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Questions about "The High Frontier"



 
 
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  #501  
Old November 8th 07, 07:57 AM posted to rec.arts.sf.science,sci.space.history
Pat Flannery
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Posts: 18,465
Default Questions about "The High Frontier"



Mike Combs wrote:
Then you might find a couple of my modest little salvos in this battle of
interest:

The Case for Space
http://members.aol.com/oscarcombs/case_spc.htm

Somewhere Else Entirely
http://members.aol.com/howiecombs/somewhere_else.htm


"We must, indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang
separately." - Benjamin Franklin

"BRIAN: Are you the Judean People's Front?
REG: **** off!
BRIAN: What?
REG: Judean People's Front. We're the People's Front of Judea! Judean
People's Front. Cawk.
FRANCIS: ******s.
BRIAN: Can I... join your group?
REG: No. **** off.
BRIAN: I didn't want to sell this stuff. It's only a job. I hate the
Romans as much as anybody.
PEOPLE'S FRONT OF JUDEA: Shhhh. Shhhh. Shhh. Shh. Shhhh.
REG: Scum.
JUDITH: Are you sure?
BRIAN: Oh, dead sure. I hate the Romans already.
REG: Listen. If you really wanted to join the P.F.J., you'd have to
really hate the Romans.
BRIAN: I do!
REG: Oh, yeah? How much?
BRIAN: A lot!
REG: Right. You're in. Listen. The only people we hate more than the
Romans are the ****ing Judean People's Front.
P.F.J.: Yeah...
JUDITH: Splitters.
P.F.J.: Splitters...
FRANCIS: And the Judean Popular People's Front.
P.F.J.: Yeah. Oh, yeah. Splitters. Splitters...
LORETTA: And the People's Front of Judea.
P.F.J.: Yeah. Splitters. Splitters...
REG: What?
LORETTA: The People's Front of Judea. Splitters.
REG: We're the People's Front of Judea!
LORETTA: Oh. I thought we were the Popular Front.
REG: People's Front! C-huh.
FRANCIS: Whatever happened to the Popular Front, Reg?
REG: He's over there.
P.F.J.: Splitter!"

Behold the present state of the space frontier movement. :-D
"Mars, my arse...splitters!"

Pat
  #502  
Old November 8th 07, 08:18 AM posted to rec.arts.sf.science,sci.space.history
Hop David
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Default Questions about "The High Frontier"

Hop David wrote:

Pat Flannery wrote:

(snip)

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


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.

But time and time again you're forking off on irrelevant tangents and
arguing against strawmen that have nothing to do with what I wrote.
You're annoying the **** out of me.

I don't like getting angry at you. I'm going to plonk you for awhile.

Hop
  #503  
Old November 8th 07, 08:47 AM posted to rec.arts.sf.science,sci.space.history
Pat Flannery
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Posts: 18,465
Default Questions about "The High Frontier"



Mike Combs wrote:
"Pat Flannery" wrote in message
...

And that's what I don't understand... on the one hand you blithely assume
that somehow transportation cost are going going to drop by a order of
magnitude or so, but never explain how that's going to happen


Some experts have started saying it's not the technology, it's the traffic
model. A system launching once a week and then later 2 or 3 times a week
might have only a fraction of the cost/lb of a system with the same tech
launching once a month, or, like the Shuttle, perhaps every other month.

That was the argument for the Shuttle also, but the turnaround time of
an orbiter and restacking for relaunch never came down to even a tenth
of what they thought it was going to be. Lack of payload volume was only
secondary to the amount of man-hours required to get a orbiter back
home, checking it out, recertification it for flight, and stacking it
again f or relaunch.
You could have built a lot more orbiters to get around that problem, but
the infrastructure to do it would have been hideous as far as expense
went to keep it going, and the payloads weren't there.
One reason why I favor things like SPS. They may get us to the traffic
model needed to drop the cost/lb to enable everything else people want.


That's about the only project imaginable that would require moving that
much mass off the surface of the planet into GEO in a fairly short
period of time (several years or a decade or two, depending on what you
had in mind).
And fission reactors are a lot cheaper way of getting the power than SPS is.
If they ever get fusion to work, kiss the whole concept goodbye. That's
a virtually inexhaustible source of power with no radioactive waste.
Heat released by the process is more than made up for by the removal of
greenhouse gases that are created via burning of petrochemicals.
Heat transfered into the surface environment is minuscule compared to
the heat convected up from the earth's interior or from sunlight falling
on it, particularly if high temperature superconductors are used for
power generation, storage, and transfer from point-to-point. If you
can pull that stunt off, you can stick around 100 amps from a fusion
reactor out in New Mexico into the power grid and pull around 95 amps
out in New York City.

or the technology that's going to be somehow developed that makes that
happen, despite the fact that rocket efficiency has been fairly constant
since the mid 1960's...


It might all well happen within the limits of chemical rockets.


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.
I'm not asking for a working drawing, I just want the basic concept.


but on the other hand you assume that robotic systems are going to remain
stagnant for decades into the future,


Well, it's just that there's been so many failed promises (yeah, I know,
you'll find those in space as well). I'm sure dramatic advances lie within
our lifetimes, but progress has been slower than anticipated, and some
problems were more difficult than early advocates had supposed. For these
reasons, I don't anticipate robots which won't need the help of people in
any foreseeable future.


Bet you didn't picture a CPU that had a multi-gigahertz processing
capability twenty-five years ago, or a hard drive that could store 500
megs... and have those both sitting inside of something of around two
cubic feet in size in your living room either.
So much for the foreseeable future. :-D


At least it's giving me a chance to realize that I was right all along,
and that Robert Zubrin really does sound like Bruce Dern out of "Silent
Running". ;-)


Hmmm... better keep him away from shovels, then.


And nuclear detonators.

Pat
  #504  
Old November 8th 07, 08:50 AM posted to rec.arts.sf.science,sci.space.history
Eivind Kjorstad
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Posts: 34
Default Questions about "The High Frontier"

John Schilling skreiv:

There's a difference between mechanization and robotics. Almost none
of the machinery used in modern mining would qualify as robotic.


Is that then, in your opinion, a difference of principle, or just a
difference of degree ?

Machines, very few of them robots, have *assisted* many people in mines.


What separates a non-robot machine from a robot-machine ?




Eivind Kjørstad
  #505  
Old November 8th 07, 09:14 AM posted to rec.arts.sf.science,sci.space.history
Pat Flannery
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Posts: 18,465
Default Questions about "The High Frontier"



Hop David wrote:
Pat Flannery wrote:


3) Mike Combs doesn't advocate human settlement of Mars.



I never said he did


Then why the **** are you explaining to him problems with Mars
settlement?


I wasn't getting out the chalkboard eraser, hurling at his head, and
making him sit in the corner with his dunce hat on, I was just pointing
out flaws I suspected in the logic of the arguments being presented in
my own opinion.
Actually, if I were going to do that to anyone, it would be _you_, not
Mr. Combs.
Can't Mr. Combs make cognizant arguments in favor of his own positions,
without your defense of him?
You can defend your own positions, and find those quite challenging
enough without taking on the added responsibilities of defending Mr.
Combs and his views.
He writes very well in defense of them, and they are a great source for
thought regarding them.
You, on the other hand, seem like small-minded zealot - the intellectual
equivalent of a remora fish, stuck firmly to the bottom of his jaw and
nipping at anything his teeth may have missed as he swims through the
sea of life. ;-)

Pat
  #506  
Old November 8th 07, 10:10 AM posted to sci.space.history
Monte Davis Monte Davis is offline
Senior Member
 
First recorded activity by SpaceBanter: Sep 2005
Posts: 466
Default Questions about "The High Frontier"

"Mike Combs" wrote:

Some experts have started saying it's not the technology, it's the traffic
model.


What's that smell? Could it be... coffee?

They "started saying" that at least forty years ago, when it was clear
(as it has been ever since) that there simply isn't the 10x or better
"headroom" for improvement in chemical propulsion that would be needed
to bring costs down dramatically through technology alone.

The only reason it's a striking new insight to many space fans is that
they'd rather think about cool hardware than about the economics of
building, operating, and making money with it.
  #507  
Old November 8th 07, 10:19 AM posted to rec.arts.sf.science,sci.space.history
Pat Flannery
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Posts: 18,465
Default Questions about "The High Frontier"



Matthias Warkus wrote:

Nonsense.

Among other things, Smith advocates that government agencies collect
road tolls (WoN V 1.3.1), that the state tax all rentable capital,
albeit in a modest manner (WoN V 2.2), yet that some exportations can
be made partially tax-exempt (WoN IV 4). He also argues in favour of
Crown-owned parks and gardens, government-supported banks and
officially regulated fiat money.

Overall, "Wealth of Nations" is a remarkably moderate book that does
not call for any sort of extreme economical or political measure. Most
proposals it contains are based on contemporary examples. There is no
Utopian component whatsoever to it.


But look where it ends up; the book becomes the keystone of Laissez-Fair
economics, and the excuse for the concept of socio/economic Darwinism.
I don't seem to remember Karl Marx saying: "First thing, lets kill all
the kapitalists." but that's how things ended up in China and the Soviet
Union.
Smith took the concept of economic efficiency and profit as the basis
for the success and measure of a nation (and the individual for that
matter), and set it forth as something like a inevitable mathematical
formula.
From that moment, a new idea came into the world, "Greed" as the movie
Wall Street said, "is good".
Not a existing thing, not a regrettable thing, but actually something
positive and inevitable.
The flip side of Rousseau; man in his natural state is a greedy son of a
bitch, and that's the way the world is supposed to work.
It's the natural order of things. Go against it at your peril.
If you want to be praised, then tell people what they want to hear. Or
even more so for that matter.
Tell people that not only what they know is wrong to do is perfectly
natural, but indeed it's a good thing, and in the long run it helps
their society, and indeed humanity, out.
It's such a nice little apple, what harm could taking a little bite out
of it possibly do? It will open your eyes to new possibilities, I'll
guarantee that.
(I always liked the "Adam" name in that regard.)
You shall then know the truth of this world and be as strong as
God...who is deceiving you, out of his desire to be better than you.
Screwtape would understand it all.
And from little insignificant snowflakes do terrible avalanches grow,
given enough time.
Don't ever trust someone who tells that there is no such thing as "sin".
If that statement doesn't set off every alarm bell, air raid siren, and
emergency buzzer in your conscience, then the batteries in your smoke
detector are dead.

Pat
  #508  
Old November 8th 07, 11:25 AM posted to rec.arts.sf.science,sci.space.history
Erik Max Francis
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Posts: 345
Default Questions about "The High Frontier"

Pat Flannery wrote:

But look where it ends up; the book becomes the keystone of Laissez-Fair
economics, and the excuse for the concept of socio/economic Darwinism.
I don't seem to remember Karl Marx saying: "First thing, lets kill all
the kapitalists." but that's how things ended up in China and the Soviet
Union.
Smith took the concept of economic efficiency and profit as the basis
for the success and measure of a nation (and the individual for that
matter), and set it forth as something like a inevitable mathematical
formula.


And that nice guy Haeckel only took Darwin's ideas to their "inevitable
conclusion," and helped form the basis for what would later be called
social Darwinism. Curse that Darwin, everything that followed was his
fault!

From that moment, a new idea came into the world, "Greed" as the movie
Wall Street said, "is good".


I see you get your sociopolitical understanding of the world from Oliver
Stone movies. Cough.

Not a existing thing, not a regrettable thing, but actually something
positive and inevitable.


Do you have any idea what you're talking about?

--
Erik Max Francis && && http://www.alcyone.com/max/
San Jose, CA, USA && 37 18 N 121 57 W && AIM, Y!M erikmaxfrancis
It dives and it jumps / And it ripples like the deepest ocean
-- Sade
  #509  
Old November 8th 07, 11:33 AM posted to rec.arts.sf.science,sci.space.history
Pat Flannery
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Posts: 18,465
Default Questions about "The High Frontier"



Hop David wrote:

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.

You might want to try a magnet first,


Didn't I mention using a magnet?
I want to see you try to get a a tiny screw as it floats around in the
microgravity near a asteroid sometime.
Learn to read, dammit. :-)

(mayhaps mounted on a "Luumba") or get one of those $1.00 eyeglass
repair kits at WalMart. Better yet, you may want to not to build
probes that use 2mm long screws on them without Loktite, or wear your
helmet the next time you take a walk on the lunar surface.


Derksen was opining that fast reflexes aren't really needed. Quickly
turning to the sound from an impact of a wayward tool is just one of
many uses of fast reflexes.

Sound on what in a vacuum? Unless it hits your suit you need a
seismograph, not a microphone.
If you are in a pressurized contained environment, then you can
probably see where the lock-wrench went and even the sloth-like robot
can track it down as it's not going to leave the area.
Actually, the sloth-like robot isn't going to drop the tool, as it's
going to be attached to one of its arms like a socket on a socket wrench.

Your paragraph above does not discuss in any way the advantages or
disadvantages of a 2.5 second telepresence lag.


When's the last time from the Surveyor landers forward that a robotic
system dropped a tool?
How many times since Ed White lost a glove on our first space walk, did
astronauts lose a tool?
They lost one on the EVA just last week to fix the solar array on the ISS.

If you have tiny screws that can fall out and seriously damage
equipment, then somebody at the design end has been screwing up badly.


I wasn't talking about screws seriously damaging equipment. Yet
another tangent that has absolutely nothing to do with the topic at
hand (immediate presence vs 2.5 second delayed telepresence). Again,
please learn to read for comprehension.


I didn't mean that screw pops out and goes flying around like like a
meteor, I meant the Jesus Screw falls out of one of the MERs, and the
whole thing falls apart into something like a pile of erector set parts.



But if you're going to be designing these extraterrestrial mining
machines with these capabilities either way, why _not_ make them
autonomous?


Well, I consider such robust A.I. rather implausible science
fiction. I could read a yarn employing this device with WSOD, but I
don't expect it to come to pass.



I'm still keen to hear the technical details of those
super-economical/super efficient rockets of yours that are gong to
drop spaceflight cost be a order of magnitude or so.


And where have I been talking about super economical rockets?


Oh, constantly, you keep going on about how this all this space mining
and colonization works if the costs of space travel drops by a
spectacular degree.
This is so silly that normally I'd just killfile you and have done with
it (in fact it was goofiness like this that made me drop out of
sci.space.policy) but I must admit that you interest my in a odd manner.
It's rather like the Duck-Billed Platypus...you can't easily figure out
why or how it evolved, but the lethally venomous toe claws on the male's
rear feet are a singular and most unexpected feature, and you really do
want to keep observing the female closely so you can actually see her
lay an egg. :-)

Pat
  #510  
Old November 8th 07, 11:43 AM posted to rec.arts.sf.science,sci.space.history
Matthias Warkus
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Posts: 31
Default Questions about "The High Frontier"

Pat Flannery schrieb:


Matthias Warkus wrote:

Nonsense.

Among other things, Smith advocates that government agencies collect
road tolls (WoN V 1.3.1), that the state tax all rentable capital,
albeit in a modest manner (WoN V 2.2), yet that some exportations can
be made partially tax-exempt (WoN IV 4). He also argues in favour of
Crown-owned parks and gardens, government-supported banks and
officially regulated fiat money.

Overall, "Wealth of Nations" is a remarkably moderate book that does
not call for any sort of extreme economical or political measure. Most
proposals it contains are based on contemporary examples. There is no
Utopian component whatsoever to it.


But look where it ends up; the book becomes the keystone of Laissez-Fair
economics, and the excuse for the concept of socio/economic Darwinism.


Uh-huh - but how does this matter? We are talking about what's actually
in the book.

mawa
 




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