From: dietz@cs.rochester.edu (Paul Dietz)
Subject: Re: Justification for the Space Program
Organization: University of Rochester
Distribution: usa, world
Date: Fri, 25 Dec 1992 20:43:05 GMT

In article <BztyEy.Crz@mentor.cc.purdue.edu> hrubin@pop.stat.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin) writes:

 > The US economy might be growing in dollar terms, but not in real terms
 > per capita.  And one does not benefit if others catch up at one's
 > expense.

The US came out of the second world war with the only well-functioning
advanced economy in the world.  Many competitors have now emerged.  Is
it at all surprising that the US is losing or has lost its competitive
edge?  Economic competition causes a strong negative feedback tending
to equalize global wealth.  As technology has become mobile it has
become harder for the US to maintain nearly across-the-board
superiority.

 >>Consider China.  The private sector there will grow more than 20% this
 >>year, and exceed the size of the public sector; aggregate GNP growth
 ...
 >Does the world have enough resources for this?  As I have often said
 >that I consider the US substantially overpopulated for the available
 >resources available to us, what will happen when China attempts to 
 >get 4 times as much of them?

I believe so.  I consider the US substantially *under*populated.  This
country will be a bit player in the next century if the population
does not increase sharply.  Fortunately, immigration and higher birth
rates among recent immigrants appear to be making that happening.

 >>Bullshit.  Existing coal plants kill more people than existing
 >>nuclear plants, and we can build nuclear plants that have accident
 >>rates much lower than the current generation, low as they are.
 >
 >There is a misunderstanding here.  We agree on the safety, but the
 >political climate will not let those nuclear plants be built.

My apology; I failed to see the ambiguity.  The answer, I think, is
that if and when nuclear is significantly cheaper than the
alternatives, it will be used; economic self-interest will swamp
ideology.  The world still has copious fossil fuels (and will for some
time).  In any case, nuclear was presented as an existence proof that
effectively unlimited energy is available without going into space; I
was not intending to argue that nuclear will necessarily be the
cheapest source.

 > We had better face the
 >fact that without war we probably would not yet have done much in space,
 >and without the cold war, not much beyond the technology of the early 1950s.

I have to ask: is this a bad thing?

Trillions of (current) dollars were soaked up in the cold war.  It is
likely the world would be significantly wealthier and more advanced
(albeit in different directions) if the cold war had not occured.
Spaceflight Now is not the be-all and end-all of existence.

If spaceflight had developed as a private venture, the first boosters
would likely have been significantly different from the converted
ballastic missiles we got from the cold war.  I suspect they would
have been inherently simpler and cheaper, although with poorer mass
ratios, and would have served as a better foundation for eventual
commercial development in space, even if they arrived later.

	Paul F. Dietz
	dietz@cs.rochester.edu

Newsgroups: sci.space,alt.folklore.urban