How about an optional extra charge on retail sales or subscriptions, pay an extra $10 if you want to see the movie made, or a bit less in ongoing payments. By March 2010, BioShock had sold 4 million copies - it's potentially doable. You might not get the full amount but if you only need half what you originally wanted, its much easier to find investors.
I don't get it though, shows like Supernatural have that sort of stuff in them all the time, and you can do an awful lot by implication, just look at Paranormal activity. I think the direction he was going to take is the problem here, not the basic concept.
Cut the deficit from the supply side by increasing revenue. Then, when times are good, that's the time to look for ways to cut costs and make things more efficient (and more fair!). Cutting public spending when people are already suffering is just going to make it all worse. Look at how all the budget cutting is failing in Europe.
It's not as simple as that, unfortunately, it very much depends on what you cut. Taxation is essentially leakage from the economy, this means that it is money taken from what should be productive activities. The only expenditure which has an effect like you describe is that which is pumped straight back into circulation, like wages and social welfare. And even then, you need to balance out what you are spending from taxation against what the government actually needs to operate. There are plenty of useless sinecure departments in every European government, or areas which could use more efficiency, or groups which could easily be merged.
Ideally, cutting back certain areas and raising taxes strategically should nail the deficits completely, which is a good thing when you consider a deficit is something which all citizens must ultimately pay for from their taxes. Strategic tax raises should be targeted at those sectors which provide minimal employment and minimal circulation of currency (productivity).
I think there's a persistent perception in certain areas that only the well off and perhaps the young use cell phones. This makes them easy targets for tax rises - the rich don't care, and the young don't vote. From a revenue perspective it's a no brainer.
Isn't serving different content to spiders and to people, for whatever reason, explicitly against Google's rules though? For the first point, I think Google can digest JavaScript alright these days, even some flash. For the second, that's dodgy, if you want those terms indexed include them in your article. The third, it would seem you're still serving the same content just in a slightly different format.
I don't know, I think there are a lot more people annoyed with link farmers and ad sites than there are link farmers. Filtering complaints by IP should winnow out the majority of sabateurs. What's the deal with chrome anyway, is Google feuding with firefox that they won't port it or something?
Trying to defeat a religion's organization and beliefs by using logic has been tried many, many times before and never stops people from being convinced they are right. If you think this will have any impact whatsoever, I think you need to open your eyes.
As they guy said, you can't logic someone out of something they didn't logic themselves into! On the other hand, this isn't about scientology being a religion, its about it being a criminal organisation.
I can't help but think the only long-term way to reduce the effectiveness of these kinds of SEO tricks is to remove all storefronts from Google results.
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Even your nickname seems to be determined by such fantasies... and you're trying to pretend to not be heavily emotionally invested, under wishful thinking, perhaps even blindly in awe of those few shining beacons of an engineer?
I see you've been at this with other posters on the thread as well, including Rei. At some point you must realise, if people stop arguing with you, it doesn't mean you've won, it means you're all alone.
Mr. Stephenson is an author of literary fiction. But how you are convinced only those few precious brilliant engineers have the right solution, in how long writings you're willing to glorify them, how you stepped back to claiming you're victim of some sort of "abuse" by reality, is another telltale sign.
Not abuse by reality, abuse by you, linking to a page containing some sort of mad air display and calling it my imagination. This is personal abuse, intended to create insult, which is a far cry from actually dealing with the detailed technical information which was actually put before you. This can go round in circles for as long as you desire to get the last word in, so if you've nothing constructive to add we'll draw a line under it.
Heck, even how you fail to notice / are unwilling to strongly point out (lest it puts your pet fantasy in bad light?... I waited few enough posts) the basics of such megastructure, literally aiming only for a very narrow range of inclinations.
So you didn't bother to read the tower launch discussion page then.
This is your style of imagination (if you are really capable of asking "so?" when faced with how your pet fantasy would require EVERYTHING, but with much tighter tolerances for error, than what it's meant to "replace"... plus a megastructure of doubtful practicality even in easiest of conditions), airplanes from "our" times (and we CAN even build them! Take a Harrier, remove wings and canopy... doesn't mean it's anywhere near a good idea) - vs. boring reality
Yeah, you've descended into abuse now. Here's what's really happened: you've come across a concept, which I supported with technical discussions, real world examples, and a variety of articles, which is far outside your comfort zone, as in that area where you feel the real world exists and can be controlled, a conservative place where nobody steps too far out of line.
You responded to this intrusion by raising nonsensical objections (the space shuttle? really?) and ignoring the facts presented to you, dancing around your intuition that this all must be somehow against the laws of physics or something, which puts you right in the same ballpark as creationists and flat earthers.
With the best of intentions I say it is this kind of knee jerk counter-rational dogmatism, inspired by a misunderstanding of what science actually does to advance, that is strangling innovation and creativity, and it would appear Mr. Stephenson agrees with me.
But please, do link to this discussion, it might help some other seekers of philosopher's stone.
The issue that you, for some reason, do not see is that your maglev tube would require everything a typical rocket and its launch already does. EVERYTHING! And MUCH more
So? We're talking about putting pylons 11km into the air. At no point did I say this was something that could be done by a hobbyist with a lathe. All of the basic principles are well established, and indeed in use at the moment. Adjusting them and scaling them up is by no means impossible, to say nothing of inconceivable.
first demonstrate the viability of underlying concept in a monumentally more simple application, then...wait, not even then can you start promoting it as some wundersolution in quite different scenario!)
Also, real world does have practical limits and wishful thinking doesn't take them away. It didn't with the Shuttle, when we "really, really wanted it"
Sorry, at this stage you're just dragging your heels and saying "nuh-uh". For once will you please rtfa. http://www.therefinedgeek.com.au/index.php/2009/09/03/space-shuttle-reusable-craft-by-committee/ The shuttle was a bad fit for everything because it was designed by committee. That doesn't mean the basic concept was wrong or mistaken, or even impossible. Really at this point I'm going to bookmark this conversation to use in further discussions on why dogmatism has replaced imagination and creative thinking.
Do you see anything comparable in operation?... (nvm large masses, high accelerations, huge energies involved if the maglev payload is a rocket, nvm "popping" the tube...)
And this is why imagination is a basic requirement for advancement. As it turns out, engineers are working on one right now. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vactrain A mere century ago the idea of a network of high speed passenger airliners with the capacity we have today would run into the very same objections you raise here, large masses, high accelerations, huge energies involved, never mind popping the tube at high altitudes, etc.
The "tremendous improvement" they talk about is merely at the cost of quite possibly not practical, one of a kind megastructure. Forming with the rocket a potentially quite problematic, high-speed dynamic system during launch.
All of which is well within the boundaries of today's engineering. Heck, most of it was within the boundaries of engineering two decades ago, at least. And what a project, the first true spaceport! My god, what a project, no one country could manage it, you'd need international co-operation on a massive scale, will, impetus, a route laid out for longer term benefits, it would be a thing of awe and splendour. The biggest difficulties you would face would be political to be honest, but thats a matter of simply convincing enough people, and spread out over a large enough population, the per capita investment costs wouldn't be too serious. Probably less than the US spends in a few years on the military.
Vs. having the same gain for just somewhat enlarging the first stage (also via quite straightforward "multiplication" of it, what Delta IV Heavy sometimes does, what Angara will do to an even larger extent), continuing to use simple launch facilities and decently easy, at this point, procedures. On a static platform.
The bottom line is, right now, they cost too much, way too much. This is a means to significantly reduce the unit costs for payload, and hence open the road to the sky above us. If it was as cheap to ship cargo/facilities/people to orbit as it was to ship them across the oceans, we'd alread have orbit well colonised, and be taking advantage of the near limitless resources of space.
Build this, build LEO fuel and resource dumps, build a proper station and refinery up there, build drones to assay near earth resources, build extractors to bring back those resources or produce them on-site, ship the raw materials back to orbit and produce finished goods, drop them down or use them to build out even more infrastructure, and so on. You could ultimately outsource most of the industrial heavy lifting to orbit, along with food production and a lot more. I appreciate this is a long term plan, as in a couple of centuries, but if you don't get started you won't get finished, and what a world we'd have then.
You provide great examples why "dumb rockets" do remain attractive (and remember, people similarly enthusiastic about their dreams - even people from the same institutions - gave us the Shuttle; it also had great advertising before the reality set in)
In fairness the shuttle was changed considerably from its initial specifications, it is the definition of "designed by committee".
The pegasus is also mentioned in that link I supplied, which is from 1996. Also I didn't say it should be a simple tower ("which supplies energy to ships to help attain higher speeds as they launch"), I was thinking more an evacuated maglev rail tube of some sort, supplied by electric on the ground level, which is vastly cheaper than rockets. Again, have a good read of that link, there's plenty of technical information in there too.
The only currently-flying exception to this is Pegasus, a very small booster that's light enough to carry on an airplane. Even that was only feasible because an existing airplane (NASA B-52) was already configured to carry similar-sized rockets (X-15), thus saving development costs.
Despite this, even a few km can supply a quite respectable advantage, and that's before you start powering anything.
Some of the advantages of high-altitude launch: (1) You start with a fraction of the potential energy needed to get to orbit.
If you could launch at 10000 ft above sea level, you could reduce your velocity change to get into orbit by approx. 250 m/s. However, you need about 8000 m/s to get into orbit. A 3% improvement.
But three percent is a *tremendous* improvement. A RL-10A has an Isp of about 450 seconds; thus, exhaust velocity Ve is about 4400 km/sec. Structure & payload mass fraction is exp[deltaV/Ve]; a RL-10A powered vehicle could achieve a maxium amount of structure plus payload to 8 km/sec of 16.3%. Typically about 5% of this is actually payload. A 3% decrease in delta-V to orbit increases this to 17.3%. This increases the *payload* to 6% of the gross lift-off mass -- a 20% increase in payload.
(2) You start at a lower atmospheric pressure.
a. reduced atmospheric drag loss
Which wasn't commented on by Bromley or by Pat, but is a significant effect, at *minimum* equal to the potential energy gain.
b. vehicle can be designed with less attention paid to aerodynamics. Lower aerodynamic design penalty means higher performance designs (ie., smaller fineness ratio allows more efficient tanks)
c. More optimum trajectory possible; you can curve toward horizontal thrust much faster since you start out closer to out of the atmosphere
d. Max-Q occurs at a much lower pressure; lower aerodynamic stress on the system means vehicle can be designed lighter.
Pat, prb@clark.net commented on this one: I think Max-Q is going to be at the same altitude or lower depending upon tank fineness.
To the contrary. Max-Q is the product of air density, the square of velocity, and a vehicle-dependent factor which depends on mach number. For a given acceleration profile, Max-Q occurs at the same altitude *above the launch site* independent of how high the launch site is. That is, the actual value of dynamic pressure will decrease linearly with the initial pressure.
True, if you decrease the fineness ratio to gain tank fraction, you will then increase the Max-Q again. This makes the whole thing an engineering trade-off-- how much do you gain in tank fraction and robustness, versus how much of the decrease of Max-Q do you lose? Doing such trade-offs is why we pay engineers.
However, I don't have a good number which tells me how much of the structural mass is due to making the vehicle robust to survive Max-Q. Anybody have a guess?
e. Aerodynamic vibrations lower; allows less robust payload (e.g., lighter)
f. Wind loads on vehicle in flight much lower
g. Acou
11km of height is quite significant, I assure you.
else you would see spaceports on major highlands; a launcher works primarily horizontally, for speed - and tower could provide very little of that (remember there's a square in kinetic energy...)
In fact, we already have a launcher which does more than your fantasy could ever accomplish - Pegasus rocket (check it out). It is one the least cost efficient launchers around.
Please, drop the wishful thinking.
Please learn the difference between realism and dogmatism.;)
And amortized development costs for that will OBVIOUSLY be cheaper than our already paid for rocket technology.
That was Stephenson's point - rockets are not cheap and they are pretty bad value with it. Better to spend some of that money on newer and better systems.
The escape velocity is about 11 km/s, the speed of sound about 300 m/s.
Yes but you don't need to get to escape velocity, just LEO and build from there.
So to get anywhere with a space cannon type system, it needs to be on a very high platform, probably 10km or more, and then be big enough to accellerate a payload to 10-20 times the speed of sound.
Slashdot Mirror
How about an optional extra charge on retail sales or subscriptions, pay an extra $10 if you want to see the movie made, or a bit less in ongoing payments. By March 2010, BioShock had sold 4 million copies - it's potentially doable. You might not get the full amount but if you only need half what you originally wanted, its much easier to find investors.
I don't get it though, shows like Supernatural have that sort of stuff in them all the time, and you can do an awful lot by implication, just look at Paranormal activity. I think the direction he was going to take is the problem here, not the basic concept.
Nonsense. Taxation is paying dues to have civilization.
I'm speaking in the purely economic sense, as regards the injection-leakage model.
Cut the deficit from the supply side by increasing revenue. Then, when times are good, that's the time to look for ways to cut costs and make things more efficient (and more fair!). Cutting public spending when people are already suffering is just going to make it all worse. Look at how all the budget cutting is failing in Europe.
It's not as simple as that, unfortunately, it very much depends on what you cut. Taxation is essentially leakage from the economy, this means that it is money taken from what should be productive activities. The only expenditure which has an effect like you describe is that which is pumped straight back into circulation, like wages and social welfare. And even then, you need to balance out what you are spending from taxation against what the government actually needs to operate. There are plenty of useless sinecure departments in every European government, or areas which could use more efficiency, or groups which could easily be merged.
Ideally, cutting back certain areas and raising taxes strategically should nail the deficits completely, which is a good thing when you consider a deficit is something which all citizens must ultimately pay for from their taxes. Strategic tax raises should be targeted at those sectors which provide minimal employment and minimal circulation of currency (productivity).
I think there's a persistent perception in certain areas that only the well off and perhaps the young use cell phones. This makes them easy targets for tax rises - the rich don't care, and the young don't vote. From a revenue perspective it's a no brainer.
Isn't serving different content to spiders and to people, for whatever reason, explicitly against Google's rules though? For the first point, I think Google can digest JavaScript alright these days, even some flash. For the second, that's dodgy, if you want those terms indexed include them in your article. The third, it would seem you're still serving the same content just in a slightly different format.
if a site serves different content to people than to spiders
If a site does that, why should it be listed at all? That's straight down the line spammery, as far as I can see.
I don't know, I think there are a lot more people annoyed with link farmers and ad sites than there are link farmers. Filtering complaints by IP should winnow out the majority of sabateurs. What's the deal with chrome anyway, is Google feuding with firefox that they won't port it or something?
Scientology isn't a religion.
Trying to defeat a religion's organization and beliefs by using logic has been tried many, many times before and never stops people from being convinced they are right. If you think this will have any impact whatsoever, I think you need to open your eyes.
As they guy said, you can't logic someone out of something they didn't logic themselves into! On the other hand, this isn't about scientology being a religion, its about it being a criminal organisation.
I can't help but think the only long-term way to reduce the effectiveness of these kinds of SEO tricks is to remove all storefronts from Google results.
Wouldn't that just be wikipedia?
Is there a will to find their roots again? Can they relearn their customs from Taiwan? Should they?
I'd have thought all the creationism would have done that. :p
practicality.
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Even your nickname seems to be determined by such fantasies ... and you're trying to pretend to not be heavily emotionally invested, under wishful thinking, perhaps even blindly in awe of those few shining beacons of an engineer?
I see you've been at this with other posters on the thread as well, including Rei. At some point you must realise, if people stop arguing with you, it doesn't mean you've won, it means you're all alone.
Mr. Stephenson is an author of literary fiction. But how you are convinced only those few precious brilliant engineers have the right solution, in how long writings you're willing to glorify them, how you stepped back to claiming you're victim of some sort of "abuse" by reality, is another telltale sign.
Not abuse by reality, abuse by you, linking to a page containing some sort of mad air display and calling it my imagination. This is personal abuse, intended to create insult, which is a far cry from actually dealing with the detailed technical information which was actually put before you. This can go round in circles for as long as you desire to get the last word in, so if you've nothing constructive to add we'll draw a line under it.
Heck, even how you fail to notice / are unwilling to strongly point out (lest it puts your pet fantasy in bad light?... I waited few enough posts) the basics of such megastructure, literally aiming only for a very narrow range of inclinations.
So you didn't bother to read the tower launch discussion page then.
This is your style of imagination (if you are really capable of asking "so?" when faced with how your pet fantasy would require EVERYTHING, but with much tighter tolerances for error, than what it's meant to "replace" ... plus a megastructure of doubtful practicality even in easiest of conditions), airplanes from "our" times (and we CAN even build them! Take a Harrier, remove wings and canopy ... doesn't mean it's anywhere near a good idea) - vs. boring reality
Yeah, you've descended into abuse now. Here's what's really happened: you've come across a concept, which I supported with technical discussions, real world examples, and a variety of articles, which is far outside your comfort zone, as in that area where you feel the real world exists and can be controlled, a conservative place where nobody steps too far out of line.
You responded to this intrusion by raising nonsensical objections (the space shuttle? really?) and ignoring the facts presented to you, dancing around your intuition that this all must be somehow against the laws of physics or something, which puts you right in the same ballpark as creationists and flat earthers.
With the best of intentions I say it is this kind of knee jerk counter-rational dogmatism, inspired by a misunderstanding of what science actually does to advance, that is strangling innovation and creativity, and it would appear Mr. Stephenson agrees with me.
But please, do link to this discussion, it might help some other seekers of philosopher's stone.
Indeed I will.
The issue that you, for some reason, do not see is that your maglev tube would require everything a typical rocket and its launch already does. EVERYTHING! And MUCH more
So? We're talking about putting pylons 11km into the air. At no point did I say this was something that could be done by a hobbyist with a lathe. All of the basic principles are well established, and indeed in use at the moment. Adjusting them and scaling them up is by no means impossible, to say nothing of inconceivable.
first demonstrate the viability of underlying concept in a monumentally more simple application, then ...wait, not even then can you start promoting it as some wundersolution in quite different scenario!)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1q_rRicAwI&feature=related
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vactrain
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPduAYKk_6I
Also, real world does have practical limits and wishful thinking doesn't take them away. It didn't with the Shuttle, when we "really, really wanted it"
Sorry, at this stage you're just dragging your heels and saying "nuh-uh". For once will you please rtfa.
http://www.therefinedgeek.com.au/index.php/2009/09/03/space-shuttle-reusable-craft-by-committee/
The shuttle was a bad fit for everything because it was designed by committee. That doesn't mean the basic concept was wrong or mistaken, or even impossible. Really at this point I'm going to bookmark this conversation to use in further discussions on why dogmatism has replaced imagination and creative thinking.
Do you see anything comparable in operation?... (nvm large masses, high accelerations, huge energies involved if the maglev payload is a rocket, nvm "popping" the tube...)
And this is why imagination is a basic requirement for advancement. As it turns out, engineers are working on one right now. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vactrain A mere century ago the idea of a network of high speed passenger airliners with the capacity we have today would run into the very same objections you raise here, large masses, high accelerations, huge energies involved, never mind popping the tube at high altitudes, etc.
The "tremendous improvement" they talk about is merely at the cost of quite possibly not practical, one of a kind megastructure. Forming with the rocket a potentially quite problematic, high-speed dynamic system during launch.
All of which is well within the boundaries of today's engineering. Heck, most of it was within the boundaries of engineering two decades ago, at least. And what a project, the first true spaceport! My god, what a project, no one country could manage it, you'd need international co-operation on a massive scale, will, impetus, a route laid out for longer term benefits, it would be a thing of awe and splendour. The biggest difficulties you would face would be political to be honest, but thats a matter of simply convincing enough people, and spread out over a large enough population, the per capita investment costs wouldn't be too serious. Probably less than the US spends in a few years on the military.
Vs. having the same gain for just somewhat enlarging the first stage (also via quite straightforward "multiplication" of it, what Delta IV Heavy sometimes does, what Angara will do to an even larger extent), continuing to use simple launch facilities and decently easy, at this point, procedures. On a static platform.
The bottom line is, right now, they cost too much, way too much. This is a means to significantly reduce the unit costs for payload, and hence open the road to the sky above us. If it was as cheap to ship cargo/facilities/people to orbit as it was to ship them across the oceans, we'd alread have orbit well colonised, and be taking advantage of the near limitless resources of space.
Build this, build LEO fuel and resource dumps, build a proper station and refinery up there, build drones to assay near earth resources, build extractors to bring back those resources or produce them on-site, ship the raw materials back to orbit and produce finished goods, drop them down or use them to build out even more infrastructure, and so on. You could ultimately outsource most of the industrial heavy lifting to orbit, along with food production and a lot more. I appreciate this is a long term plan, as in a couple of centuries, but if you don't get started you won't get finished, and what a world we'd have then.
You provide great examples why "dumb rockets" do remain attractive (and remember, people similarly enthusiastic about their dreams - even people from the same institutions - gave us the Shuttle; it also had great advertising before the reality set in)
In fairness the shuttle was changed considerably from its initial specifications, it is the definition of "designed by committee".
The pegasus is also mentioned in that link I supplied, which is from 1996. Also I didn't say it should be a simple tower ("which supplies energy to ships to help attain higher speeds as they launch"), I was thinking more an evacuated maglev rail tube of some sort, supplied by electric on the ground level, which is vastly cheaper than rockets. Again, have a good read of that link, there's plenty of technical information in there too.
The only currently-flying exception to this is Pegasus, a very small booster that's light enough to carry on an airplane. Even that was only feasible because an existing airplane (NASA B-52) was already configured to carry similar-sized rockets (X-15), thus saving development costs.
Despite this, even a few km can supply a quite respectable advantage, and that's before you start powering anything.
Some of the advantages of high-altitude launch:
(1) You start with a fraction of the potential energy needed to get to
orbit.
If you could launch at 10000 ft above sea level, you could reduce
your velocity change to get into orbit by approx. 250 m/s. However, you
need about 8000 m/s to get into orbit. A 3% improvement.
But three percent is a *tremendous* improvement. A RL-10A has an Isp of
about 450 seconds; thus, exhaust velocity Ve is about 4400 km/sec.
Structure & payload mass fraction is exp[deltaV/Ve]; a RL-10A powered
vehicle could achieve a maxium amount of structure plus payload to 8
km/sec of 16.3%. Typically about 5% of this is actually payload. A 3%
decrease in delta-V to orbit increases this to 17.3%. This increases the
*payload* to 6% of the gross lift-off mass -- a 20% increase in payload.
(2) You start at a lower atmospheric pressure.
a. reduced atmospheric drag loss
Which wasn't commented on by Bromley or by Pat, but is a significant
effect, at *minimum* equal to the potential energy gain.
b. vehicle can be designed with less attention paid to
aerodynamics. Lower aerodynamic design penalty means higher performance
designs (ie., smaller fineness ratio allows more efficient tanks)
c. More optimum trajectory possible; you can curve toward
horizontal thrust much faster since you start out closer to out of the
atmosphere
d. Max-Q occurs at a much lower pressure; lower aerodynamic
stress on the system means vehicle can be designed lighter.
Pat, prb@clark.net commented on this one:
I think Max-Q is going to be at the same altitude or lower depending
upon tank fineness.
To the contrary. Max-Q is the product of air density, the square of
velocity, and a vehicle-dependent factor which depends on mach number.
For a given acceleration profile, Max-Q occurs at the same altitude
*above the launch site* independent of how high the launch site is. That
is, the actual value of dynamic pressure will decrease linearly with the
initial pressure.
True, if you decrease the fineness ratio to gain tank fraction, you will
then increase the Max-Q again. This makes the whole thing an engineering
trade-off-- how much do you gain in tank fraction and robustness, versus
how much of the decrease of Max-Q do you lose? Doing such trade-offs is
why we pay engineers.
However, I don't have a good number which tells me how much of the
structural mass is due to making the vehicle robust to survive Max-Q.
Anybody have a guess?
e. Aerodynamic vibrations lower; allows less robust payload
(e.g., lighter)
f. Wind loads on vehicle in flight much lower
g. Acou
Can you have a read of this first http://yarchive.net/space/exotic/tower_launch.html
Few km of height is largely insignificant,
11km of height is quite significant, I assure you.
else you would see spaceports on major highlands; a launcher works primarily horizontally, for speed - and tower could provide very little of that (remember there's a square in kinetic energy...)
The tower doesn't need to point straight up. Do take a look at this http://yarchive.net/space/exotic/tower_launch.html
In fact, we already have a launcher which does more than your fantasy could ever accomplish - Pegasus rocket (check it out). It is one the least cost efficient launchers around. Please, drop the wishful thinking.
Please learn the difference between realism and dogmatism. ;)
And amortized development costs for that will OBVIOUSLY be cheaper than our already paid for rocket technology.
That was Stephenson's point - rockets are not cheap and they are pretty bad value with it. Better to spend some of that money on newer and better systems.
"engineering culture," or "scientific elitism,"
Two very different things, engineers are not scientists. The mindset needed for the two disciplines are worlds apart.
What we have here is a failure of the imagination...
Indeed, which is itself a failure of the scientific method.
The escape velocity is about 11 km/s, the speed of sound about 300 m/s.
Yes but you don't need to get to escape velocity, just LEO and build from there.
So to get anywhere with a space cannon type system, it needs to be on a very high platform, probably 10km or more, and then be big enough to accellerate a payload to 10-20 times the speed of sound.
Oddly enough, quite doable.