Return-path: X-Andrew-Authenticated-as: 7997;andrew.cmu.edu;Ted Anderson Received: from beak.andrew.cmu.edu via trymail for +dist+/afs/andrew.cmu.edu/usr11/tm2b/space/space.dl@andrew.cmu.edu (->+dist+/afs/andrew.cmu.edu/usr11/tm2b/space/space.dl) (->ota+space.digests) ID ; Mon, 5 Feb 90 01:24:21 -0500 (EST) Message-ID: Reply-To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU From: space-request+@Andrew.CMU.EDU To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU Date: Mon, 5 Feb 90 01:23:59 -0500 (EST) 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" ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 31 Jan 90 20:22:56 GMT From: pyrnj!pyrdc!netxcom!netxdev!ewiles@rutgers.edu (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 ewiles@iad-nxe.global-mis.DHL.COM | Vienna, VA 22182 ------------------------------ Date: 2 Feb 90 13:53:12 GMT From: amara!khai@uunet.uu.net (S. Khai Mong) Subject: Re: furlongs per fortnight in space In article <35348@mips.mips.COM> rex@mips.COM (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 (313)973-1300 (uunet|sharkey)!amara!khai khai%amara.uucp@mailgw.cc.umich.edu ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 4 Feb 90 13:38 CST From: TAHA%TCUAVMS.BITNET@ricevm1.rice.edu 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!jim@angband.s1.gov (Jim Bowery) To: crash!space@angband.s1.gov 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: $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ ------------------------------ End of SPACE Digest V11 #9 *******************