In article OPOVg.2124$YD.1529@trndny09,
vze3gz45 wrote:

Thierry wrote in message ...
Hi,

Your opinion 'd be welcome.

There is a French magazine titled "L'internaute magazine" (magazine of
internet users) that provides for a while a poll dealing with the interest
or not to invest in the US space program
http://questionnaire.linternaute.com.../23/index.html

It is a multiple-choice test with 3 opinions in radio buttons
Estimez-vous que le budget de la Nasa est (I translate, do you think that
NASA budget is) :
- Légitime (legitimate, rightful)
- Disproportionné : il y a des problèmes plus importants
(disproportionate: there are problems more important)
- Insuffisant : la recherche spatiale est fondamentale (insufficient :
space research is fundamental)
validation button.

Up to date, the result is... 47% against !

Thats ok. All this means is that French will not be a language spoken
in the first space colonies off world. So far humanity will speak english,
russian, german, chinese in the first space colonies off world.

Your remark reminds me a bit of a list of solar eclipses in an astronomy
book from 1930. That list contained all total and annular eclipses visible
in Europe from the 1800's into the 2100's. Nothing strange with that,
except that the book included a number of colonies in northern Africa in
what it considered to be "Europe" and thus listed eclipses visible from
there too. Little did the author realize that well before the 2100's,
actually only some 30-40 years after the publication of that book, these
colonies would become independent nations, considering themselves to
belong to Africa rather than to Europe....

The first space colonies off the Earth are still a long time into the
future. At best there might be something on the Moon within 50 years or
so -- a more probable scenario is that it'll take 100 or more years to
happen. Maybe it'll never happen, we don't know. Anyway there may be
fast and unexpected political changes during these 50 or 100 years - just
think back 50 or 100 years about what has happened since then. These
changes can easily alter your list of languages spoken on these colonies,
if they ever materialize. Your list of languages is probably appropriate
for any space colonies being built now -- but there are none.

vze3gz45


snip

Thierry
http://www.astrosurf.org/luxorion






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