h (Rand Simberg) wrote in
:

On Thu, 14 Apr 2005 15:21:11 +0000 (UTC), in a place far, far away, bz
made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
such a way as to indicate that:

This is a bizarre (and fallacious) argument. The fact that we don't
literally ship money into space doesn't make spending money on space
worthwhile, just because it creates jobs.

It does MORE than just create jobs, it creates knowledge.

Sometimes. But there are other ways of creating knowledge than
building space stuff.

Other, but not better. That is the BEST way for us to be spending our
time now.

That's an opinion (yours), not a fact.

Opinions are like noses, everyone has one. 'My' opinion is not original. I
am echoing things said by Isaac Asimov, Jerry Pournelle and others that
have spend a good deal of time and energy thinking this through.

We still have enough of the stored solar energy left to be able to
overcome gravity.

When that is gone, the consequences for the human race will be grave
unless we have made it out of the cradle and have self sustaining
colonies in various orbits around the solar system.

We will have other energy sources. This is another fallacious
argument for space activities.

That is YOUR opinion.

I tend to agree with you that we will have other energy sources, but NONE
of them have what we were given by mother earth.

It's
easy to create jobs, but it's much harder to create wealth, and if
you don't, there will soon be no money left with which to continue
job creation.


If you want to really create wealth, you go out in space and snare
some of the rocks that come whizzing by. You build a big mirror and
refine the rocks. You create 'things' in space. You remove the
pollution that comes from creating things. You clean up the earth by
moving all industry into space.

Maybe, but we haven't done much of that yet. And it's a different
argument than the one you were making before.

Not in my mind.

Your argument before was that spending money on space is good because
it creates "jobs." That's a different argument than it's good because
it creates wealth, brings in new resources and cleans up the earth.
Whether the latter argument is valid or not, it's clearly different
than the first one.

I understand what you are saying, but just because I didn't say what I was
thinking 'clearly' does not mean that was not part of why I said what I
did.


If you're going to persuade skeptics of the value of space activities,
it's important to get your arguments coherent, and valid.

Agreed.

So, how would YOU say it?

Your column of a couple of years ago reads like you are against the whole
idea of space exploration.

It reads like something written by someone angry because they were laid off
during budget cutbacks. But the anger doesn't seem to focus on where it
should be focused, the lack of vision of the american politicans and
voters, it seems to blame the whole concept of space exploration.

Perhaps I missed the nugget of gold in there somewhere.

Sorry if you got burned. I, too, have suffered because of cutbacks. But I
don't syle myself as
[quote]
Rand Simberg is a recovering aerospace engineer and a consultant in space
------------------^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
commercialization, space tourism and Internet security. He offers
occasionally biting commentary about infinity and beyond at his Web log,
Transterrestrial Musings.
[unquote]



--
bz

please pardon my infinite ignorance, the set-of-things-I-do-not-know is an
infinite set.

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