Long-term planning (an unfortunate lack, thereof)

> As it became
>clear that Hypothetica was about to emerge as the dominant space faring
>nation, private investment would drive the economy forward at an
enormous
>rate. Combine this with the enormous revenues that the country would
later
>earn by cornering the communications and power industry, along with
>construction of space hotels, missile defence shields, etc. and
you find
>that hypothetica gets very rich, very fast. Why didn't any of the
European
>nations think of this?
> Tony

Because they are aware of the slumbering giant problem. Nothing
spurs the American public like a real challenge that has people on
the other side. The challenge of just doing space stuff is dull
to the American public because there is nobody on the other team.
But provide a real competitor and there could be very fast movement.
There are several states and multinational corporations that have
larger budgets than most EU nations that could be just as effective.
The Russians are in poor economic position at the moment but they
also have the potential to take up the challange. At the moment
that the EU was starting to see economic return, there would be several
large locomotives coming full steam intent on crushing them. I have
entertained the idea previously that if NASA was broken up and we
could start a four way competition between New York, Florida, California,
and Texas that we could see some real progress in space industrialization.
At the moment the states defer to NASA.

I think that the wide open stealth approach would be best for the
EU. Define a budget that does NOT require national mobilization.
Something that can be sustained for 30 years. Even the EU public
will lose interest after so many years. Use the approach that I
previously defined to build up expertise and capability so that enough
potential is generated that at somepoint in time a little extra money
can kick off serious development.

However, I hope that you do the frontal attack big budget approach.
It might be the spark that will start the rest of the world moving.

Mitchell James
mejames@...
http://www.InnerTransit.net (Email distribution for multilevel organizations)
http://www.InnerTransit.org (Homebase for collaborative engineering)