Great essay utterly refuting Zubrin and others

Jeffrey Bell wrote a great opinion piece for SpaceDaily that takes on
one thread often bandied about here--the historical exploration
analogy:

http://www.spacedaily.com/news/oped-03zzx.html

Although I think we should be spending more than we currently are on
space, I agree that NASA will no more lead us to space exploration
than Cheng Ho did China to world colonization.
But Jeffrey Bell draws some questionable conclusions about what caused
Nordic and Chinese exploration to sputter. I think most would argue
that Nordic exploration might well have continued to colonize America
if the Little Ice Age hadn't arrived to kill it off at its most
vulnerable stage.
And although Chinese exploration was not accompanied by parallel
merchant activity, it is tough to tell if this followed from the
nature of the exploration or if this activity simply wasn't recorded
because it was explicitly ignored and discouraged by subsequent
government policy. I'll elaborate on these issues later...

Tom Merkle

(Tom Merkle) wrote:

Jeffrey Bell wrote a great opinion piece for SpaceDaily that takes on
one thread often bandied about here--the historical exploration
analogy:

http://www.spacedaily.com/news/oped-03zzx.html

Although I think we should be spending more than we currently are on
space, I agree that NASA will no more lead us to space exploration
than Cheng Ho did China to world colonization.
But Jeffrey Bell draws some questionable conclusions about what caused
Nordic and Chinese exploration to sputter. I think most would argue
that Nordic exploration might well have continued to colonize America
if the Little Ice Age hadn't arrived to kill it off at its most
vulnerable stage.

Agreed, because somehow he missed the economic roles of those
colonies. That's what the Space Cadets miss. The European
colonization was driven by two factors a) economics and b) the White
Man's Burden. The 'prestige' colonies of the late 1800's were an
anomaly.

D.
--
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Corrections, comments, and additions should be
e-mailed to , as well as posted to
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In article ,
(Tom Merkle) wrote:

Jeffrey Bell wrote a great opinion piece for SpaceDaily that takes on
one thread often bandied about here--the historical exploration
analogy:

http://www.spacedaily.com/news/oped-03zzx.html

Although I think we should be spending more than we currently are on
space, I agree that NASA will no more lead us to space exploration
than Cheng Ho did China to world colonization.
But Jeffrey Bell draws some questionable conclusions about what caused
Nordic and Chinese exploration to sputter. I think most would argue
that Nordic exploration might well have continued to colonize America
if the Little Ice Age hadn't arrived to kill it off at its most
vulnerable stage.
And although Chinese exploration was not accompanied by parallel
merchant activity, it is tough to tell if this followed from the
nature of the exploration or if this activity simply wasn't recorded
because it was explicitly ignored and discouraged by subsequent
government policy. I'll elaborate on these issues later...

IMHO that is not the only thing which is questionable.

"If we emulated the Vikings and the Confucian scholars
by closing down our current useless manned space program,
we might have the money to fund the equivalent of Prince
Henry's Navigation Institute and develop this technology
now instead of waiting 500 years."

"But no Space Cadet dares to advocate this. They fear that
instead of a second Space Age with advanced technology,
we would get what the 16th-century Chinese got: no manned
space program at all. They insist that we need to continue
spending the existing budget on Cheng Ho's pointless and
expensive voyages, and find new money to fund Columbus
and Da Gama."

Instead of offering evidence for why he believes the fears of the "Space
Cadets" are wrong all he can offer is ridicule.

If anything the evidence he does present would suggest the fears of the
"Space Cadets" were not without foundation.

"Unfortunately, there seems little possibility of significant
new money, at least from the US government. The Congress
recently sent letters to President Bush asking for a modest
increase in the NASA budget. These letters were signed by
only 18% of the House and 23% of the Senate! This level of
support is not enough to start a major new spending program."

If high levels of congressional support are not there now for NASA why
should they be there for a modern-day "equivalent of Prince Henry's
Navigation Institute", especially in the longer term? And it is long
term support which is needed if a long term exploration program is to
receive enough funding to be viable. Without it any modern-day
Navigation Institute, and its programs, will simply meet much the same
fate as NASA: chronically under-funded. Which in turn will mean reduced
staff and horizons, and shrunken programs. Which in its own turn will
doubtless lead to increasing ridicule from the Jeffrey Bells of this
world, who will find themselves calling for the abolition of the
Navigation Institute and the institution of a brand-new body to lead the
way to the promised land.

--
Stephen Souter

http://www.edfac.usyd.edu.au/staff/souters/

"Tom Merkle" wrote in message
om...
Jeffrey Bell wrote a great opinion piece for SpaceDaily that takes on
one thread often bandied about here--the historical exploration
analogy:

http://www.spacedaily.com/news/oped-03zzx.html

- Cheng Ho's fleets didn't actually carry the whole Imperial Court,
- but just enough of it to impress everyone with the power and
- majesty of China. It is misleading to refer to these voyages as
- "exploration". That concept didn't really exist at the time and
- certainly was not a major motivation for the tribute fleets.

I find it hard to believe that the concept of exploration didn't exist. A
famous Chinese poet climbed a bunch of mountains. I'm sure that the rich in
China had no desire to move.

As far as the Vikings go:

If a space colony lasts 100 years, that would be great. Whether or not the
Viking colonies failed depends one whether or not they intermarried. If
they intermarried, then they may have blended into the locals instead of
dying.

Many of the first immigrants to the New World didn't care about exports.
There was a time when a man built his own house and grew his own food. He
didn't need to buy and sell a lot. If the stock market was up or down, he
didn't care.

Spacesuits are bad. I think that most of the outdoor manual labor will be
done by robots. The bulk of space economy may be robot based.

If we continue spending money on the Shuttle, OSP, and ISS, we can't do much
with the moon. We can cancel those programs and spend money on the moon. I
personally am not that interested in Mars. A Mars program would involve
huge spaceships launched once every 2 years. A lunar program would involve
smaller ships launched 4 times a year. Frequent launches are more
efficient, so a lunar program would be more sustainable. The goal is to get
a colony that can survive for 10 years after the budget is cut.

In article , Derek Lyons wrote:

But Jeffrey Bell draws some questionable conclusions about what caused
Nordic and Chinese exploration to sputter. I think most would argue
that Nordic exploration might well have continued to colonize America
if the Little Ice Age hadn't arrived to kill it off at its most
vulnerable stage.

Agreed, because somehow he missed the economic roles of those
colonies. That's what the Space Cadets miss. The European
colonization was driven by two factors a) economics and b) the White
Man's Burden.

A phrase which became famous, of course, used with reference to the US
in the Phillipines... ;-)

http://whitewolf.newcastle.edu.au/wo...iplingRudyard/
verse/p1/whiteman.html (note the wrap)

The 'prestige' colonies of the late 1800's were an anomaly.

Indeed, although there's an argument that the "moral imperative" concept
- the WMB above - didn't really get into its stride until the late
1800s. I can't really cite anything - I have a couple of thick books on
colonialism on my self, but I got half-way through one of them and
stalled. Must get back to it...

(Not that the moral imperative to civilise the locals was ever going to
drive colonisation of Mars, but hey)

--
-Andrew Gray

Tom Merkle on 04 Dec 2003 wrote in
. com:

Jeffrey Bell wrote a great opinion piece for SpaceDaily that takes on
one thread often bandied about here--the historical exploration
analogy:

http://www.spacedaily.com/news/oped-03zzx.html

From that page:
As for the fantasy of Cheng Ho sailing around Africa and conquering Europe --
Europe was already well ahead in the technology of gunpowder weapons. ...

I have very little knowledge of the era mentioned, but are there any
resources comparing the two countries power in this regard?

--
Please don't reply through email, reply to group.
From header goes to a dummy address.

Here's the text of the article - my comments next post:

OPINION SPACE

Nostalgia For Medieval Explorers Won't Make Us Space Explorers

Cheng Ho's travels took him far at the time, but left China in no
better position to confront the centuries of decline it has faced
until the most recent years.
by Jeffrey F. Bell
Honolulu - Dec 03, 2003
Talk to "Space Cadets" long enough and they will inevitably start
using historical analogies to "successful" sea exploration programs in
order to promote their particular vision for future space exploration.
But it is the historical failures that shed more light on the state of
space efforts today.
Living in Hawai'i, I constantly encounter references to the great
Polynesian canoe voyages. Another popular model is the age of European
exploration that started with Columbus and Vasco Da Gama. Both had an
immense influence on human history, so Space Cadets love to point to
them to describe the potential for the exploration of space.

More appropriate lessons can be drawn from two "unsuccessful" sea
programs. One which does get a certain amount of play is the Chinese
Empire's program of "tribute fleets" that roved throughout the Indian
Ocean in the 15th century. Science-fiction writer Vernor Vinge has
even named his future interstellar trading culture after the most
famous commander of those fleets, Admiral Cheng Ho.

The Space Cadet history of Cheng Ho's voyages goes like this (with
modern analogies in parentheses): Far-seeing palace
eunuch-administrators (JFK's New Frontiersmen) funded an immense
program of exploratory voyages (Apollo) that extended Chinese
influence and culture throughout the Indian Ocean.

The size and technical sophistication of these ships was far in
advance of the pitiful Portuguese (Soviet) caravels that were creeping
down the West African coast at the same time. When Cheng Ho was on the
verge of rounding the Cape and reaching Europe, a palace revolution
replaced the eunuchs with Confucian scholars (Great Society
welfare-staters / Nixon Administration warmongers) who lacked the
vision to appreciate the value of oceanic exploration. The new
administration cut seafaring out of the budget. Eventually, the
building of ocean-going ships was banned, China turned inward and left
the world of the future to be dominated by Europe (USSR / Japan / Red
China).

But some years ago, I read some of the actual literature on that short
period of Chinese oceanic voyaging. The real story is that those
tribute fleets were very much like our current space program: vastly
expensive, but producing no useful results other than propaganda. At
each port stop, the local sultans or maharajas proclaimed themselves
vassals of the Celestial Emperor, expensive gifts were exchanged, and
then the fleet sailed on.

The Chinese didn't get any colonies, forts, naval bases, or trading
posts. They seem not to have even collected taxes or tribute on a
long-term basis from the places they visited. There was no increase in
trade or industry that can be traced to Cheng Ho's voyages.

The emigration of the Overseas Chinese population so prominent in the
economic life of this area today is completely unconnected to Cheng
Ho. The Chinese Empire spent a huge amount of public money on these
voyages and in return it got a short-lived boost in prestige and a few
alien animals for the Emperor's zoo.

The whole operation was really one of those "royal progresses" that
Western emperors and kings used to stage, where the court would
migrate around the countryside and show itself to the provincial
nobility. Cheng Ho's fleets didn't actually carry the whole Imperial
Court, but just enough of it to impress everyone with the power and
majesty of China. It is misleading to refer to these voyages as
"exploration". That concept didn't really exist at the time and
certainly was not a major motivation for the tribute fleets.

The Chinese ruling class of the 15th century felt no need to colonize
or expand in any way. They were satisfied that China was the peak of
human civilization, so any other place would be less fit for civilized
living.

The idea of conquistadores, traders, or pirates going out into the
barbarian world to win fortunes, estates, and noble titles just didn't
exist in that highly ordered and stratified society. The only way to
get ahead was to score high on the Imperial Civil Service tests, so
any ambitious youngster stayed home and studied classical literature
and poetry.

As for the fantasy of Cheng Ho sailing around Africa and conquering
Europe -- Europe was already well ahead in the technology of gunpowder
weapons. After they reached the Indian Ocean in 1498, tiny Portuguese
squadrons smashed much larger Arab, Mameluke, and Indian fleets with
cannon and musket fire, and they would have done the same to Cheng Ho
or his successor.

So I agree with the Confucian scholars that stopped these
super-expensive and pointless expeditions. It would have been nice had
the new regime in the Forbidden City substituted a real sea
exploration program like the one Prince Henry the Navigator had
started in Portugal. But that was outside the realm of political
possibility in China circa 1500AD. Only the West had the pre-existing
social conditions to make the Age of Exploration possible.

An earlier example of a failed sea program is the Norse expeditions to
Canada circa 1000AD. Here, the colonists had a strong motive to
permanently settle and colonize new lands. Their homeland was devoid
of farmable land and ridden with blood feuds that made emigration the
only hope of survival for some families. Only sheer desperation could
have driven the Vikings to settle in Iceland, much less points further
west.

What the Norse colonizers of Canada lacked was the technological base
to maintain themselves in the New World. They had a marginal
technology for crossing the ocean, a marginal technology for fighting
the Indians, marginal cold-weather clothes, and marginal
farming/fishing/mining techniques.

They didn't find an export product that could have been sold in
Europe. They could just barely support one tiny village in
Newfoundland with the help of the larger colonies in Greenland and
Iceland. (And this was in a period called the Medieval Climatic
Optimum that was considerably warmer than today.)

When it became clear that life in Newfoundland would be nasty,
brutish, and short even by Viking standards, they gave up. Later, the
Little Ice Age came along and even the Norse colonies in Greenland
were snuffed out by global cooling that their feeble technical toolkit
couldn't cope with.

I think we are in the same position with respect to space flight that
the Norsemen were in respect to colonizing Canada. Our chemical
rockets are just as inadequate as the Viking longboats. Our spacesuits
are as clumsy as chainmail armor. Our means of defense from solar and
cosmic radiation are as ineffective as the Viking spears and axes were
against the Indians. Our ideas for using local resources are as
primitive as the farming and mining techniques of 1000 A.D. And so
far, our ideas for profitable imports from space have turned out to be
as disappointing as the real lands behind those Viking realtors' names
"Greenland" and "Wineland" (Newfoundland).

What we need are the 21st-century equivalents of the galleons, plate
armor, gunpowder, horses, and plows that made the European
colonization of America practical in the 1500s and 1600s. Even more,
we need some outer space analog to profit centers like Newfoundland's
codfish, Virginia's tobacco, and Mexico's gold.

When we have these things, the Age of Space will really start. If we
emulated the Vikings and the Confucian scholars by closing down our
current useless manned space program, we might have the money to fund
the equivalent of Prince Henry's Navigation Institute and develop this
technology now instead of waiting 500 years.

But no Space Cadet dares to advocate this. They fear that instead of a
second Space Age with advanced technology, we would get what the
16th-century Chinese got: no manned space program at all. They insist
that we need to continue spending the existing budget on Cheng Ho's
pointless and expensive voyages, and find new money to fund Columbus
and Da Gama.

Unfortunately, there seems little possibility of significant new
money, at least from the US government. The Congress recently sent
letters to President Bush asking for a modest increase in the NASA
budget. These letters were signed by only 18% of the House and 23% of
the Senate! This level of support is not enough to start a major new
spending program.

So the International Space Station will continue to circle the Earth,
like Cheng Ho's tribute fleets circling the Indian Ocean, and the
Space Shuttles will continue to make expensive and dangerous crossings
of the 300-km gap to LEO, like Viking longboats venturing into the
Atlantic gales. Remembering history is not enough. We need to
understand it as well, or we will be doomed to repeat it.

Jeffrey F. Bell is Adjunct Professor of Planetology at the University
of Hawai'i at Manoa. All opinions expressed in this article are his
own and not those of the University.

Okay, so....

He's got it exactly right. The technology is not at the right level
for space colonization, nor is the economic exploitation of other
planets viable.

And although Chinese exploration was not accompanied by parallel
merchant activity, it is tough to tell if this followed from the
nature of the exploration or if this activity simply wasn't recorded
because it was explicitly ignored and discouraged by subsequent
government policy. I'll elaborate on these issues later...

I'd be really interested to see an economic comparison of what
percentage of his government's yearly budget Prince Henry the
Navigator spent on his efforts vs. what percentage Manchu China spent
on Cheng Ho. It's tough numbers to get, but I'd be willing to bet that
Manchu China spent a much smaller percentage of its budget on its
program, although the program itself was much larger in scale.

I'd be willing to bet that both governments spent 1% of their yearly
budget. Yet we hope to do more with less for NASA.

I'm not sure how big the merchant class was in China at the time, but
I'm sure some shrewd Chinese merchant would have eventually followed
Cheng Ho's footsteps, with trading junks instead of warships. Imagine
if Chen Ho, for instance, had accidently discovered the huge
sandalwood reserves in Hawaii during his journeys. While China thought
it lacked nothing in terms of silk, spices, and technology, sandalwood
has always been considered a precious resource in the East. A thriving
trade in sandalwood probably would have served the same function as
silk did for the West, if it had occurred in the fourteenth century
instead of the early nineteenth, enriching a merchant class that would
have funded bolder, more profitable ventures, perhaps eventually
reaching the redwood forests of California, and later the gold of
Mexico around the same time as Spain.

Correspondingly, China's government might have just already been too
rich as an established power to understand the benefits of
exploration. After all, it was not one of Europe's larger, wealthier
powers that began this journey. France, Spain, England, Holland,
Belgium, and Venice's governments all dwarfed Portugal's at the
beginning of the era. They were correspondingly slower on the uptake
towards the benefits of exploration, although Spain's interest saw a
prompt jump when Columbus brought back gold.

IMHO that is not the only thing which is questionable.

Instead of offering evidence for why he believes the fears of the "Space
Cadets" are wrong all he can offer is ridicule.

If anything the evidence he does present would suggest the fears of the
"Space Cadets" were not without foundation.

agree heartily.

If high levels of congressional support are not there now for NASA why
should they be there for a modern-day "equivalent of Prince Henry's
Navigation Institute", especially in the longer term? And it is long
term support which is needed if a long term exploration program is to
receive enough funding to be viable. Without it any modern-day
Navigation Institute, and its programs, will simply meet much the same
fate as NASA: chronically under-funded.

There's no way to say it better.

Tom Merkle

(Tom Merkle) wrote:

Correspondingly, China's government might have just already been too
rich as an established power to understand the benefits of
exploration. After all, it was not one of Europe's larger, wealthier
powers that began this journey. France, Spain, England, Holland,
Belgium, and Venice's governments all dwarfed Portugal's at the
beginning of the era. They were correspondingly slower on the uptake
towards the benefits of exploration, although Spain's interest saw a
prompt jump when Columbus brought back gold.

Spain chased gold, the others chased economic empires. The value of
the two approaches can be plainly seen in the outcomes.

D.
--
The STS-107 Columbia Loss FAQ can be found
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Text-Only Version:
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Corrections, comments, and additions should be
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