| | Mr. R. Kay asked: I must ask: what's stopping us from doing a manned space program?
Go right ahead! You are free to do so and others have. Richard Branson and Paul Allen and the Ansari family are among those competing now.
You have to specify what you mean by "program" really, because the Amateur Radio Relay League ("ham" operators) built their first satellite OSCAR in 1961. (The Air Force launched it from Vandenberg.)
Aside from the sheer romance of climbing it because it's there, why would any human want to go into space? What profitable work can be done there? If you read the history of colonization, you realize that going somewhere sustainable is not the same thing as making a profit for the people who paid your voyage. The Greek cities of Sicily and Southern Italy were examples of the first; America was an example of the second -- with indentured servants, slaves, and nothing but losses for English investors, right up to the laying of the railroads in the 19th century: 300 years 10 generations of losses. Is that what you envision?
I find it funny that so many who are against government spending WANT NASA...even though it's basically that. Granted, the program has created amazing results, but couldn't someone in the private sector do it just as well, if not a thousand times better?
Well, as a result of Ayn Rand's "Apollo versus Dionysius" essay, Objectivists are on board with NASA, emotionally if not actually. She even liked Star Trek. You have to admit, it is compelling, regardless of who loses money on it. The "amazing results" are hardly that, though. Everything came from the private sector. Nothing can be had, used, or given by government unless it is taken from someone else, first. At least, that's what we claim...
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