Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 exptools 1/6/84; site ihlts.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!floyd!harpo!ihnp4!ihlts!rjnoe
From: rjnoe@ihlts.UUCP (Roger Noe)
Newsgroups: net.space
Subject: Re: Space Station
Message-ID: <386@ihlts.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 8-Mar-84 18:50:42 EST
Article-I.D.: ihlts.386
Posted: Thu Mar  8 18:50:42 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 10-Mar-84 07:55:42 EST
References: <2578@rabbit.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Naperville, IL
Lines: 63

Quoting from rabbit!wolit:

>>	In fact, we've done just fine without people in space at all.
>>	Examples:  the Pioneer, Viking, Explorer, Ranger, etc., series.

But from where did the technology that enabled us to accomplish these things
come?  The manned space program.  From where did the big push that has
brought computing (and many other sciences) up to their present stage of
sophistication?  The manned space program.  Pioneer and Viking would never
have happened had we not pushed on to the moon.  The earlier examples, all
together, provided us with a small fraction of the data we gathered with a
single moon landing mission.  Future activities in planetary exploration, not
to mention our technology in general, depend upon a healthy manned space
program.

>>	Building a space station would SLOW DOWN the advance of space
>>	science.  Every penny spent on a station, is a penny NOT spent on
>>	exploration . . .

This type of fallacious thinking is all too common.  Manned space exploration
draws money to unmanned space science and produces money for unmanned space
missions.  Unmanned space science budgets have always followed manned space
science budgets, up AND down (except before there was any manned space
exploration).

>>	Scientists are not the ones behind a station.

Bull.

>>	Considering that the Reagan administration is working hard to push
>>	high school biology texts back into the 19th century, their
>>	commitment to a space station in the name of "science" is hard to
>>	swallow.

That's the most illogical statement I've heard in a long time.  What the hell
do biology texts have to do with space stations?  Secondly, what makes you
think that Reagan's motives are even relevant here?  Manned space exploration
has the potential to be the greatest pacifying influence on mankind ever seen
because of its ability to unite us as one people on a tiny planet and as a
statement about the human spirit.  To forever deny people the opportunity
to boldly go where no human has gone before is to lower them to the level
of the cockroaches.

>>	If the commercial potential of space is so great, let the
>>	companies that will benefit from a station fund it. . . .
>>	We didn't pay for all the communication satellites that are up there
>>	making money, why should we suddenly be getting into the space
>>	business now?

Every time you pay for a telephone call, you help pay for a communication
satellite, whether your call goes by one or not.  That is how capitalism
works.  You have benefitted many times over from the manned space program,
whether you realize this or not.  Manned space exploration overall is a
money MAKING venture, producing in a decade several times what was spent
on it.

If space exploration is left entirely to private companies, then
there will be very little basic space science research going on.  Apparently
you are against this research.  Would you prefer space to be controlled by
individual private interests?
--
Roger Noe		AT&T Bell Laboratories
ihnp4!ihlts!rjnoe