Fred J. McCall wrote:

:The general populace's apathy is a rational response to the situation.
:What, exactly, is the manned space program doing for them or their
:descendants?

It wasn't doing anything before and lots of people were excited about
it, Paul.

Ah, and because people were doing that, it couldn't be irrational.
As we all know, people are never irrational.

Or maybe that's the way people are on your planet.


:The only complaint I have about the apathy is that it's allowing
:the charade to continue.

As opposed to killing human access to space (and any interest in same
by most folks) outright?

I object to massively expensive government entertainment programs
for space fans. I reject that notion that 'getting people interested
in space' is a worthwhile goal. A manned space program, IMO, must
be justified by the objective good it does for the country, and
by its cost. IMO, ESAS fails to measure up.

Except that's not going to happen because you'll never get over the
'hump'. You're basically stuck at COMSAT sorts of applications. No
need for people there.

Well, at least you're off the 'getting people interested' thing here.
The problem is, ESAS doesn't 'get over the hump' either. What it does
is, at enormous cost and over an extended period, do nothing much
on which anything further can be built.

:Since ESAS won't do anything significant to advance that goal,
:killing NASA would be no worse, and would save money.

No, it would be worse because even fewer people would be interested in
the future. The money saved would go where, do you think, Paul?

Lots of people would remain interested in the future. They would
be less interested in your particular flawed view of the future.
Don't be so self centered.

As for where the money could go... gosh, maybe the government
could just NOT SPEND IT? If you claim that's impossible, that the
government will continue to spend far beyond its means, then
the country is doomed anyway, ESAS or not.

:Avoiding the shuttle fiasco would have been a huge benefit,

To who? Terminating space, remember? Contrary to what your sort
generally think, cutting manned space does NOT lead to more money for
non-manned space. It leads to a cut in ALL space.

But in this case, remember that US expendable launcher programs
were explicitly targeted for termination so shuttle would have
more customers. Had shuttle not been developed, this wouldn't
have happened. As it stands, the expendable programs were restarted,
at considerable cost, when it became clear how disastrous the
shuttle program would be. But by that time a decade or more
had been wasted.

Expenables in the US would be far ahead of where they were had
shuttle not been built. We might have had the equivalent of
the Atlas 5 a decade earlier, or perhaps even sooner. We might
even have started designing the first stages of these vehicles
for recovery and reuse.

:and US expendable launchers would be much better than they now are.

I can't find a single reason to believe that.

Sucks to be you, I guess.

Paul