People aren't supporting Moon Plan

> In short, it just seems too fanciful to expect an idealistic volunteer
> effort to get us out of the gravity well. A concerted and coordinated
> effort, which will be by necessity one that is capatilistic in nature,
> will
> be needed to get us off planet in a significant way.

I think that where we differ is money. If I had unlimited resources and
did not care about public involvement then everything would be done via
commercial services. However the assumption of unlimited resources is
never justified. From my background of 20 years in the aerospace
industry and a few encounters with NASA contracts, my expectations of
NASA using their $13,000,000,000/year wisely and accomplish laying a
foundation for space colonization is near zero. In fact I will predict
that any projects that NASA undertakes with their new direction will
somehow preclude the goal of space colonization. Yes, that is not what
the president said, but a new NASA budget based on the new priorities
has yet to make it though congress. What emerges from congress is
likely to have little semblance to what we think should happen and then
it has make it though the politics of NASA contracting. Therefore my
expectation is that there will be as much money directed toward space
colonization as there ever was, zero. Having no money to buy expensive
services, our only choice is volunteer labor no matter how painful that
may be.

Mitchell James
mejames@...
www.InnerTransit.org (Homebase for collaborative engineering on the web)