What Could 700 Billion Buy?

What Could 700 Billion Buy?

Well, we've seen the US Government borrow yet another

700 billion dollars to bail out Wall Street companies

that made bad investments... and a lot of people are

thinking maybe we made a mistake.


I've already talked about one way this 700 billion might

have been better spent. Give it to the people and let

them spend it, thereby making these companies that need

bailed out WORK for their money... which is what

capitalism is SUPPOSED to be all about... but I guess

corporate welfare is what we really stand for.


But, let's look at something else we could have done

done with 700 billion dollars...


In the 1960's, the United States lead the world. Our

technology and research was first class, and NOBODY even

came close to keeping up with us. And one of the main

reasons? Space. President Kennedy promised we would put

a man on the moon in ten years, and even though he was

assasinated shortly thereafter, we STILL did it. And the

research and development that went into that project put

us far ahead of every other nation.


There are a couple reasons why. One was the

psychological effect of "having a national goal".

Something we are sadly lacking now. We don't even have

the "Cold War" to spur us onward now... what do we have?

Problems that need solved, but who wants to work on

them? It's better for the huge corporations to

concentrate on making larger and larger profits alone,

and trying to advance this nation takes, at best, a back

seat.


Another reason why the 60's space program was such a

boon to our nation was the research. You will often hear

people complaining: "Why should we waste billions of

dollars in space, with so many problems here on Earth?"

but frankly, this is a very wrong-headed idea.


We did not buy rockets and space capsules with all that

money we spent in the 60's, what we bought was RESEARCH

on how to make them, and none of that was "thrown into

the ocean" as so many like to complain, that the money

was thrown away because the rocket stages did in fact

often end up in the drink... but again, we didn't

actually BUY the rockets, or rather, the cost of the

actual rockets and such was small compared to the

research we STILL HAVE.


Also, and I believe this may be more important in the

long run... much of the research lead to discoveries in

other fields. We gained an entirely new medical

technology because we had to develop ways of monitoring

the astronauts at great distances. Many alive today

likely would not be without that research, in some

cases, the very people most likely to complain about the

supposed waste. The other fields in which technology

advanced with benefits on Earth are too numerous to

mention, but one simple one is new materials.

Lightweight metal alloys and composite substances that

would probably not have been developed without the space

program.


And back to today, add in the need for new resources,

and new sources of energy, and returning to space in a

big way becomes a very attractive proposition.


In the 1970's O'Niel calculated the cost to build a

large space colony to be about 100 billion. Such a space

colony would be huge, house thousands of people, collect

mega-jules of free solar energy, and almost certainly

lead to discoveries and inventions that simply cannot be

made here on Earth.


So, instead of 700 billion dollars, wasted to save a

number of large corporations, most of whom brought their

troubles onto themselves, we could instead have built 7

O'Niel colonies. The pay off would surely have turned

the economy around, and that is completely ignoring the

Earth-bound benefits seperate from the free energy and

new discoveries.


But perhaps even more important, for the people of the

USA as well as the rest of the world, would be the

simple benefits of solving problems and having a

meaningful goal. People would have something to hope

for, to look forward to, to CARE about.


Personally, I believe the future of humanity is in

space. At the present time, the human race is keeping

all its eggs in a single, very fragile basket. We know

what happened 65 million years ago... the dinosaurs were

wiped out due to a single asteroid or comet hitting our

world... and there are lots of chunks of stuff out there

that could easily hit Earth, and wipe us out the same

way. Nuclear bombs, pollution, global climate change...

the list of things that could kill us is long and

frightening. We need to spread out, so no one thing can

wirpe us all out at once. And space is the only place

left to go.


I know writing and posting things like this is probably

a huge waste of time... I'm only one person, and most of

you either won't bother to read this, or will view it as

"pie-in-the-sly" ideas, or simply wishful thinking...

but know this: if we do not find some way to leave this

world, we WILL die.