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Solar sailing DOESN"T break laws of physics'



 
 
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Old July 13th 03, 01:00 AM
Edward Green
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Default Solar sailing DOESN"T break laws of physics'

h (Rand Simberg) wrote in message ...
On Mon, 7 Jul 2003 19:24:20 GMT, in a place far, far away,
(Henry Spencer) made the phosphor on my monitor
glow in such a way as to indicate that:

In article ,
Laurel Amberdine wrote:
Ignorance time: people are saying "to first (second, zeroth) order" etc,
quite often lately. What does it mean, anyway?


While those terms have precise meanings, they are often applied somewhat
more loosely and generally. Speaking loosely and generally...

"To first order" means "considering only the biggest and most obvious
effects, neglecting details which don't change things very much".

"To second order" means "including the most significant of the details,
but neglecting really small ones which have rather smaller effects".

And so forth.

And by analogy, "to zeroth order" means "making drastic simplifications to
get an answer which will be somewhere in the right ballpark".


This is a useful discussion in the context of space policy as well.
Most discussion in Congress is about second and third order items,
when in fact the problem is at the level of first and zeroth order, or
as Tom Rogers says, "page 1."


Yes ... and that doesn't seem to apply exclusively to space policy.
Most involved discussions, particularly those involving experts,
probably tend to devolve to 2nd and 3rd order effects, while the 1st
and, especially, the zero order effects and assumptions remain
unexamined. I suppose the contrary idea gives us "zero basing".

Of course to make any progress, one eventually must settle on some
assumptions at each order ... but not, one hopes, unexamined and
immutable assumptions, which seems to be the norm.
 




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