The Roots of Arab Poverty

reach an alternative policy, namely development of a frontier not much different from the one we have envisioned. The literature describing earth-like habitats in space and the means of building them using resources from "the land" are numerous and detailed, so there's no point in discussing them here. (See, however, some references below.)

We have seen how a new frontier would address the root problem, which is enclosure, not just a symptom of enclosure that we call terrorism. This is no panacea. There will still be individuals who can't fit into the matrix of society. Billy the Kid, Butch Cassidy, Sundance, and the Claytons leap to mind. But the problem of criminality on frontiers is individual, not structural, as our current difficulties are. If you buy frontier theory, you know that we are looking at the inevitable results of enclosure, the absence of frontiers.

Frontier theory holds that our greatest enemy is not someone you can shoot or something you can blow up. It is the zero-sum law that applies under enclosure and says that some people really are poor because others are rich.

Know that we are not powerless to work our way through this. However, success requires our recognition that $100 billion a year - more than seven times NASA's present budget - would be better spent opening a high frontier in space than as a mere (proposed) addendum to the $347 billion* we must spend annually to protect ourselves by conventional (and not too successful) means.

*request the Pentagon is considering for Fiscal 2003. (Aviation Week & Space Technology, December 3, 2001)

References:

Getting at the Roots of Arab Poverty, www.nytimes.com, 12/1/01

Space Settlement

The Institute for Space Studies

The Fertile Stars: Man's Look at Space as the New Source of Food and Energy, Brian O'Leary, Everest House, 1981

Pioneering the Space Frontier: The Report of the National Commission on Space, Bantam Books, 1986

The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space, Gerard K. O'Neill, William Morrow & Co., 1977

Colonies in Space: A Comprehensive and Factual Account of the Prospects for Human Colonization of Space, T.A. Heppenheimer, Stackpole Books, 1977

Breakout into Space: A Mission for a Generation, George Henry Elias, William Morrow & Co., 1990.

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