(((I never realized that they came in distinct clans, but this is all quite true.)))
http://www.space-travel.com/reports/Which_X_Treme_Spacer_Are_You_999.html
Link: Which X-Treme Spacer Are You.
SPACE TRAVEL
Which X-Treme Spacer Are Youby Monte Davis
Philadelphia PA (SPX) Dec 11, 2006
There are many reasons for wanting more activity in space. But if you're an X-Treme Spacer, you know that there's one silver bullet – the motivation that would have us halfway to the stars if people would just shut up and listen to you.
So check out the list below and choose your team:
High Groundhogs
Whoever controls the spacelanes controls the world. Unless you act fast, China, North Korea and/or Iran will soon be destroying vital US orbital assets, just as the USSR did in the 1980s with its terawatt lasers. The shortest path to space is via DynaSoar, X-ray laser battle stations, and Blackstar, because the warriors know how to get things done.
Insurance Adjusters
Something wicked this way comes. It could be the next dinosaur-killer asteroid, runaway climate change, gray nano-goo, or that old standby, thermonuclear war. If your Space Ark hasn't weighed anchor by the time it arrives... game over, man.
Much Higher Consciousness
Sharing a gene pool with E.T. and 2001's Star Child, you are pecking at the shell of the cosmic egg. Once you can gaze back upon the outmoded Earth, you will be transformed. (It's not clear how, but it will be a Good Thing). No radiation shielding needed, as cosmic rays can only speed your evolution.
Free-Fall Enterprise
Space is really about unfettered growth: the New World, the Industrial Revolution, and the Heritage Foundation all in one. We should never have let Big Government get involved. You can't wait for billions in investment to start flowing, as soon as ITAR and the Outer Space Treaty are tossed on the dustheap of history. (NASA should stick around just long enough to prime the pump with COTS contracts, then commit seppuku.)
Goal Tenders
Remember the thrill of your first time? Apollo proved that only the prospect of a flag and a footprint will get us boldly going. You demand a truly inspiring new objective (ideally reddish-brown, somewhere this side of the asteroid belt). Pedantic, bean-counting concerns about a cost-effective space infrastructure will be forgotten in the glow of achievement.
Traveling Salesmen
Do people want clean energy to forestall global warming? You offer solar power satellites and lunar helium-3 (reactor extra). New frontiers to escape a globalized monoculture? Mix and match planetary settlements and O'Neill habitats. Raw materials? Zone-melted asteroids, coming soon. Whatever their future needs, your future's got it. It just happens to be in space.
Once you've identified the end, consider the means. There can, of course, be only one True Way. Now holding tryouts:
Detail Men (aka "trainspotters" or "anoraks" in the UK)
Let NASA, RSA, ESA, and JAXA keep doing what they're doing, as long as they release the specs. This team revels in the minutiae of rocketry, the more arcane the better. If you can specify all changes in the Block N J-2 turbopump that Huntsville sent back for valve re-work before it flew on Apollo 14, you're in. Just don't ask about economics, politics, or what to do once the hardware gets us to space.
Powerpoint Rangers (formerly Viewgraph Volunteers)
You already have the key to space: it's in the files, a great but unjustly neglected launch architecture that could be developed, tested, and mass-produced for a fraction of what the Space Establishment spends on office furniture. You meet for pep rallies beneath the everlasting light bulb (suppressed by General Electric)....
(((And there's more.... though, oddly, zillionaire Charles Simonyi,
Mark Shuttleworth space-tourist dotcom geeks don't even make the cut-off.
There may not be that many of 'em, but at least they've got a budget.)))
