Comments on Rocketpunk Manifesto: Showboats in Space

Fleet week isn't really about showing off how ...

2011-11-26T16:06:55.855-08:00

Fleet week isn't really about showing off how dangerous it would be to screw with the US-- any state that cares about how strong our military is knows a lot more about US military capabilities than are going to be shown off in SF!

It does make a great recruiting tool, but that's because of something even more important: it makes a great morale tool. The current US "support-our-troops" climate is not a given; it's something that takes a lot of work (frequently, unconscious work.) When that work is done by people we don't like, we call it "propaganda" :)

But you don't need to join a parade to get that kind of PR. Consider Top Gun. Movies like that don't get made without a lot of expensive help from the military, and the military doesn't give that help entirely out of sweetness. Movies like that-- and TV shows, and books, and news items-- improve public support, improve recruitment, improve military morale. And they don't require flyovers (although they are easily more expensive than flyovers are).

I think there's one other point to be made in regards to this, which is that showboating requires a pretty careful balancing act. US Fleet Week in Japan wouldn't do the same thing that Fleet Week does in SF! Good propaganda requires careful application and good judgment, and means laying low as often as it means showboating.

(Hi, love the blog, love the conversations it spawns.)

Welcome back, then, to a longtime commenter! I th...

2011-11-01T20:49:07.291-07:00

Welcome back, then, to a longtime commenter!

I think the economics of space travel are such - even with very advanced tech - that an orbital hotel would be a lot cheaper than going to the Moon. (Which doesn't preclude package vacations combining both!)

Returning, actually. Somehow my profile got reset...

2011-10-31T18:03:48.664-07:00

Returning, actually. Somehow my profile got reset a few times, from being away so long. Back now with a new computer and an actual internet connection. And reset my profile to my old identity.

Anyway, I was about to point out that Mir going through the night sky would certainly not be confused for Venus (What with it moving rapidly) nor even with a meteorite (just a flash in the pan) And since the hypothetical Laser Star would be far bigger than little old Mir or the ISS, I don't think you'd mistake it for much else. Of course this point was already raised, so, onwards and upwards.

I like the idea of the space hotel since it provides that illusion of movement, but it doesn't *go* anywhere. Cruise lines might not go far but they do stop at exotic locales for you to step off the ship and do something interesting on a spectacular background. Who wouldn't love to hit a baseball 2,000 yards at the Mare Serenitatis batting cages?

Re: Industrial Depth In Vinge's A Deepness...

2011-10-31T09:14:45.387-07:00
Re: Industrial Depth

In Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky, the longest lived culture is the Qeng Ho. These are STL interstellar traders living on their ramscoop ships and, when at star systems, in "temps" -- temporary balloon structures in space. The point is made several times in the novel that the Qeng Ho are not self sufficient, but in fact are mortally dependent on planet and system-based civilizations for everything they use. Having a target system's civilization fall while a Qeng Ho fleet is en-route can be a disaster. Almost as bad, if a Qeng Ho fleet goes to a system that is on the technological rise, but miscalculates when it will reach a level useful to the Qeng Ho, the arriving fleet may have to wait decades for the potential customers to be worth trading with.

Milo: The question is, will someone who isn'...

2011-10-30T21:53:50.099-07:00
Milo:
The question is, will someone who isn't an astronomer and doesn't have a starchart in hand be able to distinguish it from any other bright star or the planet Venus?
It's a lot more likely to be mistaken for a shooting star then Venus. Any spacecraft will show a lot of motion. I've seen lots of them, and they very definitely move.

Welcome to a new (returning?) commenter! Industri...

2011-10-30T19:51:19.019-07:00
Welcome to a new (returning?) commenter!

Industrial Depth is a handy term.

Regarding space 'cruise ships,' see my new post - I'd argue that their counterpart is the ever popular orbital hotel. One of those counter-intuitive things is that a 'station' provides far more sense of motion than a deep space ship does, what with the Earth rolling past.

=Milo= Unknown: "Smelters, which requi...

2011-10-30T10:17:58.254-07:00
=Milo=

Unknown:

"Smelters, which require some type of fuel--and since most fuels we use in smelters on Earth are of organic origins (Oil, Natural gas, Coal...) you'll need to find something else that burns at thousands of degrees"

You don't need burning, you just need heat. Heat in space will almost certainly be from nuclear or solar origins.

"Deck it out in reflective foil, I am pretty sure its passage through the sky at night will not go unnoticed, even without pyrotechnics."

The question is, will someone who isn't an astronomer and doesn't have a starchart in hand be able to distinguish it from any other bright star or the planet Venus?

Oh and as for PMF showboats, cruise liners or all ...

2011-10-30T09:14:58.291-07:00
Oh and as for PMF showboats, cruise liners or all that, if there are some they'll be the equivalent to Caribbean cruise ships: stick around Earth, maybe stop at the Moon for some 1/6th gee golf and shuffleboard and tour Tranquility Base, gawk at Libertarian Prime at Earth-Moon L-5, then back to Earth, without ever having lost sight of the little blue ball. Interplanetary traffic is going to be the domain of actual work for a LONG time.

@Tony - A long time ago, I put forward a theory on...

2011-10-30T09:06:47.565-07:00
@Tony - A long time ago, I put forward a theory on Industrial Depth in this blog. I would tend to agree with this view. It takes a LOT of resources to make a robot. Just to start with, mines for the various metallic ores, which will not all conveniently be located in walking distance of your landing sites. Smelters, which require some type of fuel--and since most fuels we use in smelters on Earth are of organic origins (Oil, Natural gas, Coal...) you'll need to find something else that burns at thousands of degrees--and to build the smelters you will need a lot of metal which need to be smelt... oops.

And this is without silicates, plastics, and other products required for the electronic components, to say nothing of rubber for manipulator arms and tires, carbon fibers, or other exotic and semi-exotic compounds that each require a hefty technological base to produce.

Centuries might be pessimistic, but not THAT pessimistic.

To go back (waaaaaaayyy back) to the beginning of the discussion, I'm surprised no one mentioned one of the Ur-examples of Applied Showboating 101: Commodore Perry parking his frigate off Edo harbor. He certainly followed Sun Tzu's admonition to win before he had to fight, and he did it without the equivalent of a Great White Fleet.

In PMF terms, it would go like this. No matter how smart the Martian or Callistan colonists think they are (and they will be pretty smart because they'll send smart people there in the first place) they could never match the Industrial Depth of good old Earth. Have a single Laser Star just happen to drop by from time to time ("Is there anything you need? Medicine, blankets, that mountain range reduced to slag? No? Ok, we'll just stick around, in case you do") and it seems rather unlikely they'd do anything so foolish as to refuse to send whatever product they create (research, most likely) back to Earth. Then, return the Laser Star to Earth, parade it for children to ooh and aah at, and veterans to gripe about how they have it so easy nowadays, but back when THEY had to do a tour at Callisto they had to eat powdered chicken.

Rinse, repeat.

As for it not being an impressive sight, consider that Mir was quite visible streaking across the sky. It was 120 Tonnes and 20m long (on average). Our Laser Star is probably going to be over 200m (That nuke reactor you want to keep pretty far from the habitat) and mass at the very least 10,000 tonnes, and it will have radiators of commensurate size. Deck it out in reflective foil, I am pretty sure its passage through the sky at night will not go unnoticed, even without pyrotechnics. Light up the torch to make your point, or scatter the defocused beam through a cloud for extra oompf.

jollyreaper: "...anything is a gimmick un...

2011-10-24T11:21:17.695-07:00
jollyreaper:

"...anything is a gimmick until it's been done right, then it's the new standard. Horseless carriages, GUI's, airplanes, etc. Voice recognition is making that transition right now."

That's a non sequitur in the sense you're invoking it. It's also confirmation bias. We still don't have land battleships, personal helicopters, or robots in the Asimovian sense. And voice recognition has been used for what it's practical for for a long time. My ex used to do voice recognition typing on a Dell PC fourteen years ago. It wasn't quite as slick as voice recognition these days, but it wasn't bad.

"DARPA Proposes Satellite Recycling 'Phoenix' Program

They're talking about making a robot to cobble together new sats from the working parts of old ones. No idea how that'll work but that's certainly going to require some flexible manipulators."

There are so many things wrong with that idea that it's hard to know where to start. A simple starter list would be:

The enrgy required to pull part off of several different satellites in several different orbits is probably prohibitive to begin with.

Parts from different model satellites probably have widely varying power and data interfaces. Is the robot going to build a bunch of interface adaptors out of junk sheet metal, wires, and gold foil?

Parts that have been on orbit for several years have been exposed to high levels of radiation and thousands of light/dark heat flux cycles. Why would they be trusted to begin with?

No matter what you personally believe, j, my understanding of robotics and AI technology suggests to me that this is nothing more than another DARPA boondoggle. Only about 10% of DARPA projects lead to real world applications, you know. Or did you know that?

"I think you're being too categorical in saying it would take centuries to build robots in situ..."

If you want a definite statement, I think centuries would be optimistic. The industrial base is just too broad and deep to transplant it off Earth any time soon.

Voice recognition has been at least that good f...

2011-10-24T10:23:24.880-07:00
Voice recognition has been at least that good for over a decade. The increased compactification of memory and processor speed has just made it possible to put it in a handheld device.

Yes, I know how they're doing it. The point is, they're really making it practical. An observation was made about this elsewhere: anything is a gimmick until it's been done right, then it's the new standard. Horseless carriages, GUI's, airplanes, etc. Voice recognition is making that transition right now.

First of all, ain't gonna be no robots built in space for several centuries, if ever. The required industrial base is just too broad and deep. Comparing humans to robots, a robot can accomplish maybe a few strongly related tasks. Any time you need to perform outside tasks, order a new robot and wait several months or years. If a human needs to do a new task, pull a manual up from a local library database, or get one emailed to you in a few hours. It may take the human some time to achieve an adequate level of competency, but while we're waiting for that, he or she is getting some amount of work done, and may even be learning and perfecting skills relevant to the local environment that wouldn't be in the programming of a supposed robot expert, or even in the general instruction manuals for humans. That's the whole reason for humans on the ground in the first place.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2395131,00.asp

DARPA Proposes Satellite Recycling 'Phoenix' Program

They're talking about making a robot to cobble together new sats from the working parts of old ones. No idea how that'll work but that's certainly going to require some flexible manipulators.

I think you're being too categorical in saying it would take centuries to build robots in situ. Certainly if we're talking about nothing better than today's tech, it wouldn't be happening. If we'd gone ahead and built the lunar base after the Apollo mission, we'd probably still not have local fab of integrated circuits yet. But the new nano-manufacturing tech really has me wondering just what will be possible in the future.

But even if we say "nope, no space manufacturing," what are the limits to robot flexibility? For now they all have to be custom-built, true. But what happens when we can make them as generally appliable as a human being? Sure, putting the robot to a new task might require some serious programming back on Earth but to the people on the station it's just one patch away from making the harvesting bot a baking bot. We're coming up with some pretty fascinating robotic hands.

Granted, it's probably not going to be efficient in a mass production sense. You can make just about anything in your home kitchen but you won't be able to do it in volume. One turkey dinner, yes. A thousand all at the same time, you need an industrial kitchen. And one setup with rotisseries to do a ton of turkeys at a time might not be able to turn around and crank out the cakes. Economies of scale and all.

I'm not a gushing optimist and saying this will happen overnight, just that I think it's possible and certainly within the next century.

And why would we have more crewmembers than may...

2011-10-23T15:23:56.655-07:00
And why would we have more crewmembers than maybe a pilot and a maintenance engineer?

Do you even need those? The passenger manifest skillsets probably include maintenance types and even pilot types. Whatever bases you have out there must have some kind of 'mission control' for local operations. With clever personnel scheduling you can fill every needed billet.

Good thing, too, because ship crew may not be a viable career path. My guess is that the transports have only minimal shielding, to save penalty mass. In which case a few trips could add up to a career exposure limits.

But at some point there will likely be 'First Class' accommodations for VIP types, who will not work their passage (and may not have suitable skills). Whether these berths can also be outright purchased is a minor detail - one way or another they are available to members of the elite who want to make the trip.

Such tasks don't exist on a spaceship, nor ...

2011-10-23T13:41:05.115-07:00
Such tasks don't exist on a spaceship, nor do I think paying passengers will allow themselves to be utilized in this manner, but some sort of analogue will probably be created to keep the passengers and crew from going crazy.
I wouldn't be so sure about that.
If there are paying passengers, they'd probably get a price break if they agree to so many hours of work each day. Even if it's just housekeeping, it saves the line money, and helps the passengers stay sane. I'm not claiming it would make the trip free by any means, but it would be an incentive.
And if you set it up right, most of the work they'd do would only need to be done when they're onboard, so you aren't shorthanded on the trip home.
On military vessels, it's much the same, though in that case, it's not optional.

Thucydides: "Such tasks don't exist o...

2011-10-23T12:39:17.048-07:00
Thucydides:

"Such tasks don't exist on a spaceship, nor do I think paying passengers will allow themselves to be utilized in this manner, but some sort of analogue will probably be created to keep the passengers and crew from going crazy."

Are we going to have paying passengers in the PMF? I don't think so, nor, do I suspect, would many. You're a passenger because you have a job to do at the end of the line. Transport to get you there is a just a cost of doing business.

And why would we have more crewmembers than maybe a pilot and a maintenance engineer? After all, you have all of the highly intelligent and adpatable pax with nothing better to do during transit but read books and play cards/videogames. Put them to work in the ship's economy. Anybody who thinks he's too good for that can effing starve till he gets in line. It's not like the other passengers would object. Every lazy-ass not pulling his weight makes more work for them.

People did long transits in the age of sail in con...

2011-10-23T12:19:54.826-07:00
People did long transits in the age of sail in conditions we can hardly imagine today. Warships were probably the worst, since they were packed with men needed for the fighting tasks (manning the guns and fighting tops), who were otherwise unemployed in the day to day sailing.

We all know this isn't what happened; the coxswain ensured EVERYONE was employed scrubbing decks and doing other chores around the ship (especially assisting the ratings, and ships specialists like the carpenter).

Such tasks don't exist on a spaceship, nor do I think paying passengers will allow themselves to be utilized in this manner, but some sort of analogue will probably be created to keep the passengers and crew from going crazy.

This will also provide more reason to invest in drive development; getting people to their destinations as fast as possible not only increases the revenue per ship, but also minimizes the need for expensive and mass heavy entertainment to keep the passengers amused for 180+ days...

Perhaps what is needed for longer transists (90 to...

2011-10-23T10:03:39.590-07:00
Perhaps what is needed for longer transists (90 to 180 days, or longer), will be a balanced mix of privacy, community, and deversions to keep the passengers who don't have regular duities occupied. Working in the garden, playing games, reading (or watching programs), would prevent boredom for a while, but longer trips that last months (or even years) would need more. Maybe having classes and lectures, even simulations of the jobs they'd be doing once they reach their destination.

Space travel is not like any Earthly mode of travel and so needs a certain amount of thinking 'outside the box' to make it successful.

Ferrell

Sleeping car standards would be pretty freakin&...

2011-10-22T19:29:48.692-07:00
Sleeping car standards would be pretty freakin' luxurious for a six month shipboard deployment in the modern USN.

Point taken - though on surface ships you can at least go topside once in a while. My concern is mainly with volume per person, in a can.

I was told (IIRC by someone with first hand knowledge) that submarine deployments are three months because much longer and morale starts swirling down the toilet.

The ISS manages six months, but with a very selective recruitment process.

There must be a body of research, backed by considerable field experience, on psychological factors of living in a can - how crowded it is, and so forth. But I don't really know the findings.

I sort of overstated things in the line you quoted, but for a whole variety of things I think 90 day transits are preferable, and 180 days pushing the practical limits for regular service.

Rick: "Though suspect that sleeping-car s...

2011-10-22T14:39:03.796-07:00
Rick:

"Though suspect that sleeping-car standards of accommodation would be less than adequate for a 3-month journey."

Sleeping car standards would be pretty freakin' luxurious for a six month shipboard deployment in the modern USN. Even officer accomodations are no better until you get into department heads and above. It's certainly no worse than what our guys and gals currently endure for up to six months on the ISS.

jollyreaper:

"Case in point, was playing with Siri on the née iPhone. It's doing stuff skeptics promised voice recognition would never handle. One that impressed me, I tried the worst name I could think of, Harry Simeone. It was recognized as hairy simian. Tried again with the full name of the group, Harry Simeone Chorale, nailed it in one. A few years back I spent hours trying to find a cd of this guy's material since he's a favorite of my mom's. She couldn't remember how to spell his name."

Voice recognition has been at least that good for over a decade. The increased compactification of memory and processor speed has just made it possible to put it in a handheld device. Also, Siri offloads searches onto web entities that might know the answer. All the local app does is speech recognition and answer prioritization (with some personal context management). IOW, it's just an interface layer that sits on top of the Web, providing a slightly more organized and personalized service.*

*I say "slightly" because many web sites are already doing considerable personal context prioritization. Siri just keeps a context on top of that, local to your device.

"Could we see it on earth? Migrant labor might be cheaper since they come at low cost and the air's free. In space? If we consider work performed per weight, and especially if the harvest bots can be built out of material found on-site and humans are shipped in from Earth and rockets remain bloody expensive..."

First of all, ain't gonna be no robots built in space for several centuries, if ever. The required industrial base is just too broad and deep. Comparing humans to robots, a robot can accomplish maybe a few strongly related tasks. Any time you need to perform outside tasks, order a new robot and wait several months or years. If a human needs to do a new task, pull a manual up from a local library database, or get one emailed to you in a few hours. It may take the human some time to achieve an adequate level of competency, but while we're waiting for that, he or she is getting some amount of work done, and may even be learning and perfecting skills relevant to the local environment that wouldn't be in the programming of a supposed robot expert, or even in the general instruction manuals for humans. That's the whole reason for humans on the ground in the first place.

=Milo= Thucydides: "the idea of laying...

2011-10-22T13:52:33.577-07:00
=Milo=

Thucydides:

"the idea of laying about after a hard shift in the 3He mines will probably not happen"

I should totally not be picturing someone in a gas giant mining for helium using a pick-axe. Why am I?

"Picked 3 hr ago" will make your radishe...

2011-10-22T12:16:08.631-07:00
"Picked 3 hr ago" will make your radishes more attractive to someone who is looking for radish, but the consumer looking for carrots and lettuce will not be very impressed.

What I was getting at is the level of capital investment for these ecosystem farms is pretty high, so the owner/operator needs to find the best combination of cash crops (including the fish portion) to maximise the ROI. The fact that most hydroponic "farms" come under police investigation due to the main crop being marijuana is a direct result of this metric; "weed" is both very marketable and has a high cash value, which more than offsets the costs of setting up and operating the grow-op in the first place.

In space, each person is a valuable asset, and manpower will be limited, so the idea of laying about after a hard shift in the 3He mines will probably not happen; it is off to the farms to pick your tomatoes and get your portion of the fish harvest, then maybe down in the life support chamber changing filters....

=Milo= Ferrell: "With a big enough lib...

2011-10-22T10:42:05.470-07:00
=Milo=

Ferrell:

"With a big enough library, you can keep people occupied indefinantly."

Libraries are mass-inefficient. Computers can store the same amount of data in much less space.

Some people might find e-reading less comfortable than flipping through physical pages, but the mass advantages are too significant to ignore on a spaceship.

For that matter, entertainment on a spaceship is likely to involve video games. Lots and lots of video games. Access to games that use actual physical props is the luxury.

Also don't forget that even light-lagged communications back home would go a long way to making people feel less claustrophobic than they would otherwise.

Thucydides:

"They will also have to be savvy marketers to ensure they are indeed producing the produce the desired produce."

If you're living in a small community, knowing what the populace wants is less "savvy marketers" and more "let's go talk to the neighbors". You might well know most of your customers on a first-name basis.

Thucydides: Yeah, there is some level of marketin...

2011-10-22T07:03:20.326-07:00
Thucydides: Yeah, there is some level of marketing involved, but take it from someone who has gone without fresh produce for a while: All you really need to say is 'picked 3 hours ago', someone will eat it!

Where are people running those closed-circuit minifarms, by the way? That's something I'm interested in exploring.

(Best military galley I ever ate at was in Meridian, MS, but Bangor, WA was close.)

I know that everyone remains skeptical of the over...

2011-10-22T04:20:17.675-07:00
I know that everyone remains skeptical of the overpromises made by futurists but I really have to wonder at the potential for expert systems in the future.

Case in point, was playing with Siri on the née iPhone. It's doing stuff skeptics promised voice recognition would never handle. One that impressed me, I tried the worst name I could think of, Harry Simeone. It was recognized as hairy simian. Tried again with the full name of the group, Harry Simeone Chorale, nailed it in one. A few years back I spent hours trying to find a cd of this guy's material since he's a favorite of my mom's. She couldn't remember how to spell his name.

Common sense is supposed to be tough. I'll know we've reached that point when we have intelligent car washes. Right now they just stupidly go through motions without knowing whether or not the car is clean. When they put cameras on these things and they can recognize dirty from clean and go back to hit areas again... We're really not that far off from harvest bots. Mechanical spiders crawling the crops, pulling off fruit and veggies.

Could we see it on earth? Migrant labor might be cheaper since they come at low cost and the air's free. In space? If we consider work performed per weight, and especially if the harvest bots can be built out of material found on-site and humans are shipped in from Earth and rockets remain bloody expensive...

I suspect farming in any future colony/outpost or ...

2011-10-21T21:35:36.180-07:00
I suspect farming in any future colony/outpost or large scale space structure will indeed be a very technical subject.

We will need to produce food almost on an assembly line basis, and using the minimum space possible, so the farm wil probably be a hydroponic system like a "Grow Op", and the water will probably be passing through a series of fish tanks to provide the protein. The farmers will have to be experts in managing a semi closed ecosystem, including preventing infection from destroying parts of the system, managing energy, water and gas transfers and plant and animal (fish) husbandry. They will also have to be savvy marketers to ensure they are indeed producing the produce the desired produce.

Such systems are in small scale use today.

There will quite probably be several levels of com...

2011-10-21T21:08:26.908-07:00
There will quite probably be several levels of comfort aboard future spacecraft; everything from the sparten layout of the exploration and security craft to the opulent distractions of the luxury liners, and everything in between. I can see marathon card games for the crews of those less-than-opulent vessels, and the most exotic (and lightweight) diversions for the wealthy passengers of those luxury liners. What about the others? those that aren't on the government payroll, or have a hefty trust fund? I imagine something like a ferry ship; tiny cabins, a few common areas, and some simple diversions. With a big enough library, you can keep people occupied indefinantly.

Ferrell

Comments on Rocketpunk Manifesto: Showboats in Space

Fleet week isn't really about showing off how ...

Welcome back, then, to a longtime commenter! I th...

Returning, actually. Somehow my profile got reset...

Re: Industrial Depth In Vinge's A Deepness...

Milo: The question is, will someone who isn'...

Welcome to a new (returning?) commenter! Industri...

=Milo= Unknown: "Smelters, which requi...

Oh and as for PMF showboats, cruise liners or all ...

@Tony - A long time ago, I put forward a theory on...

jollyreaper: "...anything is a gimmick un...

Voice recognition has been at least that good f...

And why would we have more crewmembers than may...

Such tasks don't exist on a spaceship, nor ...

Thucydides: "Such tasks don't exist o...

People did long transits in the age of sail in con...

Perhaps what is needed for longer transists (90 to...

Sleeping car standards would be pretty freakin&...

Rick: "Though suspect that sleeping-car s...

=Milo= Thucydides: "the idea of laying...

"Picked 3 hr ago" will make your radishe...

=Milo= Ferrell: "With a big enough lib...

Thucydides: Yeah, there is some level of marketin...

I know that everyone remains skeptical of the over...

I suspect farming in any future colony/outpost or ...

There will quite probably be several levels of com...