John Schilling wrote:
> On Sun, 03 Feb 2008 13:27:29 -0800, Erik Max Francis <max@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> wrote:
>
>> John Schilling wrote:
>
>>> Who do you imagine is capable of sending spacecraft to Saturn within a
>>> decade? NASA couldn't do it, not even with unlimited funding and the
>>> certain knowledge that every NASA employee would be tortured to death
>>> if they failed. Nor ESA, nor the Russians, nor the plucky unstoppable
>>> Chinese what are going to rule the world within a decade. The United
>>> States Air Force would be a long shot, and who else is there?
>
>> You'll have to be clear about exactly what you think is impossible,
>> since we've done it before. Neither the planning or the actual trip
(if
>> one were to use simple chemical drives, possibly with gravity assists)
>> takes longer than a decade, as _Apollo_ and the _Voyager_ programs
show,
>> respectively (and _Apollo_ is vastly more complicated than what we're
>> talking about here -- we're talking about a simple probe that will test
>> the FTL drive).
>
> "We" have done this before?
>
> I don't recall being involved in the Apollo project. Were you?
I was referring to the collective "we," which would be pretty obvious if
you weren't on a pointless nitpicking hunt.
> A bunch of people who are now dead, or close enough as makes no
> difference, did it before. They can't do it again. That a bunch
> of completely different people are now doing business under the
> same name, doesn't mean they can do what the dead guys once did.
>
> You might as well ask Xerox to develop the information technologies
> that will dominate the coming decades, or the Tennessee Valley
> Authority to built a first-rate hydroelectric power network, or
> the Rolling Stones to make a decent album.
This is a pretty pointless response, quite frankly. I didn't say that
we would redo _Apollo_. I said that _Apollo_ and _Voyager_ are
existence proofs that it's quite doable. With significantly inferior
technology, no less.
Unless you really think that a manned mission to the Moon was only
possible in the 1960s and would be _completely impossible today_ because
those people are dead or have moved on, which in case, that's just
stupid. (And, like I said, I wasn't even talking about actually doing
that.)
--
Erik Max Francis && max@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
&& http://www.alcyone.com/max/
San Jose, CA, USA && 37 18 N 121 57 W && AIM, Y!M erikmaxfrancis
Time is a storm in which we are all lost.
-- George Bernard Shaw
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