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Yes, I agree that there are a lot prerequisites that need to be met before we get anywhere near ready to build space habitats. It boils down to economic incentive, and frankly I do not believe that government areospace contracting provides enough profit motive. An important part of any economic incentive perhaps, but NASA and the DOD by themselves are not going to propel us into space. There needs to be some sort of "gold rush" or other motivation that spurs private industry into action.

Don't misunderstand me, I love NASA and have fond memories of watching the moon landing as a child. I think they are important player in a national space program, but I fear they have lost their focus. What is needed is some sort of over-riding goal or need that will prove to the American taxpayer why we are spending vast amounts of money on it. I don't think that there is one thing that has captivated our national attention with regards to the space program since the moon landings. The moon landings themselves may not have had much economic impact, but in terms of moral and national defense I believe they were vital.

Since the moon landings there hasn't been one thing that everyone can easily conceptualize as to *why* we are up there in orbit. Most people recognize the value of the pure sciences but pure science doesn't galvanize the public to the same extent that the Cold War did. I think that the Shuttle plays an important role in post-Cold War space exploration, but it has become and end to itself not quite the means to an end it was promised to be. Likewise with the space station formerly known as Freedom, ISS. In my opinion ISS has been a bigger boondoggle than the Shuttle, since the Shuttle has multiple applications, including military missions. I have always thought that having the space station when we also have the Shuttle is like building a cabin in the woods when we also have a Winnebago. It costs a lot of money just to drive the RV out to the cabin. Are what we're doing at the cabin things we cannot do in the RV? Do we really need more long-term studies on the negative effects of weightlessness?

The precusor to mining initiatives must come from private industry. We have to crawl before we can walk, and we must have some incentive to take those first steps like a parent coaxing a toddler to take those first uneasy steps. I know we're going to skin our knees. But without some tangible motivation, will we ever want to try again after we lose more astronauts?

What is that motivation going to be? The last century had the Cold War. I don't really want the same situation to occur, though I see the possibility of another space race with the Chinese. Military applications are a perfectly valid motivation for development of new technologies, and space exporation is no exception to this. However, a Cold War II will be a very dangerous thing, and I would hate to think of another "missle crisis" happening with some foreign power who is, dare I say it, less sane than Nikita Kruschev. I'd rather that the motivation comes from an economic expansion rather than a military expansion.

An economic solution to the problem must come from a significant economic need, it must be for a reason everyone can understand, and everyone must be able to invest in it, and likewise everyone must be able to reap benefits from it. The colonization of the New World fit this bill, as did the colonization of the American West. Also, precursor technologies enabled the expansion to occur. In these cases, population pressure caused them to be economically viable. I am not suggestion that population pressure alone will enable space colonization, what I am saying is precursor technologies must be developed to first to solve present problems.

What is one far-reaching concern these days which has almost the impact of the Cold War? My answer would be energy policy. Energy police has almost, if not equal national security interest as does the military. Often, energy police and military policy overlap. However, energy police also has direct impact on the daily lives of us all, and it has a peaceful component as well.

A lot has been written on this topic by authors more authoritative than me, but in short I am talking about microwave power satellites. Solar power has great potential, but its major drawback is that the source of enery (the sun) is obscured by the atmosphere and planet Earth itself. There is that pesky nighttime, clouds, that ocean of air that reduces the efficiency of solar power. The greenies don't seem to care about the inefficiencies of solar power, though they recongnize its potential. The solution to the problem of solar power is to collect it from geostationary orbit where there are no clouds and available sunlight 23 hours per day and transmit the energy to the earth in a wavelength that isn't affected by the atmosphere.

I believe solar power satellites can solve our enery problems, and help us wean ourselves from foreign oil. People say our economy runs on oil, but I don't really believe this. I believe our society runs on electricity, and that oil is a secondary fuel used to augment the creation of mechanical energy and the production of electrical power. I do not believe this would destroy the petrochemical industry, either, because petrochemicals make such valuable and useful chemical feedstocks for plastics, machine oils, and so on. Seems rather wasteful to burn it all as fuel.

What I think NASA needs to do is apply itself to the solution of national energy problems. This will do several valuable things to the American people as well as to NASA. It will give NASA a goal of national importance. There will be no question as to why NASA is spending vast amounts of money. It gives NASA a tangible and achievable goal. It gives NASA a definitive direction and focus. And ultimately it will ultimately provide energy to us all, a general benefit. It will be developing an industry will be able to leverage the profit motive to achieve its goals. And in the long run, it will develop the precursor technologies needed as a stepping stone to space exploration.

This is my plan. Vote for me. :)

(gotta get back to work)