On the SSI yahoogroup, Valens Agnitio wrote:

"I would like to see us with a firm commitment to doing something substantial that will engage the public in such a way as to gain strong support for farther reacing projects, and so on, and before the world becomes to bogged down or distracted..."

Why does anyone dream of space?

For those of us who think about space, is it with visions of all the
new gadgets the military will get as a result? or the other side
effects, like Tang and fetal heart rate monitors?

I doubt it. I think most people who think about space view such
things as the technological advances and scientific data and new
products as a secondary benefit. When we're thinking about space,
our prime motivator is not one of these secondary benefits.

We're thinking about space because we want to go there _ourselves_.

I don't want to rely on the words "magnificent desolation". I want
to see the moon for myself, up close and personal.

People all over the world got a vicarious thrill when Niel Armstrong
set foot on the moon. They got that thrill because Man had finally
accomplished this feat, and because of that it opened up the
possibility that they themselves, or their children, may one day go
into space.

Why are titles to plots of land on the moon being sold today? Why
are people parting with their money for a piece of pie in the sky?
Either they are all gullible, or they believe that one day these
land titles will actually be worth something - and they will only be
worth something if either the resources are exploited by machine or
if people can go there as a matter of course.

Want to get people fired up and investing in the space stocks?
Offer them the possibility of going there for themselves. That is
what will engage the public, not the promise of new military
applications or New Improved Tang.

The world has been creeping incrementally towards a permanent manned
presence in space for nearly 50 years. That incremental creep has
ground to a halt, an indication that the paradigm is about to shift. The path chosen over the next few years will in large part be determined by some key enabling technology, but space travel as a whole will change radically within the next ten years from a government-only/huge pricetag venture to more widespread commercial and even private use of space.

Under NASA's plans for the last thirty years, if Joe Sixpack out in
Middle America ever thought about space at all, would probably not
really think of it as a place that he could go; that was for NASA's
elite group of astronauts, not a cement-mixer like Joe.

Plant the idea in Joe Sixpack's head that guys who know how to make
cement using very little water (or guys who know lots about growing plants, or guys who know lots about chickens, or... you get the picture) are extremely useful in space - to a private company - and that he might get to go himself... well Joe just might decide to invest some of his retirement money in one of those space stocks...

Now multiply Joe by a few tens of millions of people, and have lots
of companies finding niches: that's how you establish a market.
That's how you get infrastructure built: hundreds or thousands of
companies all making profits (or going under) by adding a small piece to the infrastructure, wherever they can find a niche. Not by taking hundreds of billions of dollars over several decades from the
wallets of customers (and their retirement funds), and blowing your
wad on a megaproject. The latter strategy has had us going around
in circles for three decades.

If I were advising Bush on space, and he asked me for an example of
"something substantial that would engage the public's interest and
gain support for farther reaching projects"... I would suggest
disbanding NASA and giving every American an immediate "NASA Refund"
check, along with a corresponding permanent tax cut the following
year. The president could give the press the reason that "private
enterprise is about to take over in the very near future anyway, so
we're just getting outa the way".

I would suggest the same type of refund check for reductions to any
department's funding along with a permanent tax cut the following
year reflecting the percentage of red ink cut from the budget. Make
it one of many refunds... this year the CIA gets a 50% budget cut,
amercians each get a check for 73 dollars and lower tax income bill
of that same 73 every year thereafter... same with the BATF...and the IRS... hey, I can dream, can't I? And wouldn't it be a nice way of finding out that 15 different departments had their budgets cut?