Re: Barack Obama Publishes His Space Policy

On Jan 14, 2:02 am, Fred J. McCall <fmcc...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
jacob navia <ja...@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

:This demonstrates that you can build a space program based exclusively
:on robots.

Sure you can, BUT WHY WOULD YOU WANT TO?

Because you can't afford anything better?

I certainly agree that, for all the excitement the Sojourner rover,
and Sprit and Opportunity are generating, for all the enthusiasm over
pictures from the Hubble Space Telescope, or the Pioneer and Voyager
photographs of the outer planets and their moons. this pales in
comparison to the interest generated by the Apollo moon landing.

Sending people to Mars, however, costs more money than unmanned space
exploration. So much more that it is unclear that the American people
want to spend that much money.

The political will existed for Apollo because it seemed necessary to
prove that the Soviet Union was not the "wave of the future". No
similarly compelling reason exists to go to Mars, and thus a manned
Mars mission is highly unlikely to achieve broad bipartisan support. I
don't expect it's really supported all that strongly even within the
Republican Party.

I think that's a pity. I wish it were otherwise. And, if one is going
to talk about fantasy, of course the ideas advanced by some posters in
this newsgroup about artificial intelligence (a field that has shown
little progress in real life) are in that category.

But with regret, it looks to me like a manned mission to Mars is
something I will believe when I see it. This is despite China planning
to have an astronaut perform a space walk on their one planned manned
mission for 2008, and to do an unmanned sample return from the Moon in
2017.

However, with current improvements in computers and electronics, and
given that the Moon is so much closer than Mars, I suppose one could
(but because unmanned science is so unexciting, probably one cannot,
either) hope for an unmanned sample return by the U.S. on or before
2016 as a *cheap* way to demonstrate China is still outclassed, and to
complete the geological study of the Moon cut short by the early end
to the Apollo program.

The reaction by the Democratic Party to issues relating to Iraq and
Iran make me think that if, by some chance, Osama bin Laden were to
get caught by Pakistani forces, the U.S. is heading towards
isolationism. Of course, the liberal media may be premature in viewing
a Democratic victory in November as having the inevitability of the
sun rising tomorrow; both Obama and HIllary are unpopular, divisive
candidates... the same could be said of nearly all the Republican
front-runners, but not so much so.

And the balance of probabilities in Pakistan at the moment is such
that we might see a Democratic president *invade Pakistan* as a result
of a severe worsening of the situation there. After all, _that_
relates directly to catching Osama, which is what the Democrats
approve of, unlike Iraq and Iran, actions against which they oppose.

Think Vietnam. A *big* Vietnam. Except that it doesn't have a big
buddy with a full-scale strategic nuke capability.

And I'm worried. Because if you ask people the following question:

Which of the following two unpalatable options for the U.S. would you
prefer:

a) Being personally drafted yourself to get shot at in the mountains
of Pakistan, or

b) Dropping enough nukes on the place to be sure of getting Osama,
despite heavy collateral civilian casualties there,

since the unpleasantness in *b* is something one merely experiences by
reading about it in the newspaper...

I'm worried about the future. Even though, so far, the U.S. has made
great efforts to avoid dancing to Osama's tune.

John Savard
.

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