Total Number Of Launches (Or Attempts) In History?

Eric Chomko wrote:

:On Apr 17, 1:27 am, Fred J. McCall wrote:
: Eric Chomko wrote:
: :
: :Freddy, you cut me to the quick.
:
: Nothing quick about you, Eric. You've cornered the market in
: 'slow'...
:
:
:Hah, wrong again! I beat out an infield hit today because I hustled.

Picking in insects now? You'll have to go farther down the
evolutionary scale than that to find something that doesn't outclass
you mentally.

: :I guess being close to DC has me at an advantage to you Freddy.
: :I don't need another advantage, Freddy.
:
: Learning to read wouldn't hurt. You're getting your guts kicked out
: here.
:
:Sure I am...
:
:snicker

Sure you are...

: :C'mon, I spilled my guts about GSFC and years, ...
:
: You mean 'thumped your chest', don't you? And all without really
: telling us anything at all.
:
:Still more than you.

I don't feel any need either to "spill my guts" or thump my chest.
I'll leave that sort of thing to you.

: :... its your turn.
:
: I'll leave the 'turning' to you, worm.
:
:
:Poor Freddy...

Not especially, no.

: :Where are you Freddy?
:
: Right here.
:
: :What do you do?
:
: Hey, I've posted a whole mini-bio somewhere around here over the
: years. Go look it up.
:
:
:You have? I must have missed it.

As you miss almost everything.

: Since you're afraid of Gunner, you should be terrified around me...
:
:"Should" is the operative word there and that was two mistakes you
:made in the same sentence.

The facts seem to be against you on this one once again, Eric.

--
"Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the
truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong."
-- Thomas Jefferson

On Apr 18, 7:54 pm, Michael Turner wrote:
Offlist here.

Oops. I *meant* off list.

But that brings up a point I wanted to mention: I'm still rebutting
supposed counter-examples off list. Sometimes one-to-one reduces the
emotional charge on an issue, and people can think and write more
clearly -- the benefits of open discussion are questionable
sometimes. So don't take my failure to respond openly to yet another
supposed counter-example as any evidence that I'm just running away
from under the weight of evidence piling up against my case. If
you're interested, write personal e-mail to the person who offered the
supposed counter-example, asking if I've responded and whether the
response was cogent and reasonable. I hereby give all those to whom
I've responded privately permission to forward those response.

The picture on can-openers, for example, is much more complicated than
it seems at first. I was able to decrease (by almost a factor of
four) the decades-long gap between the *apparent* appearance of tin
cans that could be opened with can-openers as we know them, and can-
openers themselves. I was able to do this by searching only a little
further than Fournier did, and substantiating two factors that would
have held back any market for tin cans themselves for a long time.
(It should go without saying that, if you've got some way to open a
tin can already, you need a whole lot more tin cans out there than can-
openers -- cans had to make any market for can-openers.)I was also
able to come up with about a half dozen other factors that have to be
ruled out before you could say that the can opener's apparently late
appearance is an exception to my Law of Soonest Opportunity.

I will not be responding by private e-mail to anyone who moves the
goal posts. Here are some examples:

Someone who says, "X was thought of, but it took a whole TWO YEARS
before it hit the market" is being unreasonable. Many companies are
started after enduring a year or more of frustration trying to put a
good idea across, followed by a year or more (after leaving the
problematic mother company) of raising capital, refining the product,
and getting it to market.

Someone who says that there was no BIG, GROWING market until decades
after an idea was thought of (or new demand discovered) is similarly
off the point -- many startups aim at niches that some big company has
already has covered with patents, but doesn't pursue because either
it's not one of the core businesses (the time of executives should be
conserved) or because, beyond the perceived market risks, it could, if
successful, actually cannibalize part of the core businesses. These
companies can often be persuaded to license patents to startups, but
that can take time. (The really smart companies take an equity stake,
a hedge against cannibalization, but I think that's rare.) In any
case, small markets turn into big, growing ones because of a kind of
lemma of my Law of Soonest Opportunity: underlying conditions change
so as to favor more demand. Why has the cruise ship industry grown so
much faster than in past decades? Well, look to demographics (an
aging population who wants more relaxing vacations), incomes (growing
at the higher end), and perhaps an increasing tendency to put a whole
vacation on your credit card (part of the trend toward greater
consumer indebtedness, an outgrowth of wealth effects from property
bubbles.) Those are changed underlying conditions for the cruise ship
industry, conditions they don't control. Peter Drucker once said that
almost everything important for a business happens *outside* the
business. That applies about equally well to businesses that don't
yet exist, but seem like they could. Innovation is an exception, but
it's not a predictable one.

-michael turner
http://www.transcendentalbloviation.blogspot.com

"Hop David" wrote in message
...
Spencer's point was "no existing market doesn't mean there is no demand."

Demand = market

Prior to Henry Ford there was no mass market for cars.

Not at all. There was no mass market *recognized by those capable of meeting
the demand*. Quite a different thing. Henry Ford did not create the market
for automobiles, he was the first person capable of meeting the demand who
recognized that there was a demand and was willing to meet it.

"Scott Hedrick" wrote:

:
:"Hop David" wrote in message
...
: Spencer's point was "no existing market doesn't mean there is no demand."
:
emand = market

No. Demand equals half a market.


--
"Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the
truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong."
-- Thomas Jefferson