President's Commission on Moon, Mars and Beyond

Greetings Ed,

Like you I dream of space as I hope we all on this
site. My particular focus is getting there from here
and that means navigating the irrational realities of
government, politics, and application of technology to
solve a problem.

As I see it there are these realities that like it or
not we have to come to terms with:

1) NASA helps the space movement much more than it
hinders it.

This means that the presidential commission will be
looking to form the same type of deal that got NASA
going in the first place. This was the military
cooperating with industrialists (anybody in R&D)
cooperating with the scientific community.

2) The same commercial interests you refer to
supporing space development are currently embroiled in
the exporting of jobs to foriegn countries and are not
reliable.

Commercial interests tend to be ruled by the almightly
dollar and indifferent to the concerns of average
people. Space doesn't pay at the moment and who in
the American military is going to stand up for
something that does not benefit America? Given how
wacky the USA has invested in education, by classical
economics it is not price competitive with foreign
countries. Still you are not going to win any hearts
by going before the populace and saying they obvious
when it is deeply offensive. Nor does it provide any
leadership on how to make this more equitable to the
people involved so that bankruptcies are not rife
dragging everyone into a depression.

3) The guy selling moon plots is perpetrating the
strangest shell game I have ever heard of.

He did not get clear title to the land he is selling
from any government and runs the risk of fraud.
Nobody owns the moon yet.

4) Space development has a lot more to offer than just
Tang and a few other gadgets for the military.

Moore's law of doubling computer power should be a
warning to anybody that doubts that robotics are right
behind them. Both have an exponential curve of
adoption, innovation, and sophistication.

The US was the world leader in the development and use
of computer technologies. I assert it is something
that culturally Americans are good at and should
continue in their strengths. The next big things are
genetics and robotics. In the development of
computers the military poured huge sums into R&D that
yielded the components that made the revolution
possible. This looks to be an ideal marriage of space
development with meeting the next technological
challenge or I am gravely mistaken.

5) The world is fumbling toward manned space
presence.

Anyway you look at it the ISS is a fiasco. It cost
way too much and produces virtually nothing useful.
It is parked in a strange orbit that makes it hard to
use for anything other than visiting. I think the
shuttle has already been picked on so I will not
comment on its sad state.

China sure looks like it is caught up in repeating the
Apollo missions to prove they are equals to the US.
Japan is launching things to show North Korea that
they should be respected (ie look what we can do).
Russia is well Russia and has mind boggling problems
of its own.

I suggest the fastest most efficient way to get to
perminent space habitation is to develop the resources
that make this a low cost safe enterprise. This means
utilizing the lunar resources to get out of the
gravity and atmosphere trap that the Earth is. The
moon close enough and has 99% of everything you need
to build a powerful asset in space.

Summary:

When I step back and look at what would happen in the
next 50 years if a moon base got going and I see a
spot for virtually every idea that I have seen on this
list and conference. Build up 50 terawatts in space
and you can abolish all kinds of taxes as the
government can be funded by selling the power they
authorize to be received. Want a giant colony in the
asteriod belt? It is the cost of getting to LEO plus
the pennies per ton material fabricated into a habitat
from the moon.

There is a transition period between awareness of what
is possible and the feeble attempts to get it, and
making it so inconsequential that anybody can live in
space if they want to. I am in full agreement with
just about everybody once you have the wealth in space
to satisfy the cravings of people on earth. Until
then it is a tourturous journey through a lot of
things I don't know about and don't particularly like
(politics) to get this started and up to speed.

I see a way and hope that it can start within the next
couple of years. It will only start if enough people
see that their interest are in fact common and support
a common vision of how to get there from here.

Sincerely, Thor Olson

--- In ssi_list@... "Ed Minchau"

Hi Thor, Valens,

Why does anyone dream of space?

For those of us who think about space, is it with
visions of all the new gadgets the military will get
as a result? or the other side
effects, like Tang and fetal heart rate monitors?

I doubt it. I think most people who think about space
view such things as the technological advances and
scientific data and new
products as a secondary benefit. When we're thinking
about space, our prime motivator is not one of these
secondary benefits.

We're thinking about space because we want to go there
_ourselves_.

I don't want to rely on the words "magnificent
desolation". I want to see the moon for myself, up
close and personal.

People all over the world got a vicarious thrill when
Niel Armstrong set foot on the moon. They got that
thrill because Man had finally
accomplished this feat, and because of that it opened
up the possibility that they themselves, or their
children, may one day go
into space.

Why are titles to plots of land on the moon being sold
today? Why are people parting with their money for a
piece of pie in the sky?
Either they are all gullible, or they believe that one
day these land titles will actually be worth something
- and they will only be
worth something if either the resources are exploited
by machine or if people can go there as a matter of
course.

Want to get people fired up and investing in the space
stocks? Offer them the possibility of going there for
themselves. That is
what will engage the public, not the promise of new
military applications or New Improved Tang.

The world has been creeping incrementally towards a
permanent manned presence in space for nearly 50
years. That incremental creep has
ground to a halt, an indication that the paradigm is
about to shift. The path chosen over the next few
years will in large part
be determined by some key enabling technology, but
space travel as a whole will change radically within
the next ten years from a
government-only/huge pricetag venture to more
widespread commercial and even private use of space.

Under NASA's plans for the last thirty years, if Joe
Sixpack out in Middle America ever thought about space
at all, would probably not
really think of it as a place that he could go; that
was for NASA's elite group of astronauts, not a
cement-mixer like Joe.

Plant the idea in Joe Sixpack's head that guys who
know how to make cement using very little water (or
guys who know lots about growing
plants, or guys who know lots about chickens, or...
you get the picture) are extremely useful in space -
to a private company - and
that he might get to go himself... well Joe just might
decide to invest some of his retirement money in one
of those space stocks...

Now multiply Joe by a few tens of millions of people,
and have lots of companies finding niches: that's how
you establish a market.
That's how you get infrastructure built: hundreds or
thousands of companies all making profits (or going
under) by adding a small
piece to the infrastructure, wherever they can find a
niche. Not by taking hundreds of billions of dollars
over several decades from the
wallets of customers (and their retirement funds), and
blowing your wad on a megaproject. The latter
strategy has had us going around
in circles for three decades.

If I were advising Bush on space, and he asked me for
an example of something substantial that would engage
the public's interest and
gain support for farther reaching projects... I would
suggest disbanding NASA and giving every American an
immediate "NASA Refund"
check, along with a corresponding permanent tax cut
the following year. The president could give the
press the reason that "private
enterprise is about to take over in the very near
future anyway, so we're just getting outa the way".

I would suggest the same type of refund check for
reductions to any department's funding along with a
permanent tax cut the following
year reflecting the percentage of red ink cut from the
budget. Make it one of many refunds... this year the
CIA gets a 50% budget cut,
amercians each get a check for 73 dollars and lower
tax income bill of that same 73 every year
thereafter... same with the BATF...and
the IRS... hey, I can dream, can't I? And wouldn't it
be a nice way of finding out that 15 different
departments had their budgets cut?

Ed
http://robot_guy.blogspot.com