[FPSPACE] Griiffin's Giant...Chinese may be first to puttaikonauts on Mo....[Scanned by MAIL]

[Matula, Thomas L.]

David,

I wish it was so, but the only thing which matters to the world is where humans are. The photo of Admiral Peary at the North Pole sent a message to the world the U.S. had arrived as a world power, just as the Great White Fleet did. A phot o of a Chinese Astronaut on the moon would have the same effect.

Remember, the space policy experts failed to predict the poltical impact of Sputnik. And Explorer I was a far more advanced satellite. But what matters in world affairs is the perception of power and capabilty, which is not the same thing as the reality of it.

Tom



-----Original Message-----
From: DSFPortree at aol.com [mailto:DSFPortree at aol.com]
Sent: Fri 3/16/2007 7:24 PM
To: Matula, Thomas L.; pjp961 at svol.net; ljk4 at msn.com; fpspace at friends-partners.org
Subject: Re: [FPSPACE] Griiffin's Giant...Chinese may be first to puttaikonauts on Mo....[Scanned by MAIL]
 
Tom:

We could easily make China dangerous - it doesn't have to be.

I don't think that not being able to go to the moon - or choosing a different 
path in space, which is my preference - would signal our decline. I think 
that trying to recapture lost glories would.

We should be thinking of something new to do, not repeating what we did 40 
years ago. There are lots of interesting things we could do. For instance, what 
if we declared that we'd be the first nation to send a robot probe to the 
nearest star? A laser-boosted lightsail could get to Alpha Centauri in time for 
the American tricentennial. Closer to home, what if we showed the world that we 
could detect all incoming dangerous asteroids and deflect them?

Incidentally, I hope that you won't notice that both of these options have 
some pretty powerful weapons potential.

David

David S. F. Portree
author & educator
dsfportree at aol.com
(928) 226-1427
Flagstaff Arizona USA

DSFP homepage
http://members.aol.com/dsfportree/dsfp.htm

DSFP blog
http://altairvi.blogspot.com/

"It's like when you're a kid, the first time they tell you that the world's 
turning and you just can't quite believe it because everything looks like it's 
standing still. I can feel it - the turn of the Earth. The ground beneath our 
feet is spinning at a thousand miles an hour, the entire planet is hurtling 
around the Sun at sixty-seven thousand miles an hour, and I can feel it. We're 
falling through space, you and me. Clinging to the skin of this tiny little 
world, and if we let go..." - The Ninth Doctor








**************************************
 AOL now offers free email to everyone. 
 Find out more about what's free from AOL at http://www.aol.com.