the drive to explore

Pat Flannery wrote:

Matt Giwer wrote:

I should not be so light-handed with the sarcasm. Why did he not
simply question the thousands of French who had explored simply
because it was their natural urge to explore?

Because of their fur trapping business, the French "Voyageurs" tended
to confine their explorations to the areas on either sides of rivers;

I know that but my erstwhile correspondant is claiming there is a natural urge to explore
independent of any financial gain. I point out that is a myth as all examples have been for
financial gain. I gave the major examples including L&C. There has yet to be a counter example. I
simply point out where they must have existed if he is correct.

--
If non-Jews were admitted into the holy holocaust, homosexuals
and gypsies would become the moral equals of Jews.
-- The Iron Webmaster, 3447
nizkor http://www.giwersworld.org/nizkook/nizkook.phtml
book review http://www.giwersworld.org/israel/wi...utioners.phtml a7

Rand Simberg ) wrote:
: On 16 Jun 2005 16:43:38 -0700, in a place far, far away, "horseshoe7"
: made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a
: way as to indicate that:

:
:
: Jordan wrote:
: Stewart said:
:
: Who is the customer for your proposed "all-purpose" reusable spacecraft? Customers drive the requirements. If you don't have a customer, you have no requirements.
:
: You don't need an immediate customer for a not-yet-built kind of
: vehicle. Almost by definition, new vehicle types have no customers.
: What you need is the rational expectations that such will appear when
: the vehicle has been constructed.
:
: In this case, the R&D needs to come from the private sector, not the
: government sector.

: It undoubtedly will, the government sector being driven by too many
: other priorities to make a sensible space policy decision.

Well they are smart enough to stay out of the space tourism business.
Speaking of which shouldn't another provate individual being going up
soon? With the Ruskies? SS2? Delta time between flights should being
getting shorter if you plan on actually have some sort of commercial space
industry.

Eric

Jordan ) wrote:
: Stewart said:

: Jordan wrote:
: Stewart said:
:
: You don't need an immediate customer for a not-yet-built kind of
: vehicle. Almost by definition, new vehicle types have no customers.
: What you need is the rational expectations that such will appear when
: the vehicle has been constructed.
:
: In this case, the R&D needs to come from the private sector, not the
: government sector.

: Some _is_ coming from the private sector, now. Note the case of Space
: Ship One.

When is SS2 going up? Who is going to follow Dennis Tito? Where is his
endorsement? All those indicate that an industry could be around the
corner.

Eric

: Sincerely Yours,
: Jordan

In message
(Eric Chomko) wrote:

Jordan ) wrote:
: Stewart said:

: In this case, the R&D needs to come from the private sector, not the
: government sector.

: Some _is_ coming from the private sector, now. Note the case of Space
: Ship One.

When is SS2 going up?

When the US government gets off its backside and lets Burt Rutan show
Richard Branson the plans for it, and stops complaining about the
corporate structure of Virgin Galactic.

Anthony

Jordan wrote:
Matt Giwer said:

Jordan wrote:

Matt Giwer said:
Foreseeable future means the best we can do with proven technology or technology "almost proven."
Um, no.

Then I am certain you will tell us why we don't have the radium powered steamships which were once "foreseen."

???

We do, in fact, have atomic powered ocean-going vessels. We have had
such since the 1950's. The key points of that prediction were that
atomic energy would be developed, and that it would be applied to
oceanic travel. It is, and it was.

Now, it turned out that we used an isotope of uranium rather than
radium as the power element, and that (because air displaced oceanic
passenger travel and because we suffered a phase of anti-nuclear
superstitious aversion) we don't currently use atomic power for
passenger liners. But those details don't invalidate the important
general prediction, any more than an 1875 prediction of a motor car in
every house would be invalidated by the author's having chosen electric
batteries as the means of powering them.

The point is as I said, the cost. Now that it is possible although entirely different from the
original idea the cost is prohibitive save for a very few types of ships and except for a couple
icebreakers are all military where performance rather than cost is primary. We do not have nuclear
steamships because very simply the world cannot produce enough nuclear technicians at an affordable
price.

And that is what I said about all the present "predictions" of innovative ways to get to LEO. We
have no idea of the cost of any of them if it becomes practical. Factually what we are seeing today
is the pre-sputnik approach with the X-15 as the most viable approach to lowering the cost. The X
Prize award was won with it. It may not be improper to say we wasted half a century with the rocket
detour just to get it done faster and damn the cost.

It means the best we can do under proven _science_, which may encompass
a lot of technology not yet developed but obviously physically possible
and logically desirable. For instance, by 1875 the development of some
sort of primarily motorized off-rail ground transportation system at
some point in the future would have been part of the "foreseeable
future" (even though most people at the time failed to foresee it).

In the real world only economical practical engineering matters.

Science is what determines which engineering is economically practical.
And if there is a demand which is scientifically possible, one may
predict that (in time) the technology will be developed to meet that
demand, at which point it will become part of "economically practical
engineering."

Where did you ever get that idea? Engineering determines which science can be made practical. There
have been enough discussions to establish the A bomb could have been built without knowing the
source of the energy, no e=mc^2 required. For the record I am a scientist by education and an
engineer by career. I worked for my first few years in the field of testing scientifically workable
ideas to see if they either were practical or worth the cost of making practical. I have no
preference for either science or engineering. They always work together.

The confusion comes because a demand may be scientifically impossible.
For instance, if time travel is impossible, then it doesn't matter how
much we may want it, we won't be able to get it. But if interplanetary
travel is possible, then if we want it and work for it enough, it will
eventually become ecnoomically practical. We know that the energy
costs are not too great to prohibit it: the rest is accomplished by
the slow and steady progress of engineering.

Economically practical is where this started. You have named on thing if palletized may be worth it
if it is the only way to make fusion work. Economically practical for what purpose?

Tesla was scientifically correct. Electric power can be broadcast.

Indeed. What is even better, it can be "narrowcast" by maser, which is
probably the way in which the wireless of transmission of electric
power, Tesla's dream, will become an economically practical reality.

Nothing beats the cost of copper wire so what is the point? Send it to space? Plutonium thermal
batteries and solar cells work much better and cheaper.

You appear to confuse imaginable and possible with practical and affordable.

No, you appear to confuse "impractical and unaffordable TODAY" with
"impractical and unaffordable FOREVER."

And you are saying any method can be made affordable and clearly that is not true. If it were
chemical engines could always be cheaper than any other method and no reason to explore other
methods. That is clearly not the case.

You can imagine man ways to get into space other than chemical engines but you cannot
conclude any of them will be cheaper until they actually work.

Sure I can conclude that some of them will be cheaper, even before they
have been constructed.

The issue not not some. The issue is which one and by how much cheaper. The interesting thing about
earth orbit is the cost has to decrease by 99% before significant new uses for earth orbit become
affordable. From here to there it just makes existing uses cost less.

In particular, I can conclude that those which
keep the power source and fuel on the ground (such as electromagnetic
or laser launchers) are going to be a LOT cheaper (and more payload
efficient) because of the physics involved in launching _anything_ and
the engineering requirements of constructing stationary as opposed to
mobile power plants.

That is an interesting conclusion. Can you post your calculations? Laser launchers sounds
interesting. What will they have to cost to build and operate to make them cheaper and powerful
enough to put tens of tons high enough that the rockets can get it into orbit? Pleas show your
calculations that that will be cheaper then chemical engines to get to orbit insertion height.

If you really mean the old EM launch ideas you have the same problem of tens of tons high enough to
insert a payload into orbit. It has to be cheaper than chemical engine to that altitude.

And in both cases it is competing with improved chemical engines.

You're also assuming that the ultimate limitations of chemical rockets
are the launch bottleneck; I don't think we've even _reached_ that
bottleneck yet. I think that the chemical rocket launch systems we are
using, most of which were originally designed to launch nuclear
missiles rapidly in wartime on one-way missions, are poor fits to the
needs of commercial orbital launch systems. For instance, we could do
a lot more with airborne orbital launchers than we are currently doing
-- a large cargo plane could carry a booster above most of the
atmosphere and then launch, thus simultaneously resulting in much more
flexible launch windows and reducing most of the energy lost to drag.

As I said but that is far from exotic. It is the X-15 approach.

This system might have involved coat-burning steam cars, or
battery-powered electric cars, or gasoline-powered internal combustion
powered cars. But it was close to a certainity by then that some such
system _would_ be developed, as it was known to be both physically
possible and logically desirable.

Again you ignore the issue of cost which is what is being discussed.

No, I'm pointing out that the problem of cost inevitably solves itself
over time, due to growth in wealth and technology. By "solves itself"
I of course mean "is solved at great effort by industrialists and
engineers," keep in mind ...

No cost solves itself. Nothing ever solved the cost of steam over sail. An additional premium upon
predictable economic transit time caused steam to win.

There was no way of knowing it could ever come to more than a novelty for the rich.

I could have logically predicted in 1875 that growing wealth would mean
that more people would be rich enough to afford motorcars; and that
growing technology would mean that motorcars would become cheaper and
cheaper over time. MOST technologies begin as novelties for the rich
and in time trickle down to the bulk of the population. That is the
NORMAL pattern, not an exception to some rule.

The concept of growing wealth did not exist in 1875 so you could not have predicted it. The idea of
trickle down from rich to everyone did not exist in 1875.

And then who would imagine the country would pave roads to make cheap and reliable cars possible?

Actually, the "cheap and reliable cars" came first, and the demand for
paving followed. Read up on, in particular, Henry Ford, the Model A
and Model T, and the development and political actions of the American
Automobile Association.

As you say, cars could not have made it without politics.

--
American interrogation methods are loved because they can
get confessions to witchcraft if desired.
-- The Iron Webmaster, 3456
nizkor http://www.giwersworld.org/nizkook/nizkook.phtml
book review http://www.giwersworld.org/israel/wi...utioners.phtml a7

: Matt Giwer
: We do not have nuclear steamships because very simply the world cannot
: produce enough nuclear technicians at an affordable price.

ObSF: Sam Nicholson's "Captain Empirical" series. Late '60s Analog.
Collected in an ACE printing in the early '70s.


Wayne Throop http://sheol.org/throopw

Matt Giwer wrote:

Pat Flannery wrote:

Matt Giwer wrote:

I should not be so light-handed with the sarcasm. Why did he not
simply question the thousands of French who had explored simply
because it was their natural urge to explore?

Because of their fur trapping business, the French "Voyageurs" tended
to confine their explorations to the areas on either sides of rivers;

I know that but my erstwhile correspondant is claiming there is a natural
urge to explore independent of any financial gain. I point out that is a
myth as all examples have been for financial gain.

Lots of people explore just because they want to - it's generally known
as 'going on holiday'. People who do round the world walks, backpack
through the Amazon and that sort of thing. Many of them actually pay to
do this, rather than seeing it as a means to financial gain.

'Big' explorations often require a lot of preparation, time and resources.
This requires money, so needs financial backing. The question isn't so
much whether an expedition had a financial reason, but whether the
financial reason was thought up after someone realised that they needed
funding if they were to spend two years exploring uncharted territory.

Most (all?) of the companies currently trying to get into space have a
financial plan (normally to do with space tourism) - but is this because
it was the only way to get VC people interested in funding them?

I'd be surprised if someone was looking for a way to make money, and
decided that building a space tourism business was the best way of
doing it. More likely they wanted to build a spaceship, and space
tourism was the best plan they could come up with to fund it.

Virgin Galactic aims to make money from Rutan's designs, but Branson
probably got involved as much because he wanted to go into space as
because he needed a bit more cash.

Sam.

Anthony Frost wrote:

In message
(Eric Chomko) wrote:

Jordan ) wrote:
: Stewart said:

: In this case, the R&D needs to come from the private sector, not
: the government sector.

: Some _is_ coming from the private sector, now. Note the case of
: Space Ship One.

When is SS2 going up?

When the US government gets off its backside and lets Burt Rutan show
Richard Branson the plans for it, and stops complaining about the
corporate structure of Virgin Galactic.

I hadn't heard about that. Got any more information?

Sam.

In message
Samuel Penn wrote:

Anthony Frost wrote:

In message
(Eric Chomko) wrote:

When is SS2 going up?

When the US government gets off its backside and lets Burt Rutan show
Richard Branson the plans for it, and stops complaining about the
corporate structure of Virgin Galactic.

I hadn't heard about that. Got any more information?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4506133.stm covers it.

Anthony

Anthony Frost wrote:

In message
Samuel Penn wrote:

Anthony Frost wrote:

In message
(Eric Chomko) wrote:

When is SS2 going up?

When the US government gets off its backside and lets Burt Rutan show
Richard Branson the plans for it, and stops complaining about the
corporate structure of Virgin Galactic.

I hadn't heard about that. Got any more information?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4506133.stm covers it.

Cheers. Didn't find that with google news.

Sam.