Summing up a Green position on SSPS

> Somebody forwarded me the following link:
>
> http://www.lastsuperpower.net/docs/Document.2003-12-11.3925
>
> Michael Crichton's talk to the Commonwealth Club of California this
> past
> September, on "Environmentalism as a Religion". There's a point where
> there's no real use in arguing further; as he says, "One of the
> defining
> features of religion is that your beliefs are not troubled by facts,
> because they have nothing to do with facts." Can we actually leave the
> realm of religion for science here? Crichton concludes:
>

I must admit to being a bit mystified by this list's view of
environmentalists as deranged fanatics. While there are deranged
fanatics that call themselves environmentalists, they are a tiny
minority -- probably a smaller fraction than deranged fanatical
Christians or Muslims. I consider myself an environmentalist, as was
Teddy Roosevelt and many others. I believe a large majority of
Americans consider themselves as such (although my data on that is
old).

A close examination of the data makes it clear that mankind is having a
major impact on the planet, some of it clearly negative (try breathing
in any third world city). Anyone familiar with the state of our
knowledge of the planet knows that we haven't a clue what the effect of
our actions is going to be. Since we really need this biosphere for
our second-to-second survival, perhaps a bit of conservatism makes
sense.

With regard to SPS, it clearly has potential to provide baseline power
at a minimal, operational environmental cost. Launch activities for
construction (not to mention space colonization in general) may have a
negative effect on the atmosphere and we should be gathering data and
building models of that now to understand the effect and mitigate it at
the design stage when fixes are cheap.

The International Space Station's (ISS) most important legacy may be
jump-starting space tourism. Consider: the first space tourist, Dennis
Tito, was supposed to go to the Soviet era Mir space station. Under
pressure from NASA, Russia de-orbited the Mir which resulted in Mr.
Tito going to the ISS instead. Now the Mir was a terrific space
station, but by the time of Tito's trip it was also old, smelly,
crowded and probably not all that nice. The ISS was brand new, shiny,
much more roomy, etc. Mr. Tito came back to Earth with glowing accounts
of how great space is. Would his experience have been as good on Mir?

Al Globus
CSC at NASA Ames Research Center
http://www.nas.nasa.gov/~globus/home.html

Views expressed in this email are only my opinions and are not the
position of any organization I'm familiar with.