Subject:      Dumb Wannabe Colonists
From:         GroundHog <Standing@Sea.Level>
Date:         1997/02/13
Message-Id:   <33034984.4413@Sea.Level>
Newsgroups:   sci.space.policy

Lots of crock on this newsgroups from wannabe space colonists about 
how mankind in general, and Americans in particular, must go out into 
space and multiply.
Dumbasses. I have been around the world, and your average American is 
anything but a pioneer. The US citizen in a third world country: 
complains about the food; drinks only bottled water; can't stand the 
weather; won't learn the local languages; can't stand the locals; 
despises anything not blessed by the touch of mom'n'apple pie;pines 
away if he can't follow Oprah or the Superbowl on satellite TV.
The pioneering type ?!!! 
Forgawssakes, what do you imagine life on a space colony to be like, 
Star Trek? With holodecks, huge open spaces, pleasantly designed 
decors? Get a brain. The first few generations in space will live a 
hard, dangerous, confined life under conditions that will make 
Alcatraz seem like a spa resort. Big, rolling hills in O'Neill 
cylinders? Don't get fooled by the ads. They will come, but the first 
couple of space-borne generations will have to build 'em.
What kind of American, or indeed Westerner, would give up a life on 
humdrum ol' Earth to live the rest of his life in cramped, uncertain,
unpleasant conditions ? 
'Cos believe you me, the romance of pioneering in space will wear off 
real quick once the public realises there are no holodecks, or green 
bountiful parks in moon domes, or exciting battles with fierce alien 
invaders, just 10 cubic meters of cramped quarters, recycling your own 
urine, living in your own sweat, facing the dangers of decompression 
daily, seeing the same goddamn faces every day,knowing that down below 
on Earth people are laughing, and loving, breathing fresh air and 
running in spring sunshine,meeting people and living life.

Who would want to colonise space under such conditions?

That's right: the people we all love to hate and despise:
The poor from the Third World.
Sure you don't see them in Star Trek. Sure the crew of the Enterprise 
is white, male and of American origin. (Noticed how every time the 
Enterprise goes back in time, it goes back to the American past?)
But WASPs are not the people who risk their lives on shaky home-made
rafts on the open sea in search of a better life. They are not the 
ones who leave their homelands in search of opportunity. They have not 
known civil war, or hunger or hardship. They are not the ones with 
nothing to lose.

Cubans. Haitians. Somali's. Phillipino's. Timorese.
They are the immigrants of the 21st century. They are the ones fleeing 
persecution and poverty, seeking a better life. They have far more in 
common with the passengers on the Mayflower than the overfed, 
overweight, self-satisfied, self-righteous, tax-paying, groundhogs 
sitting behind their computers and filling the Net with wannabe 
hogwash, boasting about their ancestor's deeds and imagining 
themselves to be their spiritual heirs.

And no claptrap about "Yeah, but  Cubans can't build spaceships, only 
shaky old rafts". Colonists don't build ships. They colonise. Or die 
trying. And when launchers have been privatised, when the American 
public in 2030 has tired of the short-lived space-colonisation fad, 
and turned to watch Star Trek reruns, who will be the ones who scrape 
up their life's savings, sell off a son or daughter to pimps, and 
travel in dangerous, untrustworthy rockets to face an uncertain future 
in the moon colonies (while American taxpayers whine about all these 
foreign immigrant types living in colonies paid for by THEIR money, 
and isn't it time they did something about it, bla bla bla ..) 

The ones with nothing to lose.

And that means NOT you.