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Past Perfect, Future Misleading



 
 
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  #11  
Old August 29th 03, 03:45 AM
LooseChanj
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Default Past Perfect, Future Misleading

On or about 28 Aug 2003 22:40:09 GMT, Rand Simberg
made the sensational claim that:
On 28 Aug 2003 22:15:01 GMT, in a place far, far away, "Dholmes"
made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a
way as to indicate that:
While I agree in theory with much of what you are saying IMO the market is
not yet developed to that point especially considering the poor orbit the
station is in.


I'm not sure what relevance the space station's orbit has.


Just a guess, but I'd say he's thinking of the payload hit launching to the
station from my back yard.
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  #12  
Old August 29th 03, 04:00 AM
Kevin Willoughby
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Default Past Perfect, Future Misleading

Joann Evans said:
We've seen the opposite in (I think) Massachusetts when they
increased sales taxes on big-ticket luxury items like yachts.


While New England has build ships of many kinds for many years,
Massachusetts has never had a yacht-building industry to speak of. (Not
that this invalidates the rest of the anecdote.)
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  #13  
Old August 29th 03, 05:45 AM
Pat Flannery
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Default Past Perfect, Future Misleading



Rand Simberg wrote:

I have some more commentary on the Gehman report, and why we should
not build "the" next generation launch system.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,95930,00.html



It's an interesting article, but I think that the analogy between the
development of commercial aviation and space commercialization is
stretching it a bit...back in the early teens and twenties it was
possible for anyone who had some cash and access to some wood, wire, and
fabric to buy an engine and propellor and take a crack at designing and
building his own aircraft* (Alberto Santos-Dumont and his Demoiselle
immediately come to mind- he built the first ultralight aircraft.) and
such simple machines were usable for both sport flying and possibly
military reconnaissance and light mail delivery...but it took the
impetus to aircraft design that W.W. I brought- with the need for
long-range bombers, to really lay the groundwork for passenger carrying
aircraft in both the design category...and having aircraft companies
that had the venture capital needed to bring practical airliners to
fruition... and there is a fundamental difference between airliners and
commercial spacecraft...an airliner was useful if it could deliver even
a few passengers to a reasonably distant location at a speed greater
than a steam train; or if it could carry them to a destination that
couldn't be reached by train at a speed greater than any other form of
transport that could reach it- such as dogsled to the North Pole; or
ship across the English Channel....but unless commercial spaceflight is
going to limit itself to simple up and down flights, such as the X-Prize
is geared for- there is a big fly in the ointment for any group or
company trying to get it going; and it isn't altitude- it's speed.
Getting a rocket up to the hundred kilometer requirement for being in
space isn't all that difficult; some of the amateur rocket societies
have members who have built vehicles that are little short of sounding
rockets in their performance...but getting up to orbital velocity is a
far, far, more challenging endeavor- and unless you can reach that
velocity with a usable payload, you aren't going to make much money in
the space business... although sub-orbital vehicles might have great
appeal to certain small governments, especially if they landed with
reasonable precision in a neighboring country. If aircraft hadn't been
practical until they reached, say, 500 mph, they might not have ever
been developed at all (on the other hand, we might have had 500 mph
nuclear powered steam engine trains by 1960...and consider for a moment
what the derailment of one of those babies would have been like...); and
the big challenge for any investors or company in developing a
non-government funded vehicle is: where are you going to get the money
to design, build, and support a new type of space vehicle? Once you get
over that hump, then the rest is fairly easy, assuming that you have an
economically feasible vehicle, and the other players in the game play
fair...and given the French subsidies to Airbus, that is a far from
certain situation....even simple technologies, such as the use of solid
fuel, off-the-shelf guidance components, and simplified launch and
support infrastructure are going to require a very large outlay of cash
before vehicle one ever flies...particularly in regard to the actual
production of the flight vehicle- there's aerodynamics to consider,
manufacture of structural components, fuel manufacture, guidance system
manufacture, and transport to the launch site- as well as support
on-site. And every one of those requirements that gets subcontracted out
to another firm eats into your profit margin...so unless you have access
to the amount of capital and manufacturing capabilities of a major
player that already exists in aerospace has you are going to be sinking
a fortune into the initial preproduction costs for a new vehicle, plus
having to gain experience in all of the above mentioned aspects of
design from pretty much scratch...and I don't think that many companies
really want to do that, or really can do that when it gets right down to it.

Pat

* Yours truly took a crack at this once, and some of my design
techniques were "novel" to say the least; such as building the fuselage
first, with a horizontal slot running through it; then building the
wing, sliding it through the slot, sliding it back and forth, and
anchoring it when the center of gravity of the finished fuselage ended
up at the center of lift of the wing...a concept, which it has just
occurred to me, was subconsciously inspired by the balsa wood toy
gliders I purchased as a kid. The aircraft project went into abeyance
after structural tests on the rear PVC pipe braced by 1x1's fuselage
revealed that although PVC pipe will bend, sharp impacts (such as the
aircraft touching down) would cause it to shatter, and the whole
aircraft would end up as fragments after any rough landing such as the
inevitable crash landing on the first test flight...so the moneys set
aside for the aircraft project were put into the more rational and
successful homemade concrete 8 inch siege mortar project, with the
resulting explosion and time in the hospital- so instead of crashing
down...I blew up.

  #14  
Old August 29th 03, 05:55 AM
Rand Simberg
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Default Past Perfect, Future Misleading

On 29 Aug 2003 04:45:07 GMT, 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:

I have some more commentary on the Gehman report, and why we should
not build "the" next generation launch system.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,95930,00.html


It's an interesting article, but I think that the analogy between the
development of commercial aviation and space commercialization is
stretching it a bit


endless graf snipped

Good lord, man, do you ever hit the return key?

That was frigging unreadable...

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  #15  
Old August 29th 03, 05:55 AM
Pat Flannery
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Default Past Perfect, Future Misleading



stmx3 wrote:


Find a solid gold asteroid...then you'll have the killer app. Space
transportation would leap a century into the future.


Wouldn't work... The gold price would drop through the floorboards due
to the vast increase in supply; a SciFi author wrote a short story about
the devastating economic consequences of a solid gold meteorite of
fairly good size falling to Earth, that leads to the complete breakdown
of civilization- the story was called "Element 79" IIRC.



But, unless China makes plans to plant a flag on Mars, there's not
much out there other than the public imagination to give manned
spaceflight a purpose. And that's mainly driven by romantic musings
of the Apollo program.



Hmm...Commie Mars...The Red Planet...should have seen this one coming.

Pat
(At least not going to sleep by the light of a communist Moon.)

  #16  
Old August 29th 03, 05:55 AM
Pat Flannery
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Default Past Perfect, Future Misleading



Chuck Stewart wrote:

The only exception would be materials that are _only_ produced or
procured offworld... that are wanted on Earth.



Okay, what if the SOB's made out of Krell Metal?

Pat

  #18  
Old August 29th 03, 06:15 AM
Pat Flannery
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Default Past Perfect, Future Misleading



Rand Simberg wrote:



As somebody said:

"The United States is the only country , on the face of the earth, to
go from Frontier to Decadence, without going through Enlightenment ."



Yes, somebody who was an ignorant idiot.



Now that's seems like a downright unenlightened thing to say...lighten
up a bit, Rand.
Besides, if he's ignorant- then he is capable of learning; if he's an
idiot- then he's not capable of learning; If he's an ignorant idiot-
then he thinks he's capable of learning; but he is too stupid to know
that he's not- as he is an idiot...but ignorant of that fact. And even
as we speak, Loius Pasteur is developing a vaccine against
hoof-and-mouth disease.

Howard Johnson

  #19  
Old August 29th 03, 07:30 AM
Pat Flannery
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Default Past Perfect, Future Misleading



Rand Simberg wrote:

endless graf snipped

Good lord, man, do you ever hit the return key?

That was frigging unreadable...



Unlike speaking, I don't have to inhale while typing...so it tends to
drag on a bit.
Consider it one of those odd writing styles that Irish authors are noted
for.

Pat

  #20  
Old August 29th 03, 12:15 PM
Joann Evans
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Default Past Perfect, Future Misleading

Dholmes wrote:

[snip]

One thing that might get the industry going is to sell the shuttles instead
of retiring them. Then the risk falls to the people willing to fly them and
they could with modifications carry a lot of people.


I seiously doubt that anyone would privately operate the shuttles on
an economic basis. Concorde barely cut it, in known markets. (albeit
limited by sonic boom restrictions to mostly over-water routes) The
orbiters just cost too much to operate.

 




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