Hello everyone!

From: jwsmith42000@... [mailto:jwsmith42000@aol.com]

> I am not paranoid but I do not like anyone who begs the
> government to steal my money, and then waste much of it
> on useless activities that will not do us any good.
> Robert Zubrin does that on a regular basis.

I don't disagree with most of what you say about The Mars Society. But
still, I think if Zubrin had got his way in everything, we'd have still
been better off than if we had instead just continued to mess around
with the Shuttle and ISS, and nothing else. That said, I think the
approach Bush has advocated (provided he gets his way) is a better
approach than Zubrin's, which seems to basically be that Mars is the
only significant target beyond the Earth, and anything other than Mars
isn't worth doing. His rejection of any kind of infrastructure
development other than on the surface of Mars means that his plans don't
offer anything to anyone with even slightly different space plans. His
scenarios are for those with eyes for one target, and one target only.

> I believe that space will be settled in the beginning by
> people who want to be different.

The "in the beginning" part is the only part I would disagree with. I
would even agree that long-term, dissatisfaction with Earthly society
will be the single biggest driver of space migration. For example, I've
written short fiction about several families immigrating to the Asteroid
Belt due to what they perceive (rightly or wrongly) as religious
persecution. In other words, the Pilgrims all over again. I just don't
anticipate that the process will start out that way.

Establishing the first few beachheads will cost hundreds of billions of
dollars, and I just can't see small groups of space settlement
enthusiasts (and we are small) raising the money on their own. I think
it will only happen after large multinational corporations (and perhaps
even consortiums of many such corporations) make the initial investments
in infrastructure that, once established, might have the effect of
bringing the costs of subsequent developments down to the range that
small private groups might be able to consider.

Regards,

Mike Combs