How the West Wasn't Won 183
Nigel Assbackwards writes "Finally, after years of being furtively passed between trusted friends, the legendary NASA satire "How the West Wasn't Won" is available at spacefuture.
And Oh!, if only all space agencies were as loud and as totally ace as WideGroup's MirCorp intro."
Satire? (Score:4, Insightful)
Still, amusing non the less
Any takers (Score:4, Funny)
My bet is 22H 43M
Re:Satire? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Satire? (Score:3, Insightful)
When the Desert was conquered, the "explorers" didn't have to worry about bringing a self-contained environment that, if breached, would kill the travlers in under a minute.
The "explorers" didn't have a hyperactive media that chronicaled every death, especially the women and children. (remember how Christa McAuliffe got all the press) There were lots of people who died getting from east to west. The Chinese slave^H^H^H^H^H laborers who built railroads.
The current space infrastructure is based upon the current aerospace ideology that all possible engineering go into making sure that "wagon" reaches the other side of the desert and back since the other side of the desert is just as deserted as the desert itself!
I for one, am glad that when a rocket launches, with zillions of pounds of fuel, it did so because lots of people said it is safe rather that it might be safe. Think what could happen if one of the solid rocket boosters tipped sideways while ignighted. There're no pumps and can not be shut off. It shuts itself off only once it has spent all of its fuel. It could easily wipeout Disneyworld on its way to Tampa.
I like NASA just the way they are.
ok, the mircorp thing kicks ass (Score:2, Interesting)
-Skeld
Full text (Score:3, Informative)
(a.k.a. 'NAFA')
A Fable
by I M Patient
Of course the Americans conquered their Western frontier pretty effectively. But there was another country which set about the same task in a different way.....
This country was bounded to the West by a desert. One day a telescope built on one of the country's mountains revealed what looked like sea far away beyond the desert which would have to be crossed in order to discover if there was habitable land on the coast. So the politicians got together and established a government agency to send some people through the desert. They called it the National Agricultural Frontier Administration, NAFA for short, and charged it with a dramatic task to demonstrate the vigour of the nation: it would carry out a "mission" to send people right through the desert to the West coast of the continent and bring them back safely, within a decade.
NAFA got to work. They used the telescope on the mountain bordering the desert to look out and prepare the best maps that they could. They mounted short "missions" of one or two days out into the desert and back again. And finally they produced designs for a special "desert-waggon" that would be able to take a crew of three people across the desert and back again, carrying all its own supplies in case there was nothing but desert beyond. NAFA called the people who were to go on these "missions" "WAGGONAUTS". A special feature of NAFA's desert-waggon design was that as supplies were exhausted, the "waggonauts" would abandon individual parts of the enormous vehicle in order to save taking them all the whole distance, arriving back home in just a little waggon.
So then NAFA divided up the work and gave contracts to companies in every part of the country to help build this astonishing vehicle, and finally they carried out the "mission". The whole nation was fascinated to hear the result, and the public were all very pleased that it went smoothly: The desert-waggon worked fine, and the "waggonauts" returned quite safely, saying that the desert was a truly beautiful place, and there was indeed plenty of land beyond. The bill for the "mission" was as much as the whole nation normally spent in a year on clothing, but no-one minded because it was so exciting.
Then NAFA mounted a second "mission". This was exactly like the first. And like the first it returned safely, with similar reports. The crew of "waggonauts" made stirring speeches about the importance of their great "mission", and the public were pleased that they all got back okay.
Then NAFA mounted a third "mission". People weren't quite so interested. After all, everyone knew what the "waggonauts" would say when they got back: "There's lots of land out there, and the views during the journey are fantastic." This "mission" didn't work so well. Several parts of the desert-waggon and much of the crew's supplies were severely damaged in a fire one night, and the "waggonauts" only just managed to return safely. The public were relieved at that.
Then NAFA mounted a fourth "mission". The public really weren't very interested this time, but it went fine anyway.
Then NAFA mounted a fifth "mission". That was very like the fourth. By now the public were beginning to ask why NAFA kept sending out these "missions". NAFA spoke of their high duty, and said that they had to keep sending "waggonauts" out there in case they discovered something new.
Then NAFA mounted a sixth "mission". This was pretty much like the fifth "mission" except that this time the "waggonauts" took some special bicycles with them and wheeled about in the new land they had found. They said it was good fun. But they didn't discover anything new, and the public began to complain that they shouldn't keep spending taxpayers' money on these pointless "missions". NAFA didn't agree, and spoke of the high duty of their "waggonauts" to explore this distant land. So the public said that if the land was so important perhaps more people should get to go and live there. But NAFA said that this wasn't a good idea. Only "waggonauts" could go on "missions"; it was far too expensive for anyone to go there to live; and the land wasn't actually at all valuable; but NAFA should still be paid to go on sending "waggonauts" out there.
So NAFA mounted a seventh "mission". This was exactly like the sixth "mission". When they returned, the "waggonauts" made stirring speeches about this new frontier, but frankly no-one was very interested in what they had to say about their exclusive, taxpayer-funded carryings-on, and finally they voted to stop the "missions".
But by now NAFA was an impressive organisation. Its desert activities were the largest research effort in the country, indeed in the world, and everyone agreed that "desert engineering" was an important new field. So although the government told NAFA to stop these "missions" to the West coast, . they didn't close NAFA down. In fact NAFA had begun to campaign for funding to enable it to "open up" the desert that their "waggonauts" had begun to explore. They spoke impressively of their high duty, and proposed in particular to build a NEW TYPE of desert-waggon which would carry more "waggonauts", and would be "re-usable": It could be used over and over again, a bit like an ordinary waggon in fact, so that the cost of each mission would be less.
There was a lot of debate over this plan; people weren't sure it would be worth paying NAFA to build a NEW type of desert-waggon. But politicians in every part of the country argued that it would "create jobs" locally. People weren't ENTIRELY convinced by this argument; after all, if you spend money on ANYTHING you "create jobs". Even some politicians understood this, but they argued it anyway. Being seen to "create jobs" was good for getting votes, after all.
And then the military said they wouldn't mind having a vehicle to place large telescopes at certain points out in the great desert. NAFA enlarged their new desert-waggon design to accommodate this, and the government finally voted to pay for it.
The new desert-waggon took a lot longer to develop than the original one. NAFA had scrapped that one and destroyed all the plans (nobody was QUITE sure why) and was starting from scratch. Once again NAFA gave contracts to companies in every part of the country. To cut a long story short, the "new, improved" desert-waggon carried six "waggonauts" instead of three, and it cost TWICE as much to carry equipment with them as the original vehicle.
It also turned out that the new desert-waggon wasn't very reliable. By now the public had grown used to the idea that NAFA continually spent vast amounts of their money to send small numbers of NAFA staff out into the desert, but they were rather-surprised when one of the new desert-waggons burst into flames in full view of the crowd that was waving goodbye, and the "waggonauts" were all killed.
Politicians immediately explained that it would be quite unreasonable of the public to expect desert-waggons to actually WORK. After all, the desert was a "new frontier" (well, only three decades old), and everyone should be grateful to NAFA for, er, something or other (it wasn't QUITE clear what). NAFA officials of course spoke impressively of their high duty to explore this terrible frontier, and built another vehicle exactly like the one that had exploded, at further enormous cost to the public.
Now around this time a number of ordinary waggon-designers, who had been ignored for years, began to say that they couldn't understand what the fuss was all about. Sure, a trip to the West coast was a long journey, so you needed a pretty carefully designed waggon. But, now that they knew what was involved, and ' NAFA had designed a whole lot of systems that worked perfectly well and were public property, it wasn't difficult to design a vehicle that would cost as little as 10% of the cost of the original missions.
Some of these independent designers even went as far as trying to raise the money to do it. They reckoned that if they could make it quite cheap to get to the coast, people would find some use for the desert instead of just driving about in it making scientific measurements. But they had a real difficulty: No-one with any money believed them. After all, NAFA employed 40,000 experienced desert-waggon engineers, If, with all their combined experience, they designed vehicles that cost a vast amount for each "waggonaut" to travel out into the desert, that must be what it cost, mustn't it? When the independents explained that NAFA had no interest in designing cheap desert-waggons, people didn't believe this. And when they pointed out that after 25 years of effort NAFA had actually raised the cost of going into the desert by more than 100%, people thought it was pretty unpatriotic to criticise NAFA, which had done so much to open up this great frontier for, er, for their "waggonauts".
Now, in order to "protect the public", the government had also made it illegal for anyone else to go out into the desert in a vehicle without NAFA's officials okaying the design. And somehow none of the independents' designs ever quite reached NAFA's standards, which weren't actually written down anywhere, but were based on their enormous experience. As a result no members of the public were killed, only NAFA's "waggonauts".
Actually, in private a number of desert-waggon engineers agreed that maybe "desert research" might be done a BIT cheaper. But they wouldn't say this in public. NAFA was the only source of desert-research funding around, and of course they didn't want to lose their contracts.
By now, true to its high duty, NAFA had developed educational programs which they gave to schools across the whole country, teaching children the history of NAFA, and the details of all their past "missions", and how to design desert-waggons, and the names and life-histories of the heroic NAFA "waggonauts", arid the glorious plans for future NAFA "missions", and how to write to politicians to persuade the government to increase NAFA's budget. Taxpayers paid for all this as well of course.
Furthermore other countries with similar bureaucratic tendencies had established their own agency, called FAFA. They were pretty proud when, starting decades after NAFA, they got their "mission" costs to the same level as NAFA! They also called some of their own staff "waggonauts" who had special meetings with NAFA's "waggonauts", while their administrators met and discussed the cost of desert-waggons, and how to get more money from taxpayers.
Like NAFA, FAFA's administrators and "waggonauts" also made speeches about how important their work was. The public in these other countries tried hard to be interested, but they could never really QUITE grasp the bit about why THEY had to pay for the "waggonauts" and their "missions"? "Because it's too expensive for the "waggonauts" to pay for themselves, of course" they were told. "Yes, but, um, why does that mean that WE, have to pay?" "Because of our high duty." So it went.
However, by now NAFA were engaged on developing a "waggonaut habitation facility" at truly stunning cost to the taxpayer.
This would house six "waggonauts" right out in the desert for fully several weeks at a time, and could actually be VISITED by the desert-waggons during their "missions".
The independents were amazed. They pointed out that the "waggonaut habitation facility" was in fact a small house, and could be built and transported out into the desert for little more than the cost of an ordinary house. And they went further. Technology had been developing so rapidly during NAFA's thirty-year life that the independents had improved their own designs of desert-waggon so far that they could now see how to reduce the cost of desert travel by 99% to a level that many of the public could afford. The public were of course fascinated by the idea. They had all heard "waggonauts" giving speeches about how amazing it was out in the desert, and they were keen to see for themselves. So they asked NAFA if they could go too.
At this the officials at NAFA became very solemn. This was ABSOLUTELY out of the question. ONLY NAFA's (and FAFA's) "waggonauts" could go out into the desert. "Missions" were FAR too important and difficult for mere "ordinary members of the public" to take part. But, since this showed that the public were keen for even more space activity, NAFA was happy to propose that the public should pay for NAFA to start a new "Desert Exploration Initiative", greater and more difficult than any previous mission: NAFA would build a fleet of ENTIRELY NEW desert-wagons, which would carry at least six NAFA "waggonauts" right across the desert (something they hadn't done for twenty years now despite the cosmic amounts of money that they used), and then explore RIGHT ALONG THE COAST. This would cost a truly heroic amount of taxpayers' money, commensurate with NAFA's importance, and fully ten times what the original mission across the desert had cost. It would double the nation's debt at a stroke, and demonstrate clearly what a stupendous organisation NAFA was..... or something.
The public were amazed at how expensive this new frontier was. And some of them began loyally campaigning for the government to raise taxes to pay for the new "DEI",
The independents were aghast, not only at NAFA's increasingly insane behaviour but also at the public's gullibility, and they wished that the people did not have such blind faith in politicians and their agencies.
Then NAFA had another setback. They had designed a colossal "desert mirror" that their desert-waggon would place out on a mountain in the desert in order to see the coast better. At a cost to the public one thousand times that of an ordinary mirror, this was put on top of the chosen desert mountain. But when the "waggonauts" got back they discovered that the mirror was the wrong shape. The public were puzzled. Didn't NAFA employ tens of thousands of the most highly qualified desert-engineers? So how come the mirror didn't work? But NAFA explained smoothly that this was an IMMENSELY difficult task, way beyond anything that the public could reasonably expect them to achieve, and that in any case it was really very valuable having a slightly bent mirror on the desert mountain, at whatever cost.
The public weren't all convinced by this, though, and some journalists decided to investigate the story. They discovered that in fact NAFA no longer employed the best engineers. Indeed it was full of elderly managers who had helped with the very first mission over twenty years before, and who liked best to reminisce about those days. And far from being heroic figures, the "waggonauts" were perfectly ordinary, in fact rather boring people, very like people you find in any large government bureaucracy.
All the young engineers - well there weren't actually many young engineers in the country any more. Young people found it more fun to watch fictional movies of what it was like on the frontier, rather than study engineering just to help a tiny number of government "waggonauts" make occasional incomprehensible "missions" out into the desert.
At about this time NAFA started a "commercialisation initiative": They invited businesses to pay for some of their "missions", or bits of equipment on the desert-waggons. This of course made no sense at all commercially since a business has to earn revenues to cover its costs. But NAFA argued that the reluctance of businesses to join in their "missions" showed what a good job NAFA was doing performing tasks too difficult for mere "private enterprise" to carry out.
Some journalists now began to describe NAFA as a "stagnant bureaucracy", and so the Vice-President of the country announced that he would establish a Committee to examine "without fear and without favour" whether NAFA still served the public interest, or whether, as government departments sometimes need, it should be re-organised. This seemed a good idea, and was a popular move.
HOWEVER, NAFA was still a very large and influential organisation, and of course it employed directly or indirectly ALL the desert engineers in the country. So, in recognition of NAFA's expertise, it was decided that NAFA should choose the members of the Vice-President's Committee! And furthermore, as NAFA argued convincingly, the Vice-President was really not expert in desert-engineering matters, so it would be much better if the Committee reported to... the Head of NAFA!! ASTOUNDING though this may seem, this is what was decided!! (Fact is sometimes stranger than fiction!) You can imagine how the Committee's report read when it was finally published:
"Desert-research" is an IMMENSELY difficult undertaking. NAFA is a SUPERB organisation, and it tackles this daunting task with imagination, dedication, and the bravery of its indomitable "waggonauts". NAFA's efforts are however hampered by one problem; its budget is far too small, and it should be increased by 100% - or, er, why not 200%?"
The public were reassured to know that the Vice-President's Committee had examined NAFA closely, and reached this conclusion. Especially when FAFA wrote to the Vice-President adding its impressive voice to that of all the desert-engineering experts who were unanimously praising the report.
Needless to say, the independents and the increasingly sceptical journalists were stunned, and they began to despair of ever escaping from this truly insane situation..... And the public, some of whom could remember thirty years before being promised excitement and wealth on this "new frontier", became increasingly puzzled, and lost any interest in the new frontier. In the schools the nation's children stopped studying engineering and science and turned instead to taking strange psychoactive drugs and following irrational religions, since the future seemed so unutterably boring.
"And so...." sceptical readers might well ask "assuming for the moment that we accept that this preposterous, incredible farce did actually happen, how do you propose that it finally ended?"
Unfortunately the story handed down becomes confused at this point. What seems to have happened is this: By now it could be only a matter of time before NAFA would be closed down - still several years, though, since politicians don't like to admit mistakes, and NAFA retained a great amount of influence to delay its demise. And of course, so long as NAFA continued to exist, no sensible commercial desert waggon business could start.
However, in the meantime NAFA became increasingly irrelevant, because it seems that some of the independent waggon designers travelled to a small country far away beyond the desert. There some ingenious engineers welcomed the independents, and listened to their ideas, and together they built cheap desert-waggons. These were so cheap to operate that they offered rides out into the desert and along the coast for paying passengers, and even built hotels there for people to stay in.
Eventually many ordinary members of the public were regularly going abroad to take trips out into the desert, and even seeing NAFA's "waggonauts" struggling with their strange equipment out there. Then they finally realised that NAFA's technology was not the best in the world, and that as a matter of fact it was over-sophisticated and commercially worthless. Then the politicians finally voted against giving NAFA any more taxpayers' money and it was closed down, having wasted a generation and allowed the country to fall behind other countries in desert activities.
--
But of course this terrible story DIDN'T happen in the USA. Americans didn't do anything so stupid as to entrust the development of the new frontier to a government monopoly. They relied instead on the vigour and ingenuity of the people themselves to find ways of reducing costs and creating commercial opportunities - with great success. And in opening up the West they reinforced the "frontier spirit" that, has maintained the USA's" pre-eminence. And they did the same with equal success in the conquest of the air: It was the brilliant, independent bicycle-makers Wilbur and Orville Wright who invented flight not the government-funded Langley - and within thirty years commercial airlines covered the globe (though it took the US government 45 years to officially recognise the Wright brothers' genius),
And no such terrible thing could ever happen in the USA, could it? Because of course American ideology warns against any such foolish behaviour. The long and bitter experience of the founders of the Constitution led them to warn specifically against trusting government. It's not that people in government are particularly criminal or dishonest or lazy (though they are no less so than anyone else), but "you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear", and there are some things that government cannot do.
Once you set up a government monopoly, particularly a large one, it rapidly becomes extremely difficult to control. The monopoly immediately develops its own objectives, the FIRST one being survival, so it NEVER FINISHES ITS TASK, which becomes more and more complex and expensive. It also creates interest groups; crushes incipient competition in order to protect its prestige; and develops power to influence the government, the behaviour of whole industries, and eventually the perceptions of the whole population - particularly if it's allowed to use public funds to campaign for itself. So it can waste ANY amount of taxpayers* money; FAIL to achieve the task it was designed to achieve; and waste DECADES of time in the process.
So of course that's why this never happened in the USA. Lucky for America!
Re:Full text - mirror (Score:1)
http://www.rjk-comm.com/mirror/west_won.html [rjk-comm.com]
Re:Full text (Score:3, Funny)
Jeez, does every
The moral of the story (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The moral of the story (Score:1, Insightful)
It goes on for too long, and while amusing at first, quickly becomes tedious.
Re:The moral of the story (Score:5, Funny)
Which would run in a direct parallel to the Space Program.
Nice but... (Score:5, Interesting)
Then you'd have to watch out for titatium-alloy-arrow-throwing Aliun'.
Re:Nice but... (Score:1)
Bulk to start with, plenty to follow on (Score:2)
At first a lot of things will have to be brought up from earth, and there will certainly be human or robotic (tele-operated?) work to actually make the habitats/instruments/spacecraft needed. In the long run what the moon is low on (as far as Apollo measurements could tell) are the volatile elements: hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, sodium, etc. These may possibly be available in sufficient quantities elsewhere - measurements by Clementine and Lunar Prospector in the last 10 years gave pretty strong evidence for hydrogen (presumably in water ice) at the poles. If not the poles, needs for hydrogen, carbon, and nitrogen may have to be met from near-earth comets or asteroids in the long run; in the short run from earth - at least these elements tend to be light!
The space between Earth and Moon has, of course, essentially none of those physical elements, which is why the article (rather overdone) made the analog of space a "desert". It really does make sense to try to get to the other side of Earth's gravity well and get something moving over there.
TransOrbital [transorbital.net], which has appeared on
There's plenty of ways for any of you to get involved - all of these efforts and the cheap launch side of things can all use as much support as possible...
Re:Nice but... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Nice but... (Score:2)
Because the Moon has so much less mass than the earth, its gravity well is much smaller and getting off of it is much easier.
As the saying goes: Once you're outside of the Earth's gravity well, you're halfway to anywhere in the Solar System.
Re:Nice but... (Score:2, Insightful)
I see short-term missions (like those of Apollo) to be useless unless followed-up by some kind of semi-perminant habitation; even if it's just exploration for the sake of exploration.
Re:Nice but... (Score:2)
The point is this. Travel in space requires a reaction mass. The problem with a reaction mass is you have to carry it with you. The distance you can reasonably travel is a function of how patient you are and how much of your mass you have remaining by the time you get out of whatever gravity well you're in.
The earth has a larger gravity well than the moon. Consequently, constructing a longer range vehicle in the moons gravity allows you to save power and time lifting that device clear of your launch site. Using a smaller craft to lift, say, humans... from the earth to your longer range probe saves you the need to lift your reaction mass for the longer trip initialy.
So a better anaology would be climbing a mountain. You have a friend who lives half way up the mountain. It makes more sence to walk to his house and then resupply and climb to the summit from there instead of bringing all your provisions for the entire trip from the mountain base.
Re:Nice but... (Score:2)
Re:Nice but... (Score:2, Informative)
But it's more than just proportions. Going across the street doesn't make it significantly easier to go on vacation, but going to the moon makes getting spaceships zooming across the Solar System significantly cheaper by getting them away from the gravitational pull of the earth.
Buying a house near an airport makes some parts of the vacation shorter.
Re:Nice but... (Score:2)
No shit! You have an enormous gravity well between your house and the house across the street, too?
Re:Nice but... (Score:4, Funny)
I don't know about you, but I sure enjoy this tasty moon-cheese.
Re:Nice but... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Nice but... (Score:2)
You don't need to terraform the Moon to live on the moon, or off of the moon.
Re:Nice but... (Score:5, Insightful)
It falls short far more quickly than that. You can gradually expand into a desert; there is no gravity-well-equivalent to require a geat expenditure for a small gain like the early space missions.
Also, at least while still close by, there's not as much risk of sudden death in a "mission" through the desert. If your wagon breaks down, you can look for sparse-but-extant resources to sustain you until you return (or, you know, given the timeperiod this was written, they could have used shortwave to call base and ask for help). If nothing else, you don't have to carry your environment in your wagon, just food, water, blankets, and some weapons to fend off animals.
You don't make special calculations for every bit of the trip; if you give up, you can return and sneak back into town early Sunday morning, instead of having to arive at one special spot equipped for you at noon on Friday.
Which brings up another point: spacecraft are a bit more different from cars than a long-distance wagon is from a farm wagon. The ultimate failure of this story lies in the pretense that an evolutionary progression is the same as a revolutionary leap, and that the attitudes of the people paying for each should be the same. We want to see real results, whether that be pacemakers, communications satellites, or Tang, that everyone can benefit from.
We don't want to pay for infrastructure for the rich to take vacations, or for pure science experiments that we can't immediately see results from. Give us dreams and the belief that we if we set out in our own creaky vehicles, at least some of us will make it out there, and that we won't be under the thumb of our original governments, and that we all will have a chance at better lives when we get there.
Wagons, ho!
Re:Nice but... (Score:2)
You missed the point entirely - gradually means, for example, that if someone's homestead is considered the last stop before the desert, and where the road and sewer and power stops, you go to the far side of them and stake a claim and build a house, and extend the road and services, then someone else makes a claim on the far side of you, and so forth. You can't send a rocket up a few hundred feet, stop, and get out and build a platform.
Also, at the time the story was written, it wasn't "cowboys and indians" any more, and I covered the supplies issue.
Re:Nice but... (Score:2)
annoying flash intro (Score:5, Funny)
The mircorp flash intro needs to have an epileptic seizure warning.
My cat was looking over my shoulder and it is now vibrating across the tile floor into the other room.
Re:annoying flash intro (Score:1)
You know the Sony Station where jeopardy.com is hosted has epileptic warnings now. I thought that was funny.
Re:annoying flash intro (Score:2)
Not politically correct, but A+ on funny.
Story needs compression (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Story needs compression (Score:2)
Re:Story needs compression (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Story needs compression (Score:2)
Re:Story needs compression (Score:5, Funny)
Ok, so it doesn't quite have the same prose, but it's just as "funny" as the original and took 1/20th the time to read.
Better?
not all that funny (Score:5, Insightful)
The Onion [theonion.com] packed more humor into one fake headline:
"NASA delays shuttle launch out of sheer habit"
than that essay manages in endless paragraphs. (disclosure: I worked at the NASA Ames Research Center.)
annmariabell.com [annmariabell.com]
Just visited The Onion... (Score:2)
Oh wow, you're accepting these? (Score:5, Funny)
Hrm. (Score:5, Informative)
Now if the government truly has been witholding monies from really good projects, sure, that's bad. But in my amateur interested following of the space progression, there hasn't been any 'wow' project which has simply been unable to get funding. There's a plethora of interesting designs and ideas out there, but no guarantee they'll work - and the big, bad, beast - NASA itself - does work on the 'crazy' ideas itself.
Small companies and hoobyists are working on alternate designs, such as the X-Plane prize efforts, but they do have a ways to go (Armadillo's latest launch, anyone?). For all it's sins, NASA did a good job early on - not the best, but who can do that? - although I'd agree it needs to start doing some proper advancement now. Less of the old tech, more of the ISS, and a lot more work on actually getting their next-gen designs out there!
But where space is concerned, I'm happy to play the waiting game. Impatient, but happy. The longer we wait, the safer and cheaper the eventual solution will be.
Re:Hrm. (Score:5, Informative)
-russ
Re:Hrm. (Score:2)
Yes, but only because innovation threatens all power structures, private or public.
Re:Hrm. (Score:2)
-russ
Re:Hrm. (Score:5, Interesting)
Then there are the alternative methods to spaceflight; either totally different propulsion methods or antigrav, which while they would fall under the heading of innovative also fall under the heading of 'not yet'. Then there's different techniques of launching. Railguns and such are possible, but not practical due to the massive cost. Skyhooks and beanstalks equally so, as well as being very limited by technology. But despite the problems, they still work on these things as well. NASA isn't just the rocket-launcher; it's also the researcher. Legislated monopoly, possibly; but not because of anti-competitive practices, just because they're the only real thing around.
The point I'm trying to make is that the 'essay' (not sure if it deserves that, but I just don't like the style) neglects what innovation NASA does. It's not just the failure to get to the stars - it's also success in trying to get to the stars, whether it's in contained habitation, new materials, or trying to work with new technologies. In many ways NASA would be a lot bigger if it was actually succeeding - if there was a base on mars, would NASA get less funding? If they're a successful space department, do they get junked because the colonists are building their own? I'd say that an established launch site would do rather well out of it.
As for the excellent Guns, Germs and Steel (by Jared Diamond - everybody, go buy, it's *good*), I took it more as a theory on how human society was shaped by its environemt. In fact, I seem to remember that early on it focusses on settling in one place - an innovation - actually allows a power structure
So if you're arguing against monopolies, I'm with you. If you see NASA as a monopoly just cos it's the only thing out there, I'm afraid I respectfully disagree; NASA will try to help you, and won't be anti-competitive (see armadilloaerospace.com and when they refer to NASA - it's usually citing them as a reference, and sometimes going ooh because someone from NASA visited them).
They're trying, space is just a little hard. Kudos to smaller efforts - but when they spring a leak and die out there, it'll only lead to people urging more caution, more safety, and they'll up up at roughly the same stage as NASA. NASA's noly problem is that they're also hampered by a lot of red tape and beurocracy due to being governemt-run... but then which large company doing something physical isn't...
You don't get it. (Score:4, Insightful)
Bullshit!
Firstly, space isn't that hard. It is non-trivial, but then so is powered flight via airplane. We did it in the 60's with technology so antiquated (from a modern perspective) that most of it isn't even in use anymore. None of what was done back then is even remotely cutting edge now. Which is why there are dozens of groups working on the X-Prize, which is essentially a privately run Mercury/Gemini mission.
Secondly, since I'm paying their bills, I don't care if they're "trying real hard." I care abaout results, and NASA's development efforts have been consistently missing the bottom line since I was born.
The issue is making space access cheap, and that is where NASA has failed utterly. The problem is, NASA is a beaurocracy, and beaurocracy DOES NOT REWARD EFFICIENCY. A beaurocracy is a political organization, and it rewards political skill. Which is how you get the current NASA, which is designed primarily to suck up to senators and representatives by placing jobs in their districts. If a program fails, but its bosses know their politics, they will be rewarded for playing the system properly and not punished for failing. Case in point: the space shuttle was originally supposed to be a cost-saver over the Saturn 5. Instead, it's the most expensive system ever. Did anyone get fired over that?
The other problem NASA has, and it is also symptomatic of being a beaurocracy, is incurable featuritis. You have to have shiny new bullets in your PowerPoint presentations. That's why NASA designs have requirements like reusability, single-stage-to-orbit, hydrogen fuel, scramjets and aerospikes, new materials technology, etc. Making it cheap is a secondary priority that in theory will follow from the new technology, but in practice has not done so to date. (I'm not dissing new technology, I'm just saying that tech for novelty's sake doesn't necessarily get you anywhere.)
NASA is just not the right organization to produce low-cost space access. NASA isn't "designed" to do that.
Jon Acheson
You don't have to pay taxes (Score:2)
You don't have to pay your taxes, you know. There may be some consequences, but you don't have to pay them. You could take a page from the War Tax Resitors [nacc.info]' book...
Re:You don't get it. (Score:3)
crimony, people. If y'all are gonna use the word so many times, spell it right: BUREAUCRACY.
Death in space (Score:2)
People are going to die developing private spaceflight. This is a given. Get over it, and tell the public to get over it.
-russ
Re:Hrm. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Hrm. (Score:2)
Subsidy is not a requirement. Not killing the market is a prerequisite for private spaceflight.
-russ
Re:Hrm. (Score:2)
Re:Hrm. (Score:2, Interesting)
Check this [bealaerospace.com] out. It basically is an example of a low-cost commercial launch system company going under as a result having to compete with NASA.
I don't know if the company in the link would have actually made a working system, but the link makes the point that private sector space tech would not even be able to get investment capital, because of the uncertainties created from having to compete with NASA-subsidized projects which do not need to make a profit.
OTOH, NASA contractors compete with each other to win the contracts, so it's not really a monopoly. Then again, the project requirements often dictate the complexity and (in)efficiency in $$$. So really, to fixing the "problem" is more a manner of tweaking the way money is counted, rather then eliminating NASA.
Re:Hrm. (Score:3, Insightful)
Check out Rotary Rockets and Scaled Composites (the last one is Burt Rutan's baby). Now those are two companies which most definitely deserve funding. Rotary Rockets especiall, as it's a SSTO (Single Stage To Orbit), fully reusable (ie no bits which drop off) launch vehicle. It has working rpototypes, and in 5 years they'll launch...for a measely 7 million dollasr a pop!
But they're both private companies. Now where is NASA's fully reusable launch vehicle? And don't give me Venture Star...that's theoretical work, one (non-fullscale) prototype at best.
Re:Hrm. (Score:3, Informative)
Check out Rotary Rockets..
Last I heard the Rotory Rocket company's assets had been seized [spaceandtech.com], including the Roton prototype, and that XCOR had bought [spacedaily.com] at least some of them, including the IP rights to the design.
From looking at the XCOR Website [xcor.com] they've pretty much shelved the Roton [damer.com] in favour of their own suborbital spaceplane design, the Xerus [xcor.com], which they're prototyping with the EZ-Rocket [xcor.com].
In any case it looks like the Roton is dead, which is a shame, it was a novel and interesting design. Which isn't to say it was going to work when they scaled it up of course...
Al.Re:Hrm. (Score:2)
'tis a damn shame though, as I thought the whole concept was definitely well thought out...too bad the accounting wasn't.
Re:Hrm© (Score:2)
More of the ISS? Why? I have yet to hear a good reason for ISS, and I have actually tried to find one© Now there are several good reasons to have a permamently manned space station© It could serve as a construction facility for large vessels, but ISS isn't going to do that© It could serve as a "service station" to all of the other satellites in space, to make it easier to repair them, but ISS isn't going to do that either© It could serve as a sort of "space port" for the docking of ships on their way to and from other interesting parts of space, but ISS isn't going to even do this© It could serve as a first attempt at a human colony in space, but it currently only holds 3 people, and is only designed to hold 7 in the long run, all "astronauts", so it isn't doing that either© It is in the wrong orbit to serve as a manned communications station, so it isn't going to replace any of those© It isn't going to replace Hubble, and it isn't going to replace any of the other scientific satellites either© A few days ago it was suggested that ISS might be abandoned© If it were abandoned, It most likely would never be reoccupied© I don't think that would be all that bad of a thing©
Re:Hrm. (Score:4, Informative)
NASA basically killed the McDonnell Douglas DC-X [nasa.gov].
Instead of going ahead with the Delta Clipper, which had working flight tested hardware, they went with the more expensive, riskier, technology of the Lockhead Martin X-33 [lockheedmartin.com] design for the RLV program. While much more impressive, if it worked, the Lockheed design was alot riskier.
Then in 2001 they killed the entire SSTO program stone cold dead...
Al.Re:Hrm. (Score:2)
Not to mention that the DC-X was balls-on cooler looking*, and just plain cooler, than the lumpen Lockheed effort. It looked like a real spaceship.
If they're not going to effectively provide space-access, I'd at least like them to fail with style.
Maybe we should contract NASA out to Italy...
* I'm not sure that `balls-on' is actually a real superlative, but it sounded good at the time
Re:Hrm. (Score:2)
Imagine if you got to decide how your money got spent, based on your values and what you think is interesting or exciting. Bleeding hearts could more easily feed the hungry, and nerds could more easily fund (or get funding for) crazy ideas.
Re:Hrm. (Score:2)
Did you even read the article? It's about NAFA, not NASA!
Damn slashdotters... :P
Re:Hrm. (Score:2, Insightful)
What did the US get out of the apollo missions? Twelve pounds of rocks?
And it beat the USSR to the moon in the middle of the cold war, which was huge because the USSR was ahead of the U.S. in the "space race" until that point. Back then, space technology was directly relevant to military power (think ICBM's, "star wars", etc).
Re:Hrm. (Score:3, Insightful)
If they hadn't gotten this position back then, they would too have degraded to the "corporations-are-the-basis-for-all" thinking. There would have been very little science done, and because of that, very little technology drive. Basically, you guys are world leaders because of the Apollo program!
Now, I only wish that you had used it for better than get a bunch of religious morons into office.
Re:ISS: what the hell? (Score:2)
The long term zero-gravity exposure is what makes space interesting, so why not use it? The only place I can think of (although I have the feeling I'm about to hear of plenty of good ones, shooting my argument to hell) for gravity in space is on extra-planetary missions where much of the trip is spent waiting to get to where you are going.
When you are in orbit, zero gravity stuff is what you do.
Hehehe... (Score:1, Offtopic)
Y'Know.... (Score:3, Funny)
I would have more confidence in MirCorp if their tagline didn't abbreviate to 'The MCSE Company'.
Lousy Equipment (Score:3)
I've heard the arguement that, besides tourism, there's no reason for the vast majority of people to go into space. Perhaps, allowing a larger number of people access would uncover new reasons.
Re:Lousy Equipment (Score:4, Insightful)
They are finally doing something more than talk about replacing it but the existing shuttles are going to have to last a long time yet.
Re:Lousy Equipment (Score:2, Interesting)
--
Re:Lousy Equipment (Score:2)
Re:Lousy Equipment (Score:2)
NASA was not stupid. It was made stupid. If there is anyone to blame, then it is the people that took control of NASA somewhere during Apollo's missions. They destroyed the bigest and best team of scientists and engineers ever. And left to a bunch of stupid managers the task of caring for that Ford-T that we know as the Space Shuttle.
Re:Lousy Equipment (Score:2, Insightful)
There is a real example... (Score:3, Interesting)
For those who don't know, North America was pretty well known to Europe before Colombo set foot there. I'll try up some of the data I knew a few years ago.
Well there are lot of stories floating around that America was known to other people before the XIth Century. There are some strange facts about architecture and customs that suggest that African/Mediterranean peoples were in contact with America in a very far past (>3000 years ago). There were some suggestions that Phoenicians and Romans knew soemthing laid in the west of the Atlantic. We had stories about legends from people now living in modern West Africa. We had the famous Irish monks. However the historical mist is pretty thick here. So we just ignore these things for now.
In the XIth century we have the first, 100% data that Europeans reached America. As many of you know, they were the Vikings. Classical History claims that this discovery was lost. Wrong, at least until the XIIIth century, many bigheads in Europe knew about this. However something happened during that time and this data was forgetten for nearly 100 years till Templars/Portuguese reached modern Boston somwhere in 1450s. There is a fact that confirms this, some "signed" rock, which its copies lays now in Lisbon. Note that Portuguese had such a tradition - apart of putting pilars in the seashore, they marked rocks to mention their presence to future expeditions. But that was not all. From that time and until the end of the 1480s Portuguese made several expeditions to North America, and probably sailed over the South. And according to certain stories, they did this taking together dannish and french (why ???) sailors. Besides there is a story that Portuguese possessed maps made in the XIIth century that clearly showed Labrador and regions down to modern New-York. Btw, it was in the middle of the XVth Century that portuguese got used to fish Codfish. Codfish does not live in Portuguese hotter waters. To catch it up, one has to get near Canada. Unfortunately, with the exception of two expeditions, every document concerning these travels probably was destryed during Inquisition times and Lisbon's Earthquake in 1755.
But this story is not the main thing. As you see, I speak about the Inquisition. Why? Because one of the main oppositors to all this was no one else than Roman Church. Fantasy? Absolutely not. Several years ago I got into my hands the story of a french archeologist that made a fantastic discovery. He studied the social-economical situation of Europe during the middle of Middle Ages. In one of his studies he met with people who talked about some wierd documents on Greenland dated to the XIIIth century. These documents were several bureaucratic papers concerning the relation between Greenland people and the Dannish Episcope. It occurs that somewhere after to colonization of Greenland, these lands were offered to the Church. The Dannish Episcopate, as representative of the Pope, ruled in fact these lands.On the papers it seems that there are references to the fact that Greenlanders knew about the existence of other lands in the West. However, somewhere in the middle of the XIIIth century, step-by-step contacts with Greenland started to fade. It is curious to mention that in some point of History, only Church boats had the right to sail to these lands. However in the XIIIth Century, contacts were reduced to only one sail a year. In the end the boat caught fire and no one replaced it. What happened to the remaining Greenlanders remains a mistery.
Frankly this story made me think A LOT. Right now, I don't remeber the name of the french archeologist. But I remember that this was once considered one of the biggest authorities in Middle Ages History. The fact that the Church didn't only knew but OWNED lands that later were considered pure fantasies, rises lots of questions about how and when America was in fact discovered. During the Middle Ages, people had lost of other problems rather to care about something that eroded all foundations of knowledge of those times. However, the Church was The European Center of Knowledge, and even in the most darkest times, they cared to be informed. The fact that they were so near of America, and restricted contacts with Greenland, suggests that they knew about it.
There is also one factor to add up to this story. Portuguese expeditions were directed from a center in South Europe. This center was known as Sagres, but the name of a village that lays nearby. There were stories that this center was a big building laying not far away from the sea. However, since the XVIth century, references to this building disappeared altogether. Today, in the supposed place where this center existed, there is NO OBJECT that would remind of its existence. Until the somehwere in the 1980s... Sagres is a good place for those who fly small motor planes, its windy like Hell. and one pilot noted drawings in the surface. Archeologists came in and discovered the biggest mistery of Portugal's History. The building was completely removed from that place, down to the foundations. A huge Rose of the Winds that layed nearby and was surely made of rocks, could only be seen from the air for the holes on the ground. All the Sagres center was completely wiped up. By who? Archeologists thought that nearby villagers may have used the rock for their houses. However in Sagres there are no clear signs that houses may carry those rocks. Besides some cannot understand why villagers would be so systematic to clean the place completely.
There is one interesting conspiration theory about this. One guy suggested that this was a last attempt to forget America and everything else. However it was too late. Europe went crazy about India. Spanish were making fortunes out of the stolen american gold. English, French and Dutch were already reaching America. the Church lost the battle...
Re:There is a real example... (Score:2, Insightful)
Not sure what your definition of 'well known' is, but clearly Columbus himself did not know about America. Nor did his crew, or his fanciers. Had they known, they never would have bothered trying to come here. What distinguished Colubus's visit is that he mistakenly thought he'd found a cheap way to get to somewhere useful: India. Had they known about America, they never would have set out on the journey in the first place.
Re:There is a real example... (Score:2)
On what concerns Phoenicians and Romans, the story is more complex. I know that the "Roman coins" story made a lot of noise, when they were discovered in the shores of Brazil. However we know now that these coins were probably related to a more recent crash that happened in more recent times and that these coins were in fact collectioner's coins. Meanwhile there is a big problem here. According to certain facts from the Portuguese History, a lot of their discoveries were not original in full sense. Discoveries made by Portugal were mainly based in documents, stories and facts from very ancient times. Portuguese went to South Atlantic fully convinced that Phoenicians did circumvent the African continent. That's an historical fact. And based on the sources that lead to this story, there is some weird story about how they did the track around Africa. It seems that they based their navigation in very old data that mentioned that same weird track they did between West Africa and Brazil. However there are other theories and tales about how they did this. One claims that currents in Pheonicia time run nearer the African continent, so Pheonicians could never had reached Brazil. Another considers that this current has been always there and that even West African sailors did reach, from time to time, Brazil (Note: West Africa in the Middle Ages was much more developed than Europe then). Meanwhile the data is very fragmentary speculative and dubious. So I keep it away.
Meanwhile the similarities on architecture is not a work of amateurs. Is Heyerdal an amateur? I don't think so. He and several other people did a lot to study ancient civilizations. And we in Russia have one of his disciples. That guy is tremendously serious and solid. And he doesn't stop just in speculations. He shows facts. He showed Malta's constructions and compared them with similar buildings in Peru. Yes, there are huge similarities. And also some serious differences. Heyerdal's group work is careful to note it, and this guy goes step by step on his findings. And, till now, they have found more things to go further, rather than getting punched. Not long before Heyerdal's death they finally confirmed that Peru's people have been in Easter Island. This was one thing that many historians frequently dismissed as some amateur stupidity. But Heyerdal's group showed that the traditional academic circles can, sometimes, be deeply wrong. I saw a film where Heyerdal and his followers digged up the Peruvian "fortress" in Easter Island. As scientists they were quite careful to film the different stages of cleanup and the details of the walls. That building had absolutely no difference from Machu Pichu or Cuzco's "fortresses". They were made exactly with the same technology and design.
Well this does not concern exactly our problem. But it shows that we may be deeply wrong in our theories. So, while the presence of earlier Old World people in America is still a speculative point, it shall not be dismissed at all. But we should be careful to avoid the speculations of certain people who try to find tetrahedrons in the mud.
Scared... (Score:2)
I'd read the link, but I don't trust guys named Nigel.
I might be jaded & fond of conspiracy theories (Score:3, Interesting)
I bet that every satellite put in orbit right now, is thoroughly scrutinized by the various nations' secret services, and I also bet that satellites that would have 'too sensitive' capabilites would be 'rejected' unless appropriate agreements are made with the satellite's owner/operator.
After all, if I was company X interested in mapping/data acquisition at resolutions much higher than currently offered (say, 1 foot resolution images at different wavelengths etc.) I doubt I would be allowed to launch such a satellite without signing some papers saying that I won't photograph 'sensitive' areas, or that I won't give that info to 'bad people'.
If there was a 'free market', and I was a country that the US wouldn't like to have satellite sensing capabilities, there wouldn't be much they could do to stop me from using, hypotetically, my petroldollars to buy it.
I could also, extremely hypotetically of course, make a bogus communication satellite, which is really a nuke or bio weapon, and get this commercial company to put it in orbit, and from there I can just make it drop anywhere in the world.
While I do believe that there should be commercial competition to lower prices and so on, I really don't think it will be allowed to happen: only state-based space agencies will be allowed to have launch capabilities, and because of the deterrence factor, they will make very sure that the above rogue scenarios won't happen.
Re:I might be jaded & fond of conspiracy theor (Score:2)
The rationale is that if a 'rogue' group put in orbit a weapon that created a lot of casualties, the retaliation would presumably be against the country that launched it, so every launch capable country in the world has in their best interest to make sure that anything that goes up is well scrutinized.
Obviously other countries' militaries are likely putting in orbit military-sensitive satellites *for themselves*, but due to the world balance of power (you nuke us, we nuke you, everybody dies) unsavory accidents don't happen.
The same rationale makes, for example, *extremely* unlikely that a country would put in orbit a commercial imaging satellite with 'enhanced' capabilities and sell the images freely: I bet that if something like this happened, the US of A would remind said country that said satellite could start experiencing 'malfunctions' or have an 'untimely re-entry' unless said images were distribution-controlled.
For all these reasons, I really don't think it will ever, ever, ever happen that private entities will be allowed to develop in space without overt or covert government regulation and/or intervention.
A Devils Advocate POV (Score:3, Interesting)
space needs a kick in the pants from one of the two following and I don't care if it comes via the private entrepanuer or NAFA.
1) We find some incredible new technology or resource that can only be found/created in microgravity and the capital investment returns far exceed the cost... ie a good space buisness venture. Space tourisim is a non starter at its current costs.. even at a 10th the current costs. Do the math.Shuttle launch 400 million/10 makes 40 million. call it two pilots and 8 passengers. 8 passengers to defray 40 million ? a novelty enterprise at best. even if you convert the payload to acomodate max passengers up to say 40 you still have a million per ticket just to meet expenses. Again its a novelty enterprise with no long term future. Get it down to 10k a ticket and a system that can be operated for less than the total ticket cost for a full load and can handle enough flights to pay for itself and make a profit and you start cookin with gas. However Chemical bi-propellant systems just are not that capable.
2) We build a better mouse trap and find a better way than chemicle bi-propellant launch vehicles. Perhaps a more efficient chemcial system or perhaps a new means of generating thrust.
I am just hoping the X-prize contestants are succesfull, but I think the break through there will be when they manage orbital flights, or perhaps sub orbital ballistic hops to distant locations. I think the market for 0 G joyriding is somewhat limited long term, but the ability to get from say california to australia, or similar hops, in less than an hour has a serious commercial market. After all if we could launch multiple nukes to distant lands in 30 minutes... why not people ? Its a small step indeed from something that can do that to something that can make LEO, not much more for TLI to LLO, and not much more for a TMI to a LMO. After all 99% of the problem is getting out of the atmosphere. Once your up there, going elsewhere or comming back takes only a fraction of the Delta V.
Space travel isn't feasible (Score:4, Interesting)
As a result, all space vehicles are mostly fuel tank. They all have dinky payloads for their size. They just barely work. They're all weight-reduced to the edge of what's possible, far beyond the weight reduction efforts in commercial aircraft. As vehicles, they suck.
Only some non-chemical propulsion method can possibly get us out of this mess. Orion might have worked. Laser launch is a possibility. Antimatter propulsion is a ways off, but possible. Open-cycle nuclear engines have been built successfully, but they make a huge mess.
Incidentally, the "cheap, dumb booster" is a myth. Most of the cost comes from making boosters light. It's easy to make a cheap, heavy booster, but it will barely get off the ground.
Re:Space travel isn't feasible (Score:2)
Could you please tell me when it was proven to be a myth? AFAIK, it's more of an unproven hypothesis. And most of the cost savings from a big dumb booster approach were supposed to come from operational simplicity, not weight savings. Lastly, the Saturn V surely got off the ground, and new BDBs would certainly be somewhat lighter than that.
Jon Acheson
Re:Space travel isn't feasible (Score:2, Interesting)
say what you want but the shuttle system tosses 220,000lbs or so into LEO, we will ignore for the moment the frustrating fact 150k of it is tied up in the orbiter itself ( and thats not including the engines ). Lets round it to an even 250,000lbs for S&G's ( you will see why shortly )
That 25% increase in fuel must come out of the 250,000 pounds that the system tosses into orbit otherwise its added weight which necesitate still a longer burn and more fuel ( you see the vicious cycle developing I am sure )
Now the ET holds roughly 1.5 million pounds of fuel. Lets say it only holds 1 million for the simplicity of the math and to illustrate my point even more clearly. a 25% increase for 1 million is 1/4 million... or 250,000 pounds. Now that you have your cheap booster ( and I didn't even suggest it weighs more than the current 7500 lbs weight for the SSME's ) you have a rocket that won't lift off the ground because your power to weight ratio is insufficient.
However it has a cheap engine.
You will also find that if you simply scale the system to use the cheaper booster you will either have to
A) use more of them... if it costs a 1/4 as much and you have to use 3 times as many and maintenence costs are doubled becasue you have more than twice as many less sophisticated engines to deal with how much have you saved in the end ?
B) Launch less acording to the power capabilities. You will find that at that point the price per pound that you tossed into orbit isn't greatly improoved though you will have a cheaper per launch cost.
As for your assesment of the Sat V... well how many engines are currently out there with the capability of the F-1 ? ( answer: none ). Even BDB's aren't BDB's. The performance margin of the Sat V and Shuttle and of all major rocket systems in the world currently capable of reaching LEO with ANY paylaod whatsoever are remarkably similar.
Re:Space travel isn't feasible (Score:2)
Jet aircraft also got close to their limits around 30 years ago. The Boeing 747, the Concorde, and the SR-71 are all 1960s designs. Since then, fuel economy has improved a little, noise has been reduced substantially, nav and control are far better, titanium and carbon fibre are now workable materials, but 747s flying today look pretty much like the 747 prototype parked behind the Boeing plant in Seattle.
Jet aircraft at maturity are pretty good. They work fine, it takes multiple major screwups before one crashes, they can be flown several times a day for decades with regular maintenance, they're often more than half payload, and they operate profitably.
Rockets, by comparison, suck. Mission success has been in the 80-90% range for decades now. Payloads are dinky for the size of the craft. Most of the boosters are use-once and throw away. Turnaround time for the shuttle is months, not hours. Shuttle vehicle lifetime is 100 flights, and that's optimistic. There's been one crash in 100 or so flights. Costs are incredibly high. No other commercial transportation system is that bad.
Attempts to get around these limits have been disappointing. All Single Stage to Orbit craft are almost all fuel. (Any weight growth in your SSTO craft, and the payload goes negative, which means you can't make it to orbit. That's what happened to Rotary Rocket.)
Spaceplanes, i.e. rocket/aircraft combos, are very hard to do. Ben Rich, head of the Lockheed Skunk Works and propulsion chief on the SR-71, writes that the rocket/aircraft combo will probably never work together successfully.
Launch from an aircraft can work; Pegasus routinely launches from a B-52. But it takes a big airplane to launch a little rocket.
The more exotic schemes are either too expensive at the front end (beanstalks, Lofstrom loops), too dangerous (nuclear engines, antimatter), or beyond current physics (antigravity, etc.). Laser launch might work, but the most powerful laser available can only launch a tiny vehicle a short distance, and the vehicle still has to carry reaction mass.
That's why everybody is stuck. When you crunch the numbers, you run up against the basic fact that chemical fuels just don't carry enough energy to do the job right.
Re:Space travel isn't feasible (Score:2)
A wimple is a medieval hat. Are you thinking of Frank Whittle, who invented the first jet engine? It won't help. Rocket engines are already somewhere around 90% of the theoretical max. The SSME is a very good engine. LH and LOX is as good as it can get.
NERVA was a cool idea, but awfully messy and very risky. You'd have to launch from some place suitable for atmospheric nuclear testing. That's not impossible; we're still not sure if the Israel/South African nuclear bomb test even happened, merely because it was done in a part of the South Atlantic used by nobody. A nuclear version of SeaLaunch might work. But oh, the objections.
Re:Space travel isn't feasible (Score:2)
The cost of even an unmanned launch is not dominated by the fuel cost. If needing a 20:1 ratio between fuel and cargo was the only hindrance, we'd be in the sub-$100/lb regime even with exotic fuels.
So, the theoretical minimum cost of chemical launch would seem to be quite low.
Incidentally, the "cheap, dumb booster" is a myth. Most of the cost comes from making boosters light. It's easy to make a cheap, heavy booster, but it will barely get off the ground.
So basically, we need cheap, light composites. We'll get there eventually (we have the "light" part, just not the "cheap").
Re:Space travel isn't feasible (Score:2)
It has always been a goverment project (Score:3, Insightful)
England created crown corporations to create colonies.
When the USA was created Congress made sure that the government and themselves got paid for the land that got settled. West of the Mississippi was largely settled by the railroad companies. The guilded age scandals were largely fueled by the money the railroads passed to members of Congress. They got rich and the poor of Europe got to do the work.
Government will always be involved in the frontiers because despite what people say they are not willing to put up with the expense and dangers to be on the cutting edge. These in power will be sure to get their money and those who are the most desperate will get to do the work. Such is human history. Companies rich off government contracts get to write how they could to it so much better if you just gave them another contract.
Re:It has always been a goverment project (Score:2)
Re:It has always been a goverment project (Score:2)
Personal computers are not "frontiers" in any sense of the word. They are evolutionarily designed tools that can be traced back to the abacus, whereas a frontier is an undeveloped field or area for discovery. There was no great "push" required to get computers from the drawing board to reality. Spacecraft are a different story. Come on, people, think a little.
Not bad, but I do have one comment... (Score:3, Interesting)
They're talking about government monopolies and organizations, but it's important to remember that this applies to any organization - government bureau or private corporation. Witness the RIAA/MPAA members trying to save their aging business models. That's only one example off the top of my head that gets discussed here a lot.
All groups of people who get together to do something recognize that what they are doing is their way of life, their means of existence, and they are afraid of losing that, so they try to protect it at all costs. How willing would you be to give up your paycheck if it seemed your organization was obsolete or useless?
Well, I'd be willing, but most people don't seem to be so willing. I think this is harder for organizations that aren't democratically structured... The few people at the top will do what they can to protect their extra-large paychecks, even when it's not in the interest of the lower-paid individuals in the org.
And now I've gone off-topic. Wheeee!!
Wow, what a great analogy. (Score:5, Insightful)
For example:
Expiditions into the west, just like flights into space today, were enormously sensitive and complex. Just like spaceflight, a slight glitch or design flaw in a wagon could cause the, usually spectacular, instantaneous death of everyone on board the wagon in the first few minutes of the expidition. Often with damage to others who happened to be near the site that the wagon set off from.
Also, before wagons full of supplies started arriving, the American west was TOTALLY devoid of life. In fact, if you just sent a naked person or animal, or even bacterium into the west, it would die almost immediately from any number of causes - asphyxiation, radiation, extreme cold or heat. Before the original Americans started sending wagons into the west, it had been utterly uninhabited, and totally inhospitable to human life.
Thank god private individuals were able to overcome all of these nearly impossible scientific and technological challenges and open up a radiation blasted sterile wasteland to human habitation.
So the lesson is that all we have to do is convince ourselves that space travel really isn't inherently difficult or expensive, and blame everything on big government.
Great article. Great analogy.
Harvest the moon? What I imagine that mean... (Score:2)
quick question (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, the government's inefficient... why aren't you calling up your representative and telling him/her to repeal the regressive tax cuts and use the money for space exploration?
Re:quick question (Score:2)
Unfortunately, tax cuts HAVE to be regressive. Roughly 5% of the people pay 50% of the taxes. If we wanted to cut personal taxes by more than 50%, then, we'd have to reduce taxes for the Warren Buffets and the Bill Gates.
The really poor folks today don't pay much in the way of taxes to Uncle Sam. That's good, especially since I'm in that bottom tax bracket myself, but it does mean that you can't cut my taxes very far unless you're willing to go to a negative income tax (don't hesitate to do that on my account, of course!).
Why the "West" Wasn't Won... (Score:5, Interesting)
Because it's not possible to simply travel to "California" in a "wagon", and dump 1000 8 foot lengths of ceramic-coated rebar out the back of your "wagon" and destroy most most of the industrial capacity of a nation.
An aircraft smacking into a sky-scraper is *nothing* compared to the damage that can be done by anoyone who can get to "California".
It's not "NAFA"'s fault. It's an issue of maintaining control over your citizenry, while covering your ass.
The "West" hasn't been won because the people in the "East" are covering their asses, and no Horace Greely is going to talk them into not covering their asses.
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Imagine if the DC-X had gone forward: they would not have been able to control eventual private ownership of the vehicles, or the launch and landing sites for privately owned vehicles, as a security choke-point.
They would not have been able to prevent people from landing in the crater Aristarchus, and declaring a new state there, through the simple expedient of requiring a runway be built to land and relaunch the vehicle, or the need for the vehicle to have atmosphere on launch/landing, as the X-33 requires.
It's all for your own short-term good.
-- Terry
No no no... physics, please (Score:3, Informative)
1000 8 foot lengths of ceramic-coated rebar floating next to you. For a very very long time.
You'll need *energy* to move it into an orbit that will collide with the earth again. However, if you have enough energy to place 1000 8 foot Y.Y.Y. into orbit in the first place, you'll *already have* the big swinging dick in international politics, no need to get all biblical.
Just One Question For Mircorp (Score:2)
Have you ever heard of "skip intro"?
Re:Just One Question For Mircorp (Score:2)
Oh man... now I realize the whole website is Flash. I guess the Russian rocket tech is so spartan, minimalist, and efficient that the website became an outlet for their desire to make something bloated, inefficient, and well... flashy.
Some missing things (Score:2)
The structural division of PE was sold to Hughes shortly after HST was completed (and the rest of the other telescopes were canned - blame Reagan's SDI vaporware that siphoned funding away from NASA). The HST was one of few truly useful scientific instruments in space - the cancellation of the later series is one of the best examples of how politicians can screw things up.
Re:space_to_desert.patch (Score:2, Funny)
Harrrumph.
Re:space_to_desert.patch (Score:2)
I would have rather seen those things they put in the comic strips where you have to find 6 differences between the two pictures.
Re:FALSE, STILL UP (Score:2)