Long-term planning (an unfortunate lack, thereof)

In a message dated 6/8/01 7:50:45 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
hollroa@... writes:

<< Sounds sensible. This program would certainly work.

Hypothetical situation. You are elected as minister for space, in a
hypothetical European country, called Hypothetica. Hypothetica is one of
richest nations in the world, but most of the money is used up just through
maintaining the public services. You are given a budget of about $2-$3
billion per year and want to fulfil the O'Neill vision as quickly as you
can. You have almost total discretion in how you spend the money. There are
nearly sixty million people in your country, and many of them dream of
going into space, walking the lunar deserts, living in O'Neill colonies
and enjoying cheap electricity. If you keep them waiting for too long they
will grow impatient. Your visionary space ambitions are part of what got
you elected and the people are itching to see results. What sort of space
policy would you design? What would you consider to be the optimum
schedule?

Actually, I tell a lie. This isn't entirely hypothetical. In fact its
not that hypothetical at all.

Tony
>>

There is such a thing as too future oriented. NASA was like this in the
1970's doing all sorts of studies while neglecting manned spaceflight
operations. If someone asked, the reply was "were working on it", or "its in
the future".