Gore Pushes for Private Investment in Space

dptalia writes "Al Gore said in a recent speech that more private enterprises need to invest in space. Gore pointed to the successful growth of the internet as proof that private investment is faster than government. Not surprisingly, Gore also lambasted President Bush's space policy."

Real Al Gore quote kiddies...

[msimm]

Just when you want to give /. readers more credit something like this comes up. That quote [snopes.com] has been debunked [cnn.com] more [washingtonmonthly.com] times [everything2.com] then I care to remember. But I guess for some n00blets its more fun reguritating something stupid then bothering to get it right.

"Vint Cerf: I think it is very fair to say that the Internet would not be where it is in the United States without the strong support given to it and related research areas by the vice president in his current role and in his earlier role as senator."

Al Gore saw the business potential. He never claimed to actually have invented it. Vint Cert is a pretty good reference.

Re:Liberal vs. Conservative

[orcrist]

Not that I trust Mr. Gore to shrink the federal government.

Why not? He already did more to shrink the federal government as Clintons VP than any of these lip-service Republicans since they've been in power:

• Reduced the size of federal civilian workforce by 426,200 positions between January 1993 and September 2000...The government workforce was for the first time the smallest it had been since the Eisenhower Administration.
• Closed nearly 2,000 obsolete field offices and eliminated 250 programs and agencies, like the Tea-Tasters Board, the Bureau of Mines, and wool and mohair subsidies.
• Procurement reform led to the expanded use of credit cards for small item purchases, saving about $250 million a year in processing costs.

source: http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/npr/whoweare/append ixf.html [unt.edu]

Not that the mainstream "liberal" media covered this. sigh.

Space is ALREADY privatized!

[Anonymous Coward]

I've always found it annoying whenever someone goes on about how the exploitation of space should be shifted TO private industry, but doesn't mention who it is that it should be shifted FROM. NASA isn't the one exploiting space, NASA doesn't even design most of the hardware being used in space.

Almost all of the design and so forth are done not by NASA, but by NASA's private contractors. NASA acts as a funnel, pouring hundreds of billions of dollars of taxes into the high-tech research departments of thousands of corporations.

Think of it this way: Did NASA design or build the space shuttle? No; it was mostly Lockheed-Martin-Marietta, Boeing and Rockwell. What about Hubble, did NASA design or build it? No; Lockheed, Perkin-Elmer and Ball did most of the work, and the same goes for nearly every other "governmental" space project. While NASA personnel are often crucial, most of what NASA provides is inspiration and funding.

If any of NASA's thousands of contractors and subcontractors wanted to exploit space, nothing would stop them. Funding? They have trillions of dollars altogether. Intellectual property? They already have working designs, and all of NASA's work is in the public domain. Laws? Aside from military/warlike projects and a few environmental restrictions, you can launch anything you want into space.

In other words, NASA already IS (and always has been) little more than the sort of "collaboration with private industry" that the media and thinktanks are supposedly pushing for it to become.

Since all this is so, where DID this B.S. push for "private" space exploitation and a scaling down of NASA come from? The only logical conclusion is a hit job, not just on NASA, but on space science as a whole. An attempt to cut down on one of the last few big government endowments that actually accomplishes anything more than producing pork (not to mention creating dangerously disruptive new technologies like the microcomputer you're reading this on.) I would imagine the most likely sources of this garbage to be some (unrelated) combination of the "defense" industry -probably NASA's biggest enemy- and anti-government neanderthal libertarians.

Note that I wouldn't put Gore in this category, as he probably only bought into it due to its buzzwordyness.

                    Eric,

Follow the money

[Anonymous Coward]

And check who the major stockholders are in the UAC corporation.