Breaking News! NASA Astronaut Marsha Ivins ****ting Her Diapers!

On Sun, 3 Jun 2007 17:42:07 -0400, in a place far, far away,
"Jonathan" made the phosphor on my monitor glow
in such a way as to indicate that:


"Rand Simberg" wrote in message
...
On Sun, 3 Jun 2007 11:35:34 -0400, in a place far, far away,
"Jonathan" made the phosphor on my monitor glow


Yes, as long as people continue to not understand this, and yearn for
byegone glory days when Space Was Important, and delude themselves
that they can return to them, they'll continue to be disappointed.


So you're saying that global warning, oil prices and the war are
NOT urgent political issues?

No.

You are the delusional one to
think they are not. SSP connects strongly to them all and many
more.

Not in any credible way.


But going back to the moon and to mars does?

No.

What latest bout of insanity would cause you to even ask such a
question?

So you're saying that global warning, oil prices and the war are
NOT urgent political issues? You are the delusional one to
think they are not. SSP connects strongly to them all and many
more.


We gotta worry about school prayer, family values and other stupid crap
like that first.... :-)

In article ,
Jonathan wrote:
...he hardly ever mentions it in speeches, and he's repeatedly
failed to request even the modest funding levels he originally promised.
No, this is not his pet project...

I think it was his fathers pet project. And when he realized the
support was slim also walked away from it. But his father let it die
while George W. make it official policy with the Presidential order.

Bush Sr. appears to have been genuinely interested in the idea, although
unwilling to spend significant political capital on it. He too *did* make
it official policy, but it was DOA in Congress because it was so badly
mismanaged right from the start. This version was better thought out,
including telling NASA up front that it couldn't base its plans on budget
miracles.

However, I don't see any sign at all that Bush Jr. cares about it. What
little support he reluctantly gives it, I'd say, is at least partially
just because he really, really hates reversing an announced decision.

...This policy keeps the contracts
with the larger players, while diverting a larger share of the
NASA budget to them also. SSP would open up things to the start ups.

Surely you jest. A huge project like powersats, especially if it has to
get started in a hurry to get some results soon, is clearly a job needing
companies with large resources and long experience. I can't think of a
better way to ensure the continued flow of money to the Usual Suspects
than a big job to be done in a hurry.

Note that NASA *has* given some funding to some of the startups in the
current game, with its "COTS" contracts.

And the fact he barely supports it anymore shows the weakness of the policy.
So why is there any argument that a new direction is needed?

Because some of us no longer believe that there are magic words which will
get the government gung-ho about space development and keep it that way.
Your argument is that Bush clearly didn't get the magic words right, so
it's time to try a different set, because the true magic words *must* be
out there somewhere and the sooner we find them the better.

There's nothing much wrong with the current direction, as a direction.
(It's better than no direction, which was the situation for many years.)
If one assumes that a new direction cannot reasonably be expected to stir
up vastly more enthusiasm and support, then there is no good reason to try
a new one just because the current one didn't produce miracles. There are
no miracles to be had.

And today that very same urgency can be installed
in a NASA goal from global warming and oil shortages.
Thirty years they say for both to come to a climax.

When you start talking about throwing really large amounts of money at it,
you'll find that "they" are nowhere near that unanimous about it. And
even stipulating urgent need, there are a wide range of views about how
best to proceed. The space option is seen as (to put it politely)
speculative and long-term, not least because NASA's incompetence when
faced with even much more modest goals has become so obvious.

Too uncertain and too long-term.

That's just not the case. The SERT study, the largest to date
set out the following initial timetable. If the program were
to begin in 2002, then...
"Technology flight demonstrations (referred to by NASA as MSCs) are
scheduled in FY 2006-2007, FY 2011-2012, and FY 2016."

At the end of which we have, not the first operational powersat, but a
technology demonstration or three which might indicate a *long-term*
potential for actual powersats. Reminder: Apollo went from commitment to
*final objective* in eight years, and only barely managed to hold its
political base together long enough.

And even those dates *ASSUME* that NASA and its contractors manage to
execute the program competently and promptly, which would be a huge
departure from recent history.

Powersats don't stop being uncertain and long-term until you can commit to
having a "pilot plant" powersat built within ten years (preferably less).
Note that a pilot plant and a technology demonstrator are very different
things; a pilot plant has to *be* an operational system in all but size.
If it can't deliver hundreds of megawatts 24x7 to the power grid, it's not
a pilot plant.

As a single answer to Global warming and dependence on
fossil fuels and the Middle East, it makes an easy sell to
politicians on the left or right, dove or hawk, tree-hugger
of NRA.

Not as long as it's uncertain and long-term; see above. It's *not* an
easy sell when people flatly don't believe you can deliver any time soon,
regardless of great it would be if you could.

You have rather obviously never tried selling anything to a politician.
They spend a fair part of their lives listening to sales pitches; they
have a *lot* of sales resistance.

(P.S. I've already spent more time on this than I should have; expect
future responses to be a lot terser.)
--
spsystems.net is temporarily off the air; | Henry Spencer
mail to henry at zoo.utoronto.ca instead. |

Henry Spencer wrote:
Bush Sr. appears to have been genuinely interested in the idea, although
unwilling to spend significant political capital on it. He too *did* make
it official policy, but it was DOA in Congress


The bush Jr announcement did have a very positive aspect to it in that
it unlocked NASA's ability to do research on possible manned Mars
missions. And this should survive any CEV plans since the space station
can be used to do such research (testing O2 generators, closed loop
ECLSS etc)

Is it true that prior to that announcement, NASA was prohibited from
using any of its budgets to perform research for a manned Mars mission ?
If so, when would such a policy have been imposed on Nasa ? Bush Jr ?
CLinton ? Bush Sr ?

Was it imposed at the budget debacle in late 1990s when station cost
overruns forced the government to give NASA strict spending guidelines ?

(Henry Spencer) wrote:

:
:However, I don't see any sign at all that Bush Jr. cares about it. What
:little support he reluctantly gives it, I'd say, is at least partially
:just because he really, really hates reversing an announced decision.
:

I'm curious how you arrive at this conclusion. Surely if he didn't
care about it at all he would never have made the announcement of the
decision in the first place. Nothing drove him to it, after all.


--
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable
man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore,
all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
--George Bernard Shaw

In article ,
John Doe wrote:

Henry Spencer wrote:
Bush Sr. appears to have been genuinely interested in the idea, although
unwilling to spend significant political capital on it. He too *did* make
it official policy, but it was DOA in Congress


The bush Jr announcement did have a very positive aspect to it in that
it unlocked NASA's ability to do research on possible manned Mars
missions.

And even more importantly in my opinion, it finally lifted the Moon
taboo.

Best,
- Joe

Powersats don't stop being uncertain and long-term until you can commit to
having a "pilot plant" powersat built within ten years (preferably less).
Note that a pilot plant and a technology demonstrator are very different
things; a pilot plant has to *be* an operational system in all but size.
If it can't deliver hundreds of megawatts 24x7 to the power grid, it's not
a pilot plant.



Something capable of that would likely need to be built in place. And a
powersat (as I understand it) needs to be in a geostationalry orbit, and
that's about 22 thousand miles up out there. Which would mean that we'd
need to get men and materials up that far. Construction shacks with
life support, etc. And once it's operational, you probably won't need
it manned 24/7, but you may need to get people up there reasonably
quickly to make bigger repairs when something breaks down. Oh, you'd
have redundant and backup systems to keep things running, but eventually
the failures accumulate enough that you need to go up and clean it up.
All those trips are going to be expensive. But you have nearly
continuos sunlight (except around March and September) up there.

It's probably a lot cheaper to just build the solar power plant on the
ground (like in a desert in Arizona), even though it can only work
during the daytime. But power consumption does peak during the daytime,
so it would still make sense to do it. And you don't need to convert the
power to RF and back again. And access for building it and maintenance
is nothing out of the ordinary.

On Mon, 04 Jun 2007 18:47:38 GMT, in a place far, far away, robert
casey made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
such a way as to indicate that:


Powersats don't stop being uncertain and long-term until you can commit to
having a "pilot plant" powersat built within ten years (preferably less).
Note that a pilot plant and a technology demonstrator are very different
things; a pilot plant has to *be* an operational system in all but size.
If it can't deliver hundreds of megawatts 24x7 to the power grid, it's not
a pilot plant.



Something capable of that would likely need to be built in place. And a
powersat (as I understand it) needs to be in a geostationalry orbit, and
that's about 22 thousand miles up out there.

No, it doesn't need to be--that's only one potential architecture.
The benefit of GEO is that you can get continuous service from a
single satellite, whereas lower altitudes require a constellation of
them. However, the latter would be easier to demonstrate with a
part-time system, which would be a proof of concept for the whole
constellation.

In article .net,
robert casey wrote:

Powersats don't stop being uncertain and long-term until you can commit to
having a "pilot plant" powersat built within ten years (preferably less).
Note that a pilot plant and a technology demonstrator are very different
things; a pilot plant has to *be* an operational system in all but size.
If it can't deliver hundreds of megawatts 24x7 to the power grid, it's not
a pilot plant.

Something capable of that would likely need to be built in place. And a
powersat (as I understand it) needs to be in a geostationalry orbit, and
that's about 22 thousand miles up out there.

It doesn't have to be, it's just an engineering trade-off. A GEO
powersat has obvious advantages when it comes to aiming and and
receiving the power beam, and it can provide continuous power, which any
other orbit almost certainly wouldn't do (for lack of receiving
stations). But it does have the problems of being a long way up (as you
point out), and needing a really big transmitter.

Which would mean that we'd
need to get men and materials up that far.

Probably, but again, that'd be an engineering choice -- there are almost
certainly other ways to do it.

Construction shacks with
life support, etc. And once it's operational, you probably won't need
it manned 24/7, but you may need to get people up there reasonably
quickly to make bigger repairs when something breaks down.

Sure sounds good to me!

It's probably a lot cheaper to just build the solar power plant on the
ground (like in a desert in Arizona), even though it can only work
during the daytime.

Yes, in the short term or for small needs, of course this (or many other
things) makes more sense. SSP only makes sense when you're thinking
long-term and on the scale of satisfying a major fraction of Earth's
power needs.

Cheers,
- Joe

"Rand Simberg" wrote in message
...
On Sun, 3 Jun 2007 17:42:07 -0400, in a place far, far away,

What latest bout of insanity would cause you to even ask such a
question?


I don'ty know. Since I'm always bashing the Vision, and you're
always arguing with me. Guess I assumed that meant you
supported the Vision, at least the moon and mars part.