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January 30, 2004
Pay for Performance
NSS member Richard McNeil's letter was printed in the Memphis Commercial Appeal in response to 2 editorials they ran face to face including a cartoon showing a foot labeled "space initiative" stepping on "education". Reprinted with the author's permission. Dear Editor: Your running the face-to-face editorials on Friday was an interesting case for the diversity of American thought. Unfortunately, Bill Day's editorial is wrong in several ways, but John Paschal's "Voyage to Mars is a trip we must take" is a refreshing counter balance. To take the main issue with John Day's editorial, a funding plan that would cost only $20 billion to get to Mars was proposed by Robert Zubrin in "The Case for Mars". While this was proposed about 1997, and some upward adjustment may be called for, I would suspect that his figures would still work. This is what I call the 'PAY FOR PERFORMANCE' plan. That is, the government will pay $20 billion to the first group that gets to Mars. One charm of this plan is that nothing is spent unless someone gets to the Red Planet, or meets one of the milestones on the path. Another charm is that any group pursuing the goal can get there on their timetable - whether it takes 30 years, or 3. This works, as the flights of SpaceShip 1 by Burt Rutan's group over Mojave, California, is demonstrating. It's about time the ancient art of rocketry borrowed one of the great ideas from the start of aviation. So let's go to Mars - not only for the thrill of the exploration, the national pride, but to show that private interests can make money at it ! Richard McNeilPosted by apsmith at January 30, 2004 04:14 PM
