Re: What if space instead of defense?

"Andre Lieven" <dg411@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:efei55$j3g$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
"Danny Dot" (don't.mail.me@xxxxxx) writes:
"Andre Lieven" <dg411@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
snip
Look guys, I know that without defense we would be speaking Japanese,
German, or maybe Arabic. This is NOT an anti war question. In 1985 I
had
an oppertuinity to become an astronaut instructor. I turned it down to
build missiles and airplanes to combat the Soviets. I am a big fan of a
strong defense. Even today without the Soviet threat, we need a strong
defense.

I am thinking more of just an "engineering thought experiment". Assume
world peace broke out in 1900 and we spent every penny on space instead
of
defense. Where would we be today in space? Part of the process is:
would
we be as inovative without a war going on. I say we would not have.

The whole question is on it's face, absurd, as in 1900, and for a very
long time afterwards, there was NO technology available, or developable,
that would lead to anything approaching spaceflight. Including unmanned
spaceflight.

OK, I agree 1900 might be a little too early. What date to you want to use.
Konstantin Tsiolkovky developed the rocket equation in 1903. He also
developed the idea of staged rockets. In my opinion, with the threat of the
Earth being taken, the world would have started development of rockets in
1900. But I will let you say what date you like. Was it 1920 when we had
the first liquid rockets.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konstantin_Tsiolkovsky


Nothing like a war to bring inovation into the process. The development
of
rockets done by the Germans would not be in place. We would be relying
on a
much more bearacratic processes to develop new idea (nothing like war to
cut
red tape).

OK, but still, even with V-2s as a juml start ( For both the US and
the USSR ), we only got a sattelite in 1957. Absent V-2s, and the
technolog8ical spurts of both World Wars, and you surely so NOT
get to space any earlier. In that case, I'd be very surprised in
you get a Sputnik by 1997.

Maybe the answer is: without war, we would have spent all of the
countless
billions to feed a huge buraucracy and still be sitting on the ground.

Maybe the real answer is, war was, and is a part of us, and ideas where
its disappears is about an alternate reality so different that the
people there aren't humans...


I can't say I disagree with this statement. Maybe the fantasy-hypothetical
needs to be a non-human race doesn't have wars :-)

Returning to Planet Earth...

Andre



.

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