In many fields—the computing industry in particular—there is something known as FUD: fear, uncertainty, and doubt. It’s propaganda usually provided by one company, sometimes only loosely based on the facts, designed to raise doubts among a wider audience about a competing company’s product. For example, proponents of the Linux operating system often claim that they have to fight FUD generated by the likes of Microsoft and SCO.
The space arena has seen its share of FUD in recent weeks by people opposed, for one reason or another, to the Bush space plan. Last Sunday, Florida Today printed an essay by Alex Roland, a former NASA chief historian, who took issue with the Bush space plan with what seemed to be a convincing set of facts. On Sunday, Florida Today printed a sharp rebuttal to this essay by Dwayne Day, who takes issue with a number of facts presented in the Roland piece. Day essentially takes apart Roland’s commentary, piece by piece, exposing the flawed facts used to support those original arguments. In a time when trillion-dollar price tags are applied to the plan with no justification whatsoever, it’s refreshing to see a bit a FUD fighting going on.
