why outer space?

Bill wrote:

>
> What is going to stop a privatized NASA from abandoning space all
> together and focusing on its 'core competencies'. What should be done
> is the marketable technology from NASA should be leased out with the
> royalties going to NASA instead of being given away by politicians, or
> leased with the money going to Congress.

NASA can and does get patent royalty income from it's inventions. Working as
a NASA contractor, I actually have a big problem with giving taxpayer
developed technology to a few and denying it to those everyone else who paid
the bill.

On a related issue, I have not been able to put the software I've developed
at NASA expense on the web. As a result, I'm the only one who uses it. I
can publish the papers explaining the software in detail, but I can't
distribute the software itself. This experience is multiplied thousands of
times throughout the agency. Personally, I feel that all taxpayer developed
technology, especially software, should be made freely available on the web
with only two exceptions:
-- technology with a strong military application
-- technology which requires huge investments to bring to market, and
where those private investments cannot be protected. A good example is
pharmacutical drugs. The testing is enormously expensive so you need patent
protection on the molecule itself.

>
> How much money does the US governement get from Royalties. Almost all
> that technology research came out of NASA or the military.

NSF and NIH develop a lot of excellent technology, especially for medicine.

Al Globus
aglobus@..., (650) 604-4404
http://www.nas.nasa.gov/~globus/home.html

The dinosaurs weren't spacefaring. We are. I don't think that's an accident.
Maybe we are life's taxi to the stars.

I think we should:

1. Devote half of NASA's budget ($7 billion) to reaching NASA's 2020 goal of
reducing launch costs to Low-Earth-Orbit to $220/kg with a 0.01% failure
rate.
This should enable space tourism. The resulting orbital hotels will need to
develop efficient orbital life support and other necessary technologies.

2. Build orbital space colonies. The materials in the largest asteroid are
sufficient for orbital colonies with a combined surface area about 500 times
greater than Earth's. Eros alone could make over ten thousand space colonies,

each with about about 10 square kilometers of 1g living area.

3. After a few generations of orbital living, people won't need their colony
to be near Sol. Then small groups of colonies with populations in the
tens-of-thousands can set out on multi-decade journeys to nearby stars.

Except the launch goals, none of this is even a little bit official.