OzOz

Serpent,

You talk of me making assumptions. Fine, but where is my "assumption" that the "egg-heads" would "simply be cut loose to screw things up in other ways" (as you put it)? My bit about fears of Russian rocket engineers being tempted to sell themselves to the highest bidder and how preventing that was one of the motives behind the US inviting Russia into the ISS project is not my assumption, but a fear that has been stated in print many times and, it would seem, made a basis for US and Russian government policy. (Also, I'm not aware that any Russians actually *have* sold their services in this way. I would suggest that's a pretty good example of personal responsibility, and of them giving quite a bit of thought to the moral implications of the things they could create.)

I also noted your response to my question about your statement that we don't need more satellites or need them to be cheaper, given the damage the mass media is doing to us all. While I agree that we're not well-served by the mass media (after all, in the final analysis, commercial TV news doesn't exist to inform - it exists to sell shampoo and anything else anyone cares to advertise, for the right price), you didn't answer the original question: How does the performance of the mass media mean that we don't need more, or cheaper, satellites?

I won't argue with your three points - I'd consider them to be pretty self-evident (and I'd note that we're not looking for other places to screw up). I would point out though that I'd be more than happy to work in a civilian or military (under the right circumstances) space program - and in so doing, I wouldn't feel in the slightest bit irresponsible.

__________________
Maybe you should put some shorts on or something, if you wanna keep fighting evil today.