Questions about "The High Frontier"

On Nov 9, 4:49 pm, Pat Flannery wrote:
Mike Combs wrote:
Give me an explanation of how that's done from a technical point of view.
Show me a concept of making a chemical rocket that has a isp of around
1,000.

You seem to assume that the cost/lb is primarily a function of ISP. That
may not be the case.

We aren't sure about that. although the big dumb cheap booster is a very
fond dream of everyones, the infrastructure to move it around and launch
it may be more trouble that the lower cost of the vehicle justifies.

Less than the cost of cryogenic pumps, pipes and storage, limited time
on the pad due to cryogenic boiloff, more parts that require testing?
The Russkies have never really even bothered with cryogenic
technology. GLOW is about the same

Turbopumps are heavy and expensive but you need them if you want
decent chamber pressures and Isp at sea level. Some proposals avoid
this by air-launching (which also saves on handling and abort issues).

There's a rough middle ground...you don't need engines with the isp and
complexity of the SSME, but you don't want things as simple and low cost
as V-2 engines either, because you end up with a fairly small payload
riding on something the size of WvB's Cargo Rocket.

You're right there. However, with LOX and liquid H2, NASA launch
vehicles are just as big, if not bigger than their kerosene/LOX-
fuelled Russian counterparts, with comparable GLOW. Eh?

If you are going to try and make the vehicle completely reusable, either
in one piece or in stages. you are going to have to use very high isp
engines just to have any usable payload left due to the TPS and recovery
systems.
The Russians may have hit fairly near the mark with their R-7 series of
rocket derivatives which are pretty bulky for what they do, but are also
fairly cheap and very reliable.
One thing that the space tourism crowd hasn't ever seemed to recognize
is that if they are going for orbital flight, then after 50 years of
work, we still haven't been able to get past around a 95-97%
reliability rate with our orbital rockets.
That's okay for satellites put start extrapolation it into some sort of
passenger carrying service that has a fairly high launch volume, and you
had better have one mighty effective and reliable LES and abort
capabilities, or the fatalities are going to start piling up.

That's what man-rating a booster means. The R-7 has a success rate of
97.5%.

Thought we'd have fusion...and personal autogyros and flying cars for
that matter also.
We are probably around 50 years off from Asimov's world, but on the
other hand we do have some robots being integrated into things, and we
still haven't put a person on Mars, built even a small prototype SPS, or
put up even a small manned Moon base. Even our ISS is a long shot from
WvB's 1950's space station, regarding crew size in particular.
We were supposed to have Gemini spacecraft on Mars by now:http://www.ninfinger.org/~sven/model...inggemini.html
Despite possible landing problems:http://membres.lycos.fr/marsetsf/rc2/snap01034.jpg ;-)

Pat

That's because no-one is willing to pour hundreds of billions of
dollars into space exploration. Space exploration is mainly justified
to governments because of the tech development benefits, not the bulk
benefits like SPS or a manned lunar base. The European ATV could just
have been a simple donkey module with a half-baked propulsion system
to be collected by the ISS arm and moved to a docking port, or brought
in on remote control like the Progress. Instead it's a high tech
automated supply ship, showcasing technology and developing experience
for automated docking tech needed for Mars sample return missions and
other more complicated stuff, not to mention experience in an almost-
manned system.

Eivind Kjorstad wrote:

John Schilling skreiv:


Classically, it's a robot if it has the ability to sense and respond to
the external environment.

Pragmatically, it only counts if the "sense and respond to the external
environment" bit applies to the normal exercise of the primary function
of the device; safety overrides and/or feedback control of secondary
functions need not apply. A car does not become a robot when you add
anti-lock brakes; it becomes a robot when it steers itself down the
road.


But my electric heater is a robot. It senses the external environment
(namely the temperature) and responds to it (by turning on or off the
heating). This is it's primary function, indeed it does its thing
unsupervised for weeks at a time, it is clever enough to know when I'm
at work and when I'm sleeping, so allows temperature to drop further at
those occcasions.

I've got a robot heating my bathroom-floor too. I give it orders twice a
year. The rest of the time it senses and responds to the environment
independently.


Ah, you're going to use your thermostat to mine the moon and build
powersats from lunar materials. Neat trick, that.

Hop

Pat Flannery wrote:



Hop David wrote:

Hop David wrote:

Pat Flannery wrote:

(snip)

Do you honestly believe miners are a bunch of clumsy morons? You
arrogant, ignorant, little prick.


I DID NOT WRITE THAT.

Nor did I claim that you did.

Troy was able to correctly interpret it. It's not hard to read it
correctly. My newsreader keeps track of who says what with the number of
greater than signs prefacing each line.

For the record I called you an arrogant, ignorant little prick. Then I
felt guilty about it and wrote that it distressed me I was abusing you
in this fashion.


You have just defined and damned yourself with a outright lie

I take it back. It does not distress me in the least that I called you
an arrogant, ignorant little prick. **** off and die.

Hop

Pat Flannery wrote:



Troy wrote:

On Nov 8, 9:38 pm, Pat Flannery wrote:


Hop David wrote:


Hop David wrote:


Pat Flannery wrote:


(snip)


Do you honestly believe miners are a bunch of clumsy morons? You
arrogant, ignorant, little prick.


I DID NOT WRITE THAT.



No, you didn't and I believe Hop was expressing regret at what he
wrote:

Quote from Hop:

"I've always regarded you as a gentle soul and a wonderful story
teller.
It distresses me to read some of my replies to you in this thread. "



So first he lies about what I wrote,

Again, _I_ wrote that you're an arrogant, ignorant, little prick. Anyone
who knows how to use a news reader should be able to tell that your text
was snipped and I was commenting on what I had written earlier.

I will extend you a courtesy and assume your accusation is due to
misreading and not a deliberate falsehood.


Hop

Hop David wrote:
Pat Flannery wrote:



Hop David wrote:

Hop David wrote:

Pat Flannery wrote:

(snip)

Do you honestly believe miners are a bunch of clumsy morons? You
arrogant, ignorant, little prick.


I DID NOT WRITE THAT.

Nor did I claim that you did.

Troy was able to correctly interpret it. It's not hard to read it
correctly. My newsreader keeps track of who says what with the number
of greater than signs prefacing each line.

For the record I called you an arrogant, ignorant little prick. Then I
felt guilty about it and wrote that it distressed me I was abusing you
in this fashion.


You have just defined and damned yourself with a outright lie

I take it back. It does not distress me in the least that I called you
an arrogant, ignorant little prick. **** off and die.

Here we go again I see; first the apology, then another insult.
You might just want to shoot for the middle ground with someone you
don't agree with, and state why you don't agree with them rather than
oscillating up and down between apologies and insults like a see-saw.
If I were you; I'd really think about going to see someone about this,
because you have some very peculiar things going on upstairs.
Anyway, you've obviously turned into a troll...there's something going
on that involves a particular psychological archetype that's a true
believer in space exploitation and colonization and then degenerates
into a troll...as it's happened to Rand Simberg first, and now to
you.... I still think it has a cult-like aspect to it, reminiscent of
hippies in a commune after about a year getting embittered when they
realize that it's not the nirvana it was supposed to be.
Anyway, I'm not going to read your stuff anymore.

Pat

A recap of this thread:

Jim Davis started this subthread on October 23 with the assertion that
worker housing in space made no sense. Johnny 1-A seconded this notion
with "The only way any of that would make sense is if the cost of
returning workers to Earth, and the related turnover, was less than the
cost of constructing a habitat. Slot in selected assumptions about
relative cost and you can reach an answer. The answer is almost surely
going to be 'no'.

Later in the thread I offered this model:
----
I = investment
R = value of resource
T = cost of transporting workers
H = cost of housing

If R I, your project is viable.

If the project requires workers at a remote location, you must either
transport workers or provide them housing. Either T or H must be
included in I.

If T H then it makes sense to build housing.
----

I noted that neither Johnny 1-A nor Jim Davis have demonstrated that T H.

Jim Davis' oil rigs aren't relevant. Sure, in that case T H, but
helicopter or boat transportation is far cheaper than space
transportation. Early 20th century desert mining communities are
examples of T H, this is more relevant since both T and H would be
high in either space communities or desert communities prior to
railroads and highways.

Your pointing at the I.S.S. in LEO isn't relevant, there is no R
(resources) in LEO.

There were some interesting discussions on whether R can exceed I
(investment), R being lunar resources to build solar power satellites.

The argument for this R was lots energy sans greenhouse gases and
increased options for further space development. I believe it was Paul
Dietz who launched the strongest counter-argument: There's millenia of
energy in the form of sea water uranium and this makes no CO2.

You informed Mike Combs that Mars is hard to colonize which had nothing
to do with anything Mike was saying.

You informed me that robotic Discovery missions are much less expensive
than human missions which had nothing to do with what I was saying. Nor
did that demonstrate that mining can be done sans humans. Especially
mining and manufacturing on the scale suggested in the High Frontier.

You informed me there were carracks in the 15th century and that Santa
Maria was a carrack, also having nothing to do with what I was saying.

When I talk about repairing stuff in a pressurized bay vs using
teleoperated robots, you inform me you can't hear or smell in a vacuum.

And now you falsely accuse me of a misattribution and spew out an
avalanche of frenzied hyperbole and incoherent rants.

Can you respond to what I actually write?

Hop

Pat Flannery wrote:



OM wrote:

...As long as this thread has progressed, I'm starting to see more of
this happening. Apparently some of you guys aren't watching your
attribs while trying to trim your quotes. Keep a cooler head about
yourselves, and watch those attribs before you flame each other for
the wrong reasons!



Note how it was posted; with only a single quotation bar in front of it.
That had to be intentional.

When a poster replies to himself (a common way to add a postscript) his
earlier text has a single quotation bar. In my reader, a single greater
than sign preceding each line.

To anyone viewing the thread as a tree, it was obvious I was replying to
myself. If you're not viewing it as a tree, the "hop wrote" at the top
should have indicated I was replying to myself.

My insult to pat had a single quotation bar in front of it. This, plus
the "hop wrote" at the top indicated the insult was said by me.

http://tinyurl.com/yw5u5g

Pat's smoking gun is in fact proof there was no misattribution,
intentional or otherwise.

Hop

OM wrote:

On Fri, 09 Nov 2007 02:08:27 -0600, Pat Flannery
wrote:


So first he lies about what I wrote,


...Hoppy's getting frustrated these days. I fear he's developing
Chumpko's Syndrome,

http://tinyurl.com/yw5u5g

You can see from the Google tree I'm replying to myself. It also
indicates that I was replying to myself with the top line "Hop David wrote:"

My insult to Pat that follows has a single greater-than-sign preceding
each line. This indicates Hop David wrote it. There was no
misattribution, intentional or otherwise.

I suspect Chomko could correctly interpret the post. Whether you or Pat
can is another question.



Hop

Pat Flannery wrote:


Hop David wrote:

Note the line immediately above has a single quotation bar (or greater
than sign) in front of it.

Uh, no. Several times I've mentioned the best place for humans to do
maintenance work is in a pressurized bay.

Learn how to read, dammit.

Note the above lines have two. This is an indication I wrote them.

Now look at

http://tinyurl.com/ytfkuq

Note that, just as in this post, "Hop David wrote:" is preceded by 1
greater-than-sign (or quote bars). Then the lines I wrote are preceded
by two.

Again, I made no misattribution, intentional or otherwise.


Hop

On Fri, 16 Nov 2007 23:12:04 -0700, Hop David
wrote:

You can see from the Google tree I'm replying to myself.

....Yeah, and if you keep up this retarded game of focusing your
arguments on semantics and accidental misattributions, you're going to
wind up having only yourself to reply to. Hop, you're *BETTER* than
this. Your past posts have proven this, and your bickering with Pat
isn't doing *ANYONE* one iota of good. It's rapidly putting you into a
troll category, and quite a few people are getting *REALLY* ****ing
sick of how your posts have degenerated in this direction.

For God/Yahweh/Roddenberry's sake, stick to the *topic* and defend
your stand regarding that. You and Pat may never agree, but at least
the rest of us will have a better chance of seeing two sides of a
topic with a high S/N ratio than some ****-slinging flame fest would
usually supply!

OM
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