Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/pc/text/spacedig/v11_0/v11_009.txt

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Subject: SPACE Digest V11 #9

SPACE Digest                                       Volume 11 : Issue 9

Today's Topics:
               Cosmonaut Quote!
         Re: furlongs per fortnight in space
               RE: SPACE Digest V11 #7
             Grassroots Space "Radicals"
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Date: 31 Jan 90 20:22:56 GMT
From: pyrnj!pyrdc!netxcom!netxdev![e-mail]  (Edwin Wiles)
Subject: Cosmonaut Quote!

An interesting quote from the February/March issue of "Air & Space" magazine.

"The Rescue of Salyut 7", pg 57.
Cosmonaut Dzhanibekov on docking with Salyut 7 while the station was 'dead'.

    "Docking is like driving a seven-ton truck with fragile freight
     on an icy road into a narrow gate at the end of this road."

Rather appropriate, eh?
--
    "Who?... Me?... WHAT opinions?!?"    | Edwin Wiles
    Schedule: (n.) An ever changing nightmare.    | NetExpress, Inc.
  ...!{hadron,sundc,pyrdc,uunet}!netxcom!ewiles    | 1953 Gallows Rd. Suite 300
       [e-mail]    | Vienna, VA 22182

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Date: 2 Feb 90 13:53:12 GMT
From: amara![e-mail]  (S. Khai Mong)
Subject: Re: furlongs per fortnight in space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Rex Di Bona) writes:
>   Does anybody know of a country other than the US that still has
>   imperial measurments, as a standard?

Last time I checked, North or South Yemen and Burma.
--
Sao Khai Mong:   Applied Dynamics, 3800 Stone School Road, Ann Arbor, Mi48108
[phone] (uunet|sharkey)!amara!khai  [e-mail]

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Date: Sun, 4 Feb 90 13:38 CST
From: [e-mail]
Subject: RE: SPACE Digest V11 #7

        I agree and support Dana Paxon's demands. Four months ago I had a USD 18
00.00
 All due to some body's KOOL discovery of my PIN, as a moslem I pray that
my Allah will punish that person. I think US SPRINT's voice-dialing card is
great and I am waiting to get one and say to hell-with-you PINs.

------------------------------

Date: Sun, 4 Feb 90 18:52:15 PST
From: mordor!lll-tis!ames!ucsd!pnet01.cts.com![e-mail] (Jim Bowery)
To: crash![e-mail]
Subject: Grassroots Space "Radicals"

Tihamer T. Toth-Fejel writes:

>                     ...  In addition, each has fundamentally
>different values, especially with respect to what NSS should be
>doing, ie. should we be rocking the boat (like Earth First!) or
>working within the system (like all the companies working on cleaning
>up toxic waste dumps, or on recycling technologies).  (Maybe we can
>use this difference to our advantage.)

I consider the National Space Society to be very important because
it has been the main obstacle to a truly activated grassroots pro-space
movement and therefore, it is the main thing blocking our best hope for
a viable and timely breakout into space.

Comparing anti-space pacifist authorities such as Scott Pace, Mark Hopkins
and Sandra Adamson, to entrepreneurs who are risking their own capital on
their own ideas toward the goal of a clean environment is to make a wretched
mockery the efforts of those entrepreneurs and of the properly analogous
efforts of people like George Koopman and space entrepreneurs who are working
"within the system" as you put it.  Your terminology, however, confuses "the
system" of NASA and its captive aerospace contractors with "the system" of
free enterprise.  Your thinking has been conditioned by those who benefit from
such confusion.  Don't listen to them, kid.  They speak with forked tongue.
Just look at where they've been getting their PAYCHECKS.

If there were a comparison it might be with the board of directors of
the Sierra Club, but then the Sierra Club's board of directors isn't
controlled by people who get their PAYCHECKS from a multi-billion
dollar environmental technology and cleanup industry whose sole source of
capitalization and business is the EPA.  Also, since NSS now appears to
have been receiving a signficiant portion of its funding directly from
the Aerospace Industry Advisory Council (an organization which appears
 to exist for no other purpose) one would have to further hypothesize a
Sierra Club whose officers and staffers were paid, indirectly, by EPA itself.

I've been involved in the environmental movement since the early seventies
and have never affiliated with radical groups such as Earth First!
One might wonder, therefore, whatever got under my skin about space to
make me so "irrationally radical"?  The answer:  There has never been a
profound betrayal of grassroots environmentalists by those in control of
moderate environmental organizations like the Sierra Club, nor has there
been a systematic use of the big lie theory.  There HAS been a profound
betrayal of grassroots space activists by those in control of the National
Space Society and the big lie theory protects them from wide-spread
recognition of this betrayal.

Like the Hitler-youth who helped promote big lies, the social needs of
your typical space nerd in the National Space Society ensure a drive
toward upward affiliation that makes him WANT to believe NSS authorities
regardless of the violence done to the truth.   It is no accident, by the way,
that while Andy Cutler and I were reviving the San Diego Chapter from its
post-Challenger malaise, it had the largest female to male ratio in the
Society without any specific effort to recruit females.  A group of nerds
slavishly spending their time trying to get the approval of even bigger nerds
in in Washington D. C. so even bigger nerds in a boy-toy industry can steal
money from hardworking Americans, is pretty damn repulsive to women.  Now that
the chapter is growing rapidly as a result of its leadership in genuine space
activism, the Nerds are back with their deep-seated desire to please those
above them in the NSS and resultant aversion to "divisiveness" with a
predictable drop-off in female participation.  Fortunately, HR2674 is no
longer critically dependent on the San Diego Chapter.

Good, clean-cut Hitler-youth nerds like Dale Skran are functionaries of
the National SS in its promotion of its big lies.  You are boardering on it
yourself.  In order to maintain their feeling of being accepted by "the
group" (in this case, NSS authorities and associated social groups such as
CSDC) these functionaries would suppress any dissent or even doubt about
the validity of the big lie.  Seeing this suppression take place successfully,
others who might have their own doubts would suppress those doubts themselves,
making external suppression less unnecessary and therefore less obvious.

Think about your average Sierra Club member who likes to camp out in
Yosemite, contributes to the World Wildlife Fund and occasionally
writes letters in support of tough environmental legislation.  How is
this sincere person going to react when President Bush increases EPA's
budget by $15 billion/year, lets EPA squash any private environmental
companies who aren't getting most of their money from EPA, helps its
captive companies control their markets in return for political support
and takes over the Sierra Club by inserting employees of EPA-captive
companies in the key positions of authority?  Well, one might not
get to bent out of shape as long as the whole thing were still cleaning
up the environment, right?  But when EPA starts chewing up more and more
money with less and less effective environmental action, the Sierra Club
spends all of its political capital helping EPA get more money and none
reforming its activities and membership in the Sierra Club drops off leaving
only a bunch of losers and misfits to work for bigger EPA budgets, this
Sierra Club Member might, reasonably, become a bit radical.  If his
efforts to bring to light this disgusting situation are met with
noise from the losers and misfits, he might decide the best thing to
do is disband the Sierra Club altogether.  Well kiddo, that's the
"radical environmentalist" analogy, without the brain-noise.
---
Typical RESEARCH grant:
$
Typical DEVELOPMENT contract:
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

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End of SPACE Digest V11 #9
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