>Reviewing recent posts, I'm lead to wonder if the intelligence which often underlies an interest in space also frequently leads to high levels of self rightiousness and loss of ability to admit error or tolerate dissent.

One of my backgrounds is avant garde art (particularly avant garde music & cinema); & much the same characteristics can be found in this field as here. The issues are similar: both avant garde art & space exploration are minority interests which the true believers simply can't believe >aren't< majority interests; so all kinds of driven hyperbole tends to appear where rational analysis is required.

(If you think some of the claims made for VASIMR or Mars research are overstated, you should have heard the defense of Malcolm le Grice a supposedly sane cineaste once made to me. Granted, >my< defence of Paul Winkler's Brick Wall or Penderecki's Threnody: to the victims of Hiroshima was probably just as daffy as hers)

Bear in mind, though, there's a difference - to me, at least - between grumpy about stuff than being straight out abusive.

I admit that i find it difficult to be patient when the usual press releases about emergent technologies saving space exploration, particularly when they come from people who know better (like Friedman & Huntress) & can be short when people repeat the same silly claims as though they were new insights. That shortness is definitely a fault; but at least i try to avoid using my very Australian command of creative vernacular simply to abuse people out of the argument; which to me is a gesture of the same kind of intellectual cowardice that my artiste friends often showed when someone dared to suggest that the paintings of Rothko or Pollock, say, were rather expensive wallpaper.

Then & now, demonising the critic to avoid considering the awkward possibility that the negative position may actually have some validity which needed to be addressed gutted the debate; & ultimately end with a product which was a lot less than the sum of the intellectual parts - hardly surprising, given that the purity of the true believer was being preferentially advantaged over the totality of effect.

To use a specific case: in this list & elsewhere, we have a possible manned space target - Mars - being pushed by some with an almost religious fervour by its advocates despite the fact that there's no actual evidence to support the theory that a manned Mars mission can be financed anytime soon; & this push is taking place at the intellectual expense of targets which are scientific competitive & which - because they are a lot cheaper - may actually have a chance of getting flown (in order of increasing cost: NEOs & the Moon). In some ways, the manned Mars argument is acting as a kind of intellectual roadblock to new manned space initiatives (like the Church in Machiavelli's Italy) - not big enough to unify the scientific country into an actual mission; but big enough to prevent anyone else from doing so....

Is this a problem? I think so; because if the religious argument wins but the Mars option remains unfundable - very likely given the cost & lack of clear consensus for the target - we get nothing at all; whereas a more rational analysis of costs & benefits may have allowed some cheaper mission options to take place, perhaps ultimately leading to the Mars mission the advocates keep pleading for.

The sooner space advocates stop believing & start analysing, the better our future will be.

Robert