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

On Mon, 4 Jun 2007 19:34:47 -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 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.

Well, since you snipped out all context, including the idiotic
question you asked, I doubt if anyone will pay much attention to your
nonsense.

In article ,
Fred J. McCall 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.

A President's personal wishes and interests generally are the smallest
part of why he does things. He doesn't get into that office without
making compromises, *lots* of compromises. He spends a fair bit of his
time mediating between various interests, both inside and outside the
government, who want different things.

This guy has never impressed me as being terribly bright, but then, he's
far from the first President of whom that can be said. :-) I don't buy
the theory that he's the mindless puppet of the Dark Forces, but there
are issues he cares about and issues he doesn't care about, and this is
obviously in the latter category.

If he had any personal interest in this particular issue, it's clearly
long gone, because he hasn't been *doing* anything to advance it. As I
noted, he hasn't even been asking Congress for the modest NASA budget
increases that he originally promised. The amount of money is peanuts
compared to the cost of certain other hobbyhorses of his which I won't
name :-), so if he's not even trying to get that money, it's because he
just doesn't care. He'll make a token gesture of support now and then
because he promised someone (who? damned if I know) he would, but his
heart's visibly not in it.
--
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"Henry Spencer" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Jonathan wrote:


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.


Lost your religion? This pessimism must be based on the past
performance of our political system. We live in an entirely different
political world these days. Wisdom is a collective property, and
the internet is quickly allowing the weight of the people to assert itself
over our political system. You could watch this effect in the aftermath
of Katrina, watch a new opinion form on global warming that resonated
throughout a very resistant administration.


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.


It was the idea that failed, not the pitch, as most people formed
an opinion on going back to the moon long ago.

I'm not looking for those 'magic words' that will sell even a lemon.
The administrator was when he solicited opinions on justifying
a return to the moon. I'm looking for the 'magic goal' that
will /sell itself/ even if only a few lamers are pushing it.

Complexity science has taught us how to design the
idealized goal, at least in the abstract. And the ...magic
is simply is constructing a system where all the primary
driving variables are complex at the same time.
And using the definition of 'complex' as given by
complexity science. It's a very simple concept to apply.

Let me explain the new definition of complexity. Then and
only then could you understand the overall structure
and why it works.

The relationship or connectivity between the primary system
variables need to be /neither/ completely rigid, a connectivity
of 1, or completely disconnected, a connectivity of 0.
In this system the relationship needs to be a goal that is
neither easy/fixed, a 1, or impossible/pile-dream, a 0.

For instance, a return to the moon vs. space elevators.

Either of those goals are, by definition, losers and will fail.
One because it's too easy and unproductive, the other
because it's just not possible.

If the goal is as ambitious as possible, but just short of
becoming a pipe-dream, it is complex. It must not only be a
fractional level of connectivity, but also as close to the
tipping points as possible so that one can't tell which-is-which.
That is to say, so no one can tell which is the greater
component, level of ambition vs realm of possibility.

Both being simultaneously just at the tips of our
.....outstreched hands. This is what will resonate
with the people, the politicians will follow.

You need to find the project that has ambitions so
grandiose and world changing that it borders, but
not quite, on the realm of science fiction. While at
the same time being so difficult as to just, but
not quite, be out of reach. This is complexity as it's
defined in the latest non-linear mathematics.


When a system has that complex property throughout.
Like ...magic...it self organizes and generates a
life of its own. It's what the second law does, it drives
everything towards the complex realm.
Where spontaneous order emerges.
It's what nature does, often it drives systems far from
equilibrium just to, but not quite, to the breaking point.
At which time they begin evolving.

At the edge of chaos.
http://www.calresco.org/perturb.htm


SSP has all those complex properties and almost perfectly so!

It's potential to change the world is dramatic, yet easy to
comprehend. It's difficulty is clear, yet the technology is
within our grasp.

I believe in these concepts, and I believe I've applied them
properly to solving this problem...the long term goal of NASA.
I figure two more years of pumping should tell me if they
are both correct. SSP becoming policy or close to it in two
years of bust for me~


There's nothing much wrong with the current direction, as a direction.
(It's better than no direction,


Oh my God! That's what's wrong with the Vision, it's only slightly
better than doing nothing at all. And given the expense, doing
nothing is becoming the better choice.


which was the situation for many years.)


Complexity science and the internet has not been around
for many years at all. Combining the two has all kinds of
possibilities.



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.



Yes there are. In two years, I estimate, SSP will be the new goal
of NASA. When I first started pumping it a couple of years ago
It seems, the only response I could see was NASA taking down
the SSP website exactly three weeks after I started. Now, the
Pentagon is considering studying it, MIT just had a conference
a couple weeks ago, it's making a come back. I'm betting
another Katrina or like disaster hits in the next of couple
of years to complete it's revival and turn it into policy.

The reason I expect another 'global warming' catastrophe
such as Katrina is because living here in Miami I watch
these things pretty close. Katrina and Wilma were entirely
unprecidented storms. The recent trends have done more
than bring a lot of storms, their upper limit has grown in size
by a...couple...orders of magnitude.

A 100 mile wide eye at cat 5 strength is a monster like no other.
That hardly ever happens, yet it happened twice in a row.
Andrew caused over thirty billion in damage and it was only 20 miles
across. Five times the diameter at the the same strength
is how much more enengy? Those two storms, Katrina and Wilma, were
rather sobering to experience.



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.


You fail to see the different trends. At the end of Apollo we had, in the
eyes of the public, several piles of fairly worthless moon rocks.
No great discoveries, we didn't even accomplish the primary science
goal of figuring out how the moon formed.

At the end of the first MSC, we'll have a scale version of something
that could transform the future and our country. The people
can easily see the progress and possibility. The goal of
the original moon shot had a finite ending built in, SSP does not, it
...always has a next step. With each one strengthening the next.



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.


The more ambitious the goal, the more likelihood of success.
Due to the diversity created by the excitement. The thing about
self organized systems you don't seem to appreciate. Once
a complex adaptive system has been established, they cannot fail.
A property of nature or evolution is for the system
to settle on the best possible solution for the given problem.

So the goal is always to design a structure that best mimics
a complex adaptive system. This is done by seeking the complex
realm in every aspect. By constantly pushing right up to the
breaking point, but not quite.



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.)



Well, I intend to spend a couple more years pumping this. Any advice
that can make the message more effective would be appreciated.



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On Mon, 04 Jun 2007 09:03:51 GMT, Fred J. McCall
wrote:

(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.

Nothing drove him away from it, either. The announcement cost him
close enough to nothing, in political terms, as makes no difference.

At very least it changed the subject, and there was very definitely
a slim chance that it would reignite some sort of Apollo-esque public
enthusiasm. Since the usual subject of political debate the past
year has been enthusiastic Bush-bashing, why not take the chance on
talking about something positive? If nobody follows his lead, it's
easy enough to drop the subject and try talking about something else.

By comparison, consider social security reform. Granted, that's a
dead issue that Bush never mentions any more. But he kept talking
about it and kept pushing for quite a while after it became clear
that the public and congressional response was mostly negative.
*That* is how you figure out what a politician really cares about.


--
*John Schilling * "Anything worth doing, *
*Member:AIAA,NRA,ACLU,SAS,LP * is worth doing for money" *
*Chief Scientist & General Partner * -13th Rule of Acquisition *
*White Elephant Research, LLC * "There is no substitute *
* for success" *
*661-718-0955 or 661-275-6795 * -58th Rule of Acquisition *

On Sun, 3 Jun 2007 11:35:34 -0400, "Jonathan" wrote:


"Rand Simberg" wrote in message
...

And how can this sad situation be changed?

Almost certainly it can't be. Space isn't politically important, and
never has been. The political support for NASA's brief surge of glory in
the 60s came from Cold War politics and gross insolence by the Soviets

not a belief that it was important to invest in the country's long-term
future. "There's progress, and then there's Congress."

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

Only in ill-thought propaganda.

SSP doesn't connect to oil prices, because SSP generates electricity and
oil is almost exclusively used in applications where electricity is *not*
an adequate substitute. You're thinking about "energy" as if it were a
fungible commodity; it's not. There are two almost completely independant
energy markets, one for fixed power and one for motor vehicle fuel.

SSP is doubly irrelevant to the war because A: see above, and B: SSP can
not possibly be brought on line in significant quantity until the war is
long since won or lost.

And SSP is somewhat relevant to global warming, but mostly to the extent
that it replaces Chinese coal-fired power plants and blast furnaces. But
any plan to devote Sagans of American taxpayer dollars to building new and
better power plants for the Chinese, is an absolute political non-starter.


Furthermore, SSP is *percieved* as being absolutely completely totally
irrelevant to anything in the real world, on account of being a hopelessly
unrealistic fantasy. If you propose to change that perception, note that
people have spent thirty-odd years trying to change that perception, with
zero success. What do you propose to do that they haven't already done?


We will get into space in a big way when people are spending their own
money to do so, and not the taxpayers'.

No, we'll fill the new niche of space as soon as our currect niches
are filled. Just as it has been with naturally evolving systems for
eons. Or, we'll move into space big time when that is the best
solution for our needs.

When it is percieved as being the best solution to our needs. It is far
from clear that SSP is the best solution to our needs, and quite clear
that it is not percieved as the best solution to our needs.


We need clean solutions to global warming and fossil fuels.

Which SSP may not offer, and even if it does, how do you propose to get
it? Shouting for massive government spending to develop SSP technology,
however you propose to structure the program this time, *will not work*.
And damn few of us will join you on that fool's errand.

If that's all you've got, then you are not going to get what you need.
So your time would be better spent figuring out how to do without.


--
*John Schilling * "Anything worth doing, *
*Member:AIAA,NRA,ACLU,SAS,LP * is worth doing for money" *
*Chief Scientist & General Partner * -13th Rule of Acquisition *
*White Elephant Research, LLC * "There is no substitute *
* for success" *
*661-718-0955 or 661-275-6795 * -58th Rule of Acquisition *

John Schilling wrote:

SSP doesn't connect to oil prices, because SSP generates electricity and
oil is almost exclusively used in applications where electricity is *not*
an adequate substitute.

And to the degree that electricity can better become a substitute for
petroleum (for example, by improvements in batteries for vehicles)
then SSP isn't needed, or even particularly helpful. Huge numbers of
PHEVs could be charged on the US power grid with existing capacity
(mostly during off-peak times) before they would require new capacity
additions.

Paul

In article ,
John Schilling wrote:

SSP doesn't connect to oil prices, because SSP generates electricity and
oil is almost exclusively used in applications where electricity is *not*
an adequate substitute. You're thinking about "energy" as if it were a
fungible commodity; it's not. There are two almost completely independant
energy markets, one for fixed power and one for motor vehicle fuel.

This will cease to be true when/if motor vehicles run primarily on
stored electricity. Try http://www.google.com/search?q=Tesla+motors
for example.

SSP is doubly irrelevant to the war because A: see above, and B: SSP can
not possibly be brought on line in significant quantity until the war is
long since won or lost.

Well, (B) is true for my lunch too, given that the war has long since
been lost.

And SSP is somewhat relevant to global warming, but mostly to the extent
that it replaces Chinese coal-fired power plants and blast furnaces. But
any plan to devote Sagans of American taxpayer dollars to building new and
better power plants for the Chinese, is an absolute political non-starter.

China is certainly important, but the US is at the top of total CO2
emissions at least as of 2003:
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/emis/tre_tp20.htm

Of course I realize that what matters is current and near-future
emissions, not total past emissions. But the U.S. is at the head of
that "current" list too, at least as of 2005:
http://www.earth-policy.org/Indicato.../2006_data.htm

Granted, China's got a lot of power coming online in the near future,
but it's extreme head-in-the-sand-ism to say that US emissions don't
matter. We're responsible for over 20% of the CO2 emitted on the
planet. That's huge.

Furthermore, SSP is *percieved* as being absolutely completely totally
irrelevant to anything in the real world, on account of being a hopelessly
unrealistic fantasy.

No argument there. Of course if it were demonstrated, even on a small
scale, people would stop laughing. But as long as they're laughing,
it's hard to demonstrate. This is the classic problem space development
has faced over and over, occasionally with success (e.g. space tourism).

We need clean solutions to global warming and fossil fuels.

Which SSP may not offer, and even if it does, how do you propose to get
it? Shouting for massive government spending to develop SSP technology,
however you propose to structure the program this time, *will not work*.
And damn few of us will join you on that fool's errand.

True. About the only hope I have for SSP is for some visionary business
leader to do it -- maybe Richard Branson, who has deep pockets and an
obvious interest in both space development and clean energy. But I
don't imagine that there's much we can do here to have any influence on
it at all.

Best,
- Joe

In article ,
"Paul F. Dietz" wrote:

John Schilling wrote:

SSP doesn't connect to oil prices, because SSP generates electricity and
oil is almost exclusively used in applications where electricity is *not*
an adequate substitute.

And to the degree that electricity can better become a substitute for
petroleum (for example, by improvements in batteries for vehicles)
then SSP isn't needed, or even particularly helpful. Huge numbers of
PHEVs could be charged on the US power grid with existing capacity
(mostly during off-peak times) before they would require new capacity
additions.

It's not just about adding new capacity as needed -- it's about reducing
existing emissions, by replacing existing fossil-fuel-burning plants.

But maybe I'm missing the point here, which was merely about oil prices.
For that I agree, widespread electric vehicles alone would reduce oil
prices without SSP.

Best,
- Joe

In article ,
Paul F. Dietz wrote:
And to the degree that electricity can better become a substitute for
petroleum (for example, by improvements in batteries for vehicles)
then SSP isn't needed, or even particularly helpful. Huge numbers of
PHEVs could be charged on the US power grid with existing capacity
(mostly during off-peak times) before they would require new capacity
additions.

With one small caveat: some of the generating capacity now used only for
peak loads, which would have to run 24x7 if some new big off-peak energy
use appeared, is not suited to providing base-load power -- too expensive,
too polluting, etc. (Some utilities use older plants, or inefficient but
low-capital-cost technologies like gas turbines, to help meet peak loads.)
It would have to be replaced with new base-load generating capacity in
this scenario.

That's a detail, though; Paul is still basically correct.
--
spsystems.net is temporarily off the air; | Henry Spencer
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In article .net,
robert casey wrote:
...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...

Almost. You couldn't build it on the ground; you'd have to assemble in
orbit, at the very least. But you can consider building it in an orbit
different from its final operation orbit. Yes, it's big and heavy, but it
has *lots* of power available for electric propulsion (ion rockets etc.),
so it is not as hard to move as you might think, if you're not in a rush.

This is particularly helpful for powersats in geostationary orbit, which
is in the fringes of the outer Van Allen belt and gets enough radiation to
complicate long-term manned operations. (For that matter, most any likely
powersat orbit has the same caveat. The non-geostationary concepts mostly
want to operate closer in, not farther out.) You'd assemble in LEO for
Earth-launched concepts, and in very high orbit if you're going to get
most of the materials from the Moon.

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...

Unfortunately, even Arizona gets clouded out at times, and atmospheric
absorption cuts available power early and late in the day (a particular
annoyance for the latter, since that's when the highest demand peak is).
And there is quite a bit of 24x7 base load to be supplied, and there'll
be much more of that if electricity is used to manufacture or replace
petroleum-derived liquid fuels.

(Also note that ground solar plants contribute, a little bit, to global
warming! Deserts mostly are quite reflective, with much of the incoming
energy going back out into space. But a power plant captures almost all
incoming light, and much of it ends up as waste heat at the power plant.
For power generation on a many-gigawatt scale, this isn't entirely
negligible. Powersats do the inefficient part outside the biosphere.)

Daytime-only solar power generation has some uses, but it's a specialized
niche technology, ill-suited to taking over a large fraction of our energy
needs. To be more generally useful, it would have to be backed up with
some highly effective energy-storage technology, and that's really hard to
do (except in a few favorable locations where pumped hydroelectric storage
is practical).

...And you don't need to convert the power to RF and back again.

Actually, conversion to RF and back is more efficient than long-haul
transmission by high-voltage power lines. (Long-haul transmission is
currently fairly minor -- most power is generated close to its users --
but that would have to change for large-scale use of ground solar.)

And access for building it and maintenance is nothing out of the ordinary.

Powersats do require a big up-front investment in space transportation.
Once that's done, though, access for building and maintenance *would* be
nothing out of the ordinary. You can't realistically hope to build and
operate powersats with the sort of space transportation we've got now --
it's a whole new order of magnitude -- so the current situation, in which
access to space is difficult and infrequent, simply isn't relevant.
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