Anybody got any ideas about what he really thinks about spaceflight?

— Donald

It’s funny, but my ‘fantasy’ predictions have held true in every election since 1980 when I made my first one. Mabey I will get this one wrong.

— Donald

And what ever made you think I presumed that witch could be elected president? Don’t try to make your fantasy justifiable by pinning an equally ludicrous one on me.

i suppose not. but since i don’t live in fantasyland, i don’t have to consider that option.

Well, first you’d have to enable people to actually get to that new “frontier” – which, right now, is about as accessible as the American West was to 2nd century Christians living in Jerusalem. That is, it is not.

The VSE is just another feeble attempt at trying to keep the industrial base funded, NASA centers operational, and various special interests happy. The average American doesn’t give a hoot, and over the next decade will have many more pressing interests/issues at home to deal with – mundane little things like feeding their families, dealing with retirement, the perpetual war on (insert noun here), etc.

After 2008, when a new President is installed in the White House, VSE will drop off the agenda and we’ll move on to yet another “vision” that won’t lead anywhere.

JMHO, of course.

Aerospace companies advertise the VSE in AvWeek and Space News, we write for each other in a number of space publications including Jeff’s, and (although I write the occasional Op Ed piece for a newspaper and I often write for popular astronomy publications) I too am guilty of preaching to the already converted. The Religious Right, much as I personally despise their goals, have shown us how to make a single issue that is not necessarily subscribed to by the nation at large into a political force to be reconed with. That is, organize around a small set of consistent messages and keep voicing them to the wider public for thirty years, with a minimum of self-destructive civil warfare. We’ve been voicing our message for longer than that, but only to each other.

I once conducted an interview with John Pike, who I often disagree with, but he made a key point that I think is valid to this date: “He said, ‘You have this very small minority of people who have had this personal “revelation” that [human] spaceflight is important and means something. They have to trick the other ninety-five percent of taxpayers into paying for their own private, religious obsession.’ Does Mr. Pike share this ‘religion’? He laughed, and said, “Yes! My first conscious memory was when I was four years old and went out into the back yard and saw Sputnik-1.'” The lesson here is that Mr. Pike and I do not have to agree about very much, even regarding spaceflight, to share a common “religion” and overarching goal.

Many frontiers have been colonized by religious movements, not least some of our own. People motivated by religion are often willing to endure great hardship for no apparent material gain. Using the broadest definition of “religion” (according to my desk OED “a pursuit or interest followed with great devotion”), how do we make our movement into the Solar System into the type of “religious” movement that does not need a reason beyond our belief in it, and can movivate people for centuries?

— Donald