Political Commentary, Space

Jerry Pournelle Weighs In

5 Comments

In response to my PJM piece:

NASA’s budget since Apollo has been big enough that we ought to be halfway to Alpha Centauri by now. Perhaps that’s an exaggeration, but we certainly had a budget that could have taken us to Mars and the asteroids. We certainly could have a Lunar Colony.

That was never the goal. It was all about the pork.

5 thoughts on “Jerry Pournelle Weighs In”

  2. Good article Rand. You quoted Pournelle in full. I was hoping he had more to say. Now may be a good time for me to get both of his step farther out books. I no longer have his first and haven’t read his second. I wonder how he’s feeling and hope he is well?

    We really could have sent a probe to Centauri by now. We could have done a great many more things. If humanity had any idea, the smallest inkling, how the political class has stunted our growth they would be hunted to extinction. Demagoguery would be considered a psychological disorder to be treated in a hospital with massive doses of drugs.

  3. Demagoguery would be considered a psychological disorder to be treated in a hospital with massive doses of drugs.

    They did that in the Soviet Union. Unless your demagoguery was in favor of the political apparatus.

  4. Ah Rand, Pournelle was not resopnding to your article there, he was respondnig to Bolden’s “announcement that the foremost mission of NASA”

  5. They did that in the Soviet Union.

    If they had done it to the entire demagogue squad I’d consider moving there (even with the lousy weather in most parts of the country.) Put some free marketers in charge and they could make something of that place.

    My ex-wife thought she was a free marketer when she had clothes to sell from Turkey in one hand and their paychecks in the other! She was chief financial officer, meaning second in command to a drunk. A very common structure at the time.

    It amazes me how such rational people can have such a system. Here we have a media that will never call out the demagogues. You wonder what they get out of it, or if it’s just pure intellectual laziness.

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