From: Monte Davis 

"Geo."  wrote:

>So the Apollo program was just a clever way to cover up how much we were
>spending on defense?

No -- very explicitly no, as I wrote: "I point this out not to
deprecate the space program ("it was just another playground for the
eeevil Amerikkkan military-industrial complex"), but to emphasize how
much space 'piggybacked' on another enterprise."

I'm trying to look at fifty years in space and understand how and why we
(the species as well as the US) are where we are:  very broadly, why a
relatively fast pace 1957-1969 turned to a relatively slow one 1969-2007...
if you like, why the scenario of "2001" didn't come about on
schedule and won't come about any time soon.

One widespread view is that we lost the magic mojo of the early years
-- that our Apollo-launching forefathers were mighty men, we've lost
their inspiring vision, etc. And a large part of that view is an unexamined
belief that the cost of the space race was... well, what we paid for the
space race.

I'm arguing that in fact that was the tip of the iceberg: that 3/4 of the
real cost was a de facto R&D "subsidy" from the strategic
arms race (call it "dual-use" technology, which was Adam's
original point) and that after the 1960s, most of that defense spending
turned to other areas that no longer advanced civilian space capabilities
as well. So civilian space slowed down after the 1960s? Well, duh...

There *is* a radical-left "guilt by association" critique of the
space program out there (which I parody in the first paragraph above), but
that's not where I'm coming from. My PoV rests on arithmetic, not on any
political/moral stance vis-a-vis the arms race, US global policies, etc
yawn etc.





Monte Davis
http://montedavis.livejournal.com

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