Victory From Space: This is no time for science to retreat; it must attack.

www.habitablezone.com ^ | Oct 2001 | Robert Zubrin

[PatrickHenry]

Great article.

[eddie willers]

Wow!...talk about serendipity.

Last week I was bored and so went to the library to find some light reading. I noticed a slim science fiction book about the first Mars landing. When I saw that it was a first novel by the author of The Case for Mars and the main brain behind the plan to send manned missions to Mars IN 10 YEARS!, cheaply, using current technology by being smarter than the average bear, I knew I had to take it home.

Though it read like a novel written by a scientist, it was a cool little corker of a story with with some freeper touches.

It takes place in 2012 and starts with a crew of 5 (3 men 2 women) and looked like it could be PC as hell, but I stuck with it. And I'm glad I did because it was anything but.

The Captain was a John Wayne type who was prouder than hell to plant an AMERICAN flag in Martian soil (no mention of the UN or Russia or anyone else in this story)

One woman was a Vasser Lib and the other was a fundamentalist Christian 'hillbilly' and the sparks flew. There were crooked politicians and an enviromentalist whacko cult that was looking to scuttle the mission.

I finished the book this last Friday night and felt a pang when the heros, defying orders by corrupt politicians and by getting help from a military man who refused to shoot down the returning craft, crash landed in NY harbor at the base of the Statue of Lberty! (I told you it was written by a scientist...ha ha). As he described the flottilla of yatchts and pleasure boats (the Vasser Lib ask for, and got, a latté) the author mentioned the World Trade Center as being behind them. OUCH!

The author was the writer of this artcle and I recommend his book First Landing.

[RightWhale]

If we build a manned base on the moon, terrorist Islamism will die.

[Momaw Nadon]

got to give this one a planetary bump to the top

[Lazamataz]

How can America's space program contribute to victory? There are a number of obvious ways. Our reconnaissance satellites will spot the terrorist encampments, our navigation satellites will guide us to them, and our communication satellites will allow us to coordinate our forces to assure that they prevail in combat.

Plus our transporters will help beam bin Ladin into jail, and our phasers can be set to cut right through the rock of the mountains he lurks in.

Lets not even discuss the tribbles.

[PatrickHenry]

Yet another bump. But bump isn't for Mars, which is probably a waste, but for the article's discussion of fundamentalism and the West.

[Storm Orphan]

Placemarker bump.

[KevinDavis]

I read that book myself, loved it. To me this one of the few sci-fi books that is almost based on fact. He is correct, we could land on Mars in 10 years using the current technology.

[eddie willers]

Lets not even discuss the tribbles.

You got troubles with tribbles?
I knew you were a Klingon!
(and a Canadian Klingon to boot)

[KevinDavis]

It should be a Bump for Mars.. Mars is not a waste of time. Staying on this godforsaken planet it. A Freeper Martian Bump.

[Jupiter II]

you mean marbles? lol

[PatrickHenry]

Mars is not a waste of time. Staying on this godforsaken planet it [is].

I'm not a one-planet kinda guy. But Mars is nowhere. We can do better. The money that will be wasted on terraforming should be spent on developing better propulsion systems. Then we can have our choice of destinations.

[eddie willers]

Wow....three freepers who have read this small book.
But I'm hardly surprised at freeper reading lists anymore. : )

[Momaw Nadon]

We could zap those terrorists with space lasers, just like frying ants in the sun with a magnifying glass.

[WRhine]

Very insightful, well-written article. The author vividly illustrates how religious zealots can stifle a culture's progress. Science and discovery is the key to man's survival and intellectual growth.

[Physicist]

But works of reason can be more than contemplative; they can be creative. Consider the object of the terrorists rage; the World Trade Center. A triumph of the human mind, the WTC was the most recent of the series of astonishing feats of civil engineering New York City has shown the world over the past 118 years.

These architectural marvels have their uses, but their value goes much deeper. The creator of the first of them, Johann Roebling, designer of the Brooklyn Bridge, said it well; “No one will be able to look at it and not feel prouder to be a man.”

Some of the most cherished and profound moments of my life were experienced on the top and in the observation deck of the south tower of the World Trade Center. The buildings themselves were, to use a seriously devalued word in its truest sense, awesome. But they were only the cherries on top of the cake, which was to see the surface of planet Earth curving away, as the lights of the Metropolis slowly came on during a crystal-clear sunset.

It was an achievement-worshipper's religious experience.

I have no doubt that, at some point, the plan to destroy those particular towers was hatched when someone connected to the event went where I went, saw what I saw, felt what I felt, and hated it. When the towers were destroyed, I knew immediately why they, of all things in the world, were targeted. They were an embodiment of human greatness, and a vantage point from which one could see further greatness, still. Of course they had to be destroyed. Anyone going up there was put face to face with the irreducible truth of the greatness of mankind.

Well, the buildings are destroyed, but the truth remains.

[Jupiter II]

[PatrickHenry]

From the article:
But then the fundamentalists took over. The philosophers were made into fugitives. Scientific inquiry was banned. Libraries that were found to contain scientific works were burned.

That's one of the principle reasons I hang out in the evolution threads. Fundamentalism is a major problem in the West too, potentially. But it's not in power at the moment.