O'Niel, von Braun, Sagan.... and D.D. Harriman

05/06/05 00:00:00    

By Michael Mealling

When Rick Tumlinson gives his standard stump speach (which is a soul stirrer) he often cites the three people who define various approaches to space:

Saganites: “Space is big, billions of stars, isn't God's creation incredible…DON'T TOUCH IT.” This view pretty much sums up the science side of NASA.

Von Braunians: “We vill go boldly into space, and you vill watch on television, and you vill enjoy it because of the glory it brings to ze state!” This is what the engineering side of NASA has built since the 60s.

O'Neillians: “We will build the tools, go into space, and use its resources to expand humanity and freedom into the cosmos…. but would you mind if we raised your taxes by a few percentage points to do it?” While this is getting close to something interesting, it always smacks of socialism to me. Don't get me wrong, I'd probably have been right beside Gerard at the time if I'd been old enough to know better. This just seems to be what Zubrin is always yammering on about and I just can't see how you can make that sustainable and profitable.

But I think for a large portion of us, our ideological father is more Heinlein than anything. But even then you have to pick one of his characters. Of all of the space related archetypes available, I have to say that its D.D. Harriman

He's as close as we have to John Galt, Clayton Christensen, Bill Gates and Burt Rutan all wrapped up in one single rocket building nut job of a businessman.