On 8/7/2010 2:00 AM, Pat Flannery wrote:


That wasn't the reason they scrapped their fleet - when the worth of the
things the treasure fleet was bringing back was measured against the
cost of running it, it was a net money loser.

There's a whole book on that fleet BTW, called "When China Ruled The Seas"
The fleet was made ready and stocked with high quality trade goods for
its voyages through the Indian ocean and down the east coast of Africa.
But all that would come back on it were things like raw ivory and live
giraffes; and once the novelty of the giraffes wore off, it was realized
that the area it was sailing to didn't have anything equal or greater in
value to the trade goods. Spices from the area could be obtained by land
routes or small vessels coming and going from Chinese ports.
In a lot of ways, this is indeed very similar to the current manned
space program - we brought some rocks back from the Moon, the novelty of
them wore off, and it's going to take a lot of economic worth coming out
of the ISS to ever justify the cost of building, crewing, and supplying
it...and there's been no sign of that occurring yet.

Pat