How the West Wasn't Won

Nigel Assbackwards writes "Finally, after years of being furtively passed between trusted friends, the legendary NASA satire "How the West Wasn't Won" is available at spacefuture. And Oh!, if only all space agencies were as loud and as totally ace as WideGroup's MirCorp intro."

Comments

Satire?

[alnapp]

Over laboured analogy, more like

Still, amusing non the less

The moral of the story

[ohboy-sleep]

Reading the little fable, I wished some of the "wagonauts" brought back some subtlety to give to the author.

Re:The moral of the story

[micahmicahmicah]

"It goes on for too long, and while amusing at first, quickly becomes tedious."

Which would run in a direct parallel to the Space Program.

Nice but...

[newsdee]

the metaphor falls short with the fact that you cannot send people to harvest the Moon, even if there was an easy way to transport them. ...unless you terraform the Moon and then build a spaceship out of wood pulled by flying animals.
Then you'd have to watch out for titatium-alloy-arrow-throwing Aliun'.

Re:Nice but...

[zulux]

the metaphor falls short with the fact that you cannot send people to harvest the Moon

I don't know about you, but I sure enjoy this tasty moon-cheese.

Re:Nice but...

[Artifex]

the metaphor falls short with the fact that you cannot send people to harvest the Moon

It falls short far more quickly than that. You can gradually expand into a desert; there is no gravity-well-equivalent to require a geat expenditure for a small gain like the early space missions.

Also, at least while still close by, there's not as much risk of sudden death in a "mission" through the desert. If your wagon breaks down, you can look for sparse-but-extant resources to sustain you until you return (or, you know, given the timeperiod this was written, they could have used shortwave to call base and ask for help). If nothing else, you don't have to carry your environment in your wagon, just food, water, blankets, and some weapons to fend off animals.

You don't make special calculations for every bit of the trip; if you give up, you can return and sneak back into town early Sunday morning, instead of having to arive at one special spot equipped for you at noon on Friday.

Which brings up another point: spacecraft are a bit more different from cars than a long-distance wagon is from a farm wagon. The ultimate failure of this story lies in the pretense that an evolutionary progression is the same as a revolutionary leap, and that the attitudes of the people paying for each should be the same. We want to see real results, whether that be pacemakers, communications satellites, or Tang, that everyone can benefit from.

We don't want to pay for infrastructure for the rich to take vacations, or for pure science experiments that we can't immediately see results from. Give us dreams and the belief that we if we set out in our own creaky vehicles, at least some of us will make it out there, and that we won't be under the thumb of our original governments, and that we all will have a chance at better lives when we get there.

Wagons, ho!

annoying flash intro

[Anonymous Coward]

The mircorp flash intro needs to have an epileptic seizure warning.

My cat was looking over my shoulder and it is now vibrating across the tile floor into the other room.

Story needs compression

[jswinth]

Umm... Could I have my 30 minutes back? Couldn't the author have made is point in like 5 minutes worth of reading? Maybe this guy is ex-NASA and dosn't know how to be economical with words.

Re:Story needs compression

[toastyman]

Here... One of the few useful bits of Microsoft Word is the "Autosummarize..." feature. Insert wordy airbag story. Set desired compression level (in this case "10 sentences or less"). Read, and get almost everything the original had in far less time. Here goes:

NAFA got to work. NAFA called the people who were to go on these "missions" "WAGGONAUTS".

Then NAFA mounted a second "mission".

Then NAFA mounted a third "mission".

Then NAFA mounted a fourth "mission".

Then NAFA mounted a fifth "mission".

Then NAFA mounted a sixth "mission".

So NAFA mounted a seventh "mission". ONLY NAFA's (and FAFA's) "waggonauts" could go out into the desert.

Then NAFA had another setback.

Ok, so it doesn't quite have the same prose, but it's just as "funny" as the original and took 1/20th the time to read.

Better? :)

Any takers

[Anonymous Coward]

Wanna bet on how long before this is posted again.
My bet is 22H 43M

not all that funny

[urbazewski]

I found this a tedious read, heavy handed and predictable.
The Onion packed more humor into one fake headline:

"NASA delays shuttle launch out of sheer habit"
than that essay manages in endless paragraphs. (disclosure: I worked at the NASA Ames Research Center.)
annmariabell.com

Oh wow, you're accepting these?

[fobbman]

I get emails that are "passed between trusted friends" all the time. If I had known that Slashdot was interested in them earlier I would have sent them in!

Hrm.

[Lebannen]

The article criticises 'the government-started monopoly' due to the fact such an organisation wants to keep itself alive and thus will never get the job done. It goes on to bewail the fact that third parties with better solutions have been stopped from succeeding, for funding reasons.

Now if the government truly has been witholding monies from really good projects, sure, that's bad. But in my amateur interested following of the space progression, there hasn't been any 'wow' project which has simply been unable to get funding. There's a plethora of interesting designs and ideas out there, but no guarantee they'll work - and the big, bad, beast - NASA itself - does work on the 'crazy' ideas itself.

Small companies and hoobyists are working on alternate designs, such as the X-Plane prize efforts, but they do have a ways to go (Armadillo's latest launch, anyone?). For all it's sins, NASA did a good job early on - not the best, but who can do that? - although I'd agree it needs to start doing some proper advancement now. Less of the old tech, more of the ISS, and a lot more work on actually getting their next-gen designs out there!

But where space is concerned, I'm happy to play the waiting game. Impatient, but happy. The longer we wait, the safer and cheaper the eventual solution will be.

Re:Hrm.

[Russ Nelson]

Obviously, you didn't get the point of the essay. NASA was never the right way to advance spaceflight. Legislated monopolies don't need to be innovative. Innovation threatens their power structure. Read Guns, Germs, and Steel.
-russ

Re:Hrm.

[Lebannen]

I quote, from my original post, The article criticises 'the government-started monopoly' due to the fact such an organisation wants to keep itself alive and thus will never get the job done. I understood that. I even agree with it, in most cases. However, spaceflight is rather more difficult than just being innovative; with the exception of true high-tech, we need a brute-force approach to even get into space. There isn't much you can do to brute-force. Better propellants, nuclear propulsion, are possibilities, but difficult ones. And think back... when you look at informative websites on such topics, haven't most of them been at nasa.gov?

Then there are the alternative methods to spaceflight; either totally different propulsion methods or antigrav, which while they would fall under the heading of innovative also fall under the heading of 'not yet'. Then there's different techniques of launching. Railguns and such are possible, but not practical due to the massive cost. Skyhooks and beanstalks equally so, as well as being very limited by technology. But despite the problems, they still work on these things as well. NASA isn't just the rocket-launcher; it's also the researcher. Legislated monopoly, possibly; but not because of anti-competitive practices, just because they're the only real thing around.

The point I'm trying to make is that the 'essay' (not sure if it deserves that, but I just don't like the style) neglects what innovation NASA does. It's not just the failure to get to the stars - it's also success in trying to get to the stars, whether it's in contained habitation, new materials, or trying to work with new technologies. In many ways NASA would be a lot bigger if it was actually succeeding - if there was a base on mars, would NASA get less funding? If they're a successful space department, do they get junked because the colonists are building their own? I'd say that an established launch site would do rather well out of it.

As for the excellent Guns, Germs and Steel (by Jared Diamond - everybody, go buy, it's *good*), I took it more as a theory on how human society was shaped by its environemt. In fact, I seem to remember that early on it focusses on settling in one place - an innovation - actually allows a power structure :) But it also allowed more specialisation - such as thinkers and priests. Researchers. Innovators. Although yes, later change was resisted because great changes in technology tend to lead to great changes in society, and thus affect the ruling order.

So if you're arguing against monopolies, I'm with you. If you see NASA as a monopoly just cos it's the only thing out there, I'm afraid I respectfully disagree; NASA will try to help you, and won't be anti-competitive (see armadilloaerospace.com and when they refer to NASA - it's usually citing them as a reference, and sometimes going ooh because someone from NASA visited them).

They're trying, space is just a little hard. Kudos to smaller efforts - but when they spring a leak and die out there, it'll only lead to people urging more caution, more safety, and they'll up up at roughly the same stage as NASA. NASA's noly problem is that they're also hampered by a lot of red tape and beurocracy due to being governemt-run... but then which large company doing something physical isn't...

Re:Hrm.

[aallan]

...there hasn't been any 'wow' project which has simply been unable to get funding.

NASA basically killed the McDonnell Douglas DC-X.

Instead of going ahead with the Delta Clipper, which had working flight tested hardware, they went with the more expensive, riskier, technology of the Lockhead Martin X-33 design for the RLV program. While much more impressive, if it worked, the Lockheed design was alot riskier.

Then in 2001 they killed the entire SSTO program stone cold dead...

Al.

Re:Lousy Equipment

[jridley]

They keep the current design because NASA's budget has been slashed to the point where the engineers are practically cleaning their own toilets. THEY have known for many years that the shuttle isn't very good, but in light of congress cutting their budget constantly, I think they didn't want to go to them and say "OK, can we have 25 billion to start researc on the replacement for the Shuttle?

They are finally doing something more than talk about replacing it but the existing shuttles are going to have to last a long time yet.

You don't get it.

[Thag]

They're trying, space is just a little hard.

Bullshit!

Firstly, space isn't that hard. It is non-trivial, but then so is powered flight via airplane. We did it in the 60's with technology so antiquated (from a modern perspective) that most of it isn't even in use anymore. None of what was done back then is even remotely cutting edge now. Which is why there are dozens of groups working on the X-Prize, which is essentially a privately run Mercury/Gemini mission.

Secondly, since I'm paying their bills, I don't care if they're "trying real hard." I care abaout results, and NASA's development efforts have been consistently missing the bottom line since I was born.

The issue is making space access cheap, and that is where NASA has failed utterly. The problem is, NASA is a beaurocracy, and beaurocracy DOES NOT REWARD EFFICIENCY. A beaurocracy is a political organization, and it rewards political skill. Which is how you get the current NASA, which is designed primarily to suck up to senators and representatives by placing jobs in their districts. If a program fails, but its bosses know their politics, they will be rewarded for playing the system properly and not punished for failing. Case in point: the space shuttle was originally supposed to be a cost-saver over the Saturn 5. Instead, it's the most expensive system ever. Did anyone get fired over that?

The other problem NASA has, and it is also symptomatic of being a beaurocracy, is incurable featuritis. You have to have shiny new bullets in your PowerPoint presentations. That's why NASA designs have requirements like reusability, single-stage-to-orbit, hydrogen fuel, scramjets and aerospikes, new materials technology, etc. Making it cheap is a secondary priority that in theory will follow from the new technology, but in practice has not done so to date. (I'm not dissing new technology, I'm just saying that tech for novelty's sake doesn't necessarily get you anywhere.)

NASA is just not the right organization to produce low-cost space access. NASA isn't "designed" to do that.

Jon Acheson

Space travel isn't feasible

[Animats]

Look. The basic problem with space travel is real simple. Chemical propellants don't have enough energy per unit weight to do the job.

As a result, all space vehicles are mostly fuel tank. They all have dinky payloads for their size. They just barely work. They're all weight-reduced to the edge of what's possible, far beyond the weight reduction efforts in commercial aircraft. As vehicles, they suck.

Only some non-chemical propulsion method can possibly get us out of this mess. Orion might have worked. Laser launch is a possibility. Antimatter propulsion is a ways off, but possible. Open-cycle nuclear engines have been built successfully, but they make a huge mess.

Incidentally, the "cheap, dumb booster" is a myth. Most of the cost comes from making boosters light. It's easy to make a cheap, heavy booster, but it will barely get off the ground.

Wow, what a great analogy.

[adrizk]

When I started reading this article, my first thought was "I don't seem the similarity" - but after a few (of the many) paragraphs, I begin to see the similarities between the race to open up the west, and the opening up of the "final frontier".

For example:
Expiditions into the west, just like flights into space today, were enormously sensitive and complex. Just like spaceflight, a slight glitch or design flaw in a wagon could cause the, usually spectacular, instantaneous death of everyone on board the wagon in the first few minutes of the expidition. Often with damage to others who happened to be near the site that the wagon set off from.

Also, before wagons full of supplies started arriving, the American west was TOTALLY devoid of life. In fact, if you just sent a naked person or animal, or even bacterium into the west, it would die almost immediately from any number of causes - asphyxiation, radiation, extreme cold or heat. Before the original Americans started sending wagons into the west, it had been utterly uninhabited, and totally inhospitable to human life.

Thank god private individuals were able to overcome all of these nearly impossible scientific and technological challenges and open up a radiation blasted sterile wasteland to human habitation.

So the lesson is that all we have to do is convince ourselves that space travel really isn't inherently difficult or expensive, and blame everything on big government.

Great article. Great analogy.

Why the "West" Wasn't Won...

[tlambert]

Why the "West" Wasn't Won:

Because it's not possible to simply travel to "California" in a "wagon", and dump 1000 8 foot lengths of ceramic-coated rebar out the back of your "wagon" and destroy most most of the industrial capacity of a nation.

An aircraft smacking into a sky-scraper is *nothing* compared to the damage that can be done by anoyone who can get to "California".

It's not "NAFA"'s fault. It's an issue of maintaining control over your citizenry, while covering your ass.

The "West" hasn't been won because the people in the "East" are covering their asses, and no Horace Greely is going to talk them into not covering their asses.

-

Imagine if the DC-X had gone forward: they would not have been able to control eventual private ownership of the vehicles, or the launch and landing sites for privately owned vehicles, as a security choke-point.

They would not have been able to prevent people from landing in the crater Aristarchus, and declaring a new state there, through the simple expedient of requiring a runway be built to land and relaunch the vehicle, or the need for the vehicle to have atmosphere on launch/landing, as the X-33 requires.

It's all for your own short-term good.

-- Terry