We, first loosers for 100 years.

On Sun, 28 May 2006 11:09:46 -0400, 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:

No, but individuals are still subject to laws of their countries
on the seas.

http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mlawofsea.html



Yes. The oceans aren't space, either.



No, but as I pointed out a lot of our laws about orbital space usage
came about as extrapolations of the laws regarding free transit of the
seas by ships of all nations.

But they're only extrapolations--little of it is settled law. There
are significant differences (set out in the Outer Space Treaty). For
instance, no country is liable for activities carried out by its
citizens on the high seas in the same way as it is in space. And
there are no intrinsic bars to sovereignty claims on islands, as there
are for bodies in space.

Lou Adornato wrote:

Interesting to who? The Apollo program brought about entire new fields of
technology.

Name one.
I was going to suggest LH2 rocket engines, but we had developed the RL10
before the J-2.

Compared to the scale of engineering represented by manned
missions, the robot missions are toys.


Which makes them far more economical.



Of course, one big difference between us and the Romans is that the Romans
never had to import engineers from third-world countries because not
enough of thier own kids were interested in math and science.



Actual mathematicians in ancient Rome were probably few and far between.
The ones the did have were largely Greek, as the Greeks were admired
(somewhat- they were also looked on a bit as having their heads in the
clouds) for intellectual, artistic, and scientific endeavors.
Were Rome really shown was in the caliber of its practical engineers; the
didn't spend their time working out obscure mathematical formula, the
figured out how exactly to build things that were very strong and durable.



Wow, enlightening, off-topic, and completely useless all at the same time.


It was your claim that Rome didn't import brainpower...they did import
brainpower.
Their biggest loss was when one of their soldiers killed the Greek
Archimedes after they captured Syracuse; he was the greatest
mathematician/engineer of the age and was someone whom the Romans would
have loved to have working for them.

My reference to Rome came from the previous poster, but the point is that
without SOMETHING to get the attention of the next generation of engineers
and scientists, we're going to end up dependent on foreign talent for the
most important skills of our day. I'm pretty sure the Romans never issued
huge numbers of H1B visas to ensure they had enough civil engineers to
maintain thier roads.

As expensive as the manned program was, it generated a lot of today's
scientists and engineers. You can send robots into the heart of hell itself
and it's not going to stir the imagination of the young like the old films
of Ed White's spacewalk and Armstrong's small step.



Don't forget that a lot of the engineers who worked on Apollo came from
Germany, and others came from Canada and England.



You can't go to the moon by staying home. NASA has had 35 years to
answer those questions. We have years of data from Skylab, from Mir,
from Shuttle, from LDEF, and we do NOTHING with it. It's not a lack of
data. It's a lack of leadership, it's a lack of nerve, it's a lack of
vision, but it's NOT a lack of data.



It's the lack of any particularly good or pressing reason to go there.




This is EXACTLY why we need to get NASA out of the Shuttle Operations
business and into a role in which it's facilitating private investment and
development of space.


If there's a way to make money in space, then private investment will
find it. It certainly did in regards to communications satellites,
didn't it?

It's not fair that people like you have thier tax
money diverted to programs you're not emotionally equipped to understand.


I can understand ISS; I can understand the Shuttle; they are both
pointless money pits, and I wish they weren't around anymore.
I can understand the Martian rovers, and they give a lot of bang for the
buck.


and it's not fair to people like me to have to keep explaining it. We need
to stop treating space like we're socialists and start looking at it like
capitalists - I for one want the opportunity to invest in the next wave of
space exploration.



I don't think there's going to be one any day soon, but if private
companies start claiming there is going to be one and want you to invest
in it, I'd suggest avoiding "Bialystock and Bloom Rocket Company" as
it's rumored that it's not on the up-and-up. :-)



Note the Chinese- are they sending people to the Moon ASAP?
No, the are building the world's largest hydroelectric dam.
Why? because it will serve many useful purposes, including controlling
flooding, producing hydroelectric power, and allowing cargo ships to
journey hundreds of miles inland.
Want to do something big and worthwhile?
That's the sort of project to think about, not going back to the Moon.



Question 1: Since when are the Chinese the guage for ANYTHING? They've
managed to combine the worst excesses of capitalism from the age of Dickens
and the worst of Communism from the age of Stalin,


And made it work, amazingly enough!
I'll bet they are still shaking their heads over in the Kremlin: "So,
you don't have to destroy America? You can simply _buy it_? Why didn't
we think of that?"
And of course if they'd just remember Lenin's statement: "You may count
upon the capitalist to sell you the rope you're going to hang him with."
they'd have had a clue as to what to do.

and we're going to follow
THEIR lead? I'd rather take cooking lessons from Jeffrey Dahlmer,
thankyouverymuch.



There's a sale on quality Chinese-made cookware and kitchen appliances
at WalMart this week by the way.

Question 2: When was the last hydroelectric dam built in North America? Try
building one today and you'll be nibbled to death by ducks faster than you
can say "Mount Grahm Red Squirrels eat Snail Darter sandwiches". When I say
we don't dare to dream big dreams anymore, I'm not just talking about space.
I just happen to like the idea of space travel because it will get me far,
far away from the Siera Club and all the other neo-Luddites.




I think we've pretty much built all the practical hydroelectric dams
that we can in the country; it's not a lack of imagination, it's a lack
of elevation...needed to get enough gravitational energy in the water
for the dam to generate enough electrical power to make it worthwhile.



We wouldn't have had anything in particular to launch with them; as the
only two things they were really good for was manned flights to the Moon,
and building a giant space station... and we've all now seen just how
pointless a giant space station is as far as generating anything really
worthwhile to people on Earth.




Well, I don't see the ISS as being "worthwhile to people on Earth" like
curbside recycling and Shakira videos, and it won't pick up trash on the
highways or make our armpits smell like petunias. But there does happen to
be an element of humanity that dreams of living on the frontier.



I still think the ISS would make a great artificial reef somewhere in
the South Pacific.
As to LEO being the "frontier" the only thing it's a frontier to is the
Van Allen Belts; and if you want to try to colonize those- good luck!

Any kind of realistic program is going to need large throw-weight vehicles.



We've got a realistic program right now; ground the Shuttle, give the
ISS to the Russians and Europeans, cut the NASA budget by around 50%,
and use the remaining money to start building better unmanned probes and
we will have a even more realistic and highly scientifically useful
program.

Pat

Hyper wrote:

It's apples and oranges. If you compare human vs robotic missions the
expense is more than justified. One geologist on Mars will get you more
ata than the dollar equivalent in probes.

Be careful. Robots are likely to 'skim the cream' in such situations.
Sure, the geologist may be able to examine more rocks on site, more quickly,
but the value of that rises sublinearly with the number of samples.

You also have to look at this in the context of the questions that
need to be answered. For example, a human geologist on the moon would
have had little advantage over a robot if the question being asked is
'how was the moon formed?', since much of the evidence that we believe
solved that problem was from elemental and isotopic composition. And Surveyor
solved the 'is the moon primitive or has it undergone segregation of
minerals' question without even the need for sample return.

Paul

"Hyper" wrote:

:Pat Flannery wrote:
:
: Don't forget that a lot of the engineers who worked on Apollo came from
: Germany, and others came from Canada and England.
:
:Unfortunately, not many kids today dream of becoming astronauts. I have
:a hunch that they may even be a little scared. :-)

And this is just part and parcel of not being in a 'space race' with
lots of publicity. A lot of us aging scientists and engineers wound
up in the business because we sat up watching Mercury, Gemini, and
Apollo when we were little.

These days reality is just 'too hard' for kids to want to bother with
it, so we get the decreasing numbers of kids interested in science,
math, etc.

--
"The odds get even - You blame the game.
The odds get even - The stakes are the same.
You bet your life."
-- "You Bet Your Life", Rush

In article ,
Fred J. McCall wrote:

These days reality is just 'too hard' for kids to want to bother with
it, so we get the decreasing numbers of kids interested in science,
math, etc.

There's more money in other fields.
--
http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/immigrate/
http://www.livejournal.com/users/james_nicoll

James Nicoll wrote:
There's more money in other fields.
--
http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/immigrate/
http://www.livejournal.com/users/james_nicoll

If there is one thing people crave more than money that's prestige.

Hyper wrote:



If there is one thing people crave more than money that's prestige.



When you think about it, money or prestige are both means of getting
what everyone wants: Personal Empowerment- the ability to exert one's
will upon one's situation and life, one way or another.

Pat

(James Nicoll) wrote:

:In article ,
:Fred J. McCall wrote:
:
:These days reality is just 'too hard' for kids to want to bother with
:it, so we get the decreasing numbers of kids interested in science,
:math, etc.
:
: There's more money in other fields.

But you have to be willing to work for it. Most these days don't seem
to be.

--
"Some people get lost in thought because it's such unfamiliar
territory."
--G. Behn

In article .com,
Hyper wrote:
James Nicoll wrote:
There's more money in other fields.
--
http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/immigrate/
http://www.livejournal.com/users/james_nicoll

If there is one thing people crave more than money that's prestige.

There's probably more prestige in appearing on AMERICAN IDOL
than 30 years in the plantary sciences. There's definitely more name
recognition.
--
http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/immigrate/
http://www.livejournal.com/users/james_nicoll

In article ,
Fred J. McCall wrote:
(James Nicoll) wrote:

:In article ,
:Fred J. McCall wrote:
:
:These days reality is just 'too hard' for kids to want to bother with
:it, so we get the decreasing numbers of kids interested in science,
:math, etc.
:
: There's more money in other fields.

But you have to be willing to work for it. Most these days don't seem
to be.


And their music is just noise.


--
http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/immigrate/
http://www.livejournal.com/users/james_nicoll