Reply #32: Look at this!

[Indiana_Dem]

Walter Renquist who is a geologist, I believe, wrote about this:

Myth: Export the population problem to outer space

This also may seem like an idea too absurd to discuss. However, it is amazing what can be suggested even in high government circles. In those early space exploration times, some thought that the answer to the population problem was to export it from Earth. Hardin has identified the source of this myth stating: "In 1958, four years after the founding of NASA —the National Aeronautics and Space Administration—its congressional guardian, the Science and Astronautics Committee, supported the idea of space migration as an ultimate solution to the problem of a 'bursting population."' Hardin adds, ". . . when an agency is fighting for space that counts—space at the public trough—its administrators are in no hurry to correct statements that increase the size of their budget."(14)

Regardless of their logic or otherwise, ideas of populating space persist. In 1996, an article in a national magazine proposed that most industrial plants on Earth be replaced by those built on the moon and that the population pressures on Earth be solved by colonizing Mars. Some quotes from that article follow:

"The only way to keep the economy expanding infinitely is to expand our resource base infinitely. The universe is a big place. Human ingenuity is such that we will find innumerable ways to economically prosper in space"

"We will have escaped the trap of a closed, cyclical economy; the riches of the solar system will lie before us."

"The moon, with no ecosystem to damage, can become the seat of heavy industry. The earth, relieved of its population pressure and industrial burden as people migrate, can be allowed to regreen."(16)

http://www.greatchange.org/othervoices.html

I think someone wants to ship a bunch of us to space to manufacture goods!!! Egads!!! Maybe that's why Bush wants to go to Mars!!