The Japanese newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun reports that the Japanese government is considering a rather bold new space policy for that country that would include manned space flights. (Perhaps the headline “JAXA seeks to bodily go” is really a pun rather than a typo. Then again, maybe not.) The plan, scheduled for approval later this month, calls for modifying the H-2A Transfer Vehicle (HTV) originally developed as an unmanned cargo spacecraft for the ISS into a manned vehicle ready for crewed missions by around 2015. The plan also calls for JAXA “to secure superiority in the use of the moon’s resources” in advance of participation in an international lunar base by 2025.
The plan does not come cheap: the first ten years of the program would cost Japan 250-280 billion yen ($2.4-2.7 billion) a year, compared to JAXA’s current annual budget of 180 billion yen ($1.7 billion). However, many Japanese have felt that their space program has fallen behind China’s: the failure of an H-2A less than two months after China launched its first manned mission in October 2003 was a rather pointed demonstration of those worries. If a new “space race” does develop, it will not be between the US and China, but between China and Japan (and perhaps India and South Korea as well.)
And they’re off! A multination space race is just what we need. I hope this idea amounts to more than just wishful thinking. Save the race enter space!
Unless China decides to step up the flight rate for the Shenzhou, this space “race” could take a while.
As long as they persist in throwing hardware away every flight, it will be a race between a turtle and a snail.
But a race with winners and losers all the same.
> A multination space race is just what we need.
Who’s “we,” and why do you need a multination “space race” rather than a competition between private companies to *lower* the cost of going into space?
> But a race with winners and losers all the same.
What did America “win” in the first space race, apart from 40 years of virtual inactivity and a belief (still held in some circles) that space transportation must always be prohibitively expensive?
If the race is between a Japanese government program, and a Chinese government program, using expendable vehicles, they’ll both be losers.
I agree to some extent with Rand here, though I think that a good TSTO design using conventional propulsion and a reusable upper stage could be of use as a starting point. No matter how you put things into orbit you have to know how to make reusable reentry bodies anyway, and if it’s simpler than the shuttle and buran then that’s a big advantage.
I stress though that it’s a starting point, a means to be in the game, not to win it. Winning requires a different class of launcher.
And I don’t mean scramjets. They were first demonstrated in the lab over _50_ years ago. That is to say it took 50 years just to get one to fly. It may be that where there’s a new will there’s a new engineering way for airbreathers like scramjets, but there are far simpler courses of action.
Though I don’t see Japan doing it, there may be some room for improvement with nuclear thermal rockets. The particle bed reactors were a big improvement on NERVA as far as Isp and thrust to weight ratio (T/W) were concerned. While I don’t anticipate Isp improving much beyond 1000 sec there may be an innovative design that improves T/W enough to be useful, even if just as upper stages the will take you direct to the Moon.
An Orion-style pulsed nuclear propulsion system is supposedly relatively easy, but I think it would be a fairly gutsy move by anyone. Especially to press the launch button!
Something I do see Japan with an advantage in is directed energy propulsion. They are ahead of everyone else with gyrotron-based microwave systems, having been the first to demonstrate ablative microwave propulsion a couple of years ago. In laser propulsion they are on a par with the US, though the lasers are very expensive and China is strong that department.
If there is a race, then its winner will be the country who develops the cheapest launch capability. In political terms that translates to the county who is first able to bring new launch methods to the fore, and the country who is most able to leverage their research and industrial capacity to deliver.
> What did America “win” in the first space race,
> apart from 40 years of virtual inactivity and a
> belief (still held in some circles) that space
> transportation must always be prohibitively
> expensive?
America won the peace. They competed in the technological arena rather than the battlefield, advancing the state of scientific understanding in the democratic world and in the process exhausting the resources of the opponent, especially as the oil production capability of that opponent was peaking at the same time.
On a non space-related topic, you might want to ask yourself whose resources are being exhausted these days, by who, and for what purpose. i.e. who benefits.
>Who’s “we,” and why do you need a multination “space race” rather than a competition between private companies to *lower* the cost of going into space?
>Who’s “we,” and why do you need a multination “space race” rather than a competition between private companies to *lower* the cost of going into space?
By “we” I mean people interested in space exploration. Competition between private companies goes without saying. Private companies are constantly competing with one another no matter what the field. We (people who care about space exploration) need our governments (plural) to take on risky R&D projects that privet industry cannot or will not take on. A new race will give NASA and other government run space programs a much-needed kick in the ass. If CNSA gets too the moon NASA will surly step up efforts to outdo that feat. A multinational competition would help popularize funding for R&D of new space exploration efforts.
> America won the peace. They competed in the technological arena rather than the battlefield,
We had “peace” during the 60’s and 70’s? That would have surprised the American soldiers fighting in Vietnam. The Kennedy/Nixon policy of containment and detente was a complete failure. Communism was expanding, and millions were dying.
Historical revisionism aside, Kennedy called for landing a man on the Moon because he needed a political distraction after he left men to die on the beaches at the Bay of Pigs.
> advancing the state of scientific understanding in the democratic world
What important scientific discoveries came from Project Apollo, and how do they effect our daily lives? How many discoveries could have been made if the US invested a similar sum in laboratories on Earth?
Apollo was not about science, it was about political showmanship.
> On a non space-related topic, you might want to ask yourself whose resources are being exhausted
> these days, by who, and for what purpose. i.e. who benefits.
No resources are being exhausted. That’s a myth created by the limit-to-growthers. New resources are being discovered all the time, and proved reserves keep expanding.
> By “we” I mean people interested in space exploration.
I’m interested in space exploration. When do we get to go? Or do you mean people who only want to watch space exploration and never get to do it?
> We (people who care about space exploration) need our governments (plural) to take on risky
> R&D projects that privet industry cannot or will not take on.
Evidence, please?
Space historiam Professor Howard McCurdy says, “Private individuals are willing to take risks that government can’t take.”
Did we need governments (plural) to build Voyager and fly it around the world? Did we need governments (plural) to build SpaceShip One?
Do we need governments (plural) to service the Hubble telescope? It doesn’t look like there’s even one government willing to do that. The Administrator of NASA publicly states it’s too risky.
> If CNSA gets too the moon NASA will surly step up efforts to outdo that feat.
So, then we’ll have two men on the Moon? What’s so great about that?
Regarding science from Apollo, to this date the relative cratering records used to date surfaces throughout the Solar System are based on the absolute cratering record determined for the moon by Apollo astronauts. There are some things that you just can’t do in an automated mission, and determining absolute dates for many different geological units at several sites on an unexplored world is one of them. We would know far, far less about the entire Solar System if the Apollo missions had not flown, even if all the other automated missions had been flown. It remains far from clear to me, outside of initial reconnaissance, that automated geology is that much cheaper than human missions. Absolute dates are something that not even the rovers are getting on Mars, but is critical information to understanding Mars and its region in the Solar System.
Regarding competition between superpowers. Had the space race not taken place, we would not be in some sort of corporate spaceflight nirvana. All the techniques and technologies that the provate folks are using are a direct result of sixty years of government investment in space technology. If that investment had not taken place, we would be a bit in advance of where we were before World War II. Private investment is good at developing and exploiting exitisting technology; it has not been so good at developing ideas and technology from scratch. I would argue that the great inventive genious of our contry is that, all the ideological nonesense we pretend to believe aside, we have the best of both worlds. We use government funding to jump-start new fields of research that no private organization would or could waste their money one, then we use private companies to bring those ideas to market. _Both_ are needed to create our golden goose.
— Donald
> Absolute dates are something that not even the rovers are getting on Mars,
> but is critical information to understanding Mars and its region in the
> Solar System.
And why is it important to understand Mars, if none of us ever get to go there?
> Regarding competition between superpowers. Had the space race not taken place,
> we would not be in some sort of corporate spaceflight nirvana.
And you know that, how? Crystal ball?
> All the techniques and technologies that the provate folks are using are
> a direct result of sixty years of government investment in space technology.
Um, no, unless you mean technologies developed by the X-15, DynaSoar, and other programs that were *killed* for sake of the Apollo program. SpaceShip One, for example, has very little in common with Apollo.
> If that investment had not taken place, we would be a bit in advance of
> where we were before World War II. Private investment is good at developing
> and exploiting exitisting technology; it has not been so good at developing
> ideas and technology from scratch.
Millions of patents prove otherwise. Do you live in a world without airplanes, microcomputers, telephones, electric lights, etc.???
Orville and Wilbur Wright didn’t just invent the airplane, they invented entirely new theories of aerodynamics.
Burt Rutan invented a way to go into space inexpensively — something government never did in 40 years.
How do you explain those things, if private enterprise can’t invent anything new?
> I would argue that the great inventive genious of our contry is that, all
> the ideological nonesense we pretend to believe aside, we have the
> best of both worlds
Sorry, but you’re the one spouting ideological nonsense. The airplane wasn’t invented by the government, despite your belief that only government can invent anything new, and ten years later, more than 10,000 people had flown in airplanes.
Spaceflight was started by the government, and 40 years later, fewer than 500 people have flown in space.
Why is a world with no significant spaceflight capability the “best” of all possible worlds? How many more decades are you prepared to wait for the “golden goose” to deliver an egg?
Hi Ed!
Trolling the “Space Arena Board” wasn’t enough for you?
I have to agree with you Donald.
>I’m interested in space exploration. When do we get to go? Or do you mean people who only want to watch space exploration and never get to do it?
I don’t know when we will get to go but I am working towards that reality.
>Evidence, please?
I’m sorry I do not have the time to answer this question as thoroughly as I would like to. The US government puts billions of dollars a year into privet companies in the form of grants for R&D. Organizations like the FAA and NASA have always led aviation and space development in this country. A good contrasting example is Alberto Santos Dumon. This Brazilian flew around the same time as the Wright brothers. However because the American government invested in aviation technology and the Brazilian government did not he is now little more than a historical footnote while the Wright brothers get global recognition for starting powered aviation science. I am in no way belittling what the Wrights accomplished. My point is that without government funding aviation may not have ever gotten more that a couple of hundred feet.
>Space historiam Professor Howard McCurdy says, “Private individuals are willing to take risks that government can’t take.”
Why haven’t they landed on the Moon yet? Why haven’t they even gotten to LEO yet?
>Do we need governments (plural) to service the Hubble telescope? It doesn’t look like there’s even one government willing to do that. The Administrator of NASA publicly states it’s too risky.
Where are all the fearless privet companies racing up to save the Hubble? I’ll tell you.
They don’t exist. The mission is too risky and there is no ROI thus no privet investment.
>So, then we’ll have two men on the Moon? What’s so great about that?
It’s a start. We’ve had one privet citizen (a seasoned military trained test pilot) enter space with Space Ship One and it will likely be years before anyone else goes. It could be decades before passengers are able. Look I’m all for privet space flight, in fact it’s what I’ve dedicated my life to, but NASA is going to be there flying things in space with or without privet investment. So I say whatever garnishes public support is a good thing.
Ed’s back!
Can Oler be far behind?
Let’s get a few things straight. SpaceShip One, while a great achievement for small private industry, is still 40 plus years behind US and Russian space endeavors (and Boeing, LocMart, Energia etc.). As you should know a ballistic flight like SP1 is orders of magnitude easier than orbital flight. When Rutan orbits something then I’ll be impressed.
It still comes down to Ed’s old tricks. He is an idealist. In his world private enterprise is the answer to all situations. He sites examples like the airline industry that really has no correlation to space exploration. Also he really doesn’t understand private investment. For an investor, private or corporate, to sink the substantial amounts of money needed for space travel they would have to at least have a reasonable expectation of getting a return on their investment. Right now there is not much in space to spur that type of investment.
Individuals and organizations have convinced this government and others that for many reasons besides return on investment space exploration, both human and robotic, is worthwhile.
At this stage in our exploration of space, a company’s place is to provide hardware and services to government agencies charged with this exploration. In the future, as we find resources to exploit, industry’s role will change to one that is more proactive. A good example would be Bigelow and the orbiting hotel. Here is an investment that he is willing to make that he feels will bring him a return in the not too distant future. (I should remind you that these inflatable modules came from a NASA engineering lab.)
> The US government puts billions of dollars a year into privet companies
> in the form of grants for R&D.
Yes, if your goal is to spend a lot more money, the US government certainly does that.
The question, which you and Donald still haven’t answered, is why we should *want* to keep spaceflight prohibitively expensive.
> Organizations like the FAA and NASA have always led aviation and space
> development in this country. A good contrasting example is Alberto
> Santos Dumon. This Brazilian flew around the same time as the Wright brothers.
First, you mean Alberto Santos-Dumont, not “Santos Dumon.”
Second, the Wright Brothers flew long before Santos-Dumont. Claims to the contrary are revisionist history on a par with claims that Apollo never landed on the Moon.
> Why haven’t they landed on the Moon yet? Why haven’t they even gotten to LEO yet?
Because our goal is to make spaceflight affordable and common, rather than making it rare and expensive.
Of course, you’re changing the subject. No one *claimed* private enterprise had landed on the Moon.
You claimed that what NASA does things that are *too risky* for private companies.
Since SpaceX, Bigelow, and other private companies are willing to do orbital vehicles right now, that is obviously not too risky for them.
You might argue that it’s too expensive for them, but that that’s another matter and remains to be seen. In any case, the “multination space race” you want won’t make it any cheaper, and might make it more expensive.
> Where are all the fearless privet companies racing up to save the Hubble?
> I’ll tell you. They don’t exist.
Have you told Dennis Wingo he doesn’t exist? His company, at least, offered to save Hubble.
> The mission is too risky and there is no
> ROI thus no privet investment.
It was too risky *for NASA* — specifically, for Sean O’Keefe — not for private enterprise. It was NASA that turned down the offer.
That doesn’t support the claim that NASA is willing to take more risks than private enterprise.
> It’s a start. We’ve had one privet citizen (a seasoned military trained
> test pilot) enter space with Space Ship One
Mike Melvill and Brian Binney are not one private citizen. They are two.
Mike Melvill is not a military-trained pilot.
He isn’t even a high-school graduate.
You’re 0 for 4 on facts.
Even if you were correct, how would the fact that only one private citizen prove that it is too risky for private citizens and only NASA can do it?
> NASA is going to be there flying things in space with or without privet
> investment. So I say whatever garnishes public support is a good thing.
NASA won’t be flying much of anything in space unless private enterprise reduces the cost, just as they haven’t flown much of anything for the last 40 years. Six Shuttle flights a year is not a space program, it’s a rounding error.
Why do you want a space race that “garnishes” public support for keeping spaceflight rare and expensive?
Privet industry and NASA will both continue to develop space endeavors whether you like it or not. I say anything that will keep NASA moving is a good thing. I think multiple government organizations all trying to get into space is just that thing. You either don’t agree or you’re just trying to be the devils advocate. Either way I’ve defended my stance. However I’m still not entirely clear on what yours is.
Do you live in a world without airplanes, microcomputers, telephones, electric lights, etc.???
Okay, I left out a step. The initial invention might be by a private individual, and the final deployment to the public might be by private companies, but in every one of your examples, the middle steps — development to practicality, emplacement of infructure — was done by the government.
Airplanes? A 747 is a civilianized World War II bomber, and heavy transcontinental aircraft would not exist had the government not made unlimited development funding available during WW II and the early Cold War.
Microcomputers? The electronics were made practical during ICBM and early space development. Coordinating development between different companies over vast distances was developed by the Apollo project (and I think is hugely underestimated as America’s key industrial advantage until recently). The microcomputer didn’t really take off until IBM marketed it for government and large corporate markets.
Telephones? Ever heard of “Ma Bell”? Who built all those wires to every home which are uneconomic to this date?
Electric lights? Another set of government-funded wires. Not to speak of government-funded development of generator technology, transmission technology, et cetera.
And let’s not forget that god-given right of every American, the private automobile, which would be useless without a whole lot of government-funded tarmak.
— Donald
> Privet industry and NASA will both continue to develop space endeavors whether
> you like it or not.
Chris, Chris, Chris. What does that have to do with your claim that space projects are too risky for private citizens and we need “governments (plural)” to do them?
Do you have any evidence to support that claim?
And what on Earth do privets have to do with this? Let’s keep gardening out of it, okay?
> I think multiple government organizations all trying to get into space is
> just that thing. You either don’t agree or you’re just trying to be the
> devils advocate. Either way I’ve defended my stance.
You haven’t defended anything, Chris, you’ve just reiterated it. I’ve repeatedly asked you why we “need” a “multination space race” that does nothing to reduce the cost of getting into space. You still haven’t answered me.
> However I’m still not entirely clear on what yours is.
I don’t understand why. I thought I was quite clear. Apollo sent us down a path from which it took 40 years to recover. There’s no reason to make the same mistake again.
> Okay, I left out a step. The initial invention might be by a private individual,
> and the final deployment to the public might be by private companies, but in
> every one of your examples, the middle steps — development to practicality,
> emplacement of infructure — was done by the government.
You don’t know when to give up, do you?
> Airplanes? A 747 is a civilianized World War II bomber
No, you’re thinking of the 377, which was a marketing failure. The 747 was several generations later.
There were a number of attempts to develop airliners from military bombers, none of them noteably successful.
> Telephones? Ever heard of “Ma Bell”? Who built all those wires to every
> home which are uneconomic to this date?
“Ma Bell” was a nickname for AT&T — tt wasn’t the government.
> Electric lights? Another set of government-funded wires.
No, the first electric wires were put in by Consolidated Edison.
> And let’s not forget that god-given right of every American, the private automobile,
> which would be useless without a whole lot of government-funded tarmak.
Do you mean tarmac? And what makes you assume those roads are all government funded? The last time I worked on a major highway project, it was privately funded.
Every time you claim only the government can do something, you turn out to be wrong. What does that tell you? Could you be wrong about space, too?
Instead of making analogies to space, why don’t you talk about space?
Tell us how many millions of Americans travel into space on government space shuttles?
> SpaceShip One, while a great achievement for small private industry, is still
> 40 plus years behind US and Russian space endeavors (and Boeing, LocMart,
> Energia etc.).
Boeing, Lockheed, and Energia built reusable spacecraft that ordinary people could afford to fly???
40 years old???
In what parallel universe?
> When Rutan orbits something then I’ll be impressed.
I doubt it. You obviously don’t care about anything affordable. More likely, you’ll still be carping because it can’t go to Alpha Centauri and doesn’t cost trillions of dollars.
Well, there’s not much point about debating government versus private development with someone who thinks that Ma Ball and Consoidated Edison were not the government. Government charted companies are hardly private institutions. You might as well argue that the British East India company privately developed the Empire. (Don’t get me wrong, I’m actually a big fan of government chartered companies as a way to jump-start space development, but, make no mistake, they are government institutions.)
Private roads exist, but they are extremely rare. The private automobile would not have dominated our transportation system without the government investment in highways and freeways.
It does not matter how many generations there were between the first heavy bombers and the 747, the evolutionary line is clear and the latter would not have happened (and certainly no where near as fast) without the former.
— Donald
> Well, there’s not much point about debating government versus private
> development with someone who thinks that Ma Ball and Consoidated Edison
> were not the government. Government charted companies are hardly private
> institutions.
I see.
Since all corporations are chartered by the government, I suppose you consider most businesses to be government?
Well, as Abraham Lincoln said, calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it a leg.
You avoid my question about how many Americans have been able to travel into space on government spacecraft. Perhaps you aren’t interested in space travel?
Judging from the following website, it appears you see space simply as a government jobs program to buy votes for the Democratic Party:
http://www.speakeasy.org/~donaldfr/democrts.html
Complete with the Kennedy quote about doing things just because they’re hard, as if doing things the hard way were some kind of virtue.
Private enterprise, on the other hand, avoids doing things that are hard and looks for ways that are cheap and easy.
Your site advocates “cheaper” heavy lift vehicles, without ever mentioning the actual cost. Such rockets would cost tens of billions to develop and hundreds of millions to fly, allowing only a tiny handful of astronauts to go into space at enormous cost.
We’d rather invest reasonable sums into developing practical vehicles that wouldn’t impress Kennedy or von Braun but allow thousands (and then millions) of Americans to visit space.
It’s sad if you can’t understand the desire of ordinary Americans to visit space and think we’ll only out to scam government jobs. If the Democratic Party truly believes that, it’s no wonder you keep losing.
> Six Shuttle flights a year is not a space program,
> it’s a rounding error.
*LOL* At least we’re agreed on that.
> I’ve repeatedly asked you why we “need” a
> “multination space race” that does nothing to
> reduce the cost of getting into space. You still
> haven’t answered me.
In the past a relationship between military conflict and technological progress has been observed. Theodore Von Karman discusses this in his biography, The Wind And Beyond. For many the idea of such a relationship is emotionally hard to accept. If you believe in such a correlation, technological progress above and beyond that of peactime is an outcome you would expect.
> Historical revisionism aside, Kennedy called for
> landing a man on the Moon because he needed a
> political distraction after he left men to die
> on the beaches at the Bay of Pigs.
Do you believe that this is why Bush is a big supporter of the Exploration Initiative? In both cases, I fail to see how or why a new space project that takes years to bear fruit helps deflect any significant amount of public attention from an ongoing conflict in which people are dying.
Rather, I base my arguments in part on ideas put forth in the 1970 book by Possony, Pournelle and Kane “THE STRATEGY OF TECHNOLOGY” – it’s particularly pertinent reading in the context of a new space race:
http://www.baen.com/sot/
“There are no battles in this strategy; each side is merely trying to outdo in performance the equipment of the other. It has been termed ‘logistic strategy’. Its tactics are industrial, technical, and financial. It is a form of indirect attrition; instead of destroying enemy resources, its object is to make them obsolete, thereby forcing on him an enormous expenditure….”
On the subject of the 747:
Historical revisionism aside, the government was indeed responsible for spurring the creation of the 747. According to Boeing’s own account it was created to be a military transport, and later transitioned to the civil side when Boeing didn’t win the contract:
http://www.boeing.com/history/boeing/747.html
“The incentive for creating the giant 747 came from reductions in air fares, an explosion in air-passenger traffic and increasingly crowded skies. In addition, Boeing had already developed the design concepts and technology of such an airplane because the company had bid on, but lost, the contract for a gigantic military transport, the C-5A.”
>> We (people who care about space exploration)
>> need our governments (plural) to take on risky
>> R&D projects that privet industry cannot or will
>> not take on.
> Evidence, please?
In my own case, I have a risky but very high payoff launch concept that I’m trying to develop. I have been actively seeking support from both private and goverment sources. I can say with no doubt without a doubt that the project would be dead already were it not for government support.
Having watched someone else’s anti-misting Kerosene project try to get off the ground for years one becomes skeptical that market forces have any interest in certain classes of new technology. When the goverment doesn’t fund promising work at Caltech I haven’t yet seen private interests step in. The research simply dies and the idea is lost. Without the goverment, many promising avenues of enquiry, perhaps even most, would not exist.
> The question, which you and Donald still haven’t
> answered, is why we should *want* to keep
> spaceflight prohibitively expensive.
If this is true then surely it’s trivial to make private launchers that blow away the competition (including the launchers of all competing foreign entities) no matter what the goverment is doing in space or what people say on a space politics blog. Maybe that’s what SpaceX is about to do. If they succeed, I will be the first to wonder why it didn’t happen sooner.
> In the past a relationship between military conflict and technological progress has been observed.
Yes, and it’s also been observed that it failed to produce affordable access to space.
So again, why should we repeat it?
> Rather, I base my arguments in part on ideas put forth in the 1970 book by Possony, Pournelle and
> Kane “THE STRATEGY OF TECHNOLOGY” – it’s particularly pertinent reading in the context of a
> new space race:
Then you might ask Dr. Pournelle about Apollo and the Bay of Pigs. I can tell you what his answer will be, because I have discussed it with him in person, and much more recently than 1970.
>> Evidence, please?
> In my own case, I have a risky but very high payoff launch concept that I’m trying to develop. I can say
> with no doubt without a doubt that the project would be dead already were it not for government support.
That does not prove private enterprise won’t back risky projects, it only proves that it won’t back your risky project.
> Having watched someone else’s anti-misting Kerosene project try to get off the ground for years one becomes
> skeptical that market forces have any interest in certain classes of new technology.
What does new technology have to do with beating the Chinese or the Japanese to the Moon? Wasn’t that done in the 1960’s, with 60’s technology? Or have you just changed the subject?
> If this is true then surely it’s trivial to make private launchers that blow away the competition (including
> the launchers of all competing foreign entities) no matter what the goverment is doing in space
That does not follow. Look up “Gresham’s Law.” But even if it did follow, it would not explain the point you keep dancing around: why you think we “need” to have a “multination space race.”
Why do we “need” to have such a race? What terrible thing will happen if we don’t have one?
> That does not follow. Look up “Gresham’s Law.”
That does not follow. I looked up Gresham’s Law:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gresham's_Law
You misunderstand it – it refers to the situation where people are required to accept currency worth less than its face value. If by “bad” money you meant government research money, people don’t have to accept it by law; you don’t have to accept it by law. In fact, the Wikipedia explanation goes on to say:
“These examples show that in the absence of legal tender laws, Gresham’s law works in reverse. If given the choice of what money to accept, people will transact with money they believe to be of highest long-term value”
That’s what Burt Rutan has already done by working with Paul Allen and Sir Richard Branson in preference to NASA.
> Why do we “need” to have such a race?
I wasn’t the one who said this, I was merely trying to explain why someone would.
> Then you might ask Dr. Pournelle about Apollo and
> the Bay of Pigs. I can tell you what his answer
> will be, because I have discussed it with him in
> person, and much more recently than 1970.
I’m not the one revising things.
>Chris, Chris, Chris. What does that have to do with your claim that space projects are too risky for private citizens and we need “governments (plural)” to do them?
Again I ask. Where are all these private (thanks for the spelling lesson, never has been my strongest trait) citizens who have flown to the moon or even attained LEO? If as you seem to claim, private citizens can do so much better without government support than why haven’t they? Its not like NASA is putting up an effort to stop private space exploration so what exactly is you’re problem with them? I do believe the time is coming when private companies will carry the average man around the solar system. However without government support these efforts are going to move slowly or not at all. I do not think the entire space program will collapse in the absence of a new race. I just think it will be productive especially if it is sustainable. The more nations that enter the race the more sustainable it will be.
>>>>Evidence please?
When the world had a space race America developed Apollo and landed on the moon. The Russians developed Suez and Mire. There are undoubtedly countless other examples of leaps in technology which can be directly attributed to the space race. It was only when the space race started to dwindle down and the fall of the Soviets seemed inevitable that innovation in space technology started to stagnate. This was the cause of our current rut – not the original cold war space race, but the end of it. Another good example of a race that produced results is the Manhattan Project. There are many more that I will not cover here. The fact is, competition spurs technological development. It’s the same thing that makes private industry work so well. Try to look at it this way and maybe you will get past you’re self supplied logic and actually learn something. The nations of Earth pretty much amount to massive private companies. Due to a lack of real return on investment there is no drive to develop a space infrastructure. A race for the best position both militarily and with respect to cultural influence will entice these nation-companies to outdo one another. This will boost private industry efforts.
PS: I know it’s a bit off subject. But I know a lot about this so I thought I’d share. Ma Bell was not a name for AT&T. It was in fact the blanket term used to describe the multiple Bell companies that existed when this countries telecommunications infrastructure was first being built. And it was indeed built with huge grants and subsidies form the federal government. Without this support it may or may not have been built but it undoubtedly would have taken much longer.
> If by “bad” money you meant government research money, people don’t have to accept it by law;
That’s irrelevant. Gresham’s Law says that good money drives out bad. In space transportation, government money has driven out private money for the last 40 years. The Wikipedia is a poor substitute for an economics textbook.
> I’m not the one revising things.
I’m not going to argue with someone who isn’t interested in facts. Again, I’ve discussed this with Dr. Pournelle in person. He understands the connection between the Bay of Pigs and Kennedy’s Moon speech, even if you do not. He’s even written about it, in other books, if not in the one you read.
The Boeing web site you read has some inaccuracies also. The 747 project was already started by the time Boeing lost the C-5 contract.
Sometimes, you need to read more than one source.
Ed, your words speak for themselves, I have nothing to add.
> Again I ask. Where are all these private (thanks for the spelling lesson, never has been my strongest trait)
> citizens who have flown to the moon or even attained LEO
Again I answer — I never claimed private citizens had flown to the Moon. Pretending that I said something I didn’t is dishonest, Chris. Have you stopped beating your wife yet?
As for LEO, the last I heard, Dennis Tito was living happily in his California mansion and Mark Shuttleworth was still in South Africa.
They took the same risks riding Soyuz that NASA astroanuts do. How is that possible if private citizens are cowardly and unable to take risks?
Could you please answer *my* question? Do you have any evidence that all private citizens are risk-averse cowards?
> When the world had a space race America developed Apollo and landed on the moon. The Russians
> developed Suez and Mire.
The French and Egyptians developed Suez. I have no idea about Mire, wherever that may be.
How does that prove that private citizens are too cowardly to take risks?
> There are undoubtedly countless other examples of leaps in technology which can be directly attributed to the space race.
They’re easily countable, actually. How does that prove that private citizens are too cowardly to take risks?
> A race for the best position both militarily and with respect to cultural influence will entice these
> nation-companies to outdo one another. This will boost private industry efforts.
Trying to out-do one another in making space expensive won’t boost private efforts any more than it did in the past.
Even if it did, how would that prove that private citizens are too cowardly to take risks?
Why do you keep avoiding my question?
> And it was indeed built with huge grants and subsidies form the federal government.
Which does not prove a government space race will have a similar effect on spaceflight. If it could, we would have a huge commercial spaceflight industry today. The fact that you have to point to analogies, instead of rocketships, shows how flawed your case is.
You’re right Edward. Everything I have written is just a bunch of BS. Have a nice life. Goodbye.
But seriously though thank you for helping me articulate my position on this issue. And for all the spelling lessons too. You will from here on out be ignored Troll.
Chris:
Don’t get too upset with Ed. He is a small mind that has a few facts but no real comprehension of what they mean or how they relate to the real world and how it works.
Ed:
Bottom line; If you want to explore space beyond LEO, government sponsored exploration is the only way to do it for the next 20 to 30 years. There is no profit in right now for a private company to take on that expense.
On the supplier level private companies are very involved in space exploration and that’s why I used the term “government sponsored”. I’m sure if you had the money Boeing, LockMart or Energina will be happy to build you any kind of spacecraft you want.
p.s. I like what you’ve done with the underside of that bridge.