|
|
Thread Tools | Display Modes |
#1
|
|||
|
|||
Is NASA dying?? If so, whose fault is it?
On 2004-05-17, jacob navia wrote:
[Copied and redirected to ssh, since this possibly seems appropriate there, being as it is a little historical diversion which might be useful at an indefinite later point] Trips to America were risky and extremely expensive in 1492. The technology of that epoch required that the Queen Isabel of Spain sold most of her jewel treasury to finance it. It was a good investment of course, but trips [Warning - rambling by someone with no grounding in economics bar enthusiasm and knowing some words is to follow; please treat it as the bored-evening digression it is g] I've heard this a lot, pawning her jewels; how accurate is it, really? I mean, we're talking three fairly common merchant ships and provisioning, plus appropriate crews; not pocket change, but not exactly something you would expect to tax the resources of even the monarch of a backwater nation - especially when you consider that a year or so later, he sailed with seventeen ships and fifteen hundred colonists, and funding doesn't seem to have been a problem. 'Course, then he was talking gold g (I wonder if an appropriate modern analogy would be asking somewhere like .es or .nl to provide you some 747s... not unattainable, but not something they'd do off the cuff) [digs for a while] Hmm. It seems that Isabella may have offer to pawn her jewels, but it doesn't seem that she actually did; either or both parts of this may be apocryphal - and probably no more than a demonstration of her intent to carry through. Two of the ships were provided by the town of Palos, which was apparently owing the service of two caravels to the Crown (or Crowns?); crew and tack quite likely included. Some cites seem to indicate that the crown paid for the third (the Santa Maria), some that the town was strongarmed into providing it, some that it came with Pinzon when he joined the expedition. (the 1911 Britannica seems to suggest it just appeared one night, which is probably unlikely g) Lot of variety in the details between apparently authoritative accounts, which is only to be expected (given the wide disparity on, eg, how much Apollo cost...) All this aside... http://worldebooklibrary.com/eBooks/...03/cc02v10.htm (among others) The cost to the crown appears to have been on the order of a million maravedis, plus another couple of hundred thou from Columbus. http://dinsdoc.com/sumner-1.htm "The real was, therefore, 3.433 grams gross and 3.194 grams fine. It consisted of 34 maravedis." [apparently talking of silver] .... 93941.176470588235294117647058824 g.Ag to a million mar, sayeth my calculator with delightfully spurious accuracy! So, we're looking at a shade under 100kg of silver as the cost to the crown. That's not astoundingly much, really, even by contemporary standards... "The excelente was rated at eleven reals and one maravedi, the intention evidently being to rate the metals at 10 to 1" So in gold a shade under 10kg, three hundred-odd troy ounces. I don't seem to be able to find a contemporary context for that, but feel free to play; there should be a contemportary European figure or two in either gold or silver ounces. But I think we can all agree they got a pretty good return on their investment :-) -- -Andrew Gray |
Thread Tools | |
Display Modes | |
|
|
Similar Threads | ||||
Thread | Thread Starter | Forum | Replies | Last Post |
The New NASA Mission Has Been Grossly Mischaracterized. | Dan Hanson | Policy | 25 | January 26th 04 07:42 PM |
Selected Restricted NASA Videotapes | Michael Ravnitzky | Space Station | 5 | January 16th 04 04:28 PM |
NASA Celebrates Educational Benefits of Earth Science Week | Ron Baalke | Science | 0 | October 10th 03 04:14 PM |
Lost in Space: NASA Badly Needs a Mission That's Worth Dying For | Scott M. Kozel | Space Shuttle | 16 | September 10th 03 10:32 AM |
NASA, Carnegie Mellon Inspire Future Robotics Engineers | Ron Baalke | Astronomy Misc | 0 | July 16th 03 10:04 PM |