NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #31/NN_1992_31.iso/spool/sci/space/18219

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From: [e-mail] (Herman Rubin)
Subject: Re: Justification for the Space Program
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Sender: [e-mail] (USENET News)
Organization: Purdue University Statistics Department
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
Distribution: usa, world
Date: Fri, 25 Dec 1992 19:35:21 GMT
Lines: 97


In article <[e-mail]> you write:
>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Herman Rubin) writes:

>>>world is not completely perfect.  As I said, ON AVERAGE, the world is
>>>getting better.  Fewer people (in absolute numbers, not just as a
>>>fraction of the world's population) are living in countries that
>>>experience famines that did a generation ago.  On average, people are
>>>getting more nutrition, and living longer.

>>Baloney.  The US economy is in a shambles, and will probably continue
>>to go downhill.

>The US economy is growing, not "going downhill".  Manufacturing
>productivity is growing smartly.  Moreover, the US is not the world.
>Less developed countries can and do use technologies that have already
>been worked out by the west; naturally, the tendency is for the
>underdogs to catch up, if the mechanisms for wealth creation are in
>place.

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.

Academic salaries are lower in real terms now than 20 years ago, and
the research which drives the future is being curtailed.  The emphasis
on short-term practical results is a vain attempt to keep a reasonable
position, and will soon backfire.

The US now has more government jobs than manufacturing.  The universities
are catering to the ignoramuses coming out of the high schools, and standards
are just about dead.  It is even getting into the doctoral program.  We are
paying far more to clean up the S&L fiasco, produced primarily by the
government, than for all of our space activities.

>Consider China.  The private sector there will grow more than 20% this
>year, and exceed the size of the public sector; aggregate GNP growth
>will be in double digits.  At current growth rates, China's GNP could
>exceed the entire OECD's by the year 2010.  The per capita GNP could
>reach current US levels within a generation, at current rates of
>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 cannot imagine what you are trying to prove by this quote.  Let's
>>>consider a world with 10,000 1 GWe reactors.  It will consume
>>>somewhere less than 20,000 tons of uranium per year.  Those 10^14 tons
>>>would last 5 billion years at that rate.

>>But we cannot build nuclear plants which are safer than the coal plants.

>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.

>> Communism may be passe in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe,
>> but some of the worst aspects of it are pervading Western Europe and
>> the United States.  What else can one call the government blocking of
>> human endeavor, including going to space?  Name ONE sufficiently large
>> (to accomplish) country in which the individual with enterprise is not
>> boxed in by the  socialists who insist that the wealth must be shared.

>Capitalism is quite robust, and can create wealth even in unfree
>countries, as the example of China demonstrates.  Again, your argument
>confuses perfection (a probably unrealizable libertarian utopia) with
>progress (a world in which the aggregate statistics are improving).

The world is not better off with 10 billion people making $5000/year
on the average than with 2 billion people making $15000/year on the average.
The first case will not support the individual drive, the exploration, the
aspiration to the stars (any version of this) which the second will.

Short run capitalism is quite robust, but the accumulation of excess wealth
by individuals who will try to do something with it which those individuals,
unfettered by the demands of the populace, feel worthwhile.  Governments
are not capable of doing this except when pushed by the exigencies of
danger to their security or to national pride.  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.

A famous automobile executive stated that one should lead, follow, or get out
of the way.  Governments cannot lead, except other governments; they do not
know how to follow, and they refuse to get out of the way.  They have enough
clout that only other governments can get around their blocking.  Ours is
now blocking progress on as many fronts as it can manage.

--
Herman Rubin, Dept. of Statistics, Purdue Univ., West Lafayette IN47907-1399
Phone: [phone]
[e-mail] (Internet, bitnet)
{purdue,pur-ee}!snap.stat!hrubin(UUCP)