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From: JoSH@RUTGERS.ARPA
Newsgroups: net.space
Subject: The Government in Space
Message-ID: <12396@sri-arpa.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 20-Aug-84 02:28:56 EDT
Article-I.D.: sri-arpa.12396
Posted: Mon Aug 20 02:28:56 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 16-Aug-84 02:55:19 EDT
Lines: 102

From:  JoSH 

    From:  Bernoff.SoftArts@MIT-MULTICS.ARPA
    Subject:  A message on behalf of Ben Bova and NSI.
    *from:  BERNOFF (Joshua D. Bernoff)
    ...
    Mr. Bova is also President the National Space Institue, a 
    worthwhile organization that has been asked to testify before 
    congress more than any other space public interest organization. 
    (NSI was founded by Wernher von Braun.)
    ...
    This message asks you to join NSI. As its prime purposes, NSI
    keeps its members up-to-date on space exploration activities
    and represents the interests of people like us in Congress. As
    the NRA has demonstrated, organizations of this type have
    clout, and are a force to be reckoned with. NSI is one way the
    people on this list could make themselves known and powerful AS
    A GROUP.
    ... Dammit, what happens
    in U.S. space efforts is probably the most important part of
    many of our futures.

    Thanks,
	      Josh

The NRA hasn't done so hot.  What other rights in the Bill of Rights
are so universally spit upon as the Second Amendment?

But trivialities aside, I'd like to register a dissenting opinion
to some of the implications above.  Essentially, the future of
mankind in space depends on breaking the government stranglehold
on space activity.  Those working to involve the government more
heavily in space are working to have an Amtrak, a Post Office, or
a Dept. of Education in control of what would otherwise been the
greatest adventure of the human race.

The only thing that the government SHOULD be doing in space is the
only thing it ISN'T:  aggressively protecting the rights of its
citizens.  Instead, paranoid of any miniscule power they, the citizens,
attain ("formidable to tyrants only"), the government restricts,
regulates, and wraps in red tape any private endeavor, but what is
worse, creates and maintains an atmosphere of uncertainty about
both its own efforts (NASA's highly subsidized offerings would be
instantly hauled into court as predatory price cutting it it were
a private company), and its restrictions on others'.

I once asked Charles Sheffield what was wrong with the nuclear rocket
(NERVA style); why wasn't anybody using them?  Well, he replied, they
were known to be feasible and would probably be considerably more 
economical than chemical ones, but were illegal, both by law and
by treaty.  Now, there's no law of nature that says that space 
exploration has to be cheap enough for any significant fraction of
the people to be able to do it--but if there is a way, it is nuclear
power or something better, not the "Cecil B. DeMille" method whereby
the government accomplishes one grand thing in a lifetime using the
efforts of millions of slaves.  

Governments are great at being Ozimandias, but make lousy truck drivers.
Government-run enterprises, and those under close government control,
show a moribund tenacity to old ways that would be the doom of any
space expansion effort.  --And that's assuming it's successful;  that's
assuming that people are so convinced we need space that they'll put
up with the horribly high costs involved, the way they put up with the
Post Office.  My bet is that Nasa will continue to blow in the political
wind, going in fits and starts, running hot and cold depending who's
in favor, who's in power, whether 49 or 51 percent of congressmen woke
up on the right side of the bed this morning.

The corner used rocket lot next to the local spaceport--this image could
be reality within a century.  First we must have a political environment
in which it is possible to have the corner used airplane lot next to the 
local airport.  Instead it costs about $2000 just to get a pilot's
*license*.  If space is run by the government, you can just throw all
those old dreams out the window.  Although it's next to impossible, a
political space supporter could hope to put together a coalition of
interests similar to the "military-industrial complex".  Although in the
quarter-century since that phrase was coined, DoD has spent upwards of
a trillion dollars, what has it *accomplished*?

Space enthusiasts, like many others before them, have been suckered in by
the "quick-buck" theory of government:  Spend your time and money
convincing the government to do what you want, and you'll get a 
"multiplier effect", being able to accomplish more than if you had
applied your efforts directly to your end.  It worked for the railroads
from 1880 to the 1950's; for the airlines from the 1930's to 1980.
It still works for the farmers as a sector, though most the small farmers
it was supposed to help are bust, and agri-corporations get the payoffs.
It has worked for defense contractors since the 30's in a big way.
More recently this gold mine has been discovered by everybody from 
the aged to the zoologists.  What all this has to do with space is
that like any resource, competition soon brings its cost into line
with its benefits.  How are you doing in the political arena now?
Tomorrow will bring more, not less, clamoring fools with some plausible
theory about how the "public good" and their gain coincide.

I hate to see otherwise intelligent, decent people throw away their 
integrity, and indeed their ultimate chance for success, for the
seductive short-term promise of coercive gain.  And I hate even more
for them to ruin my own chances for independent success, in the process.

--JoSH
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