Hypothetica

>>>>I would try really hard to think of ways of creating public
involvement. Remote robotic operators could be chosen from people who
bought the simulator, had passing scores, and bought a time slot.>>>>
We would bring engineering, chemical engineering, physics,
software engineering and mathematics students into the program, where-ever
we could. Students with fresh and inventive young minds could work on the
program as part of a post-grad work placement. This would bring a great
many young and vigorous people into the program. You wouldn't have to pay
them nearly as much, either. Many students would give their right arm to be
involved in a program like this. People would certainly compete for a
placement within a growing space program. The program would be able to
enroll the best and the brightest young minds within the nation, for a
relatively low price. With launch prices as low as $500/Kg to LEO ( with
cheap, expendable, mass produced boosters) a few of the very best students
could take their placement within the HEO manufacturing facilities. That
would be one hell of a work experience statement! Such a situation, would
enormously improve the state of education for most people. If you were
told, as a young, 18 year-old science or engineering student, that if you
worked hard and got a 1st, you would have the opportunity to take you work
placement in a huge manufacturing shipyard in High Earth Orbit, or a mining
complex at a NEA, would it have motivated you? I cannot imagine that any
young person, in their right mind, would choose to slack at school, with an
opportunity like that waiting for them.
Tony Tony,
Assumeing that you are able to create the program you want, I would caution you to avoid assuming that all the work will be done by cheap college grads for several reasons:
1. 20 year olds slowly become 70 year olds and with that change they expect their pay to rise and their options to increase.
2. Those college grads that can be hired for cheap can be difficult to find.
3. Having too many people that are the same age in an organization can make for real problems. There are only so many openings in a pyramid. Those not getting lead or management positions will be looking for new jobs. Everybody retiring at the same age can be really bad.
You should assume from the start that your organizations pay and age structure are represenative of the population at large that has the talents you need. In the US you would also make sure that you had the correct representation of minorities or face lawsuits.
Your response about the type of people that you would bring in is not what I had in mind. Your thinking NASA style where the self described bright people bring the wonders of space to the lowly masses. Your also describing the U.S. response to Sputnik where Space was to be used as a tool to encourage technical education. I need some study data to back this up, but I don't think that NASA contributed very much as a reason why anybody was interested in science. Star Trek and Science Fiction in general were probably bigger factors. If you expect to be able to sell this retro thinking, you better be able to show that it had some effect in the U.S.
What I had in mind was more along the lines of getting the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker involved. Programs for the elite by the elite fail in a democratic socity after the next election. The U.S. is currently going through that problem. Every nation in the EU does the same thing. Out with the old in with the new. If you don't get popular support from the non-elite then your grand visions will be dust. People support what they are involved in. You would be much better off building organizations that people will support long term than spending money on things no matter how important those things are.
Space industrialization projects are so foriegn to most people's thinking that your dead meat if all you can do for their involvement is beat a drum. You need a program that your grandmother in-law will support.
One more item. No matter how wonderful or important a project seems on the outside the workaday reality is most surely Dilbert's world.
Mitchell James