After reading the article you cited, I don't believe the example I gave is quite the same as the twins paradox. The twins paradox seems to address taking two different paths to reach the same point and loosing synchronization. My example is similar, but addresses the affects of an initial velocity of the reference frame of the third spaceship.
The twins paradox does not appear to address returning to the same point with linear travel in opposing directions. My point is that the three spacecraft will have at least two (more likely three) different amounts of time elapse in their local frames of reference which can be measured if their initially synchronized clocks are brought back together. The twins paradox teaches that the first two spacecraft should have different amounts of time to elapse than the third spacecraft. It also seems to imply that _both_ the first and second spacecraft have had less time elapse than the third. In my example, that is not necessarily true. Comparing the elapsed time in each of the three spacecraft allows one to determine something about the velocity of a reference frame in which they are all motionless.
"The short version of the solution is that you can't neglect acceleration."
Time dialation is not based on accelleration; it is based on relative motion. As long as the first and second spacecraft move in opposite directections and have only one period of positive and one period of negative accelleration each, the whole accelleration curves used throughout their journeys need not be specified.
More thoughts: -What happens to an emengine in a structure fixed to the earth's surface as the earth rotates? -What happens to it as the earth orbits the sun? Milky Way? Etc. -Would it a "fixed emengine" actually put a force on the Earth, changing its orbital mechanics (by a tiny bit)?
"There simply is no such thing as a "stationary" frame of reference...they are all identical."
Not all reference frames are equally "stationary".
Consider this example: imagine an inertial reference frame with three motionless spacecraft. Time passes equivalently in each spacecraft as long as they remain motionless relative to each other. Consider what happens if the first two spacecraft depart in opposite directions from the third: the rate of the passage of time is now different for each spacecraft.
Question: In which spacecraft does time now pass the most swiftly (i.e. where you grow older most quickly)?
One anser is the third spacecraft, i.e. the spacecraft that didn't change its velocity. What the answer be if you were told that all three spacecraft had initally accellerated in the same direction as the first spacecraft and that the second spacecraft ended up accellerating in the opposite direction by the same amount? In that case, the spacecraft where time passes the most quickly may be the second spacecraft. I use "may" in the second part because we don't know how the spacecraft may have been traveling prior to the above.
So if such a reference frame exists, we should be able to find it, right? Do this by measuring the mass (or gravity) produced by an object as it moves in different directions. One way may be to spin a disk i and carefully measure the grafitational pull along the edge.
As long as the disk is forced to spin about its geometric center and it is not moving along its axis, the center of mass should shift to one side. Repeating the experiment in multiple orientations could allow one to back-calculate the velocity of the reference frame where the experiment was performed relative to the "non-moving" reference frame.
There has to be a reference frame where time passes moste quickly. I have encountered several well-credentialled physicists (one a NASA physicist giving a graduate seminar lecture at the U of MN) who agree that there must be a "universial" reference frame that is "stationary", or "at rest", relative to all other "intertial" reference frames.
Until I got near the end of the article, it seem as though things were a little screwy (e.g. 30 KN of force with a KW of energy). However, the whole part a bout bleading off energy as it accelerates makes some sense.
Think of a table. If you place a paper clip on it, it puts a few millinewtons of force on the table and vice versa. If you place an elephant on the table (assuming it doesn't collapse), there are a lot of Newtons. How much energy was expended by the table to hold up the paperclip or the elephant? None. The objects didn't move, even though there was a significant force on them.
Other thoughts
-It sounds to me like this guy figured out a way to make a hover-board type drive a la "back to the future". -Can the device "slide" out of the earth's gravitational well? As it moves further away from an inital point with its axis pointed at the earth's center, the plane perpendicular -What happens if you try to change the orientation of the emdrive? Compare with re-orienting a spinning gyro. -If power is not a problem (think nuclear), what mass/thrust ratios are possible?
Today the tropics are located at 23 degrees north and south of the equator. Does anyone really know where they were relative to the equator further back in time? I don't have a link, but there is some evidence that the Earth's tilt has changed over time and the current axis of rotation may not have always been so.
Lots of comments here along the lines of "what a waste of an engineering background..."
In order to take the patent bar, an applicant must have at least a bachelors degree in a technical field. It seems to me that math or physics is probably the route he could take with the lease dependencies between classes to get it all done in a year. As to whipping through college too fast, at least he can get paid for the research he is doing as a masters student.
The state of bananas over the years gives a good analagy of what can happen when there is too much reliance on a single variety of food-producing plant. The phrase "Sorry, we have no more bananas" comes from a time in the early 20th century where the world relied on a single variety of banana-which is now extinct due to a fungus outbreak that wipped out every known treee of this type (Big Mike, I believe).
Today's bananas really _aren't_ your grandfather's bananas. It was several years before a new variety was bread that came somewhat close to the previous variety in terms of size, texture, taste, etc., although there was never a complete match (it is universally agreed that the former variety was more appealing).
Unfortunately, the current breed is also under attack by a new fungus that likewise threatens to completely wipe out the variety. It is quite possible that we will have to settle for a third generation of bananas that doesn't measure up to the current variety. Drawing a parallel to GMO crops and the evolution of farming to be dominated by a few, non-reproducing varieties shouldn't be that difficult.
My dad once butchered an animal (beef, I think) and left in the barn to cool. He couldn't get to it for a few days and it froze solid (Minnesota winter). He needed to cut it into smaller chunks to be able to carry it inside for cutting up. So he thinks: chainsaw!
Much of it had to be thrown out due to all the bone chips.:-(
To get a patent, the invention can't be in the public domain prior to submitting an application to the patent office. However, if you have any more good ideas related to this one, you can try to patent it if you keep it a secret or get non-disclosure agreements signed prior to telling anyone about it.
And if you were wondering, IANAL, but I do write patents for a living.
I never used to buy music; it was burned CDs for me. I was a poor high school student. Now that I work as an engineer, I buy CDs all the time...
A college student doesn't have a whole lot to loose (a few thousand dollars of debt is just another semester of classes). A professional who has a reputation to worry about and likely has dollars in the bank has a bit more on the line. Not trying to knock down the poster of the parent, but one has to wonder: even though a lot of posters spout similar lines to the parent, what kind of habits would they have now if the RIAA never started taking action? After all, free beer is free beer.
Physics is arguably the most advanced part of science, largely because it is so easy to test. As you go from hard sciences to softer ones, it become more fuzzy about what is fact and what is opinion (e.g. medicine). Pshycology and pshycatry(sp?) are arguably some of the fuzziest sciences because they have been so difficult to prove.
Before we had the tremendous body of work that supports our modern understanding of physics, there were many that held notions that we find ludicrous today (e.g. human flight was mathematically "proved" to be impossible). Until science is able to pin down what the mind is and is able to reproduce it, hold off your ridicule.
We know the mind exists, but can't reproduce it or even readily define what it is.
Sure, we all know what firefox is. But can't the website at least say that firefox is a web browser? I advise anyone who asks me computer questions to get firefox, but many people have never heard of it and might assume they stumbled across something unrelated and avoid it.
I used to experience deja vous on a somewhat regular basis (once a month or so). I found that when I was highschool/college, it increased in length (from a fraction of a second to 1-2 seconds). At that point it occured more frequently as well (several times a week).
The freaky part happened when I realized I could make very quick mental predictions of what would happen. At its peak, my longest deja vous was about 10 seconds into the future. At some point, I realized I was also somewhat aware of what my part was supposed to be and found that I could change my actions and make the expected thing not occur. After "changing the future" a few times by not acting according to my "vision" (a poor word, since the affect covered all my senses), the frequency of deja vous dropped to almost zero.
I don't think deja vous can be wholly explained by malfunctioning grey matter--too many people I know or have given strong evidence of visions and other phenominon. One of my supervisors in college took a course on dreaming at the university of minnesota, duluth in the late 90's and had some really weird things happen (e.g. passing assigned messages to other students in the class through dreams near the end of a single summer class). Don't get me wrong-I think most of those phsycic hotlines a bunch of baloney, but as a scientist, I can't just reject evidence that doesn't match my picture of the world; I need to keep an open mind or risk becoming like those who ridiculed Da Vinci for saying the earth went around the sun.
If these are destined for developing countries, how are you going to enforce the rules governing who gets the computers? It seems to me that it won't take long for the militaries/ militias/ guerrilas/ warlards etc. to realize that a laptop can be a real asset to the operations. Consider the following:
Early development was sponserd by the millitary 1. Modern computers are largely due to code-breakers, artillary table generators, etc. developed during WWII. 2. ARPA/DARPA developed the Internet. 3. Would we have an NSA without computers?
Ways computers could be used for military purposes in developed countries 1. Google Maps-gives terrain for planning manuvers 2. Email for organizing 3. Weapons/warfare research 4. Training (the US military uses video games for training) 5. Finances - (e.g. Nigerian scammers) 6. Logistics tracking 7. Intelligence gathering (CNN was a big asset to Saddam in the first gulf war)
And finally... How many times have we seen foreign aid misused? - N. Korea using food aid to feed its army - Iraq's oil for food program + many other instances that don't make national news where the local fighters come in after an aid convoy and take everything that was just handed out.
Don't get me wrong. I am a big fan of the $100 laptops-it really is a case of "teach a man to fish". I fully expect at least some of them to help the kids and eventually to get in the hands of adults who make good use of them. Just be prepared for the backlash when yet another powerful tool is used in a the wrong way and remember that the good done with it outweighs weigh(s) the damage it can cause when used for evil.
Re:Why must everything paranormal be considered cr
on
Virtual Worlds and ESP
·
· Score: 1
"Even if you made a more complicated scenario... Your battle fleet has a message particle entangled with one at HQ, and they know that if it has spin up, it means "attack" and spin down means "retreat". But when does the battle fleet check their particle? If they do it before HQ has forced theirs one way or the other, then the fleet has ruined the entanglement. The only way they can know when to check it is when they receive a radio message from HQ, telling them to check... in which case, the communication is still limited by the speed of that radio message."
Alternative:
fleet 1) send out a tangled particle with the fleet 2) preinstruct them to scan at a given time 3) results of scan determine whether to attach or return base 1) keep partner of tangled particle 2) force spin of base particle up or down prior to scan time by the fleet
Why do we have the space shuttle? To go the the International Space Station. Why do we have the International Space Station? To give the shuttle something to do. Why hasn't NASA done much else for the last 10 years? It's spent most of its money on the space shuttle and the ISS.
One of the rucurring problems for companies trying to break into the space business is lack of long-term business. Bigelow noticed this and took the "if you build it, they will come" strategy since the alternative was the "I'm here, now what?" strategy. There are multiple companies that are putting forth credible efforts to created manned launch vehicles, setting asside the fact that there are already three governments who are space capable.
Everyone knew that there was only one pseudo-permanent destination available for extended space visits currently in existance. Do you think the NASA, (or the Europeans, Chinese, Japanese, Indians, Brazilianze, or any other country with a space program for that matter) would seriously not consider purchasing time in a state of the art facility at a tenth the price of the current ISS?
This isn't a case of some multi-millionare just deciding to blow a bunch of money on a whim. This is the fruit of a plan by a boy who grew up to be a successful business man who never forgot his plan.
Bigelow has been a space buff since he was a kid, but figured out at an early age that probably couldn't hack it as an engineer or astronaut. So he decided to take a different approach - make money first, then figure out where it could do the most good.
So he went into the hotel business. And got to be really good at it. Ever heard of Budget Suites? He started from the ground up and made a litteral fortune by building and running a successful hotel chain using the talent he was gifted with - management skills. Something NASA seems to have chronic problems with.
Fast forward to the late 1990s. NASA engineers started to develop inflatable space structures, but ended having to put asside the technology because it was TOO promising; it caught the attention of the entrenched aerospace contractors who promply had their congressmen ban the technology because it threatened their contracts to develop the crew habitation module. So NASA was stuck with a promissing technology that would have provided MORE crew space for LESS cost than the original plan, but couldn't use it for political reasons.
Enter Mr. Bigelow. By this time, he had become quite wealthy and was looking for a good prospect to invest in to fullfil his lifelong ambition in the space area. When he found out about the inflateable technology NASA had, but couldn't use, he quickly took advantage of one of the space acts that allowed NASA to license space technology for private development. The engineers at NASA were overjoyed that someone would use the technology instead of watching it just be thrown down the tube.
The amazing thing was, is that Bigelow's family never even knew he had a passion for space until he took action on the inflateable technology! Not even his wife!
Two companies I keep close tabs on: SpaceX (founded by PayPal founder Elon Musk) and Bigelow Aerospace. Both of these men are outsiders who got into the space industry for a reason: to get mankind into space. They are both willing and able to spend a huge chunk of their own money to get manned spaceflight kicked into high gear in a way that give the average Joe a possiblity at real spaceflight some day. Both men have seen the failures of government and early tries at space by for-profit companies. Both were enormously successful businessmen with proven track records at starting new, large scale endevers. Both decided that the best way was to pay it out of their own pocket and fund it for several years after their business plans say they should make money.
No, I wouldn't characterize this as just throwing a fortune at something just for the heck of it.
Kinda makes you wish English had words for "sarcasm in a good way" and "sarcasm in a bad way". Then again, the difference between good and bad sarcasm is often in the eye of the beholder.
I've been keeping half an eye on this company for a while, but haven't seen anything in the news for a few months before today's launch. Their website doesn't seem to have any obvious links to updates ala spacex. Does anyone have a good link for keeping track of companies like this?
I was all fired up to start responding the parent...then felt a little silly when I realized the author _did_ know what they were talking about and chose to use sarcasm.
Hey, Taco! Can we add a sarcasm selection for the moderators?
Slashdot Mirror
After reading the article you cited, I don't believe the example I gave is quite the same as the twins paradox. The twins paradox seems to address taking two different paths to reach the same point and loosing synchronization. My example is similar, but addresses the affects of an initial velocity of the reference frame of the third spaceship.
The twins paradox does not appear to address returning to the same point with linear travel in opposing directions. My point is that the three spacecraft will have at least two (more likely three) different amounts of time elapse in their local frames of reference which can be measured if their initially synchronized clocks are brought back together. The twins paradox teaches that the first two spacecraft should have different amounts of time to elapse than the third spacecraft. It also seems to imply that _both_ the first and second spacecraft have had less time elapse than the third. In my example, that is not necessarily true. Comparing the elapsed time in each of the three spacecraft allows one to determine something about the velocity of a reference frame in which they are all motionless.
"The short version of the solution is that you can't neglect acceleration."
Time dialation is not based on accelleration; it is based on relative motion. As long as the first and second spacecraft move in opposite directections and have only one period of positive and one period of negative accelleration each, the whole accelleration curves used throughout their journeys need not be specified.
More thoughts:
-What happens to an emengine in a structure fixed to the earth's surface as the earth rotates?
-What happens to it as the earth orbits the sun? Milky Way? Etc.
-Would it a "fixed emengine" actually put a force on the Earth, changing its orbital mechanics (by a tiny bit)?
"There simply is no such thing as a "stationary" frame of reference...they are all identical."
Not all reference frames are equally "stationary".
Consider this example: imagine an inertial reference frame with three motionless spacecraft. Time passes equivalently in each spacecraft as long as they remain motionless relative to each other. Consider what happens if the first two spacecraft depart in opposite directions from the third: the rate of the passage of time is now different for each spacecraft.
Question: In which spacecraft does time now pass the most swiftly (i.e. where you grow older most quickly)?
One anser is the third spacecraft, i.e. the spacecraft that didn't change its velocity. What the answer be if you were told that all three spacecraft had initally accellerated in the same direction as the first spacecraft and that the second spacecraft ended up accellerating in the opposite direction by the same amount? In that case, the spacecraft where time passes the most quickly may be the second spacecraft. I use "may" in the second part because we don't know how the spacecraft may have been traveling prior to the above.
So if such a reference frame exists, we should be able to find it, right? Do this by measuring the mass (or gravity) produced by an object as it moves in different directions. One way may be to spin a disk i and carefully measure the grafitational pull along the edge.
As long as the disk is forced to spin about its geometric center and it is not moving along its axis, the center of mass should shift to one side. Repeating the experiment in multiple orientations could allow one to back-calculate the velocity of the reference frame where the experiment was performed relative to the "non-moving" reference frame.
There has to be a reference frame where time passes moste quickly. I have encountered several well-credentialled physicists (one a NASA physicist giving a graduate seminar lecture at the U of MN) who agree that there must be a "universial" reference frame that is "stationary", or "at rest", relative to all other "intertial" reference frames.
Your thoughts?
Until I got near the end of the article, it seem as though things were a little screwy (e.g. 30 KN of force with a KW of energy). However, the whole part a bout bleading off energy as it accelerates makes some sense.
Think of a table. If you place a paper clip on it, it puts a few millinewtons of force on the table and vice versa. If you place an elephant on the table (assuming it doesn't collapse), there are a lot of Newtons. How much energy was expended by the table to hold up the paperclip or the elephant? None. The objects didn't move, even though there was a significant force on them.
Other thoughts
-It sounds to me like this guy figured out a way to make a hover-board type drive a la "back to the future".
-Can the device "slide" out of the earth's gravitational well? As it moves further away from an inital point with its axis pointed at the earth's center, the plane perpendicular
-What happens if you try to change the orientation of the emdrive? Compare with re-orienting a spinning gyro.
-If power is not a problem (think nuclear), what mass/thrust ratios are possible?
Today the tropics are located at 23 degrees north and south of the equator. Does anyone really know where they were relative to the equator further back in time? I don't have a link, but there is some evidence that the Earth's tilt has changed over time and the current axis of rotation may not have always been so.
In order to take the patent bar, an applicant must have at least a bachelors degree in a technical field. It seems to me that math or physics is probably the route he could take with the lease dependencies between classes to get it all done in a year. As to whipping through college too fast, at least he can get paid for the research he is doing as a masters student.
Today's bananas really _aren't_ your grandfather's bananas. It was several years before a new variety was bread that came somewhat close to the previous variety in terms of size, texture, taste, etc., although there was never a complete match (it is universally agreed that the former variety was more appealing).
Unfortunately, the current breed is also under attack by a new fungus that likewise threatens to completely wipe out the variety. It is quite possible that we will have to settle for a third generation of bananas that doesn't measure up to the current variety. Drawing a parallel to GMO crops and the evolution of farming to be dominated by a few, non-reproducing varieties shouldn't be that difficult.
Not just toast, BURNED toast!
My dad once butchered an animal (beef, I think) and left in the barn to cool. He couldn't get to it for a few days and it froze solid (Minnesota winter). He needed to cut it into smaller chunks to be able to carry it inside for cutting up. So he thinks: chainsaw!
:-(
Much of it had to be thrown out due to all the bone chips.
No.
To get a patent, the invention can't be in the public domain prior to submitting an application to the patent office. However, if you have any more good ideas related to this one, you can try to patent it if you keep it a secret or get non-disclosure agreements signed prior to telling anyone about it.
And if you were wondering, IANAL, but I do write patents for a living.
A college student doesn't have a whole lot to loose (a few thousand dollars of debt is just another semester of classes). A professional who has a reputation to worry about and likely has dollars in the bank has a bit more on the line. Not trying to knock down the poster of the parent, but one has to wonder: even though a lot of posters spout similar lines to the parent, what kind of habits would they have now if the RIAA never started taking action? After all, free beer is free beer.
I'm not dyslectic unless I'm really tired-like last week when I posted. But then again, this is /.
(And yes, I looked up dyslectic this time. ;-)
Physics is arguably the most advanced part of science, largely because it is so easy to test. As you go from hard sciences to softer ones, it become more fuzzy about what is fact and what is opinion (e.g. medicine). Pshycology and pshycatry(sp?) are arguably some of the fuzziest sciences because they have been so difficult to prove. Before we had the tremendous body of work that supports our modern understanding of physics, there were many that held notions that we find ludicrous today (e.g. human flight was mathematically "proved" to be impossible). Until science is able to pin down what the mind is and is able to reproduce it, hold off your ridicule. We know the mind exists, but can't reproduce it or even readily define what it is.
Sure, we all know what firefox is. But can't the website at least say that firefox is a web browser? I advise anyone who asks me computer questions to get firefox, but many people have never heard of it and might assume they stumbled across something unrelated and avoid it.
@#*&! What do you @#*&ing mean I can't @#*&ing speak @#*&ing French!
;-)
What...did I just say that? Pardon my French
Thanks for the correction - not enough sleep lately.
I used to experience deja vous on a somewhat regular basis (once a month or so). I found that when I was highschool/college, it increased in length (from a fraction of a second to 1-2 seconds). At that point it occured more frequently as well (several times a week).
The freaky part happened when I realized I could make very quick mental predictions of what would happen. At its peak, my longest deja vous was about 10 seconds into the future. At some point, I realized I was also somewhat aware of what my part was supposed to be and found that I could change my actions and make the expected thing not occur. After "changing the future" a few times by not acting according to my "vision" (a poor word, since the affect covered all my senses), the frequency of deja vous dropped to almost zero.
I don't think deja vous can be wholly explained by malfunctioning grey matter--too many people I know or have given strong evidence of visions and other phenominon. One of my supervisors in college took a course on dreaming at the university of minnesota, duluth in the late 90's and had some really weird things happen (e.g. passing assigned messages to other students in the class through dreams near the end of a single summer class). Don't get me wrong-I think most of those phsycic hotlines a bunch of baloney, but as a scientist, I can't just reject evidence that doesn't match my picture of the world; I need to keep an open mind or risk becoming like those who ridiculed Da Vinci for saying the earth went around the sun.
If these are destined for developing countries, how are you going to enforce the rules governing who gets the computers? It seems to me that it won't take long for the militaries/ militias/ guerrilas/ warlards etc. to realize that a laptop can be a real asset to the operations. Consider the following:
Early development was sponserd by the millitary
1. Modern computers are largely due to code-breakers, artillary table generators, etc. developed during WWII.
2. ARPA/DARPA developed the Internet.
3. Would we have an NSA without computers?
Ways computers could be used for military purposes in developed countries
1. Google Maps-gives terrain for planning manuvers
2. Email for organizing
3. Weapons/warfare research
4. Training (the US military uses video games for training)
5. Finances - (e.g. Nigerian scammers)
6. Logistics tracking
7. Intelligence gathering (CNN was a big asset to Saddam in the first gulf war)
And finally...
How many times have we seen foreign aid misused?
- N. Korea using food aid to feed its army
- Iraq's oil for food program
+ many other instances that don't make national news where the local fighters come in after an aid convoy and take everything that was just handed out.
Don't get me wrong. I am a big fan of the $100 laptops-it really is a case of "teach a man to fish". I fully expect at least some of them to help the kids and eventually to get in the hands of adults who make good use of them. Just be prepared for the backlash when yet another powerful tool is used in a the wrong way and remember that the good done with it outweighs weigh(s) the damage it can cause when used for evil.
"Even if you made a more complicated scenario... Your battle fleet has a message particle entangled with one at HQ, and they know that if it has spin up, it means "attack" and spin down means "retreat". But when does the battle fleet check their particle? If they do it before HQ has forced theirs one way or the other, then the fleet has ruined the entanglement. The only way they can know when to check it is when they receive a radio message from HQ, telling them to check... in which case, the communication is still limited by the speed of that radio message."
Alternative:
fleet
1) send out a tangled particle with the fleet
2) preinstruct them to scan at a given time
3) results of scan determine whether to attach or return
base
1) keep partner of tangled particle
2) force spin of base particle up or down prior to scan time by the fleet
What is wrong with the above sequence?
"Finally a vapor ware I could use for a space flight!"
Vapor ware, as in "filled with vapor (i.e. gas)"?
Why do we have the space shuttle? To go the the International Space Station.
Why do we have the International Space Station? To give the shuttle something to do.
Why hasn't NASA done much else for the last 10 years? It's spent most of its money on the space shuttle and the ISS.
One of the rucurring problems for companies trying to break into the space business is lack of long-term business. Bigelow noticed this and took the "if you build it, they will come" strategy since the alternative was the "I'm here, now what?" strategy. There are multiple companies that are putting forth credible efforts to created manned launch vehicles, setting asside the fact that there are already three governments who are space capable.
Everyone knew that there was only one pseudo-permanent destination available for extended space visits currently in existance. Do you think the NASA, (or the Europeans, Chinese, Japanese, Indians, Brazilianze, or any other country with a space program for that matter) would seriously not consider purchasing time in a state of the art facility at a tenth the price of the current ISS?
Captain Obvious, indeed.
Bigelow has been a space buff since he was a kid, but figured out at an early age that probably couldn't hack it as an engineer or astronaut. So he decided to take a different approach - make money first, then figure out where it could do the most good.
So he went into the hotel business. And got to be really good at it. Ever heard of Budget Suites? He started from the ground up and made a litteral fortune by building and running a successful hotel chain using the talent he was gifted with - management skills. Something NASA seems to have chronic problems with.
Fast forward to the late 1990s. NASA engineers started to develop inflatable space structures, but ended having to put asside the technology because it was TOO promising; it caught the attention of the entrenched aerospace contractors who promply had their congressmen ban the technology because it threatened their contracts to develop the crew habitation module. So NASA was stuck with a promissing technology that would have provided MORE crew space for LESS cost than the original plan, but couldn't use it for political reasons.
Enter Mr. Bigelow. By this time, he had become quite wealthy and was looking for a good prospect to invest in to fullfil his lifelong ambition in the space area. When he found out about the inflateable technology NASA had, but couldn't use, he quickly took advantage of one of the space acts that allowed NASA to license space technology for private development. The engineers at NASA were overjoyed that someone would use the technology instead of watching it just be thrown down the tube.
The amazing thing was, is that Bigelow's family never even knew he had a passion for space until he took action on the inflateable technology! Not even his wife!
Two companies I keep close tabs on: SpaceX (founded by PayPal founder Elon Musk) and Bigelow Aerospace. Both of these men are outsiders who got into the space industry for a reason: to get mankind into space. They are both willing and able to spend a huge chunk of their own money to get manned spaceflight kicked into high gear in a way that give the average Joe a possiblity at real spaceflight some day. Both men have seen the failures of government and early tries at space by for-profit companies. Both were enormously successful businessmen with proven track records at starting new, large scale endevers. Both decided that the best way was to pay it out of their own pocket and fund it for several years after their business plans say they should make money.
No, I wouldn't characterize this as just throwing a fortune at something just for the heck of it.
Kinda makes you wish English had words for "sarcasm in a good way" and "sarcasm in a bad way". Then again, the difference between good and bad sarcasm is often in the eye of the beholder.
Hey, Taco! Can we add a sarcasm selection for the moderators?