Comments on Rocketpunk Manifesto: NASA: A Change of Orbit

"We’ve heard that a million monkeys at a mill...

2010-02-19T16:18:43.652-08:00

"We’ve heard that a million monkeys at a million keyboards could produce the complete works of Shakespeare, now, thanks to the Internet, we know that is not true."

-- Robert Wilensky

One major part of political philosophy is and has ...

2010-02-19T16:17:07.795-08:00

One major part of political philosophy is and has been trying to define the rewards of ambition in a socially useful way.

The Space Race may have been bad for long term space development, but it was very good for the US and USSR, giving them both a harmless and possibly useful way to beat their chests and act like the biggest ape in the forest.

I am finding lately that my acceptance of humanity is greatly increased by embracing Darwin's truth. Everything you see online is what happens when you give apes access to liquor, car keys, weapons, and the Internet.

I'm not sure there has ever been a leader who ...

2010-02-18T13:46:07.624-08:00

I'm not sure there has ever been a leader who didn't see it as a path to personal glory at least in some part. It takes a strong will and a strong persona and a great ambition to rise to power, even in a democratic system. The path to leadership involves stepping on too many people for a truly selfless person to undertake it solely for the good of all. To become a leader of a nation, you got to *want* it, not just understand it is a necessary evil, but to actually, genuinely, deeply want it. Now the best leaders also want the job to make their nation great, according to their idea of what makes a nation great. But even for the best leaders to have ever emerged from history, ambition had to be a central motivator.

That said, they cannot be purely selfish either. Even Hitler did what he did to make Germany great. (oops Gordwin's Law... damn it that slipped out)

The difference between a "evil" leader a...

2010-02-18T13:38:08.496-08:00

The difference between a "evil" leader and a "normal" leader is that one belives that leadership is a personal path to glory and the other believes that leadership is a necsissary (even ornerius)duty that needs to be fofilled for the general good. Unfortunately, you don't know until they get into office which one they are...most tend to vacillate betwen the two on any given issue.

Ferrell

Like I'm supposed to believe that anyone reall...

2010-02-15T20:49:44.343-08:00

Like I'm supposed to believe that anyone really hates throwing in a monkey wrench!

Good point about the historical emphasis on restraining local warlordism. We are better able to appreciate this than just a generation ago, thanks to 'failed states' and the like.

Which is something to keep in mind in these discussions of political fragmentation in space, and/or a balkanized future Earth.

Hate to throw another wrench in things, but in Org...

2010-02-15T14:03:41.005-08:00

Hate to throw another wrench in things, but in Organizational Theory, Politics is roughly defined as a means of allocating limited resources.

Cooperation and consensus are the means most of us would approve of, but Politics is morally neutral, so being the most ruthless SOB in the valley of death is also a possible means of allocating the resources towards ends that you desire. Office politics where gossip, rumor mongering and back-stabbing are common is a perfect example of this meme.

Minimizing the hazards of local warlords taking over is a big sub theme in politics, with many possible solutions. The ancient Greeks tried timocracy, term limits and random drawings of juries and members of the eklassia, the Res Publica Roma was a form of timocracy and the Founding Fathers also were very much in favour of timocracy as well as separation of powers.

Sadly, the answer to this question still seems elusive as ever.

I'm a bit more sanguine than that - if the wor...

2010-02-15T08:49:50.741-08:00

I'm a bit more sanguine than that - if the worst consistently rose to the top, complex societies would be so unstable they couldn't exist at all. (They cause enough damage as it is, e.g. Hitler.)

The whole of political philosophy is broadly a discussion of how to minimize this hazard. It is one of the paradoxes of our human condition that such a discipline is both possible and necessary.

I think it's pretty much a law of the universe...

2010-02-14T21:06:01.125-08:00

I think it's pretty much a law of the universe that the least worthy of leadership become leaders and the most worthy do not. Well, and there's also the whole absolute power corrupting absolutely thing, so even if he was worthy at first...

"Pessimist is what an optimist calls a realist."

I think there is a disturbing tendency towards nee...

2010-02-14T21:01:39.109-08:00

I think there is a disturbing tendency towards needing to be an egotistical ass to make things happen. Consider the surgeon. Here's someone who thinks he's going to be able to cut you open and poke around in your guts to make you better. That's some goddamn arrogance right there! But if he can, who can argue with him? He's right.

Early Republican criticism of Obama was along the lines of him being arrogant. Of course he is! He thinks he's qualified to be the president of the United States! Anyone who thinks that has some arrogance to him! Doesn't mean he can't pull it off but yeah, that's not humility speaking there.

I don't have an answer to the leader problem. It seems like there's always a disconnect between what it takes to become a leader and what it takes to rule wisely. Not to go all Godwin's Law here but if you look at Hitler, it was clear that he had a very savvy political mind but he proved inadequate as a leader when he started a war with the rest of the freakin' planet.

Having been involved peripherally in local politics, I've seen the dynamic of able, capable people shying away from the spotlight and wanting to work in the background, thus leaving the leadership role and spotlight for the vain, grasping personalities that crave attention. And because this is the way we monkeys organize our tribe, the least worthy person gets the most authority. It'd be a wonderful thing if we gathered as a group and voted on who among us was suited to lead, no campaigning necessary, being seen as base and unworthy of a gentleman. That's the ideal the Founding Fathers espoused but it fell apart from the very start. Hell, they didn't even want political parties but Founding Fathers formed them!

<"We are all capable of believing things w...

2010-02-13T08:14:38.239-08:00

<"We are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, is possible to carry this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield.">

Jollyreaper/Orwell brings rise to an interesting (IMO) dichotomy that I have been pondering lately: self-assuredness even to the point of self-delusion brings about confidence in yourself and more importantly confidence in you from others. Hitler was wrong on so many levels but his supreme confidence in himself made him into The Fuhrer, with more 'self checks' he would have been a better man morally but would he have been a bigger man historically being that he would have been doubting himself all of the time? When you know you are flawed you are unsure of yourself and when you are unsure of yourself other people are unsure of you, so even though you are the better, more balanced person, you probably will never gain the confidence in enough followers to become The Fuhrer.

So do you have to be a know-it-all idiot to be a leader? -and are we destined to follow these 'leaders' to the grave (or economic or environmental ruin) because of their self-delusional cult-of-personalities?

From Next Big Future: http://nextbigfuture.com/20...

2010-02-11T06:39:10.356-08:00

From Next Big Future:

http://nextbigfuture.com/2010/02/spacex-is-assembling-falcon-9-and.html

Spacex is Assembling a Falcon 9 and Targeting March 8, 2010 Launch

The preparation of the first Falcon 9 rocket is a big step for the upstart space company, which has become the virtual front-runner in the White House's new plan to privatize
human space flights to low-Earth orbit in the post-shuttle era.

Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) announces that all flight hardware for the debut launch of the Falcon 9 vehicle has arrived at the SpaceX launch site, Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40), in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Final delivery included the Falcon 9 second stage, which recently completed testing at SpaceX's test facility in McGregor, Texas. SpaceX has now initiated full vehicle integration of the 47 meter (154 feet) tall, 3.6 meter (12 feet) diameter rocket, which will include a Dragon spacecraft qualification unit.

“We expect to launch in one to three months after completing full vehicle integration,” said Brian Mosdell, Director of Florida Launch Operations for SpaceX. “Our primary objective is a successful first launch and we are taking whatever time necessary to work through the data to our satisfaction before moving forward.”

Following full vehicle integration, SpaceX will conduct a static firing to demonstrate flight readiness and confirm operation of ground control systems in preparation for actual launch.

Though designed from the beginning to transport crew, SpaceX's Falcon 9 launch vehicle and Dragon spacecraft will initially be used to transport cargo. Falcon 9 and Dragon were selected by NASA to resupply the International Space Station (ISS) once Shuttle retires. The $1.6B contract represents 12 flights for a minimum of 20 tons to and from the ISS with the first demonstration flights beginning in 2010.

Things like subsidizing rural rail service are eit...

2010-02-09T20:43:14.390-08:00

Things like subsidizing rural rail service are either a feature or a bug, depending on perspective. Whether it is being done efficiently is a separate dimension - and it may help efficiency if you are unabashed about what you are doing.

Qwert: absolutely. I pointed out that public secto...

2010-02-09T20:35:14.868-08:00

Qwert: absolutely. I pointed out that public sector workers can unionize and strike, and do so frequently. While it may be annoyed by a halt in the rail traffic, I do (or did when I still lived there) generally support them.

I have a tendency to feel like regular instances of widespread civil disobedience has a tendency to keep the government honest. Consider the 1969 student riots, nicknamed the "Cobblestone War" because they would rip the cobbles and throw them at police. Because civil disobedience is common, police forces were trained to react in that situation. There were some wounded, perhaps a death or two due to overzealous beatings. Now consider the events on a US campus (need to get that reference somewhere) a US college mounted a protest. Taken aback by this turn of events, they unleashed the National Guard. Completely unprepared and untrained for this, they fired into the crowd, killing students.

I'm not advocating regular riots like in LA, certainly not, simply that experience helps. I suspect that US police forces are now far better trained at dealing with riots.

I think I went off on a tangent here, and I am not sure exactly where.

As a public service, it's meant to be operated...

2010-02-09T13:44:25.407-08:00

As a public service, it's meant to be operated in the public good. This includes subsidizing services.

If we're talking about selling people groceries, you can leave that up to the grocery stores. They can select their own locations, their own stock, and the market can see to their fates. But something that rises to the point of being a public utility or public transportation cannot be left to sheer market forces. Market forces would say you abandon the non-profitable people out in the country and concentrate on cherrypicking the best areas in the city and the burbs.

The thing we have to look at, societally speaking, is if we as society are really losing value on the service. When you can no longer even justify the cost of a program for society's benefit, then it needs reevaluated.

Well, the SNCF sounds good until you take into acc...

2010-02-09T13:39:01.065-08:00

Well, the SNCF sounds good until you take into account two details:

1) Ticket prices may seem reasonable, however it is only because the taxpayer is subsidizing them. While I am not arguing to abandon those isolated villages, it is certainly something that has to be taken into accuont.

2) French public-sector unions have an annoying tendency to strike frequently an violently, effectively provoking city- and nationwide blockades. In a sense taking the entire population as hostage.

The SNCF actually operates in general at a slight ...

2010-02-09T11:36:29.142-08:00

The SNCF actually operates in general at a slight deficit. While everyone (or most everyone) knows of its TGV flagship, which is expensive to maintain but represents too great a technological display to the world not to, the SNCF runs a hundred small unprofitable lines between remote villages on old clunky diesel engines. A lot of those villages would be well-nigh inaccessible without those lines, due to heavy fogs or winter snowfalls, and are really a lifeline that no politician would want to sacrifice, no matter how much clamor there is about the line's lack of profit (five farmers a day doesn't really generate a lot of revenue) No one wants to be the politician who condemned the small township of StWhatever to oblivion.

The true money maker for the SNCF is neither the expensive to maintain TGV nor those small lines, but the light rail suburbans, insofar as there is such a phenomenon in Europe as "suburb". The reason that the SNCF survives at all is that public transportation is very much a part of everyday life in France. Every city runs its own public transportation system, from very comprehensive bus lines to metros in cities big enough to warrant them. Every train station is a major hub within its own city, and even a medium-sized city will have anywhere from two to four or five major, multi-line train stations in and of themselves. Shopping areas and "main drags" are never far from a train station. The Florida situation exposed earlier simply does not happen in France: everything is interconnected, and most of it is government run, whether it is on a national level, like the SNCF itself, or at the city government level, like the buses and metros.

Yet, despite the seeming inherent dangers of government monopolies, ticket prices are extremely reasonable. a TGV ticket from Nice to Paris is far cheaper than a plane ticket, and though the trip is itself a couple of hours longer, if you include the time needed to check through the airports (crawling with submachine gun-toting Gendarmes) you might get pretty close to it. Smoother, too. It really is a fantastic ride. And there's a bar.

Overall I think there is a far greater tolerance for government involvement in France. There is only one power company, and only one train company, yet none of the Republican fears of rampant socialist domino-effect have materialized. Oh, and government workers can unionize and go on strike. And do. Often. A Worker's Paradise? Hardly. France is still a capitalist country, but it strikes what seems to be an acceptable balance between unrestrained capitalism and dictatorial socialism.

But what does this mean for the future, realistica...

2010-02-09T09:00:49.558-08:00

But what does this mean for the future, realistically? When the shuttle is gone, we'll no longer have a domestic manned space capability. We'll be buying seats off the Russians. Will the Space-X capsule be ready soon?

I suppose the size of the shuttle is deceptive. A capsule doesn't seem like much but what was the rest of the shuttle there for? It was going up for a two week mission and acting as a flying lab. We have a space station now, no need for the shuttle to be that lab. We aren't servicing and returning sats. Station modules can be nestled into place with the existing station arms, right?

I must say I do like the idea of committing to buy a few hundred boosters and seeing what we can do with them.

Taking up on Thucydides' point, I think people...

2010-02-09T08:47:33.416-08:00

Taking up on Thucydides' point, I think people forget exactly what the 'magic of the marketplace' is.

Once you get much past the six geeks in a garage level, a corporation is a bureaucracy, functions like one, and succeeds or fails like one. 'The market' simply means that if it fails, someone will muscle into the vacuum in a relatively smooth way.

100 years ago the Southern Pacific Railroad was mightier than Microsoft, and about as close to a true railroad empire as history has to offer. 'The market' didn't make it any smarter, and over time it became just another railroad, and at last was assimilated by the Great Yellow Borg.

The path is less smooth for public institutions, but they can be well run for a long time. Since I brought trains into the discussion, an obvious example here is SNCF. I don't know about it, but it is some kind of public agency, and they obviously know how to run a railroad.

Compare to the fact that the US and to lesser degree the Brits have futzed around, without much to show but a few half-fast trains.

Still, in its clumsy way the political process can get fed up with the status quo, and that is the case here. Obama's budget more or less implements the recommendations of the Augustine Commission. In other words the conventional wisdom was demanding a change, and a new administration is taking the opportunity handed to it.

Which is more or less how the system is supposed to work!

Cooperation has its place, and so does competition...

2010-02-08T08:38:45.019-08:00

Cooperation has its place, and so does competition. The economy is probably best described as an ecosystem, with various players filling the various niches.

Right now, most of the niches are filled or suppressed by the huge government monosopy of NASA/USAF and the NRO in the United States, which in ecological terms is similar to plowing the land and engaging in agricultural monoculture. Ask the Irish how well that worked for them.

Perhaps to carry this analogy a bit further, we are now getting to the sort of model the USSR had and China has today, where farmers still toil in the collective fields but are now able to get their own food from their own garden plots. Another analogy might be the farms which preserve legacy seeds and provide the source material for new hybrids working on the margins of Agribusiness.

Even if the resulting spacecraft are still high cost (due to small production runs), we are still increasing the number of approaches to do the job, and creating new markets where none may have existed before.

Even stranger things might happen. A future administration might go full bore in fielding ABM missiles. The mass production of launch vehicles with high delta V and long cross range performance mated to a mass produced standard buss and spacecraft might set the standard for microsats and small high performance spacecraft for missions in LEO, and the producing company/consortium would be pleased to recoup their investment by using the "standard" components to fill other needs like micro communication satellites, Earth and space observatory constellations and even one man high performance capsules for on orbit inspection and maintainence (the US Navy had a design for such a one man ship to be launched from a submarine using a Trident booster, so this isn't impossible).

Ferrel said: "BTW, besides chemical, beanstal...

2010-02-08T07:48:04.839-08:00

Ferrel said: "BTW, besides chemical, beanstalks, and nuke-booms, what other ways are there to get into orbit?"

This provides a pretty good overview of most of the possibilities.

Also I think 'nuke-booms' wouldn't include various *steady* high thrust nuclear rockets eg: this or high thrust solid core nuclear rockets.

New Scientist had a recent article on gravity wher...

2010-02-08T07:32:11.191-08:00

New Scientist had a recent article on gravity where the scientist was talking about the fundamental relationship to space time. It seemed kinda technobabble and I think that scientist was going in a different direction. However, I've been suggesting that the reason that gravity isn't playing well with the Grand Unified Theory is because the rest of the forces deal with how matter interacts with itself while gravity details how matter interacts with space time. That doesn't directly help, but until we know what gravity is (and not just how to mathematically model the effects) we won't be able to do much to affect it.

"The day we can't count on the government...

2010-02-08T00:16:05.774-08:00

"The day we can't count on the government to finance the little silly frivolous things like science, arts, and education is the day government fails."

I couldn't have said it better or more succinctly than that. And good point about the internationalism - it seems for a great many countries (excepting the "rogue states") have stopped the daredevil "space-race" mentality of being the first to get somewhere. Part of it is because there really aren't that many important "firsts" left to claim (first people on Mars is really the next big one, but it's a heck of a lot tougher than the U.S. title of "first [and only] people on the moon")

I'd like to think that it's more due to that spirit of cooperation and practicality rather than the loss of the romance. Five research teams in five countries all trying to do a re-usable launch vehicle in separate cubical farms won't get as far as one unified team constructed from those five countries, so long as everyone understands the difference between metric and imperial measurements.

~ Ferrard

Farrell: I think that's it. They can be combin...

2010-02-07T23:17:42.778-08:00

Farrell: I think that's it. They can be combined, like partial "hovering" beanstalks reached with chemical rockets, catapult systems with a built-in laser to continue trusting after leaving the catapult, drops from an aircraft igniting a chemical rocket with a laser to reach a partial beanstalk if you want, but there's really nothing short of magitech besides that.

I think Rick and I sort of agreed there is nothing in the theory that prevents a contra-gravitational drive, basically using Earth's gravity against itself, but that hovers so close to magitech it's not for this century if it's possible at all (not impossible theoretically and possible practically being two concepts really really far away from each other) Of course that does involve actually figuring out what gravity *is*... LHC, find us a graviton please? Thanks.

I think opening up the previous monopsony/monopoly on space exploration in the US is only a first step towards a true international effort in space exploration. I think everyone is starting to realize space is both pretty bloody expensive and pretty bloody critical to our future. The ISS is a shining example of multinational collaboration. The Europeans and Japanese abandoned manned space launchers (like the ESA's Hermes) in order to help with the ISS and hitchhike on the Space Shuttle, as well as contributing financially to said, indicates a change in how space will be handled in the future. NASA's move then could be considered a preliminary legal move to start involving European and Japanese interests in future large-scale space projects. I highly doubt our return to the Moon will be the achievement of a single nation, and Constellation and the old way of doing business with NASA were scrapped to pave the way for a sustained international effort.

However, I don't think space exploration should *solely* be left in the hands of corporations. Too often they think in short-term goals (investors tend to want their money back, and more, pretty quickly) and therefore are generally wary about pure science efforts with no foreseen return. That they tend not to realize that without pure science to pave the way, the practical, expected-return research would not even be possible. Governments must have the longer view, because no one else does. The day we can't count on the government to finance the little silly frivolous things like science, arts, and education is the day government fails.

Maybe this change to NASA will introduce a bit of ...

2010-02-07T20:52:54.983-08:00

Maybe this change to NASA will introduce a bit of realism to the space-business...but I'm not going to hold my breath. I'll be pleasently surprised if the private-industry sector pumps up the space-launch tempo by expanding the non-government orbital presence.

BTW, besides chemical, beanstalks, and nuke-booms, what other ways are there to get into orbit? Magnetic repulsion, lasercraft, and...? What? Any suggestions?

Ferrell

Agreed about the politics. Concerning civil vs. ...

2010-02-07T19:54:59.245-08:00

Agreed about the politics.

Concerning civil vs. government, there's a certain quote from Orwell that I feel is appropriate.

"We are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, is possible to carry this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield."

If you take a few liberties with this quote, it remains truthful and applies to a great many situations. I've worked in companies with some highly caustic groupthink but there was no way of telling them this from the inside. The only way those people were disabused of their incorrect notions was when the company impacted the ground at high speed and flew apart violently in various directions. A person/company/country can operate in a bubble of self-delusion for a very long time before external factors make themselves felt. The bigger the delusionist, the greater the reality shock required to get some attention.

Shows like VH1's Behind the Music, Jonestown, historical accounts of Hitler in the bunker, my own work experiences, they all share eerie parallels. You look at the Nazis at the end of WWII, it's fascinating to see the high-rollers gauge the tipping point in their own personal estimations, when the advantage of currying favor with the existing power structure drops to the point where bugging out and saving their own asses becomes preferable. Some people think the prospects in the wilderness are better while others will redouble their efforts crotch-sniffing and ass-kissing to ingratiate themselves with the crumbling power structure.

Back to the F-22 topic, I'll compare it with Microsoft's operating systems. Microsoft is a damned important company on the world stage but it smaller than a major defense contractor and the contractor is smaller than the government. Unless Microsoft has significant government backing for a given Windows OS, chances are they'll bump into Orwell's "solid reality" far sooner than the defense contractor. Indeed, these programs seem like they can ignore reality for years. We saw the V-22 Osprey revived from the dead, the B-1 bomber, the F-22 shepherded through various cost overruns, etc.

Microsoft delivered a turd with Vista and the scramble to undo that damage was visible to anyone with eyes. Even though Seven is just Vista rebranded, it's extremely telling that Microsoft had to abandon the Vista name and do so much damage control. They couldn't shrug this hit off. Seven had to do a better job of it.

The problem with government institutions and contractors who are tied in so closely with the government that they may as well be government institutions is that they can be too big to fail. We chided the Soviets for the inefficiency of their state-owned businesses, saying that with our companies they would go out of business if they couldn't compete and would be replaced by willing competitors, all without government intervention. Now we allow companies to merge and merge until they are so big we cannot allow them to fail for risk of losing the rest of the economy. While we have come about it from a different angle, we've arrived at precisely the same problem as the communist-style command economies. Karl Marx is laughing in his grave and Adam Smith is doing a facepalm.