The American Spectator

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p> George Neumayr replies: br> The point I was making is that NON-physicians are doing abortions in Vermont. That means an internist could do them. He's not qualified? Okay. But a lot of non-qualified people are doing abortions in Vermont. You don't have to be a surgeon to do abortions in Vermont. /p> p> FORGET MARS br> Re: Reid Collins's Because It's There : /p>

As with other bloated, government-funded entities, it would seem that a major purpose of the aerospace industry is to sustain the aerospace industry. Thus the president's Mars/Moon proposal is politics as much as it is anything. Something to keep the Democrats off-balance, perhaps, as if they needed anything more. I see too many conservatives falling in line behind this, a matter that deserves far more scrutiny.

Reid Collins might like to see the Star Trek scenarios come about (although I'm more of a Babylon-5 kind of guy), but I just don't have any reason for such optimism. Some would argue that the technological progress of the 20th century must inevitably continue, that the curve of scientific development should be approximately exponential. But I think this is at best wishful thinking. At this point, I doubt that people will ever leave the planet in significant numbers. Maybe my objections are merely visceral, as I've made too many long international flights in economy class ever to like flying again. But I can't get past the economics of spaceflight, for one, currently some $10K/lb. for orbital payload. Even if you reduced the cost by 99%, that's still a c-note per pound. Admittedly some hardware launches are cost-effective (e.g. weather satellites) and others (e.g. Hubble) have a cultural value that can't be judged solely in monetary terms. But without a compelling reason to do otherwise, such projects should be judged on the same terms as any other big-science investment. At least the Cold War gave us some military justification for the Apollo expenditure. I have never bought the "imagine the spinoffs" argument. Spaceflight should be justified on its own terms. Any large technological project is liable to generate spinoffs.

p>Unless much cheaper ways to loft payload can be developed, the space age is essentially over. Outer space offers several things of material value: orbital "real estate"; high vacuum, microgravity, extraterrestrial minerals, extraterrestrial land. (Did I miss any?) The first of these has been exploited successfully. The others remain only potential. What El Dorado awaits us that would make large-scale human spaceflight worth our while now? I don't know. As Gertrude Stein said of Oakland: "There's no there, there." The other, intangible goals that spaceflight could help us to achieve have to be compared with the goals obtainable by other large-scale research investments. I'm willing to be convinced otherwise, but unless spaceflight becomes cheap enough that something there can pay for it, I don't see how space exploration will ever be much more significant than current worthy efforts in Antarctica, that hardship post. br> -- Mike Walsh

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