From: Harvey Newstrom (mail@HarveyNewstrom.com)
Date: Mon Jul 15 2002 - 10:01:13 MDT
The free market will never get us into space until there is a return on
investment. Until someone ponies up a lot of money, nobody is going to
invest in this. To get someone to spend a billion dollars, you probably
need 300,000 investors each pledging a million. That's a million
dollars for each person in the U.S. It just won't happen.
I know that free marketeers love to argue that the private sector could
do space exploration more efficiently than the government. There is
just one problem. They don't want to. Unless we can translate saving
humanity, future destiny, and universal expansion into dollars, they
just don't care. Until the costs come down and the price goes up so
that it becomes profitable, the free market will continue to snub space
travel. In the long term, we think space is a good thing. However,
free-marketeers are notorious for thinking only in the short term. The
free market cannot be a solution as long as it refuses to compete.
-- Harvey Newstrom, CISSP <www.HarveyNewstrom.com> Principal Security Consultant <www.Newstaff.com>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 09:15:27 MST