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#11
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Past Perfect, Future Misleading
On or about 28 Aug 2003 22:40:09 GMT, Rand Simberg
made the sensational claim that: On 28 Aug 2003 22:15:01 GMT, in a place far, far away, "Dholmes" made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that: While I agree in theory with much of what you are saying IMO the market is not yet developed to that point especially considering the poor orbit the station is in. I'm not sure what relevance the space station's orbit has. Just a guess, but I'd say he's thinking of the payload hit launching to the station from my back yard. -- This is a siggy | To E-mail, do note | This space is for rent It's properly formatted | who you mean to reply-to | Inquire within if you No person, none, care | and it will reach me | Would like your ad here |
#12
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Past Perfect, Future Misleading
Joann Evans said:
We've seen the opposite in (I think) Massachusetts when they increased sales taxes on big-ticket luxury items like yachts. While New England has build ships of many kinds for many years, Massachusetts has never had a yacht-building industry to speak of. (Not that this invalidates the rest of the anecdote.) -- Kevin Willoughby oSpam Imagine that, a FROG ON-OFF switch, hardly the work for test pilots. -- Mike Collins |
#13
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Past Perfect, Future Misleading
Rand Simberg wrote: I have some more commentary on the Gehman report, and why we should not build "the" next generation launch system. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,95930,00.html It's an interesting article, but I think that the analogy between the development of commercial aviation and space commercialization is stretching it a bit...back in the early teens and twenties it was possible for anyone who had some cash and access to some wood, wire, and fabric to buy an engine and propellor and take a crack at designing and building his own aircraft* (Alberto Santos-Dumont and his Demoiselle immediately come to mind- he built the first ultralight aircraft.) and such simple machines were usable for both sport flying and possibly military reconnaissance and light mail delivery...but it took the impetus to aircraft design that W.W. I brought- with the need for long-range bombers, to really lay the groundwork for passenger carrying aircraft in both the design category...and having aircraft companies that had the venture capital needed to bring practical airliners to fruition... and there is a fundamental difference between airliners and commercial spacecraft...an airliner was useful if it could deliver even a few passengers to a reasonably distant location at a speed greater than a steam train; or if it could carry them to a destination that couldn't be reached by train at a speed greater than any other form of transport that could reach it- such as dogsled to the North Pole; or ship across the English Channel....but unless commercial spaceflight is going to limit itself to simple up and down flights, such as the X-Prize is geared for- there is a big fly in the ointment for any group or company trying to get it going; and it isn't altitude- it's speed. Getting a rocket up to the hundred kilometer requirement for being in space isn't all that difficult; some of the amateur rocket societies have members who have built vehicles that are little short of sounding rockets in their performance...but getting up to orbital velocity is a far, far, more challenging endeavor- and unless you can reach that velocity with a usable payload, you aren't going to make much money in the space business... although sub-orbital vehicles might have great appeal to certain small governments, especially if they landed with reasonable precision in a neighboring country. If aircraft hadn't been practical until they reached, say, 500 mph, they might not have ever been developed at all (on the other hand, we might have had 500 mph nuclear powered steam engine trains by 1960...and consider for a moment what the derailment of one of those babies would have been like...); and the big challenge for any investors or company in developing a non-government funded vehicle is: where are you going to get the money to design, build, and support a new type of space vehicle? Once you get over that hump, then the rest is fairly easy, assuming that you have an economically feasible vehicle, and the other players in the game play fair...and given the French subsidies to Airbus, that is a far from certain situation....even simple technologies, such as the use of solid fuel, off-the-shelf guidance components, and simplified launch and support infrastructure are going to require a very large outlay of cash before vehicle one ever flies...particularly in regard to the actual production of the flight vehicle- there's aerodynamics to consider, manufacture of structural components, fuel manufacture, guidance system manufacture, and transport to the launch site- as well as support on-site. And every one of those requirements that gets subcontracted out to another firm eats into your profit margin...so unless you have access to the amount of capital and manufacturing capabilities of a major player that already exists in aerospace has you are going to be sinking a fortune into the initial preproduction costs for a new vehicle, plus having to gain experience in all of the above mentioned aspects of design from pretty much scratch...and I don't think that many companies really want to do that, or really can do that when it gets right down to it. Pat * Yours truly took a crack at this once, and some of my design techniques were "novel" to say the least; such as building the fuselage first, with a horizontal slot running through it; then building the wing, sliding it through the slot, sliding it back and forth, and anchoring it when the center of gravity of the finished fuselage ended up at the center of lift of the wing...a concept, which it has just occurred to me, was subconsciously inspired by the balsa wood toy gliders I purchased as a kid. The aircraft project went into abeyance after structural tests on the rear PVC pipe braced by 1x1's fuselage revealed that although PVC pipe will bend, sharp impacts (such as the aircraft touching down) would cause it to shatter, and the whole aircraft would end up as fragments after any rough landing such as the inevitable crash landing on the first test flight...so the moneys set aside for the aircraft project were put into the more rational and successful homemade concrete 8 inch siege mortar project, with the resulting explosion and time in the hospital- so instead of crashing down...I blew up. |
#14
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Past Perfect, Future Misleading
On 29 Aug 2003 04:45:07 GMT, in a place far, far away, Pat Flannery
made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that: Rand Simberg wrote: I have some more commentary on the Gehman report, and why we should not build "the" next generation launch system. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,95930,00.html It's an interesting article, but I think that the analogy between the development of commercial aviation and space commercialization is stretching it a bit endless graf snipped Good lord, man, do you ever hit the return key? That was frigging unreadable... -- simberg.interglobal.org * 310 372-7963 (CA) 307 739-1296 (Jackson Hole) interglobal space lines * 307 733-1715 (Fax) http://www.interglobal.org "Extraordinary launch vehicles require extraordinary markets..." Swap the first . and @ and throw out the ".trash" to email me. Here's my email address for autospammers: |
#15
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Past Perfect, Future Misleading
stmx3 wrote: Find a solid gold asteroid...then you'll have the killer app. Space transportation would leap a century into the future. Wouldn't work... The gold price would drop through the floorboards due to the vast increase in supply; a SciFi author wrote a short story about the devastating economic consequences of a solid gold meteorite of fairly good size falling to Earth, that leads to the complete breakdown of civilization- the story was called "Element 79" IIRC. But, unless China makes plans to plant a flag on Mars, there's not much out there other than the public imagination to give manned spaceflight a purpose. And that's mainly driven by romantic musings of the Apollo program. Hmm...Commie Mars...The Red Planet...should have seen this one coming. Pat (At least not going to sleep by the light of a communist Moon.) |
#16
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Past Perfect, Future Misleading
Chuck Stewart wrote: The only exception would be materials that are _only_ produced or procured offworld... that are wanted on Earth. Okay, what if the SOB's made out of Krell Metal? Pat |
#17
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Past Perfect, Future Misleading
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#18
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Past Perfect, Future Misleading
Rand Simberg wrote: As somebody said: "The United States is the only country , on the face of the earth, to go from Frontier to Decadence, without going through Enlightenment ." Yes, somebody who was an ignorant idiot. Now that's seems like a downright unenlightened thing to say...lighten up a bit, Rand. Besides, if he's ignorant- then he is capable of learning; if he's an idiot- then he's not capable of learning; If he's an ignorant idiot- then he thinks he's capable of learning; but he is too stupid to know that he's not- as he is an idiot...but ignorant of that fact. And even as we speak, Loius Pasteur is developing a vaccine against hoof-and-mouth disease. Howard Johnson |
#19
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Past Perfect, Future Misleading
Rand Simberg wrote: endless graf snipped Good lord, man, do you ever hit the return key? That was frigging unreadable... Unlike speaking, I don't have to inhale while typing...so it tends to drag on a bit. Consider it one of those odd writing styles that Irish authors are noted for. Pat |
#20
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Past Perfect, Future Misleading
Dholmes wrote:
[snip] One thing that might get the industry going is to sell the shuttles instead of retiring them. Then the risk falls to the people willing to fly them and they could with modifications carry a lot of people. I seiously doubt that anyone would privately operate the shuttles on an economic basis. Concorde barely cut it, in known markets. (albeit limited by sonic boom restrictions to mostly over-water routes) The orbiters just cost too much to operate. |
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