Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Problem solving: elevator story

[Sara A. (mabonwy]

At 04:41 PM 7/17/02, you wrote:
> In the shorter term: You'd rather run cables all over the planet than
> have a few communications satellites at a tiny fraction of the cost?
> What a waste of copper and glass ...

Exactly.  Plus, it's feasible to create a solar power satellite that could 
generate a huge amount of power...as in enough for the power use of all of 
North America.  No more coal or oil burning plants that create smog, 
hydroelectric dams that disrupt ecosystems, or nuclear power plants.  I'm 
sure a solar power satellite would have its own issues...but there's the 
principle of **least impact**  Individual solar setups are good, but don't 
work for everyone.

Plus, the space program has given huge payoffs in terms of advances in 
knowledge of medicine and computers, just to name two areas.  If NASA were 
allowed to collect even a percentage of all the money that has been 
generated by its research, it would be one of the few government agencies 
that pays for itself **even** with the staggering cost of doing anything in 
space.

Humans are tool-using, that is to say technological, creatures; tool use 
among hominids is a good bit older than our species, in fact.  The question 
is, what tools? and how?  Low-tech does not equal ecologically sound; 
slash-and-burn agriculture is as low-tech as you get.  High-tech does not 
equal  ecologically damaging, either.  Permaculture, and indeed cohousing, 
are **new** technologies; they are based on older models, some many 
thousands of years old, but then so are the latest weapons.  What makes a 
technology good or bad are the values it expresses, not its level of 
sophistication or its relative age.  As technological applications go, the 
space program...at least the exploring/scientific aspect of it...is pretty 
beneficial.

Sara the technopagan...

Never does Nature say one thing and wisdom another.  --Juvenal, 50-130 C.E.

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