Wow. It’s been a while since I’ve seen a single piece so rife with them. Not sure it’s worth my while to fisk it, but others can have at it in comments.
Here are just a few (ignoring his misstatement of the purpose of government in the very first sentence):
- The spin-off benefits of human spaceflight exceeds the cost.
- We don’t spend any money in space, it’s all spent on earth.
- We need giant government projects.
- Why are we spending money on bullets instead of what I want to spend it on?
And on and on. I should note that this is Tinkerbell thinking.
The exact same reasoning comes out of the passenger train advocacy community. Amtraaak in Spaaacccee! (I think that tagline is potentially less offensive than the Tinkerbell label).
Interestingly, the US is responsible for about 45% of the world’s total defense spending, but also about 54% of the world’s space exploration spending. That points to the spending issue being one of a global relative priority between the two activities, and one that the US is already far ahead of the rest of the world on.
Even so, the problems we face in spaceflight today would not be solved by bigger government projects or increased space agency budgets.
I liked how the author claimed that the technologies needed to sustain life on Mars would have a beneficial relationship to solving the problems here on Earth that many people against space activities always say we should solve before wasting money on astronauts.
Become one with the irony.
I commented about the fallacy in that first sentence myself and got accused of not reading the constitution. Without an understanding of founding principles hope for this country diminishes.
Well, you failed to emphasize that the purpose of the Constitution was to form a more perfect union, then segue into the breakup of the imperfect Cruise-Holmes union and its relation to interstellar psychologists, liberally sprinkling the argument with strings of vague logic and unsupported assumptions. I was tempted.
However, the opening of the article did bring to mind the much worse Moon Miner’s Manifesto. If you’ve never read any of the articles, you’d get a kick out of them. Full-on, no-holds barred utopian communism, complete with essays on the importance of sculptors, jugglers, and agitator-propagandists in space colonies built by prison labor.
Mr. Turner,
Moon Miners’ Manifesto is always looking for articles, and so if you would like to write a non-utopian communist (or utopian non-communist, or non-utopian non-communist) article that does not involve cultural aspects of human life, we’d certainly consider it for publication.
And FWIW, The Moon Society does not advocate the use of prison labor in the construction of space colonies, and I seriously doubt the Artemis Society did either. That is a shameful mischaracterization. Not sure where that fantasy came from.
Oh, I’m pretty sure that was in one of the issues, or perhaps some other Artemis article from the late 80’s. Actual prison labor! Though most of the MM and Artemis pieces were very good, normal, technical stuff, there were a couple (probably from the same author) that had me in stitches. (I also love reading Maoist Movie Reviews, which are possibly some of the most unintentionally hilarious stuff ever.)
Utopians are attracted to space colonization, and many utopians happen to be socialist utopians. Perhaps Star Trek influenced them to a degree (and boy have I debated some unrepentant, proud Stalinists on Trek boards.) Space colonization also attracts libertarians, but at least they have a plan for a revenue stream and can put together a business model instead of relying on intervention by underpants gnomes. ^_^
Actually George, I did want to say something about ‘more perfect union’ but wasn’t sure what that should be.
Obviously they knew it wouldn’t be a ‘perfect union,’ but more perfect bothers me almost as much. They could have done a better job being a bit more specific, but then they might not have gotten everyone to sign on (and they had trouble with that anyway.)
As for MMM, I’m not quite sure what to make of it. Some internal links are broken.
I think perhaps we should take another shot at writing the constitution as it obviously left too much room for the statists to wiggle through. Americans seem to no longer understand what America is or was.
I’d like to see Randy Barnett on the supreme court. Rand is bolder than I in suggesting a constitutional convention. I’m afraid in this climate they’d vote everybody gets free stuff from Obama’s stash. TANSTAAFL is a pretty basic concept.
Obama’s Stash == Our Wallets
A constitutional convention is risky. Suicidal if we don’t first secure a majority of liberty minded representatives.
Indeed. When folks offer the “constitutional convention” as a remedy to today’s political insanity, I remind them that they’re essentially asking the constitution to be re-written by Nancy Pelosi and Barbara Boxer.
No, that’s a peace you broker after Civil War II, and characters like that are out of the picture…
A constitutional convention is risky. Suicidal if we don’t first secure a majority of liberty minded representatives.
Agreed. The only way a constitutional convention would work is if we were willing to split the country in two. That is, let them load up a brand new constitution with free stuff and ratify it while a core group of freedom-loving states keeps the old one.
If it’s all or nothing we’ll almost certainly get nothing.
think perhaps we should take another shot at writing the constitution as it obviously left too much room for the statists to wiggle through.
Any constitution will always leave wiggle room. They can just ignore it and do what they wanted to do. Perhaps, they would put a fig leaf on their actions by coming up with some sophist rationalization, but those are easy to come by.
What matters is consequences. If there are no consequences for breaking a constitution, then it becomes irrelevant.
Absolutely, without consequences you have no teeth. I think you can get most of the wiggle room out. Simply enumerate (very limited) with unambiguous words and a catch all that says if there is a disagreement the states decide for themselves. The government can only over-ride the states when there is no question. Then put it to the supreme court with only that question… fed or state with deference to state.
Perhaps the teeth should start with immediate impeachment (no long drawn out process) for anybody that sponsors an unconstitutional bill (any struck down by SCOTUS.) Keeping in mind that Roberts didn’t introduce a new idea. Congress has always had the power to tax without limit. We the People are responsible for electing people with fiscal restraint.
As Roberts correctly said, “It is not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices.”
Congress has always had the power to tax without limit.
Not true. Congress’ power to tax has always been Constitutionally limited. It didn’t have the power to tax personal income, for example, until the 16th Amendment. And it didn’t have the power to lay a direct tax (which is what the ObamaCare tax is) until last Thursday.
“It is not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices.”
Yes it is! The purpose of the Supreme Court in a republic is to strike down unconstitutional laws no matter how popular they may be. The republic died on Thursday. What we have now is a democracy.
Michael,
You make a good argument for repealing the 16th Amendment as another way to get rid of the Mandate as I expect without it Congress would have to return to the old limited model of taxation. Which rises an interesting question, why is the Tea Party just arguing for a reduction in the tax rate? Why don’t they do for the brass ring and make the repeal of the 16th Amendment a key part of their platform?
Which rises an interesting question, why is the Tea Party just arguing for a reduction in the tax rate? Why don’t they do for the brass ring and make the repeal of the 16th Amendment a key part of their platform?
Not everyone in the Tea Party wants that. Second, there wouldn’t be any support outside of the Tea Party. So it’d be counterproductive to stick it on the platform. Taxation and spending reduction is feasible. An extreme restructuring of how the US collects taxes is not.
My thoughts on more perfect union.
The biggest fallacy of all is that government is needed to open the space frontier. Its done its job. Now is the time to shut NASA down and put the money to better use as a Tax Credit for space development, an idea G. Harry Stine proposed almost 30 years ago (“Kill NASA Now!”).
As Steve Martin said in ‘Pennies from Heaven’… “I’m witcha.” Except I’d get rid of the IRS altogether. Especially now that ACA has revealed them to be the enforcement arm of the fundamental change.
Let’s get rid of every agency that didn’t exist until after 1900.
“(ignoring his misstatement of the purpose of government in the very first sentence)”
“Governments are supposed to exist for the welfare of their people”
“…, promote the general Welfare, …” (OK, that one’s been stretched a bit in recent decades)
The way he punctuates it implies that he thinks that what follows is what does that promoting:
“… to ensure we are protected, healthy, and employed. ”
“… provide for the common defence …”. That covers “protected”, but the Founders meant from “foreign enemies”, not from hurricanes or obesity (many of them were afflicted by that dreadful disease).
“… healthy, and employed.” Now he’s lost me.
“We don’t spend any money in space, it’s all spent on earth.” I don’t see the fallacy in that. There are no banks (yet) on the Moon, no H1-B visas for Martians.
More than that, the days of government spending on space programs (I don’t say “exploration”) are coming to an end. Private companies are starting to carry the torch (though I do not know how much, if any, monetary support they get from government). China has no qualms about throwing all that money into orbit.
“We don’t spend any money in space, it’s all spent on earth.” I don’t see the fallacy in that.
The fallacy is that it’s a straw man. No one thinks that NASA ships billions of dollars into space. Everyone knows that it’s spent on earth, which is a completely irrelevant point as to whether or not it is well spent.
No-one ever said money is “spent in space”. It’s a straw man argument. The original version went “people think we load the rocket up with money and shoot it into space …” and the correct response is “what people?”
A few newspaper cartoonists, for sure. And then, i would never underestimate the general population ..
That first sentence is the fundamental truth of the space community: it is divided along political lines. Those of us who think the purpose of the government is to protect individual rights and then get out of the way see NASA as superfluous at best and detrimental at worst.
The best example of this is the Shuttle launch monopoly of the 1980s. In the end, we won and broke the monopoly, but it was mainly the result of the horrible performance of the Shuttle. It wasn’t a philosophical victory.
Then they put Walt Anderson in prison and the alt space advocates remembered they were snubbing their nose at people with real power who will take away your liberty if you ever start to win.
Well you gotta hand it to NASA they did accomplish a tremendous feat and at the same time captured the heart of the American public across the entire political divide. I think the fiscally erudite amongst us just need to have a cold slap in the face to let one see the facts more clearly. The government can certainly dip it’s toe into a project rife with uncertainty and tell everyone the water is fine. Then, the private sector can jump right in and have a grand ole’ time. And certainly there needs to be a lifeguard on hand for that one person that only knows to dog paddle and gets stuck in the deep end of the pool. But the lifeguard that keeps shouting, “DON’T RUN!” At everyone with a somewhat brisk walk is just not conducive to a proper pool going experience. Wait, what was I talking about. Oh yea, NASA should be relegated to a nationally funded fireworks program. It’d garner about as much entertainment value dollar for gov’t dollar as a Ares I-X demonstration launch.
Rand,
I am afraid that King Canute had a better chance stopping the waves than Space Advocates have reforming Congress. Their pockets are just not deep enough 🙂
But this also illustrate the biggest fallacy in Space Advocacy, that Congress matters. Congress only matters if you believe the space frontier needs NASA money to be opened for business which seems to have been the dominate belief of space advocates since the 1970’s.
But ask yourself, how important was Congress to creating the boom industries of the last 40 years? What role did it have in the creating the Personal Computer, software useable by non-programmers, WWW, Smart phones, Social Media, Virtual Worlds, etc., basically the entire wave of high tech? And why do you believe space is somehow different from these industries?
Congress is not the enabler of space settlement, it’s the black hole that sucks in space settlement efforts and destroys them. Look at SpaceX. Their crew capsule development time table is no longer based on Internet Time. Instead it is based on Congressional funding cycles and NASA program schedules (COT, CCDev, CCP). So a crewed Dragon which Elon once claimed would be ready by 2011 is now pushed off years into the future as he waits on NASA approvals and funding for each micro step forward. The Red Dragon, which could probably be sent to Mars in the next launch window instead won’t go until 2018, again based on NASA RFP cycles for planetary missions.
That is why it is way past time to move space advocacy to give up its fixation with Congress, NASA and public support. Yes, the belief Congress is needed for opening the space frontier is probably the biggest fallacy in space advocacy. Only the fallacy that public support for space settlement is needed is close to it.
Out of curiosity, Tom, how do you propose to “Shut NASA down and put the money to use as a tax credit” without going through Congress?
Edward,
Yes, that is the weakness of G. Harry Stine’s idea. You need to get Congress to do it. And given that even groups like the Tea Party who claim to be for reducing government spending and eliminating federal interference with private industry advocate for continued NASA funding the odds are slim to none it will happen.
That is why the most practical strategy is to get NASA bogged down in a boondoggle like Constellation that keeps them so busy they will ignore space commerce. Unfortunately this is where Space Advocacy does the most damage to opening the space frontier by constantly rubbing NASA’s face in space commerce activities and constantly trying to divert NASA funds into it, thereby ensuring both that the ” Government Dinosaur” takes notice of it and, in NASA zero-sum funding world, sees space commerce as a threat to projects NASA would prefer working on.
Just imagine, under the original Constellation based time table the flying white elephant would be sleeping with the fishes in a couple of years, clearing the way for private space stations without government competition. But thanks to space advocates the ISS, like a black hole, will continue to suck up private launch resources while twisting the designs into ones about as suitable for private use as the C-17 is for commercial airline service in the mistaken belief it will create some golden New Space Age, when all its doing is creating a new generation of NASA contractors for taxpayers to support.
That is why the most practical strategy is to get NASA bogged down in a boondoggle like Constellation that keeps them so busy they will ignore space commerce.
This flies in the face of history. Getting invoved in Apollo didn’t stop the beast from killing off the X-15, DynaSoar, even Lunar Gemini. Quite the contrary.
Just imagine, under the original Constellation based time table the flying white elephant would be sleeping with the fishes in a couple of years, clearing the way for private space stations
The policy that gave rise to Constellation said human spaceflight was to remain the province of government.
You assume the only alternatives are Constellation, ISS, and private space stations. Pretty strange for someone who recently claimed to be an advocate for suborbital spacecraft.
Edward,
X-15, DynaSoar, even Lunar Gemini space commerce? Last I look they were all government projects, and ones that were in competition for the government space dollar which is always a zero sum game.
[[[You assume the only alternatives are Constellation, ISS, and private space stations. Pretty strange for someone who recently claimed to be an advocate for suborbital spacecraft.]]]
Why do YOU assume they are the only alternatives? Because I didn’t bother to list a thousand others? And what has suborbital to do with orbital? Or are you now scheming to use your Mig-21 to take teachers into orbit 🙂
X-15, DynaSoar, even Lunar Gemini space commerce? Last I look they were all government projects, and ones that were in competition for the government space dollar
Yes, they were — and if the beast is willing to take on the US Air Force, it’s naive to think it won’t take on someone much weaker.
And what has suborbital to do with orbital?
LOL. I heard the president of a mainframe computer company I once worked for make a similar statement about microcomputers.
The company no longer exists.
If you don’t get it, you don’t get it.