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MORE ON REVOLUTIONARY PATIENCE: Focusing on the public support is not to say that the technical end of things is not important to success and long-term sustainability of human activity in space. On the contrary, a long-term view is vital in this area as well, for the reasons I described earlier with regards to Hoffer’s ideas on the importance of play.

If the base of support for space exploration was built up enough that a exploration done the “right way” suddenly became possible and desirable enough to take on, and the technology didn’t exist to support it, it’s entirely possible that the required technology could be developed in a short period of time. However, what one would end up with is not necessarily the best technical solution, rather the one that could most economically and quickly be applied. On the other hand, if technology development has proceeded hand-in-hand with the outreach efforts over a number of years, always with the same goal of open-ended human expansion into space, the very fact that such expansion is not yet a reality gives the engineers and scientists involved a great deal of room for creativity — for playing with their ideas, trying new approaches, free from the risk of project-destroying failure or the stifling pressure to perform ASAP.