[meteorite-list] Ben Bova riffs with "what ifs"

[W&S Schroer]

Hi list,
even tough some of the statements are a bit far fetched I basically agree 
with Ben Bova's contribution.
Yes, the world would look different today if the American people would have 
elected politicians with a vision and not - for instance -  a second class 
actor playing first class a third class president. But the same applies to 
the country where I lived in those years, namely Germany.

But why change a system that works fine for those on the bottom of the list 
of the poorest people in the world? We have seen what has happened to those 
who've tried to implement major changes to our society, the Kennedy 
brothers, M.L. King, M. Ghandi, the list goes on and on.....

For decades the excuse was that the 'evil empire' called Soviet Union would 
kill us all if we don't stay on top of them by building more and more 
unimaginably destructive and costly weapons. And then a miracle happened and 
the iron curtain came down and most of us thought that finally there will be 
peace on this earth and mankind could do all the wonderful things Ben Bova 
mentioned in his posting. But no, it was not supposed to be. Suddenly, long 
before the horrible event now simply known as 9/11 happened, we were at war 
with Iraq, our soldiers were and still are dying in Afghanistan, and some 
years later, 9/11 was used to justify the killing of hundreds of thousand of 
innocent people who had nothing to do with the attack but were unfortunate 
enough to be sitting on one of the richest oil reserves in the world. The 
former 'evil empire' was replaced with the' axis of evil' and now we are 
apparently threatened by several smaller countries, one of them belonging to 
the top of the list I mentioned earlier. So why should our governments 
change the way they spend our money? It seems nothing has changed and we 
still need to be on top of not only Russia but now on top of the 'axis of 
evil' as well if we want to survive in this world.

We are allowing governments to spend a huge slice of their GDPs on funding 
the so called 'Defence Departements' because we all want to be safe and we 
therefore can see a need for the huge costs involved. And because a Dollar 
is only a Dollar and cannot be stretched into two, science in general has to 
pay the price. And as long a high percentage of our society still believes 
in Astrology, in Occultism and countless other equally unproven nonsense, 
and as long there is not enough pressure from the voters, there will be no 
change in any government's policies.

Many years ago, long before the arrival of the internet, I spend a warm 
night on a blanket with a new girlfriend somewhere in the desert in Outback 
Australia. After seen the stars once or twice we turned over and actually 
looked at them and when I tried to explain to my new-found love that 
practically all those countless stars out there are suns like the one that 
brightens up our skies on a regular basis, she told me that I was nuts 
because that was the dumbest thing she'd ever heard.

Needless to say that this night turned out to be a one-night stand.

It's up to us to change this world by voting for people with vision and new 
ideas. We shouldn't allow NASA to spend billions on the seemingly obvious 
next big thing, that is putting man on mars. Haven't we learned anything at 
all? There is no vision behind a plan like that. We should take one step 
after the other and spend our money on projects that generate an income so 
that private industries become involved too.

Like many others I already own a tiny piece of Mars, so there is no need at 
this stage for anybody to go out there and return with a few more rocks, 
robots can do that much cheaper and more efficient.

I hope the Obama administration will come up with a plan once this financial 
mess is behind us. And maybe, just maybe, we eventually will spend the 
necessary Dollars on trying to find those large rocks out there that will 
put an end to everything, because it's not a question of if, but a question 
of when they come and when they will come it doesn't matter where you are on 
the scale of the poorest people in the world.

Cheers

Werner Schroer