50,000 People Jam Planetary Society Website to Take Space Survey ab

> Both the questions and answers were quite
depressing from an ssi_list
>
> point of view:
> * intense focus on planets,
> * very little interest in asteroids,

Ron,

This is no surprise.

It is simply a reiteration of standard TPS policy.

TPS policy was set in these areas over ten years ago,
and has not
wavered at all.

>
> * lots of interest in Europa and other places we'll
never develop
> economically
>

TPS is not interested in commercial development, never
have been. I
doubt they ever will take that stance. They have a
greenish / academic perspective.

TPS capitalizes heavily on the public fascination with
Life on Mars, or
life anywhere for that matter.
So anywhere life might exist gets a lot of attention,
these days that
includes Europa.

>
> One bright point was that "Search for any potential
danger to Earth
> from space" ranked high. It is quite interesting
that that was the
> case, given
> that interest in missions to asteroids was so low.
Contradictory.

Yes, this is a bit puzzling. Perhaps it is simply
capitalizing on yet
another headline grabbing idea that gets a lot of
publicity, the fear of
being anihilated. TPS seems rather good at
capitalizing on things which
interest a lot of people, hence their relatively large
membership.