Hello, all --

This morning, Fox and I were talking on AIM, and the conversation turned to the space program, prompted by the "How the Left Kept Us Out Of Space" thread started by SDAI. I'm going to paste it here, with his permission, for your consideration. There will be a copy at CE as well, in an attempt to move political considerations about space over there.

Robert, if you think one copy is sufficient, please delete the one you consider to be superfluous. Thanks.

Comments?

Regards--
Mary Anne

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Mary Anne: Hm. You know what? If the space dialog is going to develop, it's going to have to find a way to combat the current climate of fear.

Mary Anne: Moving off the planet is accompanied by a belief in the future.

fox: funny, I just switched to the Space board :-)

fox: and you're right

Mary Anne: Verne in the supremely confident late 1800s, the Real space program of the 1950s-70s...

fox: think that's why there's no space program to speak of now, except in China?

fox: a victim of the Unraveling

Mary Anne: even though the rocket launches then were in part driven by strategic military concerns.

Mary Anne: Yes.

Mary Anne: I think that the problem for space advocates now is one of shoring up and preserving for later, but I wouldn't want to post that on a public board.

Mary Anne: It would be too discouraging.

fox: Then perhaps we may still live to see our grandchildren's cohort return to the Moon, and go to Mars

Mary Anne: It's now a question of appearing to move forward so as not to lose ground.

Mary Anne: Yes.

fox: Phil posts that philosophy all the time and takes flak for it, but I agree with him

Mary Anne: Also, of getting people to realize two things: the arguments about allocation of money are stupid when there is no money being allocated...

fox: yes

Mary Anne: and ..oh hell.. I forgot.

foxwaiting: what?

Mary Anne: the second thing

Mary Anne: Oh yeah!

Mary Anne: Advocates have to point out that the space operas and science fiction works are not real.

Mary Anne: They help build a forward-looking mindset, like we could really do this.

Mary Anne: But our society has crossed the line. The reality line.

foxwaiting: that *is* a problem - a generation and a half of kids who know Star Wars and Babylon 5 but not Apollo

Mary Anne: It's all smudged and fudged.

Mary Anne: The reality of space will be much more pedestrian.
Mary Anne: Nobody looks like Seven Of Nine. Not even Teri Hatcher.

fox: Although.... I have to say, that given the choice between Zubrin's _The Case for Mars_ and Robinson's trilogy, I'd choose the fiction as a teaching tool.

Mary Anne: As a propaganda piece, absolutely!

fox: It's about *people* in space, not hardware

Mary Anne: And Robinson is using science as background -- the Mars Trilogy is about sociology.

Mary Anne: +++

fox: its about culture and politics and economics and reasons why we do things like terraforming

fox: you've read it?

Mary Anne: Only reviews, but enough to understand its focus.

fox: I think you'd like it

Mary Anne: I'm a librarian. I don't have time to read.:-\

fox: there's still plenty of hard science in it, too - another reason for making it a teaching tool

Mary Anne: That's why I have eye strain.

Mary Anne: Yes, but as background.

Mary Anne: The science, that is.

fox: I wonder... how to preserve what there is, including the desire to go, until it's time again. And could I as a writer contribute?

Mary Anne: This is a political problem, not a scientific one, and that's why it's not getting the attention it should from the people who know the most about it, and what attention it's getting is mostly the wrong kind.

Mary Anne: Scientists and engineers are notoriously bad at politics and public relations, with certain exceptions who become famous because of their exceptional status.

Mary Anne: And the understanding is not there, that politicians don't take the lead in areas like this.

fox: Last time, it came from the top down - Kennedy said, so we did. Will it have to come from the bottom up, next time? that's been tried - there's not enough public interest - that lack of faith in a future you started this with...

Mary Anne: The constituency must be there. It must be organized, and more recently (with the advent of mass media), its message must be simple and direct on its surface. This doesn't describe the space advocates at all, except for the artists, who have built an impressive fantasy world that has become, ironically, an obstacle to the more humdrum world of real space.

fox: I think sometimes that the right kind of inspiration - a story, but a realistic one, not a space opera - might help

Mary Anne: The last one like that was "Rocket Boys", but that had the nostalgic feel of a story from The Past, already finished. Homer Hickam was part of NASA in the Apollo era, and in the public imagination, that era is over.

fox: yes - it will have to be fiction to place it in the near future (often, the hardest kind to write, and the quickest to become 'dated', naturally)

foxwaiting: btw, I'd never heard of Homer Hickam - still don't know what he did, and didn't see _Rocket Boys_

Mary Anne: It's a good movie. It crosses the line between regular working-class values and scientific curiosity. I think that's the best thing about it. It shows the incentive coming from human curiosity and enthusiasm, not a command from On High.

Mary Anne: Even though, in the real world of the time, the command from On High opened up the opportunity for rocket boys. Without the incentive of government eagerness, there would have been few places for a boy like Homer to go with his dreams.

fox: yes - except to the cornfields to launch models. von Braun had the same problem in the 20s.

Mary Anne: Now there is little government incentive -- we're turning inward, there isn't that confidence -- and so the challenge is to rewrite the story in the popular mind to reflect this new reality, that it will have to bubble up rather than flow down.

fox: (rewriting the story) the one drawback with the KSR trilogy is the lack of history for the initial mission - a huge pile of money is spent without an inkling of where it came from, or the incentive to spend it.

fox: it's also set too soon in our future

Mary Anne: Well, we know that now.

Mary Anne: But it could still be used.

fox: Robinson had to have known that when he wrote it - it's not that old

fox: I chuckled when I re-read the founding of the University of Mars wasn't that far off the date on my t-shirt

Mary Anne: The problem with fiction projected forward is the tension between projecting far enough to make it plausible, but not so far that the reader thinks, "Oh, come on, haven't we gotten past that yet?"

Mary Anne: You went to the University of Mars??

Mary Anne: :-D

fox: An incisive statement of *the* problem of near-future fiction. I *will have gone* to U of M ;-)

Mary Anne: Well, university degrees notwithstanding...

fox: lol

Mary Anne: I'm not sure there's even an organized effort among civilian advocates to develop a pro-space message that's not tied to a specific objective -- Moon, Mars, etc. -- tied in its turn to all those "Jane You Ignorant Slut" infighting arguments. What politician (who isn't already an advocate) would want to support and fund an argument?

fox: I thought that's what politicians did

Mary Anne: Politicians only fund arguments when it's one group against another. Not when it's one group against itself.

fox: trying to consider a way in to the motivation question on space. You know, the usual conflict between 'because it's there' and 'because we can rip it off'
Mary Anne: Not sure I understand the latter.

fox: the cheap manufacturing and resources angle - 'commercialization' is what it's usually called.

Mary Anne: I'm pretty sure that the Edmund Hillary approach won't work with the American public. They'd be, like, "OK, sure, fund it yourself, if you want to explore for its own sake," which would be fine, except it's such a huge undertaking, and it usually turns out to have strategic applications, so the government horns in on it anyway.

Mary Anne: Cheap manufacturing will be an angle, but it hasn't been demonstrated yet.

fox: yes, to all of the above

Mary Anne: Also, I don't see a Spaceworkers Local #001 yet, so the idea of jobs in space hasn't attracted much attention from the labor angle.

fox: oughta be local #2001

fox: Raoul would think so, anyway :-)

fox: The 'angle of approach' has to change. Up to now, advocates have been arguing about why we should go *now*. What's needed is is a 'keep the flame' idea, a reason to go when we can.

Mary Anne: There has to be a common schtick. And, although the alternative projects should still be under development, there has to be a way to unify them and to get everybody to SHUT UP about the internal disagreements unless they're of a really truly scientific nature. In which case they need to be aired, so the public can see science being science.

fox: Hard to contemplate, considering the attention span of 21st Cent humanity

Mary Anne: Sound bites. We need PR.

fox: exactly

Mary Anne: I've pasted this conversation into a Word doc. I'd like to post it, with your permission.

fox: permission granted, but we're not done yet ;-)

Mary Anne: True.
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