Quote Originally Posted by Bill Greenwood View Post
You guys write a lot of complicated technical stuff. but I tho i haven't read it I am unlikley to be convinced by fiction from 1979. My question is really pretty simple. I know about com satellties and weather ones and spy ones. but otherwise why do we keep sending people up to orbit around the earth for a year. like the man who is the husband of the lady who was shot in Az. cant recall her name. What would you do for a year? What do you bring back? Cook and Columbus found vibrant and welcoming new worlds to settle with tons of natural resources and favorable to people...
If you haven't read it then don't dismiss it. Stine's book is not fiction, it's a report on the possibilities in space. Unlimited solar energy, natural resources aka raw materials (one small nickel-iron asteroid could supply the steel needs of the world for 200 years), a place to put polluting industries, etc., etc. Mars, probably useless, ditto for the Moon except as a way station, the asteroids are where the action will be, since you don't have to lift the materials out of a deep gravity well. Right now it's all about developing the techniques to get into space and live there.

Remember that somebody once asked Benjamin Franklin about the first hot air balloons, "Of what possible use is it?", to which he replied, "Of what possible use is a newborn baby?"