Space Rapture

From: spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com
[mailto:spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Al Globus

> This guy has a few problems with facts. He calls O'Neill a
'rocketeer,'
> but O'Neill didn't work with rockets. He also says O'Neill failed
(true
> enough) because in the late 60s people started thinking about peaceful

> living on Earth -- but O'Neill did his space colony work in the 70's.

Yeah. I remember back in the day when I was first researching High
Frontier and came across Marshal McLuhan's comment that "To colonize
space would be to become unhumans." At that time I certainly didn't
have any well-formed negative opinions of the social science field. And
it was many years before it was demonstrated to the world that a
prankster could turn in a paper of intentional nonsense, albeit
sprinkled with the right kind of leftist seasonings, to a prestigious
social science journal and see it published. But even at that time it
occurred to me the situation was very unfair. To do his work, all
McLuhan had to do was turn a pithy phrase and craft a new word and he
was done. Meanwhile, look at all that hard work Gerard O'Neill had to
do buttressing his arguments and strengthening the foundations of his
concepts.

McMillen's entire paper strikes me as nothing more than, "This thing
reminds me of this other thing, and I can draw comparisons between this
and that. Aren't you glad for the profound new insights into the
situation that I'm offering you?" (And I think it's typical of the
modern social science field.) Meanwhile, O'Neill felt compelled to
solve many complex equations, point to real-world engineering and
technical examples, and build working mass driver models before feeling
justified in hoping that there might be some benefit to the new insights
he offered the world.

Regards,

Mike Combs