Re: Space funding (was Re: Hillary needs to quit)

In article <bb2dneV2Wr51xpjVnZ2dnUVZ_qrinZ2d@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>, Michael
Bowker <mikeb@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> writes
>Pete B wrote:
>> In article <6-idnS0ix6w2XmLanZ2dnUVZ_qOknZ2d@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>, 
>> macthevorlon@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 says...
>>>> Really?  How many of those people are under 16...or over 65?  That's
>>>> that's about 50 bucks a year.  Not including the share of the
>>>> unfunded deficit spending that type of thought process leads to.
>>>> This is one area we actually *can* do without.  You have to start
>>>> somewhere in reining in the budget.  Seems like a pretty damn
>>>> reasonable place to me.
>>> Not to me.  I wouldn't begrudge NASA that paltry amount.  In fact, I'm
>>> ashamed it's not more.
>> 
>> Yeah, we gotta get of this rock.
>> 
>
>or we're all gonna die...
Every time I see funding for a human presence in space now with this
sort of justification I am reminded of stories of generation ****ps being
overtaken in flight by subsequent technologies. This goes double with
suggestions that what we really need is some sort of historical re-
enactment in technology, with people supposedly chasing Saturn V
blueprints and parts. If the lack of progress in chemical rockets is
excused by fundamental limits, then why are we planning to throw money
at it? Couldn't we throw money at technologies that haven't yet
approached their fundamental limits?

I applaud, for instance, the idea of "cheap access to space", but I
would like to point out that (very loosely) there are two ways of
getting cheap access to space - you can reduce the cost, per kilogram,
of putting hardware in earth orbit, or you can reduce the kilogram
weight of hardware necessary to achieve any required function. Since
1969 we have made a lot more progress in reducing weight than in working
out how to get it up there - with one conspicuous exception - the
England world cup team of 1966 had an average weight of 73 kilos,
whereas the world cup team of 2006 had an average weight of 75 kilos
(although at a lower BMI).

I think that money spent on getting stuff up there should be minimised,
except perhaps for vehicles that can be justified as experiments in
their own right, so as to ****ft resources to hardware that does useful
things once it is up (such as track global warming), without needing
that 75 kilos of mass and goodness knows how much more in life sup****t
and extra safety margin and....
-- 
A.G.McDowell