, then I think we might still
be waiting for the Jamestown colony to be founded.

==================================================================================================================================-------