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C00002 00002	1. There has been a turnaround in public and intellectual attitude
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1. There has been a turnaround in public and intellectual attitude
toward space.  Through the sixties and seventies there was a
suspicious attitude demanding to be shown concrete benefits.
However, the long drought of manned space activity and the
wind-down of the space program made many people realize that
they really want Americans in space quite apart from any
specific benefits.  Most likely this attitude will strengthen,
and a Russian space station will strengthen the belief that
America dropped the ball.

Therefore, the space program should frankly aim at exploration even more
than activities with an economic payoff.  Many of the latter can be left
to industry.

2. The payoff in exploration could be enormously enhanced by one-way
manned missions.  The reason is that the take-off weight is exponential
in the total velocity change required.
  These aren't suicide missions, but missions in
which the astronauts commit themselves to living most of the rest
of their lives in space or on the target planet.
For example, if the astronauts had
not returned from the moon, they could have taken much more
equipment, and they have been resupplied annually for much
less than the Apollo missions cost.  Perhaps the
Shuttle has enough capacity to support one-way missions to the
moon.  A one-way mission to Mars should be possible by 1990.
This is a case in which a willingness to take greater risks and
make greater commitments would bring enormously greater rewards.
However, the degree of commitment is no greater than that of
explorers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

3. Basic technology needs to be supported.  It was really poisonous
when NASA adopted the attitude (or was it OMB) that only technology
in support of already approved missions would be developed.  It led
to a situation where a new technology couldn't be counted on
because it hadn't been developed and couldn't be developed because
no mission called for it.

4. Ion rockets and nuclear rockets should be considered for revival.

5. The Space Law Treaty should be explicitly denounced, and the
Government should have a policy of selling Shuttle launches for
any non-military purpose.