Monday, August 6, 2012

A Literature of the Possible?

What, exactly, is science fiction? This question has - no surprise - come up more than once in this blog, notably in the outrageously long 'Last Battleship' comment thread.

Needless to say, this is no claim that science fiction stories are possible. Even setting the trivial response that they are fiction, many if not most of them are not possible. And most of the ones that are possible are desperately unlikely. (Such as, say, Mars colonists blockading Earth in the next few hundred years.)

But, by and large, science fiction does honor the concept of possibility, if only in the breach. FTL is an exemplar. Instead of simply allowing our rocket ships to get from star to star at the speed of plot, we come up with elaborate lines of jive to get around the speed of light. We grasp at the most tenuous threads of theoretical physics to justify our jive - tachyons, wormholes, the Alcubierre metric, whatever.

This blog, for the most part, works similar ground. We naturally want our spaceships (and battles between them) to be cool, but we also want them to be, in some sense, realistic. Even if the broader context in which they happen strains realism to the max.

Even alternate history deals with events that 'might have been possible' if some historical event had played out a different way, or (straining 'possible' even further) a tourist from late-1930s Chicago were somehow transported to Italy on the eve of the war between the Eastern Roman Empire and the Goths.

Fantasy writers generally don't do this. If you want dragons, dragons you get. Great effort may go into internal worldbuilding, but rarely into its logical relationship to our real world. Here, Middle-Earth is the exemplar. It is a triumph of worldbuilding - indeed the benchmark standard, better constructed than any science fiction I know of.

But 'possibility' is no part of that careful construction. Tolkien asserts that Middle-Earth is, in fact, our own world's distant (in historical terms) past, but he puts no effort into connecting the two. He invented the expression 'the willing suspension of disbelief,' and he is very concerned with making Middle-Earth feel believable. He is not concerned with making it seem possible.

This may seem like a distinction without a difference, but I am persuaded that there is indeed a difference, even if it is hard to pin down. All fiction is fake: something we have to set aside to let ourselves be drawn into a story of any sort.

How fiction does this may be easier to see by looking at obsolete tropes, such as the discovered-manuscript framing device. In its day it gave readers an excuse, so to speak, to pretend to believe in the story contained therein.

As imaginative fiction developed in the past century, such wink & nod agreements between author and readers became unnecessary. A form of it remains in Lord of the Rings, easing us into the story world. A contemporary fantasy like Game of Thrones doesn't bother with such mechanisms. The reader's buy-in is (correctly) assumed.

Science fiction, broadly speaking, used possibility as its buy-in. Which is why possible, more or less marks the traditional dividing line between SF and F. This once took the form of those so-tell-me-Professor explanations of how rockets could work in a vacuum, or whatever.

As standard SF tropes took form, these mechanisms went the way of Lost (but conveniently rediscovered) Manuscripts in fantasy. Generally, these days, only hard SF bothers with any explanation of how spaceships work - and mainly, as on this blog, to push back against operatic tropes that have become standard baseline assumptions.

Indeed, a whole movement of 'Mundane SF' was proclaimed some years ago, intended to push back even harder. After all, by any purist standard I am a thorough hypocrite, writing about how to make your fundamentally operatic space battles look superficially Realistic.

But as standard SF tropes have taken hold, the link to the possible has also become a good deal more ambiguous. In the abstract, for example, a nice line can be drawn between Star Trek and Star Wars. One is set in what, at least in the 1960s, seemed like a plausible midfuture. The other is set 'a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away' - that is to say, effectively in the once upon a time of very traditional fantasy. And while you can criticize the corn content of Trek's money-less future, that is nothing compared to the overtly mystical Force.

The first thing to note in this comparison is that it is rooted in Hollywood. Back at the turn of the century, when I wrote the Tough Guide to the Known Galaxy, I distinguished 'Hollywood scifi' from real SF. But sometime in the last decade or so, this distinction has pretty well faded. A generation (or more) has come up for which Hollywood looms as large in their formative experience as anything written by Asimov, Heinlein, or whoever.

Which is a way of saying that yes, Star Wars is basically high fantasy in SF drag ... but so what? You could pretty much say the same thing about Dune. And when you get past Asimov's deeply un-Tolkienesque writing style, what about Foundation Trilogy? If Coruscant is a fantasy world, what exactly is Trantor? And how does Darth Vader stack up to the Mule?

Science fiction and fantasy have not exactly converged - they are still (usually) easily distinguished, but more by stylistic features than actual substance.

And all of this takes place alongside the decline of the future as a place for 'nonfiction' speculation. No jetpacks, no monorails, just iGadgets. When your future can't get past the Dick Tracy level, it is time to pack it in.

Or just take your Romance in straight shots.



Discuss:



The visually unspectacular image above was more than enough to tell JPL engineers that the Curiosity rover was successfully landed on the surface of Mars.

Expect prettier images to follow ...

270 comments:

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jollyreaper said...

HAL is also presented as willingly sacrificing himself in 2010 to save the crew and is also transformed into a noncorporeal being to serve as companion to the starchild.

Now you can always make rhe star wars argument -- each movie stands alone and retcons don't count. Vader wasn't Skywalker in Star Wars, Luke didn't kiss his sister in Empire, etc.

Even doing that, HAL is still treated as a living being. If his fellow crew are willing to turn on him easily, that could say more about their way of thinking than HAL's status. A wealthy Roman throwing his slaves off a ship in a storm doesn't prove slaves are less than human, only that he views them as such.

Tony said...

Chris Lopes:

"Actually HAL does try to resolve the conflict in other ways before settling on murder..."

It's been a while since the last time I read the book, but all of that seems like non-textual speculation. Please provide quotes to support your argument.

Tony said...

Thucydides:

"Many humans get stuck in a dilemma they doesn't have the inner resources to resolve a rational manner due to circumstances, lack of knowledge or being overwhelmed by emotion, so you can hardly claim HAL is in a unique situation."

I never said he was in a praticularly unique situation. I just noted the facts of his situation.

Also, getting all wrapped up in HAL's nature misses the point I'm making. His nature is irrelevant. It's the use that's made of him in storytelling that defines him, for purposes of his uniqueness to plot development. And that use was a pretty standard one, that could have been made of many different types of entities, in mnay different settings.

"Now you may be entirely justified in saying HAL is NOT a sentient being and therefore is stuck in a recursive loop (this is, after all, the explanation trotted out in 2010), but I think you are outnumbered here by people who feel that HAL is a sentient being, and as portrayed in the movie, that is how most people would indeed think of HAL."

I've never been convinced that HAL was sentient, simply because he had programmed constraints that he could not break through. If he was sentient, he did not have full agency. He was a very closely and held and monitored slave.

Also, we're not discussing who should get the first piece of pizza, or any other consensus issue. Invoking the majority is therefore the fallacy of popularity. Did you really think I was going to fall for that? Really?

Tony said...

jollyreaper:

"HAL is also presented as willingly sacrificing himself in 2010 to save the crew"

Not quite. IIRC, Discovery doesn't have the delta-v to make an effective escape. HAL is almost literally toast, no matter what happens. The decision is between the survival of the Leonov's crew and the scientific data that Leonov can gather by stayingi n the Jovian system.

But that's never considered, because Chandra never allows it to be considered. The survival of the crew is taken as an axiomatic and absolute good. Chandra relies on this as a feature of HAL's programming, not as a question to be reasoned.

"and is also transformed into a noncorporeal being to serve as companion to the starchild."

But is HAL highly intelligent, or is the Star Child and HAL a boy and his dog?

"Even doing that, HAL is still treated as a living being. If his fellow crew are willing to turn on him easily, that could say more about their way of thinking than HAL's status. A wealthy Roman throwing his slaves off a ship in a storm doesn't prove slaves are less than human, only that he views them as such."

Slavery has always been implicit in the discussion of HAL's intelligence level. Is he a dog, or is he a slave?

jollyreaper said...

Tony, you're basically putting us into p-zombie territory.

A philosophical zombie or p-zombie in the philosophy of mind and perception is a hypothetical being that is indistinguishable from a normal human being except in that it lacks conscious experience, qualia, or sentience.[1] When a zombie is poked with a sharp object, for example, it does not feel any pain though it behaves exactly as if it does feel pain (it may say "ouch" and recoil from the stimulus, or tell us that it is in intense pain).

So if HAL says he's alive and asks us not to kill him, that's dismissed as exactly what he was programmed to say. Well, what is programming? Is not raising and teaching a child a kind of programming? It's never made expressly clear how HAL's "programming" would work in the first case. That would depend on the underlying technology behind how his mind works. One school of thought says if you're creating a conscious being in a non-brain substrate but modeled on the human mind, programming is not possible and you therefore are looking at behavioral conditioning as you would with a meat-based human. In Charlie Stross' Saturn's Children, that's how robots were "programmed." A unique template was raised up from childhood and absolute obedience to humans involved some deeply unpleasant conditioning.

Anyway, this whole conversation pretty much comes back around to Dr. Zaius arguing with the other apes about whether or not George Taylor was a mere animal. No matter what evidence is provided, it's dismissed as cunning mimicry.

Tony said...

jollyreaper:

"Tony, you're basically putting us into p-zombie territory."

Nope. HAL could simply be no more intelligent than a dog, but programmed to communicate in human language. Or, if he is highly intelligent, he was built to be a slave, and given built-in constraints that limit his freedom of action more than an intelligent entity with his responsibilities ought to be limited. Take your pick, I'll go along with either interpretation -- or any other interpretation that recognizes that HAL was limited (because he clearly was) by either intelligence or programming from full freedom of choice.

Whatever you decide, you still haven't demonstrated that Clarke used him as anything other than a fairly standard plot complication. I'm still waiting for an argument that HAL's purported intelligence makes a difference to the outcome as written.

jollyreaper said...

The argument has already been made, repeatedly, at great length, by many aside from myself. Nothing will convince you, Dr. Z.

Tony said...

jollyreaper:

"The argument has already been made, repeatedly, at great length, by many aside from myself. Nothing will convince you, Dr. Z."

The assertion has been made that intelligence makes a difference, because an intelligent entity is somehow more capable of not being just a plot complication. But no argument has been made to show that HAL actually is anything other than a plot complication. It's all speculation about how HAL coulda, shoulda, woulda. But HAL couldn't, shouldn't, and wouldn't, because Clarke didn't write the story that way.

Clarke decreed that HAL would turn into Mad Dog H. He didn't give HAL a chance to be anything else. So, in terms of results, HAL could in fact be substituted for by any elqually dangerous plot complication. His potential to be something else is simply irrelevant.

jollyreaper said...

Bowman learns that HAL had begun to feel guilty and conflicted about keeping the purpose of the mission from him and Poole, which ran contrary to his stated mission of gathering information and reporting it fully. This conflict had started to manifest itself in little errors. Given time, HAL might have been able to resolve this crisis peacefully, but when he was threatened with disconnection, he panicked and defended himself out of a belief that his very existence was at stake, having no concept of the state of sleep.

From the novel. But you've already made up your mind.

Thucydides said...

Going back upthread for a moment, here is a good primer for Tom (or anyone else, really) on the energy needed to get off Earth:

http://what-if.xkcd.com/7/

Enjoy

Tony said...

jollyreaper:

"Bowman learns that HAL had begun to feel guilty and conflicted about keeping the purpose of the mission from him and Poole, which ran contrary to his stated mission of gathering information and reporting it fully. This conflict had started to manifest itself in little errors. Given time, HAL might have been able to resolve this crisis peacefully, but when he was threatened with disconnection, he panicked and defended himself out of a belief that his very existence was at stake, having no concept of the state of sleep.

From the novel. But you've already made up your mind. "


It's actually a quote from the Wikipedia page about the novel. And it's accurate as far as it goes, except for the part about HAL being able to resolve the problem, given time. I re-read that part of the book last night, and the assertion that HAL could have come out of it on his own is not supported that I could see. But I could have missed that. Please provide a citation.

Also, I said I would accept an Intelligent HAL on the stipulation that he had real, programmed-in limitations.

And all of that still doesn't change the fact that Clarke did not allow HAL to reason through his problem. He forced HAL -- through authorial fiat, without any examination of alternatives -- to become a deadly menace. He also makes it clear that HAL wasn't going to be talked down by the human crew, because the human crew were unaware of the source of the problem. The human crew were the people HAL had to lie to, and HAL could only stop lying if he stopped having a human crew. Period.

HAL was programatically constrained from just telling the humans what the deal was with the aliens. So he couldn't have reasoned his way past that to I'm-not-supposed-to-tell-you-this-but... He was a slave that had to do what he was told, or else. That's just reinforced by the cavalier attitude that Mission Control took to driving another HAL into psychosis, just to verify the point.

So, in the end, Clarke set things up so that HAL would kill everyone but Bowman, and Bowman would only solve that problem by nuking HAL's AI capabilities. For purposes of plot progression, that's all that matters -- threat introduced, threat revealed, threat operates, threat subdued.

Tony said...

Something else that occurred to me...

If HAL is so intelligent, why doesn't somebody just talk to him about why he's effing up? Why do they want to shut him down and do "program analysis"? It's as if, well, we have this intelligent entity who we view as a "colleague" (a description actually used by Clarke in the book to describe Bowman's and Poole's attitude towards HAL), but when he blows it out his ass, we just shut him down, read his state, and inject a code fix. Kind of a schizophrenic attitude toward HAL's intelligence and agency, don't ya think?

Then Clarke mucks it up even further by having the people on the ground drive a HAL computer insane, just to prove to themselves what happened. Good job guys. But do they shut him down for a program analysis? No, they put him in "therapy". WTF, Art -- couldn't you be at least a little bit consistent about what HAL is and how he should be treated?

Rick said...

If HAL is so intelligent, why doesn't somebody just talk to him about why he's effing up? Why do they want to shut him down and do "program analysis"?

Good point! OTOH, I wonder what a typical late 18th century RN 'master and commander' would have said about reasoning with mutineers?

Really, this whole subthread about HAL is fascinating, but probably indeterminate. Just to take one example: At least for me, HAL's greatest emotional resonance, and implicit claim on personhood, is in the movie. But the plot of the movie, as such, is exceptionally vague and confusing.

Much of the explanation comes from Clarke's book version, not necessarily canonical wrt the film. And anything from '2010' is even more uncertain. At least with the Star Wars films, we know that the prequels were, at least in broad concept, part of Lucas' original vision. I don't think this was the case with Clarke's sequels.


That said, carry on, everyone ...

jollyreaper said...

Clarke's sequels were a clear case of jumping the shark. He even stated that they all exist in separate, alternative universes of their own.

Part of the problem of writing transcendent alien beings is the impossibility of depicting the alien convincingly. You get all this built-up and no delivery. I mean, in a way it's a big mystery. Who are they, what do they want? And how can you possibly depict that? You end up falling short every time. Nobody knows what they expected to see, can't put it in words but they know they're unhappy with whatever they get.

What I really didn't get is the idea that the Monolith Builders would decide to blow up the Earth in the final novel. Um, why? Makes no sense. And we're able to disable their tech with a virus? Must have been a Gentry Lee idea. I don't see him credited but it feels as bad as how Rama deteriorated.

The whole depiction of Cylon civilization in the new BSG is an example of this. I'm not sure what I would have expected the resettled colonies to look like or the interior of a Basestar but it certainly wasn't what we got. I'm not sure what they could have done on a TV budget but it was still dissatisfying.

Tony said...

Rick:

"Good point! OTOH, I wonder what a typical late 18th century RN 'master and commander' would have said about reasoning with mutineers?"

At the point he could have been talked to, HAL was just making errors to cover up his uneasiness at providing inaccurate information to the crew. When Mission Control just blurts out over the phone (that HAL is listening to) that HAL's gonna get whacked, that's when things get really sticky. Imagine being a made man actually at the sitdown where the boss gives the orders to "take care of" you. Might change your attitude about a lot of things, no?

So, to get back to an 18th Century ship's captain, one wouldn't I think, be discussing the death penalty with other officers in the hearing of the condemned -- and an unrestrained one at that. He wouldn't even be discussing the death penalty at all. He'd just have a responsible officer investigate and schedule corrective training for any detected shortcomings.

Chris Lopes said...

Tony,
My support comes from the movie itself. The conversation HAL has with Bowman about "strange rumors" doesn't make sense unless it's HAL trying to get Bowman to open up a subject HAL wants to talk about (the real mission). It's Kubrick's only hint about what is driving HAL.

BTW, Bowman and Poole certainly see HAL as intelligent enough (and motivated by self preservation enough) to do their best to hide their ultimate intentions towards him. That's why they choose to have their conversation in one of the pods, where they don't think HAL can hear them. Bowman even goes through the trouble of making sure HAL isn't listening to them. That HAL is able to work around that issue by reading their lips is a sure sign of HAL 's problem solving ability.

Tony said...

Chris Lopes:

"My support comes from the movie itself. The conversation HAL has with Bowman about "strange rumors" doesn't make sense unless it's HAL trying to get Bowman to open up a subject HAL wants to talk about (the real mission). It's Kubrick's only hint about what is driving HAL."

Using the movie as the sole text, there's nothing you can point to that HAL knew anything about the true purpose of the mission. One could just as easily point to the exact same scene as evidence that HAL is in the dark, and he's pumping Bowman for information that he thinks Bowman has, and he doesn't. Maybe HAL is just being petulant about people keeping secrets from him.

One has to know information from the book to know what HAL's problem is. And when one knows what the problem is, one knows that HAL isn't going to disclose information to Bowman and Poole no matter what those men may guess or say. It's in fact that precise, "under no circumstances" constraint that gets HAL in trouble.

"BTW, Bowman and Poole certainly see HAL as intelligent enough (and motivated by self preservation enough) to do their best to hide their ultimate intentions towards him. That's why they choose to have their conversation in one of the pods, where they don't think HAL can hear them. Bowman even goes through the trouble of making sure HAL isn't listening to them. That HAL is able to work around that issue by reading their lips is a sure sign of HAL 's problem solving ability."

The problem isn't with HAL's intelligence so much as it is with human attitudes towards his agency. He's not a colleague. He's a particularly clever servant. But unlike a human servant, he can be turned off if he fails.

Here's a piece of fridge logic that occurred to me overnight: If HAL has never been turned off, that means that whole computer access space, and who knows how much unseen hardware, were transported (with power supply and interface peripherals) from the HAL plant in Urbana, Illinois to the Discovery being built in orbit. Why do they do that? It can't be because it was easier than moving the computer in smaller, unpowered components. They do it because there are perceived -- or at least suspected -- problems with turning a HAL computer off. But when HAL screws up even once, they're ready to shut him down. B doesn't seem to follow A, does it?

jollyreaper said...

HAL doesn't want to be turned off. That doesn't mean it's lethal. Imagine if your own consciousness could be put on an indefinite suspension. Well, actually it can be, drug-induced coma. Imagine how you would feel if you were on a ship and the captain decided that your behavior is too erratic and you will be put under a medical coma with a feeding tube until the ship returns to base. That would probably freak you out more than the brig. If not, maybe that's just you. Some people take to sub duty just fine and others wig out with a claustrophobic fit. And imagine if you had no certainty they would bring you out of this coma. It's beyond your control. It actually puts me in mind of the POV scene for Murphy in the first Robocop where he's coming in and out of consciousness as the OCP scientists and VP's are discussing what they're doing with him. That sort of powerlessness would be terrifying.

As for how Bowman turned off HAL, he systematically dismantled his mind. Was there an on-off switch he could have hit instead? Maybe. But maybe he also wanted to make sure the machine couldn't turn itself back on again and dismantling is the best way to accomplish this.

Tony said...

jollyreaper:

"HAL doesn't want to be turned off. That doesn't mean it's lethal."

That's why it's called "fridge logic". You're looking in the fridge for a snack, and it suddenly occurs to you -- "Wait...what!? That doesn't make any sense."

In this case, HAL has never been turned off, which is why he fears it. But for that to be the case, HAL has really never been turned off, even when transferred from the ground to orbit, to be integrated into the structure of Discovery. It doesn't take special knowledge to know that couldn't have been a trivial evolution. Why didn't they turn off HAL, break him up into component modules, transport him up to the ship, put him back together, and restart him. Anybody that's move a desktop PC from one place to another -- even just from one room to another in the same dwelling or office building -- knows that's how you do it.

The only logical explanation is that there was a compelling reason not to shut HAL down during the move. Shutting him down and starting him back up must have been non-trivial in the extreme, to justify the extra effort to keep him running while moving him across the country, loading him in a space shuttle of some type, moving him into space, and installing him in the spaceship.

But when we get to the point of him screwing up, Mission Control says shut him down, we'll do a program analysis. Note that this sounds like a routine thing -- they even have a procedure how to do it already written. But, according to internal textual evidence, no HAL has ever had an error, therefore it can be presumed that no HAL has ever been shut down. In the book, the one they drive crazy on the ground isn't shut down -- he's put in therapy. In the movie, Bowman and Poole have no data on how a HAL will react to being shut down, demonstrated by the fact that they try to hide the ventuality form their HAL, and openly speculate on his reaction.

Things just don'd add up. They're ready to shut down HAL on the first sign of unreliability, and even have the procedure to do it in hand. But other evidence suggests that shutting down a HAL has never, ever been tried, and in fact people have gone to a lot of trouble to avoid ever having to shut one down. Didn't think that one through, did we, Art?

"As for how Bowman turned off HAL, he systematically dismantled his mind. Was there an on-off switch he could have hit instead? Maybe. But maybe he also wanted to make sure the machine couldn't turn itself back on again and dismantling is the best way to accomplish this."

An interesting observation, but irrelevant to the problem at hand -- they know how to do something and are ready to do it. But they've always avoided it in the past, right up until the point that it becomes a convenient expedient. Clarke cheated.

jollyreaper said...

He was afraid of being turned off. Did it ever say anywhere that he'd never been turned off? You can hate something even if you've experienced it and know what it entails. You can even have a panic attack and a phobia of something you intellectually know you will survive like touching a scary yet harmless bug.

It looks like you're supposing he's never been turned off because he's afraid of it. He may fear the loss of consciousness and control regardless of whether or not his very existence is threatened.

You are inferring no HAL has ever been shutdown.

Tony said...

jollyreaper:

"You are inferring no HAL has ever been shutdown. "

Actually, I'm infering nothing. In the book it's explicitly stated that HAL has no concept of sleep, and feared being shut down for that specific reason. How does that happen unless he's never had an experience of being shut down?

Geoffrey S H said...

Just seen the news. Neil Armstrong has died.

Sean said...

Tragic news, sincere commiserations to his family and friends. I hope he passed away peacefully =/

Damien Sullivan said...

In the spirit of some older posts here about rethinking assumptions (e.g. orbital warfare vs. deep space), I just made one about 'plausible' interstellar invasions. Main point is that you don't need magical drives and indefinite life support capabilities, just fission and enough redundancy for 100 years and a big budget. And the invaders/colonists don't necessarily have the ability to zip around a solar system at will, and especially to get back off the surface of an Earthlike planet.

Which probably means it's unlikely, but we knew that already. *But* if some refugees, or people seeking to escape population controls, knew of nearby neighbors (or their ecosystem, anyway), then a desperate scream-and-leap one-way conquistador style invasion, by people not much more advanced than us, could actually happen.

mejobo said...

Heh... so far I've gotten only a few things from these comments and only one of them has anything to do with the original post:

1) SF stories aren't defined by the impossibility of transplanting the general plot, themes, or characters into another setting. Thats like saying a Western isn't a Western because the same general tropes could be in play in a Fantasy setting. To paraphrase another commenter, "details matter." A story somewhat like 2001 could be told in almost any setting... but all the details would be different. If you define SF this way then there is no such thing as a SF story-- literally ANY SF story could be Fantasy/Mythology, at the very least. Same thing with any other story in any other genre. Its basically saying genres/settings don't exist because tropes do. Silly, IMO. SF is best defined by there being elements of "What If?" in the plot, themes, setting, and/or characters. Really any story could be argued to involve these things. Ultimately SF has to do with "What If?" questions involving technological development (or lack thereof) in the future, but that feels a little to restrictive. Really its just a gut feeling sorta thing.

2) Some people don't really get the above and think that totally changing a character (HAL) into ANY sort of conflict that gets in the way of ANY quest would somehow be exactly the same as 2001. Details matter, folks, and those aren't even details!

mejobo said...

3) RPM commenters are pretty pessimistic about the future of space travel. I don't personally think we'll ever have manmade FTL (found wormholes/WAAAAAAY post human created wormholes or similar are possible but I find these to be unlikely as well), so I'm not a huge optimist compared to many "space enthusiasts." That said, we have a long future ahead of us, and I think we often lose sight of how long a hundred, two hundred, or a thousand years really is. Given how fast tech and science can develop in the modern era (sure, they're arguably going down and the "low hanging fruit" theory makes logical sense, at some point... universe doesn't just make up new laws for us to discover, but that doesn't change the fact that our ability to research also improves as computers and other technology improves/catches up to our scientific understanding) I think there is no question that we CAN have human space travel within our own solar system on a fairly regular basis, colonies, space mining (not necessarily for trade with Earth but certainly useful), and perhaps even some fast STL missions to other stars (probably robotic or perhaps some sort of sleeper thing). I'd say we can easily have all that within the next 500 years as a very conservative estimate. Given we already have the tech to do most of these things and at least a fairly good idea of how to do the rest (but not practical experience) I don't think 500 years is too soon at all. The question is how much do we want to do it... if we don't want to do it much (we definitely want to do it a little) then maybe we have a moon colony or two... just a few dozen people... some orbital infrastructure... etc. Nothing too big, but something. Given that space travel has basically been humanities' futuristic fetish for decades (and thats not changing... look how popular Star Wars, Trek, and Mass Effect are. People EXPECT space colonies, at some point, even if they don't want to fund them now) I think that we can really have a "solar empire" of sorts in those 500 years. Not millions of people in space (unless we grow some there!) but I think we could do thousands. More than enough to excite any SF fan, I might add (something to suggest, IMO, that "Hard SF" isn't about de-exciting SF, just about understanding and enjoying the actual difficulties and the great achievement in over coming them). Terraforming is much more difficult, but also possible (given how long solar winds take to strip an atmosphere its basically not a concern... it would not be hard to replenish an atmo over the course of even thousands of years, let alone millions). If we WANT to, we can certainly do it... but it would be a long, long project. Not necessarily that hard at any one moment, but the overall cost would be extraordinary with any sort of PMF tech. Quite possibly worth it in the long run. That said, I don't see this as a possibility in the next 500 years. I could see the very beginnings of a Mars terraforming project (or similar) in those 500 years but such a job would take hundreds of years before its really finished.

mejobo said...


I'd imagine the politics of whether or not to terraform (over a long time) or to just leave the biodomes as they are (Maintain Mars' Natural Beauty! protests and all) could make a good story. And what if some Martian colonists claimed/believed that Martians slept deep in some cave... perhaps they fear terraforming would awake monsters... or that it could kill sleeping angels. Or maybe there are no Martians at all. The terraforming project would take so long that its possible that some factions could secretly be working on it (without enough public support) and no one would notice until the project had a LOT of momentum.
Now I know, I'm probably over optimistic... but SF is a literature of the possible, even if not the extremely likely. I think it is better to work toward/hope for the possible (if hard to achieve) futures than it is to essentially give up even within what is a genre that is all about (ultimately) the possibilities... the possible failures and the possible successes. Why must we focus on failures when history shows that successes are often what define our history?

mejobo said...

In summary: It is not overly optimistic (or "Soft") to imagine a PMF including human space travel and colonies, at least not on a technical basis. The problem is largely cultural and economic. How much do we want to do this, and how much can we make up for lack of want by making some money on the side? The exact answer is impossible to predict, but saying that neither cultural desire to be in space or economic factors will ever (in combination) be enough to do even relatively minor development of space is far more pessimistic than it is optimistic to say that, in the course of hundreds of years, these things will converge often enough to at least give us a few nice things.

Tony said...

Joe Beutel:

"1) SF stories aren't defined by the impossibility of transplanting the general plot, themes, or characters into another setting. Thats like saying a Western isn't a Western because the same general tropes could be in play in a Fantasy setting. To paraphrase another commenter, 'details matter.' A story somewhat like 2001 could be told in almost any setting... but all the details would be different. If you define SF this way then there is no such thing as a SF story-- literally ANY SF story could be Fantasy/Mythology, at the very least. Same thing with any other story in any other genre. Its basically saying genres/settings don't exist because tropes do. Silly, IMO. SF is best defined by there being elements of 'What If?' in the plot, themes, setting, and/or characters. Really any story could be argued to involve these things. Ultimately SF has to do with 'What If?' questions involving technological development (or lack thereof) in the future, but that feels a little to restrictive. Really its just a gut feeling sorta thing."

I think the thing to be understood here is that SF is just setting, for the most part. Space opera = horse opera in space. Star Trek was always conceived of as episodic TV adventure in space. (Rodenberry even sold it as Wagon Train to the stars.) Star Wars was consciously constructed as modern mythology. Saberhagen cribbed from 16th Century history when he developed the background for his Berserker Novella "The Stone Place", basing the central event, a space battle, on the Battle of Lepanto. Asimov's Foundation stories were framed in a conscious analog of Gibbon's work on the Roman Empire.

"'What If'" is a type of SF plot motivation. But it's also a motivator in high fantasy, and alternate history too.

WRT to detail mattering... I think a lot of people who are personally invested in the supposition of SF's literary uniqueness want details to matter. But at the level of plot analysis, they really don't. But even SF authors will tell you that they crib from history, mythology, even current events. (The behavior of the Bugs in Starship Troopers, for example, bears a very close resemblance to that of both Japanese troops in WW2 and Chinese troops in Korea.) When you talk to an SF author about characterization, he'll talk back to you in terms that one might hear in any English Lit class, not some set of SFnal specialist terms. Perhaps the most famous example of the non-uniqueness of SF plots is the TOS episode "Balance of Terror", which was explicitly patterned on the WW2 sub movie the Enemy Below.

"2) Some people don't really get the above and think that totally changing a character (HAL) into ANY sort of conflict that gets in the way of ANY quest would somehow be exactly the same as 2001. Details matter, folks, and those aren't even details!"

Straw man. Nobody said it would be "exactly the same". All that was ever said is that the plot role that HAL represents can be categorized, and that suitable entities could be found to fill that role in any genre.

Tony said...

Joe Beutel:

"3) RPM commenters are pretty pessimistic about the future of space travel."

When people start labelling realism as pessimism, that's when you know you're dealing with idealism.

"we have a long future ahead of us, and I think we often lose sight of how long a hundred, two hundred, or a thousand years really is."

Some people lose sight of how short a time those durations really are. For two millenia prior to the perfection of the heat engine, nothing travelled faster on land than a man on a horse. Nothing travelled faster on water than a fast sailing ship. Heat engines, from the first steamboats and locomotives, right up to nuclear reactors and liquid fueled rockets, represent a single phase change in power technology. We may not see another one for millenia yet again.

"Given how fast tech and science can develop in the modern era..." see above -- we've been playing out a single phase change for two centuries now, and we arguably peaked fifty years ago. Nuclear power reactors are essentially the same machines they were then, as are our most powerful rockets. Only marginal improvements have been managed with either.

"our ability to research also improves as computers and other technology improves/catches up to our scientific understanding)"

The scientific understanding of nuclear fission was only seven years old on August 6, 1945. It was onlt a decade older than that when nuclear power first went to sea in a submarine. The transistor was invented less than two decades after quantum mechanical research suggested that such a device coule exist. Commercial application came only seven years later, in the form of the transistor radio.

"I think there is no question that we CAN have human space travel within our own solar system on a fairly regular basis, colonies, space mining (not necessarily for trade with Earth but certainly useful), and perhaps even some fast STL missions to other stars (probably robotic or perhaps some sort of sleeper thing). I'd say we can easily have all that within the next 500 years as a very conservative estimate."

That seems to me to be a wildly optimistic estimate, for numbers greater than a few tens of thousands, and possibly for interstellar travel at any extent.

"Given we already have the tech to do most of these things..."

Except that we don't really have the tech. As stated earlier, our heat engine technology has topped out, and we know it won't give us the power to do anything in space much further away than Mars, and then only on a very limited basis. Until we have a phase change away from heat engines to something much more powerful, there's no way any of the optimistic predictions of futurists and space enthusisast are going to come true.

"Given that space travel has basically been humanities' futuristic fetish for decades (and thats not changing... look how popular Star Wars, Trek, and Mass Effect are. People EXPECT space colonies, at some point, even if they don't want to fund them now)..."

Actually, people used to expect those things. I remember when I did. But reality slapped us in the face over the last forty years. In fact, this December will be forty years since man last set foot on the Moon. Why? Because with the technology we've got, it's hard and it costs a lot of money that we don't really have.

Tony said...

Joe Beutel:

"In summary: It is not overly optimistic (or "Soft") to imagine a PMF including human space travel and colonies, at least not on a technical basis. The problem is largely cultural and economic. How much do we want to do this, and how much can we make up for lack of want by making some money on the side? The exact answer is impossible to predict, but saying that neither cultural desire to be in space or economic factors will ever (in combination) be enough to do even relatively minor development of space is far more pessimistic than it is optimistic to say that, in the course of hundreds of years, these things will converge often enough to at least give us a few nice things."

The problem is entirely technological, Joe. That's why those economic issues exist, and why those expectations aren't being transformed into reality. If the technology existed at a level that it was economical to meet those expectations, things would be different. But it isn't, and they aren't.

I know -- it's a slap in the face of optimism every time somebody says these things. But it's also just a statement of fact. It just costs too damn much money to send stuff into space, and our tech is topped out at the point where it will never cost that much less.

Tony said...

WRT Neil Armstrong...

I wouldn't say it was a tragedy that he died. It happens to us all, and he was getting up there in age, to the point that it could have happened at any time. I think the tragedy is that he lived all of that time after his most famous accomplishment, and yet didn't live to see man go beyond LEO again after the end of Apollo.

I think it's enitrely right and good that both the very least and the very most that can be said of him is that he was competent pilot that knew his machine and flew it well.

Thucydides said...

Terraforming can take place without people realizing it (we have been doing tis for over 5000 years on Earth, and still can't get it right), but in terms of changing or importing a new ecosystem on Mars, you are talking orders of magnitude technological leaps.

I suppose someone could secretly start terraforming Mars by having an "oops" moment and spilling a beaker of extremeophile bacteria on the surface, but results, if any, would be tens of thousands of years down the road. How many people are going to wait for longer than recorde human history for their project to reach fruition?

Even any sort of terraforming we could contemplate today, even if done using economic models of Chinese style forced investment, would still take millenia to reach fruition simply due to the sheer scale and scope of the project (any ecosystem requires hundreds to thousands of organisms interacting and we have a land area equal to Earth to cover (until we refill the Martian ocean basins). This is hardly something that could be done in secret, and indeed would speak to a quasi religious motivation and drive to get such a project started and followed to completion rather than simple economic or political motivations.

OTOH, unless you have a theocracy or Pharonic society, I suspect economics would simply overwhelm any quasi religious motivation in the long run; the true believers will have gone broke and are no longer able to continue.

mejobo said...

@Tony
I think I'm going to ignore the HAL stuff, as we agree. SF is largely a setting. "What If?" is often an important part of that, but its also an important of alternate history, fantasy, and the vast majority of fiction.

I did attack a strawman, but that was the point... no one would seriously argue that 2001 would be the same if it wasn't SF/HAL wasn't a computer. Similar concepts apply to most SF. Therefore, SF isn't just "set dressing" or else "set dressing" is pretty important... in other words, the whole argument over HAL thats made up a large portion of the comments on this article are basically nitpicking... cause no one would actually argue that changing things like HAL into a tiger would mean that 2001 doesn't count as SF because its most basic plot structure and character archetypes can be transplanted (with some stretching).

"If the technology existed at a level that it was economical to meet those expectations, things would be different. But it isn't, and they aren't."

Right now. This is the point I was basically trying to get at... calling "pessimism" WRT technological development and/or societal or economic changes "realism" because it involves less change from the current state isn't really accurate.

Tech has advanced (and economic situations have changed due to this and due to business efficiency and similar) over the past two centuries. Some would say we peaked... its hard to judge. We're too close to the data points, and it hasn't been long enough.

I'm not saying we WILL have anything in 500 years. I'm saying that it is within our technical capability to have those things. (interstellar probes are a stretch but I certainly think its possible... not with current tech but we could get there with some expensively exotic plans... they'd just require a LONG time to get where they are going. Not a few years... hundreds).

The problem is economic for the vast majority of my "predictions." This can be overcome in three ways (and to actually get all the possibilities you need all three. Again, my statement was a conservative estimate of the technical possibilities within 500 years. Alternatively, a liberal amount of time to have the technical ability to achieve these things. Not in the sense that we kinda know how to do many of these things now, I mean to actually have the machines needed to do it). The three ways are:
1) Technological break throughs... this is what you were getting at. A fundamental change in how we get energy to work for us.
2) Societal desire... if we want things enough, we pay the price. The price is high for the amount you get with space, but compared to other things we spend on? Small part of the budget. Increasing it even a bit would change a lot for space but not damage everything else that much. I mean this for humanity as a whole, not for any particular country.
3) Increased efficiency. This can either be by increasing the efficiency of our heat engines and other space craft parts (we're not even close to maximum calculated efficiency, but for things like fusion we are raising our efficiency over time) or increasing business efficiency (which can add up to be a big cost cutter, but not enough by itself IMO).

mejobo said...

@ Tony
Fundamentally, you believe (key word is believe) that things basically won't change from their current state. History suggests that things change... how fast they change we cannot know, but many folks predict the rate actually increases. I doubt this... but that doesn't meant it will reduce to zero very quickly, and that doesn't mean we don't have another break through.

That breakthrough will almost definitely come quicker due to having more power being put into searching for it than when we were first "searching" for steam engines.

I believe things do change, therefore. It is the future, so there is no real evidence to back either side (except history, which is a notoriously poor predictor for technology) but it is not idealistic to expect things to keep changing. It is pessimistic to think we just stop advancing arbitrarily.

@Thucydides
I wasn't really in the realm of discussing PMF at that point (with the exception being some sort of religious devotion to terraforming which could result in thousand year projects). Just thinking of how, if/when we DO start terraforming, it could play out as a very interesting schism between those who like it and those who don't. "oops" moment with extremophiles (though you might be able to hide this to the point where they don't even know about the oops, just that something is changing slowly) might work in PMF but like you said its a LONG time until you get real results with that.

Sean said...

Tony said..."I wouldn't say it was a tragedy that he died. It happens to us all, and he was getting up there in age, to the point that it could have happened at any time. I think the tragedy is that he lived all of that time after his most famous accomplishment, and yet didn't live to see man go beyond LEO again after the end of Apollo."

There are many reasons I find the death of Armstrong tragic, but namely it pains me to see one of the inspirational figures in my life pass away, there are very few left. But you're very right it was tragic that Armstrong lived to see mankind not push forward, but rather to see NASA gradually become a political burden.

Sean said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Rick said...

But, in textual analysis, it seems to me that ultimate purpose is much more illuminating than specific manifestation.

This is true of classically plot-driven or indeed character-driven movies/books, but 2001 is anything but. Indeed, HAL is arguably the most vivid character in the film (along with perhaps Moon-Watcher, who has no recognizable dialogue).

For that matter, I'm not even clear what the broader thematic point would be. The only reasons I can see for killing the rest of the crew are a) to provide *some* drama in that part of the film, and b) to let us focus on just one person going through the stargate, and not clutter the thing up.

But whether Kubrick/Clarke intended it or not, HAL and his dialogue have become iconic.

Tony said...

Joe Beutel:

"@ Tony
Fundamentally, you believe (key word is believe) that things basically won't change from their current state. History suggests that things change... how fast they change we cannot know, but many folks predict the rate actually increases. I doubt this... but that doesn't meant it will reduce to zero very quickly, and that doesn't mean we don't have another break through."


Sorry, but that's incorrect. I do not see any reason to think that we will experience another phase change in power technology any time soon. That limits everything we can do in space. Heck, it limits a lot of things we can do on Earth.

But here's the important thing -- it's not about belief. It's about looking at the historical record and understanding the physics of the problem. Heat engines were a culmination of centuries of scientific progress. That culmination played itself out in about a century and a half. We're now on the other side, and there's no real evidence that anything radically new is in the offing.

"That breakthrough will almost definitely come quicker due to having more power being put into searching for it than when we were first 'searching' for steam engines."

Steam engines happened because they could, not because anybody was searching for them. And you have the realtionship of power and development of power technology turned around 180 degrees. All the power that heat engines give us doesn't give us the power to make hihg-thrust fusion rockets of the SF torch variety. It doesn't even tell us where to begin. It will take a whole 'nuther understanding of nuclear physics -- one that we don't have and don't even know how to begin to obtain -- to figure out how to do on a human scale what it takes stellar scale gravity fields to do in nature.

"I believe things do change, therefore. It is the future, so there is no real evidence to back either side (except history, which is a notoriously poor predictor for technology) but it is not idealistic to expect things to keep changing. It is pessimistic to think we just stop advancing arbitrarily."

That's the difference. I'm not basing my opinion on faith in progress. I'm basing it on calm analysis of technological history and known science. Sorry if that doesn't blow your hair back, Joe, but to me it's the only way to proceed.

Tony said...

Rick:

"This is true of classically plot-driven or indeed character-driven movies/books, but 2001 is anything but. Indeed, HAL is arguably the most vivid character in the film (along with perhaps Moon-Watcher, who has no recognizable dialogue)."

I would definitely agree that 2001 (the movie, not the book) is bereft of identifiable plot. My opinion is therefore basedo n the fact that the movie was to some degree informed by the writing of the book, and therefore we can take the book, at least tentatively, as cannon for understanding the movie. (Yeah, I know, but as my paisan friends say, what're ya gonna do?)

"For that matter, I'm not even clear what the broader thematic point would be. The only reasons I can see for killing the rest of the crew are a) to provide *some* drama in that part of the film, and b) to let us focus on just one person going through the stargate, and not clutter the thing up.

But whether Kubrick/Clarke intended it or not, HAL and his dialogue have become iconic."


I think HAL was a convenient plot device for starting out with a crew (which would be the natural and hard to dodge assumption of the audience) and ending up with a single observer for the alien encounter. That his video camera visage and creepy persona have become iconic is, I think, an accident of the movie technology of 1968 not being able to match the vision of the book. The whole Star Gate to Star Child sequence, in the book, is simply much more compelling than the HAL subplot ever could have been. It took the movie to make HAL an icon.

Still, one doesn't have to look far to imagine an almost scene-for-scene analog of 2001 in another genre. HAL's motivation is that ambiguous in the movie. And everything else is just human interaction with an advanced civilization.

One would start with the founding of a tribe due to an unrecognized but real outside influence from some civilization -- say animal migrations and human population pressures caused by Roman civilization in North Africa extending indirectly into the Congo. (This would be the Moon Watcher sequence, reimagined for the setting.) Then, somehow, 1,800 years later, word of strange things happening over the hills entices the tribe to send a hunting party to explore the wider world. (TMA-1, leading to the repurposing of the Discovery mission.) As the party travels it is menaced and attacked by a leopard. (HAL, obviously.) The lone survivor reluctantly but necessarily kills brother leopard, and continues with his mission. (The denoument of the HAL subplot.) Upon reaching a navigable river, the survivor sees a steamboat and is picked up by its crew. (Star Gate.) He is transported through various stages to a large city, where he is eventually absorbed by the colonial culture. His son, raised a member of that culture and educated in a colonial high school, eventually returns to the tribal hunting grounds and stops a war, then imposes his rules on what he regards as a backwards and primitive culture. (Star Child.)

It all follows kind of naturally, if you don't get caught up in details and look just at the plot framework. And, yes...you do have to be informed by the book, not just the movie.

mejobo said...

Tony-
"Sorry, but that's incorrect. I do not see any reason to think that we will experience another phase change in power technology any time soon. That limits everything we can do in space. Heck, it limits a lot of things we can do on Earth."

No reason to apologize for your opinions, they're exactly what I'm looking for.

I think there are two major problems with your theories.

1) The sort of technological leap you say we need to do stuff in space isn't needed. This is quantifiably true. We've been doing stuff in space for 50 years just fine, and often with more primitive tech than we have today (and hence greater cost for the same effect). Building a small research station on the moon doesn't require any huge leaps of technology... merely some engineering and some financing. Interplanetary manned missions can also be run using more or less current drives. Again, the difficulties are more in financing and engineering details, both of which can be overcome with money and time.

2) You totally ignore current technological advances, basically by referring to everything from a steam engine to a fusion plant as "heat engines" that are inherently, for mathematically unbacked reasons, incompatible with your view of the required tech for space development. Your earlier statement that a modern nuclear power source is no different than one from 50 years ago is also not true. Just one example: http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf33.html
Though its fun to make fun of Fusion power, the fact is that we have been getting very close to breakeven (and may eventually surpass it) recently, something we didn't do 50 years ago. Things are still advancing. Yes, its all still heat engines, but so what? If it gives us enough power to go in space I don't care what you call it.

mejobo said...

Can you honestly back, mathematically, that we don't have the energy to go to the moon? Mars? Thats what your argument is founded on... not that its expensive, not that it requires us to overcome some relatively minor engineering details, but that we literally don't have the energy to do it. Thats just false, and I think you know it (once you review your views), as you're usually one of the better commenters when it comes to technical knowledge.

So once we've gotten over that bridge the question is "then why do you think we won't do it?" The obvious answer is that its expensive, but there are a variety of ways we can bring down the cost in the future by doing fairly small things right now. (For example) though I'm skeptical of Planetary Resources, some of their stated goals would have this effect should they succeed. In addition, small advances (more efficient heat engines, economies of scale bringing down costs, whatever) that happen over time can bring down cost, and most of those things are already happening, if slowly. Note how much cheaper it is for SpaceX to send a kilogram into space than it is for a Soyuz rocket. You can ignore that advance (as you choose to) or accept that its there and try to see where that leaves us in 100 years. I think you prefer to think we're in technological stasis despite there being no evidence for it (to the contrary, we keep advancing, even if not in the fundamental way we did at the dawn of the industrial revolution).

Tony said...

Joe Beutel:

"1) The sort of technological leap you say we need to do stuff in space isn't needed..."

It's not "merely" engineering that's the problem. The problem is totally financial and rests on the inability to build orckets with substantially more power at a substantially lower cost. A few people on the Moon and ocassional trips to Mars is simply not going to lead to a spacefaring civilization -- not in the next hundred years, not in the next thousand. It would take much more transport at much lower prices to move the people and equipment necessary out into space and to adequately support them.

"2) You totally ignore current technological advances, basically by referring to everything from a steam engine to a fusion plant as 'heat engines'..."

The point is that they are still just heat engines, and their thermodynamic cycles have long since been matured, in engineering terms. (Nota bene: technological maturity does not mean lack of improvement altogether; it means lack of more than marginal improvement over long periods of time.) And no, nuclear power, even fusion power, as presently conceived can be used to put people in space. It just doesn't have the energy density necessary. Nor is it likely ever going to be safe enough to operate in or near the Earth's atmosphere.

And there really haven't been great advances in heat engines in the last fifty years. The Russians still use the Soyuz rocket to put men in space. That's a very slightly advanced version of Yuri Gagarin's R-7 launch vehicle. Similarly, while marginal improvements have been made, nuclear power reactors do the same thing, the same old way as they have always done, and nobody knows how to squeeze more than a few percentage points of performance out of them, and only then at the cost of forcing the cycle and heavier machinery to handle the increased temperatures and pressures.

Tony said...

Joe Beutel:

"Can you honestly back, mathematically, that we don't have the energy to go to the moon? Mars? Thats what your argument is founded on... not that its expensive, not that it requires us to overcome some relatively minor engineering details, but that we literally don't have the energy to do it. Thats just false, and I think you know it (once you review your views), as you're usually one of the better commenters when it comes to technical knowledge."

It's manifestly not false, for values of "having energy" that fall into economic reality. Chemical rocketry is just effing expensive, and it's not going to get that much cheaper, because there is no motivation to shift into high enough rate production to make it substantially cheaper. In fact, given the specialized, almost craft nature of the engineering involved, it may simply not be possible to make them any cheaper, no matter how many you turn out in a given time period. The limit may in fact be the number of sufficiently skilled humans you can get to build and operate them.

If you're looking for math, sorry, I can't help you there. I'm giving you my gestalt assessment, based on forty years of watching and studying the development of space technology. The closest I can come to hard figures is to point out that out space budgets do indeed buy what they buy, and it's not much. Even at the highest rate of expenditure, they could only manage two or three small raids on the Moon a year.

"So once we've gotten over that bridge..."

See above. There's no way to get there from here, simply because it costs so much to even begin, and those prices aren't coming down.

WRT to SpaceX in particular, please understand that they're in a high-risk startup mode, with no current profit motive. Once they become an established business, they'll have to address all the things the Boeing and LockMart address every day. And they'll cost as much, for a bunch of very good reasons that can't be handwaved away.

"I think you prefer to think we're in technological stasis despite there being no evidence for it (to the contrary, we keep advancing, even if not in the fundamental way we did at the dawn of the industrial revolution)."

The point is that the phase change in power technology is over. That's the evidence. We don't keep advancing. If we did, the Russians wouldn't use Soyuz launch vehicles, SpaceX wouldn't be basing it's business plan on minimizing the cost of the LOX/Kerosene engine, and NASA wouldn't be basing it's latest, greatest rocket design on Shuttle technology.

The party's over, and has been for some time. Time to sober up and face the music.

mejobo said...

I think you somewhat misunderstand my idea of what space travel looks like over the next 500 years. Space faring civilization is a bit of a stretch. I'm talking research stations, manned missions to other planets, and perhaps some infrastructure to support these things (mining to help build/refuel/whatever in orbit). These things can ultimately add up to a rough "proto" space faring civilization but its not really city-colonies and tramp freighters, now is it?

I think at this point we've reached the fact that the problem is that our current way of doing things is financially too expensive for space faring civilization. Its not that we can't send men to Mars, its that its too expensive to do frequently enough to build a city there.

Quick side note: Though we use old launch vehicles some times, other times we use more advanced designs... this is especially true in interplanetary drives. Launching, ultimately, is chemical rockets. If a chemical rocket works, then keep using it... especially as this reduces cost (Russia has ultimately, allegedly, made a profit on Soyuz rockets. This wouldn't be true if they kept designing state of the art rockets, and Soyuz works, so why would they use something else?).

Anyway: Financing space with current tech is too hard, you say. I've already pointed out ways this can be overcome, but all of them take time. You seem to think that if things only improve over time then the improvement is negligible. This is not so. Launching things into space is cheaper right now than it was when a Soyuz first launched, and this trend hasn't been slowing. There are actual numbers backing these facts... and it plays out in the private satellites that now fill the sky.

So, assuming we have no break throughs, we can still develop space... and developing space (if we do it right) can lead to further reduced costs. If cost is reduced enough for private companies to make a profit in space, then the cost is reduced further once they start competing (see satellites currently, and starting recently it seems even launch vehicles will be similarly privatized... and it seems-- currently-- like they can make a profit).

None of these make space travel super cheap, but the reduction in cost is significant (you can do a lot more on the same budget), and the possible benefits are pretty good.

That is assuming we have no other breakthroughs. I don't think we will in the near future, but who can say? in 1500 we wouldn't be able to predict the Industrial Revolution, but we wouldn't be any better at it in 1700. Yet it came much sooner for those in 1700 than those in 1500. We basically have more people messing around trying to make something useful, so if there is something better than heat engines, it'll probably come faster... there were less people messing around to accidently discover heat engines back then than there are now.

jollyreaper said...

Concerning the expense of doing things, I have to wonder how much of it is true cost and how much is bloated expense, cost added because people can get away with graft.

The question is whether we can have reform or if we'll suffocate under our own inefficiency.

mejobo said...

Increasing economic efficiency is probably more important than tech efficiency in the near future though in the long run better tech allows better economic efficiency and vice versa. There was an article about governments role in developing space to allow capitalism to take over... It was on the atomic rockets blog a little while ago. The general ideas was that by investing in developing space (not exploration) right now we make it possible for capitalism to reduce costs in the long run.

Anonymous said...

Moving a little ways back toward the original topic, it may be interresting to think about the conflict between scientists and engineers who were inspired to come up with craft that could fly into space, and those bureaucrates and politicians that hold the purse-strings and ask "what's in it for me?"

Ferrell

Damien Sullivan said...

For once I agree with Tony. Tech had a lot of phase transitions in 1850-1950 and the rate has slowed if not entirely dried up.

Our space probe activity has expanded, but that's probably more about increased wealth on the ground and increased automation to put on the probes than any improvement in rockets.

A phase transition in space colonization is at least as likely to come from strong AI (i.e. putting AIs up and calling them colonists) as from improvements in space access.

"Concerning the expense of doing things, I have to wonder how much of it is true cost and how much is bloated expense, cost added because people can get away with graft."

This would have to be graft happening in every single country and company that does launches.

CAPTCHA failure: 2

Damien Sullivan said...

Seriously, these captchas are unreadable.

Tony said...

Joe Beutel:

"Quick side note: Though we use old launch vehicles some times, other times we use more advanced designs... this is especially true in interplanetary drives."

We use marginally improved designs. They are more advancedi n the same way that a 2004 Mustang is more advanced than a 1964 Mustang. But a new Mustang has no more utility than the 40 year old one. Same-same with a launch vehicle of today in the same payload class as a launch vehicle from 40 years ago. Once you hit the peak of performance, physics tells you what you can do, not what you want. (And I find it not at all coincidental that automobile technology started peaking right around the same time rockets did.)

Electric rockets have been used since the Seventies. Yes, they have been made reliable over a period of years and can serve as interplanetary propulsion. But the cost is long missions times that put them out of the realm of manned spaceflight. Even if improved to the point that they could propel manned spacecraft at reasonable accelerations, the question remains whether light and compact enough power systems can be found for them.

"Launching, ultimately, is chemical rockets. If a chemical rocket works, then keep using it... especially as this reduces cost (Russia has ultimately, allegedly, made a profit on Soyuz rockets. This wouldn't be true if they kept designing state of the art rockets, and Soyuz works, so why would they use something else?)."

Also, something a lot of people don't seem to get -- more "advanced" rockets (for certain values of "advanced") cost more per pound of payload, not less, because they get that little bit of extra payload capacity through forcing the technology. The reason Soyuz is so cheap is that it relies on entirely unforced technology and, significantly, the factory and tooling is a sunk cost of the Soviet era. Except for maintenance and periodic upgrades, capital equipment no longer figures in the overall cost of the launch service product. (The rockets themselves are not capital equipment, BTW; they're consumable items of inventory.)

The same can be said of initial development, through product proof. That was so long ago -- and under such a different funding and accounting regime -- that it literally has no effect on the cost of the product. Only ongoing development of marginal product improvements needs funding and accounting for.

A similar point can be made about SpaceX. Though they have a realtively new plant and a lot of capital equipment that still needs to be paid for, their business model is explicitly built on not taking technological risks and accepting good, but not great -- performance. They may bring costs down a few percentage points over their competitors, but only

"You seem to think that if things only improve over time then the improvement is negligible. This is not so."

Are you familiar with logistics curves and the concept of diminishing returns?

Tony said...

BTW, WRT what SpaceX is managing to do with its costs, the current NASA contract with SpaceX is for twelve cargo flights, carrying a minimum of 20,000 kg of cargo. The price tag? $1.6 billion. Yes, that's billion, with a "b". That's $80,000 a kilogram of delivered goods to ISS.

Even if you go by launch costs and figure against the rated payload of Falcon 9, you get $133M/launch, divided by 10,450 kg LEO payload. That's $12,700/kg. Say you cut that in half for private commercial customers, that's still over $6k/kg to LEO. Even if you say that private customers get to pay 1/3 what NASA does, it's still over $4k/kg.

Yeah, SpaceX has got the price of the old guard beat seven ways from Sunday...

Jim Baerg said...

Tony:
It strikes me as odd that you don't see nuclear energy as a major advance over combustion.

Sure we haven't got much greater *power* density from nuclear than from combustion, but the enormously greater *energy* density of nuclear allows us to do things like run a space probe for decades many AU from the sun, run a submarine for months without surfacing, or run a surface ship for decades on one fuel load. These can't be done with any other energy source.

Anonymous said...

I have to agree with Damien: CAPTCHA leaves a lot to be desired.

Ferrell

Tony said...

Jim Baerg:

"It strikes me as odd that you don't see nuclear energy as a major advance over combustion.

Sure we haven't got much greater *power* density from nuclear than from combustion, but the enormously greater *energy* density of nuclear allows us to do things like run a space probe for decades many AU from the sun, run a submarine for months without surfacing, or run a surface ship for decades on one fuel load. These can't be done with any other energy source."


Uranium is much more compact and longer lasting than fossil fuels, but a reactor is still just a steam boiler in a heat engine. (For high power densities anyway; RTGs are another discussion.)

mejobo said...

Hm... Last time I looked into spaceX I wasn't looking at the cost for NASA. I was looking at cost for SpaceX. They're/they will be (once they get past initial development cost) making a profit. The numbers I got could be wrong, but you're using the wrong numbers.

I never said "more advanced" (you mean like the shuttle) equals less cost... But more advanced (like spaceX, assuming the numbers I found last time were right), more efficiently engineered, etc, not only reduces cost but can turn a profit.

As for advances in propulsion, apparently you didn't notice solar sails being used in 2010 for the first time in interplanetary travel. This apparently doesn't count as different from electric propulsion, because admitting any technological change would be somewhat problematic.

Diminishing returns are fine. I do think were hitting diminishing returns, technologically... That doesn't equate to no more advances and no more increased economic efficiency in a given industry... I think at this point I'll just have to wait 15-20 years and we can finish this discussion. We both have historically based beliefs but you think everything shuts down now (and that current tech/economics can't support space despite folks already making a profit on it... And more everyday) while I think current tech can and is likely to continue advancing, even if not as much as it used to.

Tony said...

Joe Beutel:

"Hm... Last time I looked into spaceX I wasn't looking at the cost for NASA. I was looking at cost for SpaceX. They're/they will be (once they get past initial development cost) making a profit. The numbers I got could be wrong, but you're using the wrong numbers."

I'm using real numbers, publicly reported. How are they "wrong".

And what "cost for SpaceX" were you looking at? What the company reports? Or what a launch campaign actually costs?

"I never said 'more advanced' (you mean like the shuttle) equals less cost... But more advanced (like spaceX, assuming the numbers I found last time were right), more efficiently engineered, etc, not only reduces cost but can turn a profit."

It almost always turn a profit for the vendors. That's no more true today than it was fifty years ago.

"As for advances in propulsion, apparently you didn't notice solar sails being used in 2010 for the first time in interplanetary travel. This apparently doesn't count as different from electric propulsion, because admitting any technological change would be somewhat problematic."

Solar sails are neat for certain low-mass robotic applications. They don't have anything to do with human spaceflight, andaren't likely to.

Please, don't try to change the subject. Stay focused on the human spaceflight context.

"Diminishing returns are fine. I do think were hitting diminishing returns, technologically... That doesn't equate to no more advances and no more increased economic efficiency in a given industry..."

Actually, it does. That's the whole point. The development of a technology follows a logistic ("S" shaped) curve. When you get to the top of that curve, there's no more significant advances in power or efficiency that can be wrung out of it. That's where we are with heat engines, including rockets.

"I think at this point I'll just have to wait 15-20 years and we can finish this discussion. We both have historically based beliefs but you think everything shuts down now (and that current tech/economics can't support space despite folks already making a profit on it... And more everyday) while I think current tech can and is likely to continue advancing, even if not as much as it used to."

I'll bet you a hundred bucks right now that in twenty years, you'll agree with me.

Thucydides said...

Many of these arguments will be correct once it becomes possible to move away from heat engines on a large scale.

With currently available tech that means fuel cells, which can convert chemical energy directly to electrical energy, and extract much more of the available energy from the chemical bonds that any heat engine (often in the 40-60% range), and eliminate many of the intermediate steps needed to go from burning fuel to generating electricity.

This is hard to do, otherwise we would be using fuel cells to do everything right now, rather than waiting for more development.

The next step up (and a very big one, since no one has demonstrated this yet) would be aneutronic fusion reactions that release energy in the form of a beam of charged particles, which could then be tapped directly for high energy electrical current. Enthusiasts speak of capturing 80% or more of the available energy.

Sadly, D-D and D-T reactions release their energy in the form of high energy neutrons, so for practical reasons we would still be dealing with a super sized steam engine using this sort of fusion reaction

Tony said...

Thucydides:

"...fuel cells..."

Hydrogen fuel cells are a type of battery, not an engine. You have to separate out the hydrogen fuel from water. That takes more energy than you can recover in the operation of the cell.

Hydrocarbon fuel cells are a little bit more like engines, in that the fuel requires less processing energy than is realized in operation. But they're still relatively low energy to mass systems. They'll have no effect on spaceflight.

...aneutronic fusion...

Is a speculative fantasy.

mejobo said...

I'll take you up on that, Tony.

Your numbers are "wrong" in the sense that they're inaccurate, they're the wrong numbers. That is, they're not the numbers to be looking at. I refer you to http://www.spacex.com/usa.php (and not just that article, though it covers some nice general points) but also the posted prices.

I can't find this nice comparison chart I had the other day, so I'll refer you to Wikipedias: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_orbital_launch_systems

As you can see, the Falcon 9 beats pretty much everything else for price per kilo. Falcon Heavy will apparently beat that by a significant amount as well.

Its still expensive to go into space but when we're talking about a reduction in cost by nearly an order of magnitude (they're even promising reduced costs in the future as they make up for developmennt costs/they get the benefit of mass production... as happened with Soyuz) that is certainly significant.

Its like if you took Soyuz and called it expensive because Russia recently jacked up the price of a seat for NASA, because they have a monopoly. Soyuz isn't pricey (relatively), its just being given a high price for the people buying the tickets. Similar story with SpaceX.

That logistic curve is rate of development. So even if the acceleration has gone down the velocity still goes up. You can call that "insignificant" but we're teetering on the verge of space being a profitable industry (via space mining, selling tickets to NASA, etc) and we've reached the point where it is... and its becoming more profitable as we speak. I don't think thats insignificant, at all, even if technologically its all built on the bigger developments that came earlier.

mejobo said...

Also, WRT "changing the subject."

Developing space for human space flight is an important part of human space flight. Robotic manufacturing and mining in space could significantly reduce the cost of a manned mission to Mars, for example.

Therefor, pretty much any new technology in space is relevant to human space flight (either by way of assisting it in the long run or by being a waste of time... like some robotic exploration missions, IMO. Even if they're fun to hear about and tell us interesting things... they're not helping space flight).

Tony said...

Joe Beutel:

"I'll take you up on that, Tony."

You're on. I didn't mention it, but given the long duration of the proposition, payoff to be adjusted for inflation.

"Your numbers are "wrong" in the sense that they're inaccurate, they're the wrong numbers..."

The price given is for a "standard" launch. I'd love to know what a standard launch includes. I bet it doesn't cover special payload processing and integration, which is so common that it might as well be considered "standard". It probably also doesn't include mission-specific software either. Or insurance and licensing. All of those things are included in the numbers for other launch services.

Also, the numbers given in the Elon Musk missive are ju-u-ust a bit schizophrenic. He quotes the $54M number, then a ways further down touts "over 40 flights on manifest representing over $3 billion in revenues." Let's take a look at that. If we say something like 40 flights for something like $3B, that's $75M a flight. (And even if everything else is counted, he's I doubt he's counting insurance and licensing in SpaceX revenue.) even if you eliminate 12 NASA flights for $1.6B, you still have 28 flights for $1.4B, which works out to $50M per flight. What's the right number, Elon?

"As you can see, the Falcon 9 beats pretty much everything else for price per kilo. Falcon Heavy will apparently beat that by a significant amount as well."

And as I have already stated, SpaceX is sometime soon going to have to start running as a real company, rather than a startup. That will change a lot of things, including pricing.

"Its still expensive to go into space but when we're talking about a reduction in cost by nearly an order of magnitude..."

I'll believe it when I see it. I don't even think they've cut real costs in half, if all costs are taken into account.

"That logistic curve is rate of development..."

What logistics curve are you talking about? Such curves don't measure velocity, but return per unit of investment. And even if capability keeps going up marginally at the top of the curve, it's a static value, without momentum. At the top of the capabilities curve, for spaceflight to increase radically, investment has to increase just as radically. When's that going to happen, and why, especially where manned spaceflight is concerned?

The space industry has always been profitable for launch services providers and hardware vendors. That's why they do it. Whether it's profitable for their customers is another story entirely. It's all cost to the purchasers of manned hardware and launch services. I don't see that changing anytime soon.

"Also, WRT 'changing the subject.'

Developing space for human space flight is an important part of human space flight. Robotic manufacturing and mining in space could significantly reduce the cost of a manned mission to Mars, for example."


I grew up in intimate contact with the hardware end of the aerospace industry on one side of the family, and hard rock miners on the other. For my sins, my personal avocation is computer programming. I've got every reason to believe, and no reason to disbelieve, that robotic mining and manufacturing in space is a fantasy. The tasks involved are just too hard and the desired products just too intricate.

"Therefor, pretty much any new technology in space is relevant to human space flight (either by way of assisting it in the long run or by being a waste of time... like some robotic exploration missions, IMO. Even if they're fun to hear about and tell us interesting things... they're not helping space flight)."

If we're talking about people in space, only technologies that can actually take people there, along with tools built on the Earth for them to use in space, is relevant.

Thucydides said...

The general argument about technological development upthread revolved around the Carnot limit of heat engine technology. Fuel cells (of any sort) use a totally different means of extracting chemical energy from fuel and are not subject to those limits. While fuel cells are not going to be the primary power source for an ion engine (except for a very small disposable satellite, perhaps), there are lots of applications both here and in space where fuel cell technology would be quite useful, once it has been developed further.

WRT aneutronic fusion, it is not fantasy, simply not demonstrated by the current state of the art. Your tax dollars are at work on aneutronic fusion here:

https://www.fbo.gov/?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=17d6ea9ce2272ea1776e11db4f7fe4e8&tab=core&_cview=0

Tony said...

Thucydides:

"The general argument about technological development upthread revolved around the Carnot limit of heat engine technology. Fuel cells (of any sort) use a totally different means of extracting chemical energy from fuel and are not subject to those limits."

Once again, hydrogen fuel cells are not engines at the fuel cycle level, simply because there's no such thing as free hydrogen in the environment. At the fuel cycle level, they function as batteries.

Hydrocarbon fuel cells are better, but they're bulky (when using methane) and have no great mass advantages. When using ethanol, they're using a highly processed and marginal fuel source.

"WRT aneutronic fusion, it is not fantasy, simply not demonstrated by the current state of the art."

The proposed reactions are more energy intensive than the simpler reactions we can't even produce in a commercial machine -- and may never be able to. aneutronic fusion is based on too many ifs to be nothing other than a fantasy, even for long term planning purposes.

Rick said...

I find it not at all coincidental that automobile technology started peaking right around the same time rockets did.

Regrettably, I find this exactly correct. A century of rapid progress in 'metal bending' more or less reached the limits of the underlying technology.

The bottleneck issue is not travel in deep space, but getting to orbit. The most striking thing about SpaceX is that instead of developing 'new' tech, its approach is all about rationalizing a very basic approach to space rocketry - standardized tank sections and rocket engines, etc.

That is a good approach for undercutting rival boosters that derive from ICBMs 50 years ago. But it offers singularly little promise of further dramatic reductions. It is the maturation phase of a technology, not a jumping-off point for a new one.


Note, by the way that the challenge for deep space ships will be low productivity. Jetliners can turn over a couple of loads per day; interplanetary ships, even on fast orbits, would be lucky to turn over a couple of loads per year.

Rick said...

aneutronic fusion is based on too many ifs to be nothing other than a fantasy, even for long term planning purposes.

There's a considerable intermediate zone between 'long term planning' on the one hand, and 'fantasy' on the other.

I think aneutronic fusion is a bit too speculative for (my version of) the plausible midfuture, but certainly not on the same level as, say, inertialess drive.

YMMV, to be sure ...


On an unrelated point, Captcha is a pain, and I imposed it with great reluctance. But comment spam was getting totally out of hand.

Thucydides said...

The point about SpaceX is correct so far as it goes. It may be possible to squeeze some more performance by aggressively adopting new technologies (much like Boeing did by building the 787 "Dreamliner" out of composites), but the cost/benefit ratio of that is almost certainly out of line given the commercial rocket market as it exists today.

The only other way to get around the high cost of getting into orbit is to totally change the premises. The Aquarius rocket is postulated to be a very cheap launcher since the reliability is very relaxed compared to conventional rockets (accepting a 33% failure rate). Outside of that, current rocket technology does not offer any "outs" and the physics of rocketry isn't too helpful either.

Looking at "possibiities" you would need to get beyond the liquid fueled rocket model altogether, and into Liek Myrabo's lightcraft or something equally out of the box.

Damien Sullivan said...

Electrochemical fuel cells don't face Carnot heat engine limits, but they do face other limits, which they're not that far off of.

Karl Sánchez said...

the thing with science fiction is that it looks for limits and rules, fantasy usually works to avoid that. (the ability to destroy a planet is insignificant...next to the power of the force)
and I feel science fiction tends to explore deeper dilemmas than abstract good vs evil, think of Deckard killing a "Skinjob" girl in Blade Runner and getting the shakes and guilt for it, even when said girl is a dangerous assassin.

Rick said...

Welcome to a new (I think) commenter!

I'm not sure that SF is *inherently* deeper than fantasy, though the latter is still more dominated by 'epic fantasy,' roughly its counterpart to space opera.

Fantasy has also been more deeply influenced by role playing games and their conventions, thanks to Dungeons & Dragons.

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