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From: buell%lsu.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa
Newsgroups: net.space
Subject: none
Message-ID: <12212@sri-arpa.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 7-Aug-84 19:37:10 EDT
Article-I.D.: sri-arpa.12212
Posted: Tue Aug  7 19:37:10 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 10-Aug-84 08:12:40 EDT
Lines: 41

From:  Duncan A. Buell 







The space program--how do we justify it to Congress?

Beats the hell out of me, and I have been close to the space
program  since  my  father learned rocketry in Huntsville in
1951.  How does Congress justify spending money on the arts?
on  public TV?  How did the Duke of Brunswick justify subsi-
dizing Gauss?

Apart from the obvious (justified or unjustified) desires of
the  military  for  space  ability,  the  people who want to
explore space do it, I suppose, because it's there,  because
it  would  be a denial of some of our more fundamental lusts
to have the technology to "look beyond the ranges"  and  not
do  so.  And Congress pays for it because they can be sucked
in by the same urges.

That, I think, is all there is to it.  That  certainly  does
not  suggest  practical  approaches to going after continued
funding.  Should the turkeys outnumber  the  visionaries  in
Congress,  the  space program can expect lean years--and has
seen some of them.

On  the  other  hand,  maybe  this  does   suggest   funding
approaches.   Don't  try  to  show that it's centsible to go
into space.  Just sell the dream.   Rational  arguments  are
always  in  danger of being refuted by better rational argu-
ments.  A good irrational hunger is a much better bet.

No flames in response to this, please.  I really don't  know
any  sure-fire  justifications  for  going  into  space that
aren't military.  I do know that we'd be less as  a  species
if  we  didn't  succumb  to  some of the urges we have, like
pointing up and wanting to go there.