losing the dream

On Oct 4, 2011, at 9:05 PM, Joe Strout wrote:

> I just watched a Daily Show where John Stewart was talking about how
> our
> country used to have a frontier, and no longer does (and how this
> impacts our economic and social situation). The guest made some
> comment
> comparing the U.S.'s role in the world to that of Cape Canaveral in
> the
> 60s, and John jokingly asked whether he was proposing that we colonize
> Mars, getting a big laugh from the guest and the audience.
>
> This saddens me. When did colonizing Mars become a joke?
>
I noticed that too. Unfortunately, it's a joke because both Bush
presidents have made ringing declarations that we were going there and
then failed to spend the horrendous amount of money that it would take
to get there. It's a joke because if these programs had succeeded
they would have made no more difference to Mars colonization than the
Moon landings contributed to lunar colonization (not complete lack of
colonies there). It's a joke because we need a much, much strong in-
space infrastructure to colonize Mars or (much easier) colonize orbit.

Supporting space science and human exploration of space will never get
us that infrastructure. It will spend taxpayer money without end and
deliver inspiration and knowledge, but not settlement. To settle
space we need industry in space. We need space solar power, space
tourism, space manufacture, asteroid and lunar mining -- industrial
might. We are not spending much of our space tax dollars on this.

What we need is to change NASA from an organization that does
inspirational things to an organization that supports the development
of space industries -- as the aeronautics portion of NASA does for air
travel. The COTS and commercial crew program are a good start, but we
need more.