Bigelow launch vehicle mistake

In article , says...

Eric Swanson wrote:

The space enthusiast thinks that space is exotic and glamorous. The
spaceman just thinks it is home, a familiar place he knows well, with a
nice view and good employment located within easy commute distance.

No. Spaceman knows that it's not an easy problem to solve, having
tried many times before.

Yet spacemen know the problems have been solved and will be solved,
because spacemen know that just 100 years ago, there were very few
automobiles and airplanes, and now we are literally overrun with them.

Yes, spaceman admits that he learned about the difference between subsonic
and supersonic aerodynamics some 40 years ago. He used basic physics as
defined by Newton several hundred years earlier to make it to the Moon and
past Saturn. Spaceman knows that there have been major advances in physics
over the past 100 years, yet, he is unwilling to hold his breath for a working
anti-gravity device which could lift a habitable vehicle to orbital location
and speed and build a livable self-sustaining habitat at the LeGrange Point.

Establish Standard Orbit, Scotty! Better yet, come back down to Earth.
We need the guys with brains back here on the Home Planet.

--
Eric Swanson --- E-mail address: e_swanson(at)skybest.com :-)
--------------------------------------------------------------

I know I have said this a number of times before, but the real advances
which will come in the next 30 years - not the next 100 is not new
Physics, but new AI.

Let us suppose you have a completely reusable (the Shuttle isn''t) SSTO
basded pehaps on HOTOL principles delivering a load of 1000Kg. Now the
way to use this is to use robotics to build your heavy indivisibles on
the moon. You transport :-

1) People where required, but with AI advances the requirements for
serious work as opposed to tourism will diminish.

2) Specialized pieces of equipment, such as chips, that cannot (as yet)
be made on the Moon/Asteroid.

What we should really be bending our minds to is how to produce a robot
that understands CAD/CAM and can assemble a CAD specified flatpack.

wrote:
: I know I have said this a number of times before, but the real advances
: which will come in the next 30 years - not the next 100 is not new
: Physics, but new AI.

Action Items?

: Let us suppose you have a completely reusable (the Shuttle isn''t) SSTO
: basded pehaps on HOTOL principles delivering a load of 1000Kg. Now the
: way to use this is to use robotics to build your heavy indivisibles on
: the moon. You transport :-

: 1) People where required, but with AI advances the requirements for
: serious work as opposed to tourism will diminish.

Do you think we'll actually have neurtal nets work and do something
useful?

: 2) Specialized pieces of equipment, such as chips, that cannot (as yet)
: be made on the Moon/Asteroid.

So when things get made on the moon, we'll have AI?

: What we should really be bending our minds to is how to produce a robot
: that understands CAD/CAM and can assemble a CAD specified flatpack.

I'll be happy to see a MER type rover on the moon.

Eric

Thomas Lee Elifritz wrote:

Yet spacemen know the problems have been solved and will be solved,
because spacemen know that just 100 years ago, there were very few
automobiles and airplanes, and now we are literally overrun with them.

100 years ago, a skilled person with a few tools could go design and
build a car, or an airplane. Structure was "human sized". Many
components were common items. Cost was on the same order of magnitude
of a skilled person's yearly wage.

A real spacecraft is well beyond the reach of a single person for
design or construction. It is much larger than "human sized". Many
components are required to be built from exotic materials. Cost is
beyond the reach of all but the very richest.

(Real spacecraft can orbit the Earth. No orbit, it is an airplane.)

So of course, it is just the same thing. I'm sure that spacecraft
will soon be mass produced for the few dozen individuals that can
afford one.


--
Caution: Contents may contain sarcasm.
Phil Hays

Eric Swanson wrote:

The space enthusiast thinks that space is exotic and glamorous. The
spaceman just thinks it is home, a familiar place he knows well, with a
nice view and good employment located within easy commute distance.

No. Spaceman knows that it's not an easy problem to solve, having
tried many times before.

My offer to testify at your lawsuit for a refund from your educational
institution still stands. They didn't teach you and you got screwed out
of the tuition money. Sue those *******s! I will swear on oath in court
that you don't have the mental skills your diploma claims you got.

"Phil Hays" wrote
So of course, it is just the same thing. I'm sure that spacecraft
will soon be mass produced for the few dozen individuals that can
afford one.

Oh Flash... Flash... Is that you?

Eric Swanson wrote:
In article , says...

Eric Swanson wrote:

The space enthusiast thinks that space is exotic and glamorous. The
spaceman just thinks it is home, a familiar place he knows well, with a
nice view and good employment located within easy commute distance.

No. Spaceman knows that it's not an easy problem to solve, having
tried many times before.

Yet spacemen know the problems have been solved and will be solved,
because spacemen know that just 100 years ago, there were very few
automobiles and airplanes, and now we are literally overrun with them.

Yes, spaceman admits that he learned about the difference between subsonic
and supersonic aerodynamics some 40 years ago. He used basic physics as
defined by Newton several hundred years earlier to make it to the Moon and
past Saturn. Spaceman knows that there have been major advances in physics
over the past 100 years, yet, he is unwilling to hold his breath for a working
anti-gravity device which could lift a habitable vehicle to orbital location
and speed and build a livable self-sustaining habitat at the LeGrange Point.

Don't need "anti-gravity device". Need better understanding of Newton's
laws. "Habitable vehicles already exist in Space, the Shuttle being one
of them. Nobody proposed long-term living in a space Winabago. You just
need a crew compartment sufficient to house a few workers for a week or
less is what it takes to set up the rapid-assembly modular enclosure.
Next week the next spaceplane will be along to deliver furnishings, and
the week after that another one delivering groceries and supplies.
Nobody needs to spend more than a week at a tour of duty to build a
station from scratch. People can camp out in their spaceplane crew
compartment that long. The week in space is required to give the solar
panels above the atmosphere time to electrolyse the liquids you brought
into the gases you will leave and the gases you will fly back on.

Going to LaGrange Points is a staged effort that requires a LEO way
station. First LEO, then GEO, then L-5 and Luna. Your physics stink.


Establish Standard Orbit, Scotty! Better yet, come back down to Earth.
We need the guys with brains back here on the Home Planet.

What you need is space industries making zero-G high-value vacuum
products that can't be made on Earth at all. There's zero-G grown
whiskers to go into composites to make stronger alloys and stronger
plastics (both organic and inorganic plastics) then can ever be done
without zero-G. There's thin-grown sheet silicon of ultra purity and
minimal defects that cannot ever be made on Earth. A space station
needs power plant and a space factory needs lots of power, which is why
solar PV will be one of the first products made in space, made in large
enough volumes to be worth the launch costs. That's why you need
lightfooted touchdown -- carrying as massive a payload on return as is
carried on liftoff.

And all of that is why you need aerodynamics to help in the bottom 75
miles of the 220 mile trip between LEO and ground.

We tried it your way, with your crappy understanding of physics and
economics and manufacturing and materials. It cost $10,000/pound to do
it your way.

Now It's going to get done my way, with an H2-PV infrastructure on the
ground supplying fuels and market networks for product sales, and
target $10/pound payloads when you own your own fueling infrastructure
and solar PV manufactuaries.

We'll let you come park outside the chainlink perimeter and watch us
come and go as we please, using physics that were well worked out by
Newton centuries ago. Aerodynamics is nothing more than Newton's laws,
same as rocketry. The difference is the air is invisible so earthlings
think it can't help them fly -- which is not a mistake that any
spaceman would ever make. Air is not an obstacle to be bypassed as fast
as possible: it's the bottom rungs on the ladder to space if you know
what to do with it, and it's a good percentage of your oxidizer for
your fuel that you don't have to carry all the way from 0 ft of
altitude. O2 being 8 times heavier than H2, you don't want to load
fully up on it until you are already moving at mach 5 at 20 miles high.

That's the plan. You are outside the fence looking in.

Phil Hays wrote:
Thomas Lee Elifritz wrote:

Yet spacemen know the problems have been solved and will be solved,
because spacemen know that just 100 years ago, there were very few
automobiles and airplanes, and now we are literally overrun with them.

100 years ago, a skilled person with a few tools could go design and
build a car, or an airplane. Structure was "human sized". Many
components were common items. Cost was on the same order of magnitude
of a skilled person's yearly wage.

A real spacecraft is well beyond the reach of a single person for
design or construction. It is much larger than "human sized". Many
components are required to be built from exotic materials. Cost is
beyond the reach of all but the very richest.

Baloney. A single person can sketch out the fundamentals of a
spaceplane. Even the Ford's Model T and Wright brothers biplane
required infrastructure made by miners carried by railroads, parts
forged in factories, fabrics spun by weavers, latex imported from
around the world -- "exotic" materials for their time.

Ford assembled investors and the Wright's were successful businessmen
who could afford to indulge themselves out-of-pocket. Identical
opportunities exist today. Buckminster Fuller made $1m per year for ten
years in 1960s dollars licencing his geodesic domes. Just ONE good idea
can fund a spaceplane project, as if good ideas were in short supply.
Anybody who can make a conformable light hydrogen tank has a world
market of 100,000,000 light vehicles which will ALL be needing one, and
20 year length on the patent run. A light conformable H2 tank is only
one of the innovations that a designer has to solve, and there are
quite a few spinoffs from solving those other niggling little problems
standing between weekly filghts of fully reusable spaceplanes.

In short, spaceplanes are self-funding, because to do it means you have
a bunch of good ideas worth lots of moolah. Braindeads need not apply.

(Real spacecraft can orbit the Earth. No orbit, it is an airplane.)

So of course, it is just the same thing. I'm sure that spacecraft
will soon be mass produced for the few dozen individuals that can
afford one.

80,000 pounds payload. Going up. Coming down. That gives you some idea
of the dimensions of the size of the thing, larger than three 747s put
together. Although it's big, it is not so complex, and it might end up
being no heavier than one 747, maybe considerably lighter. Poor people
can't afford Ferraris either. 'Twas ever tuis -- in Caersar's day only
the rich drove chariots. You're on the outside of the chainlink fence
looking in -- that's the fate of people who don't qualify for a
gatepass or boarding pass.

I seriously doubt the moment will ever come when two guys are sitting
around the cafeteria in LEO Habitat #207 and one says to the other "I
wonder why Phil Hays didn't make the grade". EVERYBODY knows why you
will never make the grade. By the way, helpful hint: don't lick the
chainlinks with your tongue when it's freezing.

On Fri, 24 Feb 2006 21:41:03 -0800, in a place far, far away, Phil
Hays made the phosphor on my monitor glow
in such a way as to indicate that:

Thomas Lee Elifritz wrote:

Yet spacemen know the problems have been solved and will be solved,
because spacemen know that just 100 years ago, there were very few
automobiles and airplanes, and now we are literally overrun with them.

100 years ago, a skilled person with a few tools could go design and
build a car, or an airplane. Structure was "human sized". Many
components were common items. Cost was on the same order of magnitude
of a skilled person's yearly wage.

A real spacecraft is well beyond the reach of a single person for
design or construction. It is much larger than "human sized". Many
components are required to be built from exotic materials. Cost is
beyond the reach of all but the very richest.

(Real spacecraft can orbit the Earth. No orbit, it is an airplane.)

No, an airplane is something that flies through the air. Airplanes
don't go into space.

Do you think we'll actually have neurtal nets work and do something useful?

wrote
They already are. I think in the case of Neural Nets there is an issue
of nomenclatiure. The original (Hopkkins) Neural Net was trained, on
the job and was (in essence) a diagonalization of a matrix using
perturbation theory. The term Neural Net is today used to cover the
linear NN where diagonalization is dome by the Householder reduction to
tridiagonal form (the standard method). It can in fact be shown from
basic statistical theory that the linear (explicit diagonalization)
best preserves statistical information. NNs have been used succesfully
in a number of situations. Conjoint analysis, which is a NN in all but
name, is widely acknowledged to be the best way of doing market surveys
and marketing predictions.

Oh please, a linear "neural net" is just a matrix operation.

What makes neural nets interesting is the non-linearity of their multiplier
operator.