Re: [MLUG - DISCUSSION] [POLITICS](and SCIENCE) NASA Plans Lunar Outpost

[Mike Miller <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

On Tue, 5 Dec 2006, Jonathan King wrote:

> On 12/5/06, Mike Miller <EMAIL:PROTECTED> wrote:
>
> > I'm surprised that they can mine hydrogen and oxygen from the lunar 
> > surface.  I hadn't heard that before.  Some of you will remember that 
> > Carl Sagan was an advocate for manned missions to Mars.  He was also an 
> > opponent of continued nuclear weapons proliferation.  He knew that you 
> > could only stop making more unneeded nuclear weapons if you had a way 
> > to intervene in the military-industrial-congressional complex.
>
> So that explains why he was constantly proposing that incredibly stupid, 
> counter-productive and complete-waste-of-time manned space program 
> stuff. I must have gotten hundreds of fund-raising letters from his 
> dorky space exploration foundation thing.
>
> Obviously, we have to find a better way to deal with this. Our society 
> will quite literally go away if we keep wasting tremendous amounts of 
> time and money on absolutely useless ventures like manned bases on Mars. 
> Given enough time, money, and stupidity, I'm sure we could get there, 
> find out that the getting there was almost completely useless, and then 
> turn around to find that we had been reduced to being the 23rd most 
> powerful nation on our own planet. I'm being slightly facetious here, 
> but having a manned space program is almost as stupid as fighting two 
> land wars in Asia.


I agree with your main point, but how do we begin to crack the 
military-industrial-congressional complex?  That is **massive** entrenched 
power.  It can be defeated, or diverted, in time, but we need a strategy. 
What is a good strategy?

I would say that you are wrong about manned space flight and wars in Asia 
only because such wars kill many thousands of good people and manned space 
flights will only kill a few dozen people.  The same money is being spent 
either way, so I think it is wise to strongly favor wasteful scientific 
explorations instead of systems that promote warfare and mass murder 
(while wasting the same amount of money).  Just pay GE to build space 
ships instead of smart bombs and pay Halliburton to build space stations 
on the moon instead of rebuilding what the GE smart bombs blew up.  Until 
you have another way to get these powerful corporations under control, the 
NASA approach will help.

Mike

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