Transterrestrial Musings  


Amazon Honor System Click Here to Pay

Space
Alan Boyle (MSNBC)
Space Politics (Jeff Foust)
Space Transport News (Clark Lindsey)
NASA Watch
NASA Space Flight
Hobby Space
A Voyage To Arcturus (Jay Manifold)
Dispatches From The Final Frontier (Michael Belfiore)
Personal Spaceflight (Jeff Foust)
Mars Blog
The Flame Trench (Florida Today)
Space Cynic
Rocket Forge (Michael Mealing)
COTS Watch (Michael Mealing)
Curmudgeon's Corner (Mark Whittington)
Selenian Boondocks
Tales of the Heliosphere
Out Of The Cradle
Space For Commerce (Brian Dunbar)
True Anomaly
Kevin Parkin
The Speculist (Phil Bowermaster)
Spacecraft (Chris Hall)
Space Pragmatism (Dan Schrimpsher)
Eternal Golden Braid (Fred Kiesche)
Carried Away (Dan Schmelzer)
Laughing Wolf (C. Blake Powers)
Chair Force Engineer (Air Force Procurement)
Spacearium
Saturn Follies
JesusPhreaks (Scott Bell)
Journoblogs
The Ombudsgod
Cut On The Bias (Susanna Cornett)
Joanne Jacobs


Site designed by


Powered by
Movable Type
Biting Commentary about Infinity, and Beyond!

« Four Years On | Main | Lost Art Found »

Debating Human Spaceflight

I interviewed Steven Weinberg who has replaced James Van Allen as the most prestigious and eloquent direct critic of human spaceflight (unlike Barack Obama who may be the most effective passive-aggressive de-funder of space activities since Nixon).

I faced a fundamental media ethics issue. Weinberg's opinion on the likelihood of nuclear war with Russia in the next twenty years ("more likely than not") puts him in a tiny minority. By publicizing his view on this, it delegitimizes him as a spokesman against human spaceflight without discrediting directly his arguments against human spaceflight on the merits. I chose to carefully transcribe his words on this point, confirm that he stood by them, then released them.

What would you have done?

I certainly owe society a warning if he is correct. Twenty years ago, I would certainly have joined Weinberg in agreeing we are on a nuclear precipice and the facts certainly have not migrated all that much since then, just our interpretation of them. Like the national intelligence estimate of Iran; they are enriching uranium, but maybe they're not trying to build a bomb just today. We compartmentalize and convince ourselves that we're OK.

Posted by Sam Dinkin at January 14, 2008 07:51 AM
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.transterrestrial.com/mt-tb.cgi/8868

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference this post from Transterrestrial Musings.