Good to have you in there punching, Buck. This is not as much fun when I have to take on the backup quarterbacks. ;)

"EVERY BIT (caps added) of economic progress in the world has been made by people who have more wealth than they need to live. In other words, without the "rich," you would still be walking around behind an ox for a living."

Should have been more clear on this. Surplus wealth began to be available as far back as dawn of agriculture. Even at the tribal level, human beings were only able to begin creating important new art and technologies when they were able to store enough food to get out of the hunter-gatherer stage that they had been in for a million years.

Agriculture started the founding of cities, clarified the concept of owning land for the first time, and encouraged the division of labor. Highly recommended: Jacob Bronowski's "The Ascent of Man," which, if I know you, you have already read.

Again you show why you should stick to engineering, Tom. So with your absolute statement you imply nothing has ever been produced by anyone who is not wealthy. This is beyond ridiculous Tom.

Don't confuse "production" with "capital growth." The guy walking behind an ox in the rice paddy is obviously being productive. He is creating wealth by his efforts. But without capital growth and progress, his great-great grandchildren would be walking behind that same ox, producing only enough to keep them alive until the next season, or maybe to trade rice for some cloth or another ox. The minute this guy produces a lot more rice than he needs to live, he becomes "wealthy" relative to others in his class, and he can start thinking about some more acres and a tractor.

Economic progress is achieved by having a large middle class who have buying power. 2/3 of all economic activity is consumer spending. You want an example of a society with virtually no middle class and a few rich: Mexico. Now there's an economic powerhouse eh?

Middle-class is basically a stop on the way to rich. The "buying power" is generated by a robust capitalist system which allows a middle-class person to be far more productive than he would be otherwise, creating more earnings relative to his actual efforts. Think of a blue-collar worker operating a multi-million dollar car body welder in an auto factory. That welder allows him to essentially do the job of ten hand-welders, and his value increases proportionately. Odds are he won't thank the inventor of the welder for this, but will complain about his buddies losing jobs.

Mexico is getting better, but probably serves as an excellent example of what happens when a socialist-type government runs the whole economy, and the rich run the government. When they get a true free market system, let me know.

As for your endless comments about the evils of taxation, let me make a simple point: There is no economic prosperity without civilization; there is no civilization without government; there is no government without funding; there is no funding without taxation. Get it?

No civilization without government? I would recommend looking back through history in some detail and thinking about that some more. Maybe a highly-centralized government is not a net plus.

Back to space, it is clear the space program would not exist without government funding. It simply is not economically feasible for the private sector. Does that make it unworthy? I think not. Just for starters, the knowledge we gain advances us as a civilization and enlightens us as a species. Thankfully we have government to fund things like this. Unfortunately our current leadership is cutting those funds.

Sadly, your first sentence may be correct in our current society. In a free-market society, space would have been exploited when it became possible to do so profitably. I remember Heinlein's early moon flight scenarios, using modified mail rockets!

This might not be as hard as it sounds. Certainly, the commsat industry is profitable, even with expensive launches. Things like Mars probes would have to rely on private funding by patrons, like science used to be in many areas. I can see the Lick Observatory from my house. Of course, this is all theoretical, and we have to try to work with what we have now.

I'm doing my best to try and develop low-cost access to space, hopefully with private funding if possible. So far, I haven't managed it yet, despite a few good starts. But I haven't given up.

Why don't I hear echos of the endless criticisms of Clinton's space policies addressed to Bush now?

Not sure this is relevant. Obviously space was not on Clinton's front burner, and I doubt if it is on Bush's either.