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Human Exploration of Mars
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Human Exploration of Mars
John Ordover ) wrote:
: Free enterprise has powered human endevour through the ages, it's : about time the 'Planetary Society' displayed some American : capitalistic drive to reach it's goal. : Capitalism has looked at space and can't find the money stream - : because there isn't one. Columbus didn't find any spices in the Caribean either. Should he have not made the voyage? Eric |
#13
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Human Exploration of Mars
Doug Ellison ) wrote:
: That should comfort American's who are worried their jobs may go to : China that their tax dollars are paying to go to Mars. : Any tax $ spent on the space program in essence comes back to the country by : paying for thousands of engineering and aerospace (and management scum) jobs Not to mention the byproducts like velcro, teflon, solar batteries, calculators, computers, etc. Eric : Doug |
#14
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Human Exploration of Mars
"Eric Chomko" wrote in message ... Doug Ellison ) wrote: : That should comfort American's who are worried their jobs may go to : China that their tax dollars are paying to go to Mars. : Any tax $ spent on the space program in essence comes back to the country by : paying for thousands of engineering and aerospace (and management scum) jobs Not to mention the byproducts like velcro, teflon, solar batteries, calculators, computers, etc. Again, you show your ignorance. All of those predate the space program in one way or another. Eric : Doug |
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Human Exploration of Mars
"Henry Spencer" wrote in message
... In article , Terrell Miller wrote: okay, my head is spinning here. Twenty years ago when I was a member, the PS (or more specifically, Carl Sagan) was hell-bent and determined to keep humanity's dirty little bootprints off of the universe. What's happened in the meantime...? Chairman Carl had a new revelation, and decided that a joint US-Soviet Mars mission was the way to reduce world tensions and save mankind from itself (or at least, it was a step in the right direction). So now the Planetary Society was officially in favor of manned Mars exploration, except that it *had* to be a US-Soviet joint effort -- no other approaches need apply. Ah. That figures g A few of the keep-space-for-robots folks left in disgust, but most of the faithful stayed. And that official goal in turn has mutated gradually, as mankind turned out not to need saving (this time, anyway), and as the "joint effort" part has stopped looking like such a great idea. One of the starkest days in my entire life was the day I finally realized that Carl Sagan had absolutely no clue what the hell he was talking about on most topics. Which was the day I saw the footage from teh Jupiter flyby and here's Sagan on camera telling all these techies what they need to be doing. Especially ironic since the lady he was standing next to at the time happened to be the one who actually discovered the volcano, and whose name I have totally forgotten. I always thought the Drumlin part in the film version of Contact was intended for Carl instead of Tom Skerritt -- Terrell Miller "Very often, a 'free' feedstock will still lead to a very expensive system. One that is quite likely noncompetitive" - Don Lancaster |
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Human Exploration of Mars
Doug Ellison wrote:
Any tax $ spent on the space program in essence comes back to the country by paying for thousands of engineering and aerospace (and management scum) jobs Hiring people to dig holes and fill them in again does the same thing. What you are missing is that money is just a placeholder; the real wealth is resources, products, and services. Employing these people to do something of no value wastes their labor. Paul |
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Human Exploration of Mars
Eric Chomko wrote:
: Any tax $ spent on the space program in essence comes back to the country by : paying for thousands of engineering and aerospace (and management scum) jobs Not to mention the byproducts like velcro, teflon, solar batteries, calculators, computers, etc. None of which were invented for the space program (PV cells probably come closest). This doesn't prevent space fans from claiming everything from sliced bread to fire is a NASA spinoff. Paul |
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Human Exploration of Mars
Eric Chomko wrote:
Columbus didn't find any spices in the Caribean either. Should he have not made the voyage? Van Allen had the following to say (in 1986) about the Columbus analogy: Fervent advocates of the view that it is mankind's manifest destiny to populate space inflict a plethora of false analogies on anyone who contests this belief. At the mere mention of the name of Christopher Columbus they expect the opposition to wither and slink away. I find it possible to resist such an expectation. If reference to Columbus is made in an offhand, thoughtless way, it is merely incompetant; but if made with full knowledge of the facts, it is deceitful and fraudulent.... [T]he surface of Mars has been studied comprehensively by a succession of U.S. and Soviet spacecraft.... If a similar survey of America had been available in the late 15th century, the mission of Columbus' fleet to the West Indies would have been unequivocally desirable. But the application of the Columbus analogy to support advocacy of a manned mission to Mars is massively deceitful. Mars is not terra incognita. We have already explored it and found it to be far more desolate and sterile than the heart of the Sahara desert. There, of course, remain many matters of deep scientific interest on Mars but these matters can be addressed ... by automated ... missions." Paul |
#19
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Human Exploration of Mars
In article ,
Terrell Miller wrote: ...Which was the day I saw the footage from teh Jupiter flyby and here's Sagan on camera telling all these techies what they need to be doing. Especially ironic since the lady he was standing next to at the time happened to be the one who actually discovered the volcano, and whose name I have totally forgotten. Linda Morabito, if I recall correctly. Of course, she wasn't a scientist -- she was one of the navigators, measuring star images in relation to the edges of the moons to improve navigation fixes -- and I'm sure there were some red faces in the science team when she noticed what none of them had bothered to look for... -- MOST launched 30 June; first light, 29 July; 5arcsec | Henry Spencer pointing, 10 Sept; first science, early Oct; all well. | |
#20
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Human Exploration of Mars
In article ,
Paul F. Dietz wrote: Van Allen had the following to say (in 1986) about the Columbus analogy: ... ...There, of course, remain many matters of deep scientific interest on Mars but these matters can be addressed ... by automated ... missions." Translation: the scientific matters that James Van Allen cares about can be addressed by automated missions. Note that Van Allen is a "sky scientist", studying fields and particles in space, with little interest in planetary surfaces. It shows. -- MOST launched 30 June; first light, 29 July; 5arcsec | Henry Spencer pointing, 10 Sept; first science, early Oct; all well. | |
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