I disagree. First, at 40,000 ft. you have a lot less air friction than you do at sea level. The air friction in the darn dense soup we have for an atmosphere is significant in getting to space. One rule of thumb I have seen is that air friction costs you about 1000 ft./s of velocity. As bad as air friction is, climbing out of the gravity well is harder. Losses due to fighting gravity are going to be about 3 times those of fighting air friction. Assuming the rocket weighs about 6000 lbs (that's just a guess, I don't see the mass on the website), then that should save them about 300000 BTU by going to 40000 ft. by balloon. That is nothing to sneeze at; especially in the vicious cycle of rocket sizing.
Also, you have to understand that rocket engine nozzles (in the atmosphere) are designed to operate best at one particular altitude (or more correctly air pressure). If the altitude is lower than the design altitude then the gasses leaving the engine nozzle are underexpanded, and it the altitude is higher then they are overexpanded. In either case the nozzle operates less efficiently. There are various schemes to allow one nozzle to work well at both low and high altitude (like expandable or inflating nozzles) but those add weight and complexity. By launching at 40,000 ft. instead of at sea level, the change in pressure is not as dramatic through the rocket's flight and so off-design performance is reduced.
I'm not saying that this is going to revolutionize rocketry. The rockoon has been around since the 50s, and (as you point out) there are some disadvantages for using it as an orbital launch vehicle, but the X-prize isn't for going to orbit. For just a low cost sub-orbital tourist jaunt, a rockoon is not a bad choice.
"As for the metric system, wake up and smell reality. Most of the world uses the metric system these days, at least the rest of the technologically advanced world... except for your little backwater country."
First of all, I think it is somewhat funny that you refer to the most productive and powerful nation on the planet as a "little backwater country." If the English(or British Gravitational or Imperial) system of units is such a handicap, then how do you explain America's general success in engineering and technical matters? At one time the argument "it is simpler because you multiply everything by 10s" would work. Now, thanks to my HP calculator, it is just as easy to multiply by 12 as it is by 10.
The mistake with the Mars probe was due more to poor contractor/NASA communication, than to the units used. As an engineer who has had to use both systems, I actually find it easier to catch English unit conversion errors than metric ones. If I get a result in the metric system that is off by about a factor of 10, there is no way to know where the mistake is. If I get a result that seems to be off by about a factor of 12 while using the English system, I know to go and check that inches to feet has been converted correctly. This assumes, of course that I have a have an idea of about what the answer will be which is not always the case.
Of course, the metric systems doesn't have that whole pound-mass vs. pound-force problem.
The concept was invented by James Van Allen (the same guy who invented radiation belts... or something like that) and some of his associates while they were working on sounding rockets back in the late 1940s.
Van Allen was not Canadian, he was from Iowa. I don't know where any of the other co-inventors were from. Not to say anything bad about Canada's contribution to spaceflight; by cancling the Avro Arrow, Canada freed up a lot of good engineers to come down here to the Southern part of the United States and work on the Apollo program.
More about James Van Allen: http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/spec-coll/Bai/halas.htm
More about rockoons: http://www.friends-partners.org/mwade/lvs/rockoon. htm
Magic Machine: A Handbook of Computer Sorcery
by A.K. Dewdney
ISBN: 0716721252
It is mostly a collection of essays on computers from Scientific American. Its discussions on how computers work, how they don't work, and how to think about computers will probably still be relevent 50 years from now. The April Fools computer joke about the archeological dig of an ancient rope and pulley computer is great, too.
Would you rather we do it the traditional way? I happen to think the idea of waging the Cold War through economic warfare and propoganda was a brilliant way to avoid WW3. Of course the hundreds of millions of people who had to suffer for decades under communism because we took the "easy, clever way out" instead of confronting their tyrants directly may not agree; but, considering how sick of war and death the world must have been after WW2, who can blame Truman and the other leaders for coming up with a less violent alternative.
There is a great story I heard, but cannot remember the source. I cannot find any verification of it either; but it is so appropriate I will repeat it despite it's uncertain accuracy: It was back in the 80s and the USSR knew it was falling behind the US in the arms race; Reagan's administration was just begining to promote SDI and the B2. The upper levels of the Soviet military knew that they could not afford to upgrade all their ICBMs and their entire air defense network to counter these threats. They had begun studying the possibility of conducting a surprise first strike against NATO before they fell too far behind; and the Soviet Generals and their staff were working long hours considering the details. Even though these military men couldn't talk about the details of their work, many of their families knew some new dangerous twist in the Cold War was brewing from the long hours the men were putting in and the stress they where obviously under. Finally one night when one particular Soviet General got home he found his young son crying. When he asked his son why he was crying the boy said it was because he feared that they would soon be at war with the United States, and then the boy pleaded with his father for Russia not to go to war with the U.S. saying* "We can't bomb America daddy... that's where Mickey Mouse lives." At that moment, the General realized that he, the other Soviet Generals, and all their advisers studying the 1st strike plan were wrong; the war they were planning for was already over. It had been fought, and they had lost without ever realising it had happened; because the next generation of Russian children would not grow up thinking of the "evil capitalist West" as their enemy. Does anyone know where this story came from, and if there is any truth to it? I would love to know, but have been unable to find any references to it.
I suppose we in the West may be cowards because we are following a similar economic and cultural "engagement" in China that keeps them from profiting from waging war against us; while over a billion people live as property of their gov't "leaders" as we patiently look for a solution that doesn't envolve large scale death and slaughter. Hopefully history will not look too poorly on us for trying to be clever in our fights against despotism instead of being brave.
Or perhaps you are confusing the current trends toward reducing trade restrictions, combined with the effectivness of US many businesses in winning market share to be a form of "economic war." Funny, I don't see people protesting because Airbus has picked up too much market share away from Boeing, or because too many American kids are watching a Japanese cartoon, or because yoga is replacing "aerobics" in American gyms... Globalism is a 2 way street; so get out there and start spreading your own memes. May the best ones win.
>Arms Control in general is viewed as a Bad Thing (TM).
Interesting; can you recommend any papers or books that discuss this in more detail?
>In reality, it will be like the B2;
The real goal of the B2 was to make th USSR have to spend HUNDREDS of more (in percent GNP) to revamp and improve their radars and air defense net than we spent on making the planes; and I think they did a darn good job of it.
I agree. I have had dealings with local, state, and national govt. organizations, and the further away from accountability (i.e. the voters) the bureaucrats and politicians are the more screwed up and wasteful their projects are (I have had no dealings with the UN other than reading some of their delusional reports; I shudder to think how screwed up they are). I want libraries and schools and art and help for the needy; I just don't think that the proper place for it to be done is at the federal gov't level.
It seems like every time there is a problem in society; everyone wants to know what the President is going to do to solve it, instead of asking what is the right way for US to solve the problem. I guess that is is just easier than doing real work. To put it in a way more easily understood on slashdot: Would you rather run a piece of software developed by Congress or a group of Federal bureaucrats or one developed by a bunch of people in the open source community that just spent their time and money on the project because they thought it was important and wanted to do it? For a group that takes personal responsibility for fixing computer problems and is very consious about trying to figure out the right way or the best social structure for solving IT problems, I am surprised how many people have the opposite view to other problems in society.
I agree, this does not appear to be an attempt to develop a great new weapon. Unmanned missles combined with a network of good real-time spy sats would do the job cheaper. 300k ft. is too far up for the advantage of having a human doing target aquisition directly to be significant; and the cost per target destroyed by such a Space Bomber would be huge. It is almost certainly an attempt by the Pentagon to keep the research dollars flowing to the X-33. It may be because (like the rest of us) there are a lot of people in high places at the Dept. of Defense (especially in the USAF) with bookshelves of science fiction and dreams of humanity exploring the stars (in well armed ships, of course, just in case something else is there ahead of us) that are using their positions to keep the space research going. It may be because the research for the X-33 was supposed to produce developments usable on future (probably black) military programs in addition to civilian SSTO programs, and the military doesn't want to lose that potentially useful research platform (the data collected on hypersonic flow and heating by the X-15 is still useful today). I actually hope that it is the latter. I hate the thought of Pentagon officials abusing their position (not that that has never happened before) to fund a program just because they think it is "cool" or "sexy" (even though I agree with them) instead of because it is the best way to do their jobs. The real answer is probably a little of both factors.
You know, I have often wondered what would have happened if the Air Force had been given the funding to complete the DynaSoar and MOL programs ( http://www.friends-partners.org/mwade/craft/dynaso ar.htm and http://www.friends-partners.org/mwade/craft/mol.ht m ). They would have had a space shuttle and a space station sometime around 1970.
Of course we have had the technology to make technically* workable fusion power plants for quite some time. You just build a geothermal-style power plant in someone else's back yard. You then drop a Hydrogen Bomb... er... I mean "fusion powered heat generating device" down a deep shaft and set it off. The heat released is recovered in a method similar to the way geothermal power plants work. Two H-bomb sites... er... I mean "heat recovery areas" would be needed for continous electricity generation so that one would be functioning while the other was being prepared for the next detonation... er... I mean "heat release event". I can't find the source of this design, but I know it has been around for a while.
* I doubt it would be economically workable; and that is the important measure of a power plant. It certainly isn't politically workable; it would undermine non-proliferation efforts by introdicing the idea of non-military H-bombs.
"is this a reference to the Nazi project in Philip K. Dick's Man in the High Castle?"
No, I haven't read that book. It is a reference to a proposal in Willey (or Willy) Ley's book _Engineer's_Dreams_. Considering that Ley was German, I suspect Philip K. Dick took the idea of the Nazi project from him also. Ley's book is out of print, but worth looking at (IMHO) if you can find a copy at a library or used book store.
"I wouldn't go executing all the scientists just yet. "
Oh, I wasn't proposing that we do; I was just pointing out that Scientists tend to go from specific applications (like experiments and observations) to general knowlege (theories and "laws") while it is the Engineers that are the ones who go from general knowlege (usually, but not always the ones the scientists developed previously) to specific applications (products, like you listed). It is, as you point out, semantics; real people rarely fit neatly into either category. In reality almost all engineers are also trained in the scientific method; and I have known plenty of scientists who were also very good engineers. If I had to pick a profession to excecute, it certainly wouldn't be the scientists. I also wanted to subtly suggest that if science can discover and accurately model how man is accidentally altering the climate (and perhaps even if they can't), then those principles can be used to deliberately engineer changes. Not something I think we will be ready to try anytime soon; but it may be something we need to do eventually.
"Portuguese ditch diggers would dam the Strait of Gibraltar." True, it was improper of me to overlook the tradesmen (who, in practice, also overlap with the other 2 categories).
"it doesn't look like Bush did anything more than parrot the Kyoto accord dissenters"
I wasn't suggesting that they had people in the White House running enviromental science experiments that the rest of us haven't seen. I merely meant that whoever Bush is listening to, and has write his speeches, is up to date on the scientific weaknesses in Kyoto. The administration was also well informed enough not to dismiss the whole global warming concern as crap just because they didn't like the specifics in Kyoto. Despite the science window dressing, I think that Kyoto was "killed" for political reasons (although very good ones as far as the U.S. is concerned); but at least the science window dressing was reasonably well informed science window dressing. Better than I can say for some of the crap that I ran across in _Earth_in_the_Balance_; though to be fair to my former senator, I only read about half the book.
flashms010 claims: "Here are some things science (in general) has given us: windmills,iron, steel, computers, telephones, electricity, lots of great drugs, atomic energy / bomb, rockets, you might be able to think of a few more."
SCIENCE didn't give us those things; ENGINEERING did. And if you want that climate changed, just give us the go ahead and we'll do that too. Dam the Strait of Gibraltar? Put a sea in the Sahara? Start a new Ice Age? All it takes is money.
flashms0101 then asks: "And has he even assigned a science advisor yet!?"
He nominated John H. Marburger III last month. Even without a science advisor, it is clear from the content of the speech he gave last month in the Rose Garden when he discussed the Kyoto accord (http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/06/2 0010611-2.html) that he has people on his staff who understand science.
"A scientist can discover a new star but he cannot make one. He would have to ask an engineer to do it for him." -Gordon L. Glegg
The problem I have with "each person pitches a contribution (intellectual, labor, economic, whatever) into the pot, and then we all share the fruit of the project" is that each person pitches what THEY WANT to contribute into the pot. To a lot of people that is pictures of their cat.
I don't want to share a bunch of personal feelings, strange rants on UFOs, and pictures of people's pets. I want more good music, useful data, provactive fiction, and maybe even some pin-ups of cute girls; and I'm willing to pay for them on the internet just as much as I am anywhere else. Those things take effort to produce, and have value in other media forms (CDs, books, etc.) so people need to have an incentive (probably an economic one) to create them and post more of them on the web. I'll be willing to post more useful stuff too (instead of this relatively valueless opinion piece) if people would compensate me for it.
In a capitalist Internet, where people are rewarded for good content, each of us would have an incentive to "pitch in" something that someone else would find valuable. And the people who are already pitching in valuable content would suddenly have more resouces to produce even better content (or buy themselves something nice, perhaps someone else's content... or a new car).
If the Internet is supposed to be a work of art, like a quilt or something, then the "pitch in what you want" socialist method is fine. But I think the Internet could be sooooo much more; if there were an effective* way to provide positive feedback to the content providers so it became "pitch in more of that good stuff that I find useful and in return I'll give you something you will find useful**".
Of course, an effective means of rewarding good content doesn't prevent people from posting pictures of their cat (I am assuming no one wants to pay to see images of Fluffy the kitten in a party hat... but I could be wrong, there are no doubt plenty of strange niche markets in the world), if they want to; so the artistic "community quilt" sort of feeling can still remain alongside the more valuable content.
* I realize people have been working on this for a while; I just don't feel that the true "capitalist Internet" is a reality... yet.
** Whether that useful reward is "here is some money" or "I'll pay attention to your advertisers" or something else entirely; I don't know.
I see a lot of different versions of two complaints. First, you have some people complaining that they want the information on the Internet for free, or the related complaint that somehow they already paid for the content on the internet when the paid their ISP or computer manufacturer*. Second, you have some people complaining that there is little or no good content on the Internet to pay for. There is a very strong connection between these! It is the problem of "How do producers in a non-market based economy know what to produce?" If people don't get paid for what they produce, or if they are paid the same amount regardless of how much their product is needed or wanted, then the producers are only going to produce what they (or the people bossing them around, in communism)want. Only by chance will that be what people need. If, as is so often the case now, content providers get no money in return for their efforts then they are going to post what THEY want to, not necessarily what WE want them to. That is why the Internet is full of people's opinions and pictures of their pets.
If there were a better way for the content provider's to be financially rewarded based on the success of their content, then there would be a lot better content on the Internet. Personally that can't come too soon as far as I am concerned. I don't know if it will be a micropayment system where people pay with money, or a better advertising system where people pay with their attention, or both, or something different. Whatever form it takes, as soon as there is a more effective way for wealth to flow from the people using content on the Internet to people who create it, then the quality and variety of content on the Internet will increase quickly as they (and a sudden influx of new, greedy content providers) try to figure out what content they could create that the rest of us would be willing to spend our wealth on.
Of course, some of this commerce is already going on. One of my younger brother's pays a subscription to access Steve Jackson Game's Pyramid e-zine that is published on the Internet (to paying customers only) every Friday, and he is quite happy with the arrangement. Many other companies and organizations, from pornographers to Jane's Defense Weekly have their own pay-to-access sites; but I think there is a lot of room for improvment.
For those people who don't want to pay for content and also don't want advertisements, I have no sympathy for them. If the writers, editors, photographers, managers, and capitalists who are responsible for generating quality content are providing a useful service to you, then they deserve to be compensated. I know some generous or concerned (or insecure?) people provide good content for free; just as even under socialism or communism a few people will try to figure out how to make good, useful products to satisfy their work ethic (or other reasons). But if we can figure out how to make providing good content** profitable, a lot more people will get in that business and those already in it will have better feedback and more resources to continue their work. If anyone reading this still believes content should be free or wonders why the content on the Internet doesn't seem to live up to its promise, then perhaps they should read something by F.A. Hayek or Milton Friedmen; they can explain "the invisible hand" much better than I.
Of course I'm sure people will want assurances that the content is good before they finish the transaction, but that is a problem all merchants have to solve; and I'm sure anyone who wants to make a profit by providing useful content will figure something out... or at least one of their competitors will. To use the SJGames example from earlier, Pyramid relies on a combination of free sample issues and the reputation of the provider to convince people to subscribe. And of course they have to keep providing good content of people wouldn't resubscribe.
* I'm not sure how people think that money is supposed to get from their ISP or computer retailer into the hands of the content providers; but I promise I have heard that opinion spouted by several people.
** I know there will be some discussion of what "good content" is, but for these purposes I assume that if you aren't willing to part with some hard earned greenbacks (or whatever funny color the currency is where you are) for the information, text, summary, pictures, data, music, results, etc. then it can't be that good.
I made the same suggestion to Dr. Stanley Borowski, who is doing great things with nuclear propulsion at the Glenn Research Center, at a conference a couple of years ago. He explained to me that they (I assumed by "they" that he meant either NASA in general or at least the nuclear propulsion community at Glenn) figured that they would not be able to keep the press and the protesters from figuring out that they were launching radioactive material just by changing the name, and that it was better to be up front about it and get bad press for the radioactivity than to try to be sneaky with the American people and then get in trouble for both the radioactivity AND for trying to deceive the public by renaming the technology.
I suppose that the right thing to do is to convince people on the merits of the technology, but if it were up to me I'd still change the name. I learned from Nadar's _Unsafe_at_Any_Speed_ which wins out in the public's mind: hype or technological merits. Then again, perhaps Dr. Borowski's efforts will pay off; I do seem to remember an AP poll a couple of months ago that claimed nuclear power had a greater than 50% approval rating.
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I disagree. First, at 40,000 ft. you have a lot less air friction than you do at sea level. The air friction in the darn dense soup we have for an atmosphere is significant in getting to space. One rule of thumb I have seen is that air friction costs you about 1000 ft./s of velocity. As bad as air friction is, climbing out of the gravity well is harder. Losses due to fighting gravity are going to be about 3 times those of fighting air friction. Assuming the rocket weighs about 6000 lbs (that's just a guess, I don't see the mass on the website), then that should save them about 300000 BTU by going to 40000 ft. by balloon. That is nothing to sneeze at; especially in the vicious cycle of rocket sizing.
Also, you have to understand that rocket engine nozzles (in the atmosphere) are designed to operate best at one particular altitude (or more correctly air pressure). If the altitude is lower than the design altitude then the gasses leaving the engine nozzle are underexpanded, and it the altitude is higher then they are overexpanded. In either case the nozzle operates less efficiently. There are various schemes to allow one nozzle to work well at both low and high altitude (like expandable or inflating nozzles) but those add weight and complexity. By launching at 40,000 ft. instead of at sea level, the change in pressure is not as dramatic through the rocket's flight and so off-design performance is reduced.
I'm not saying that this is going to revolutionize rocketry. The rockoon has been around since the 50s, and (as you point out) there are some disadvantages for using it as an orbital launch vehicle, but the X-prize isn't for going to orbit. For just a low cost sub-orbital tourist jaunt, a rockoon is not a bad choice.
"As for the metric system, wake up and smell reality. Most of the world uses the metric system these days, at least the rest of the technologically advanced world... except for your little backwater country." First of all, I think it is somewhat funny that you refer to the most productive and powerful nation on the planet as a "little backwater country." If the English(or British Gravitational or Imperial) system of units is such a handicap, then how do you explain America's general success in engineering and technical matters? At one time the argument "it is simpler because you multiply everything by 10s" would work. Now, thanks to my HP calculator, it is just as easy to multiply by 12 as it is by 10. The mistake with the Mars probe was due more to poor contractor/NASA communication, than to the units used. As an engineer who has had to use both systems, I actually find it easier to catch English unit conversion errors than metric ones. If I get a result in the metric system that is off by about a factor of 10, there is no way to know where the mistake is. If I get a result that seems to be off by about a factor of 12 while using the English system, I know to go and check that inches to feet has been converted correctly. This assumes, of course that I have a have an idea of about what the answer will be which is not always the case. Of course, the metric systems doesn't have that whole pound-mass vs. pound-force problem.
The concept was invented by James Van Allen (the same guy who invented radiation belts... or something like that) and some of his associates while they were working on sounding rockets back in the late 1940s.
. htm
Van Allen was not Canadian, he was from Iowa. I don't know where any of the other co-inventors were from. Not to say anything bad about Canada's contribution to spaceflight; by cancling the Avro Arrow, Canada freed up a lot of good engineers to come down here to the Southern part of the United States and work on the Apollo program.
More about James Van Allen: http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/spec-coll/Bai/halas.htm
More about rockoons: http://www.friends-partners.org/mwade/lvs/rockoon
Magic Machine: A Handbook of Computer Sorcery
by A.K. Dewdney
ISBN: 0716721252
It is mostly a collection of essays on computers from Scientific American. Its discussions on how computers work, how they don't work, and how to think about computers will probably still be relevent 50 years from now. The April Fools computer joke about the archeological dig of an ancient rope and pulley computer is great, too.
Would you rather we do it the traditional way? I happen to think the idea of waging the Cold War through economic warfare and propoganda was a brilliant way to avoid WW3. Of course the hundreds of millions of people who had to suffer for decades under communism because we took the "easy, clever way out" instead of confronting their tyrants directly may not agree; but, considering how sick of war and death the world must have been after WW2, who can blame Truman and the other leaders for coming up with a less violent alternative.
There is a great story I heard, but cannot remember the source. I cannot find any verification of it either; but it is so appropriate I will repeat it despite it's uncertain accuracy: It was back in the 80s and the USSR knew it was falling behind the US in the arms race; Reagan's administration was just begining to promote SDI and the B2. The upper levels of the Soviet military knew that they could not afford to upgrade all their ICBMs and their entire air defense network to counter these threats. They had begun studying the possibility of conducting a surprise first strike against NATO before they fell too far behind; and the Soviet Generals and their staff were working long hours considering the details. Even though these military men couldn't talk about the details of their work, many of their families knew some new dangerous twist in the Cold War was brewing from the long hours the men were putting in and the stress they where obviously under. Finally one night when one particular Soviet General got home he found his young son crying. When he asked his son why he was crying the boy said it was because he feared that they would soon be at war with the United States, and then the boy pleaded with his father for Russia not to go to war with the U.S. saying* "We can't bomb America daddy... that's where Mickey Mouse lives." At that moment, the General realized that he, the other Soviet Generals, and all their advisers studying the 1st strike plan were wrong; the war they were planning for was already over. It had been fought, and they had lost without ever realising it had happened; because the next generation of Russian children would not grow up thinking of the "evil capitalist West" as their enemy. Does anyone know where this story came from, and if there is any truth to it? I would love to know, but have been unable to find any references to it.
I suppose we in the West may be cowards because we are following a similar economic and cultural "engagement" in China that keeps them from profiting from waging war against us; while over a billion people live as property of their gov't "leaders" as we patiently look for a solution that doesn't envolve large scale death and slaughter. Hopefully history will not look too poorly on us for trying to be clever in our fights against despotism instead of being brave.
Or perhaps you are confusing the current trends toward reducing trade restrictions, combined with the effectivness of US many businesses in winning market share to be a form of "economic war." Funny, I don't see people protesting because Airbus has picked up too much market share away from Boeing, or because too many American kids are watching a Japanese cartoon, or because yoga is replacing "aerobics" in American gyms... Globalism is a 2 way street; so get out there and start spreading your own memes. May the best ones win.
*in Russian, obviously
>Arms Control in general is viewed as a Bad Thing (TM). Interesting; can you recommend any papers or books that discuss this in more detail? >In reality, it will be like the B2; The real goal of the B2 was to make th USSR have to spend HUNDREDS of more (in percent GNP) to revamp and improve their radars and air defense net than we spent on making the planes; and I think they did a darn good job of it.
I agree. I have had dealings with local, state, and national govt. organizations, and the further away from accountability (i.e. the voters) the bureaucrats and politicians are the more screwed up and wasteful their projects are (I have had no dealings with the UN other than reading some of their delusional reports; I shudder to think how screwed up they are). I want libraries and schools and art and help for the needy; I just don't think that the proper place for it to be done is at the federal gov't level.
It seems like every time there is a problem in society; everyone wants to know what the President is going to do to solve it, instead of asking what is the right way for US to solve the problem. I guess that is is just easier than doing real work. To put it in a way more easily understood on slashdot: Would you rather run a piece of software developed by Congress or a group of Federal bureaucrats or one developed by a bunch of people in the open source community that just spent their time and money on the project because they thought it was important and wanted to do it? For a group that takes personal responsibility for fixing computer problems and is very consious about trying to figure out the right way or the best social structure for solving IT problems, I am surprised how many people have the opposite view to other problems in society.
> This is a ploy to keep the research going
o ar.htm and http://www.friends-partners.org/mwade/craft/mol.ht m ). They would have had a space shuttle and a space station sometime around 1970.
I agree, this does not appear to be an attempt to develop a great new weapon. Unmanned missles combined with a network of good real-time spy sats would do the job cheaper. 300k ft. is too far up for the advantage of having a human doing target aquisition directly to be significant; and the cost per target destroyed by such a Space Bomber would be huge. It is almost certainly an attempt by the Pentagon to keep the research dollars flowing to the X-33. It may be because (like the rest of us) there are a lot of people in high places at the Dept. of Defense (especially in the USAF) with bookshelves of science fiction and dreams of humanity exploring the stars (in well armed ships, of course, just in case something else is there ahead of us) that are using their positions to keep the space research going. It may be because the research for the X-33 was supposed to produce developments usable on future (probably black) military programs in addition to civilian SSTO programs, and the military doesn't want to lose that potentially useful research platform (the data collected on hypersonic flow and heating by the X-15 is still useful today). I actually hope that it is the latter. I hate the thought of Pentagon officials abusing their position (not that that has never happened before) to fund a program just because they think it is "cool" or "sexy" (even though I agree with them) instead of because it is the best way to do their jobs. The real answer is probably a little of both factors.
You know, I have often wondered what would have happened if the Air Force had been given the funding to complete the DynaSoar and MOL programs ( http://www.friends-partners.org/mwade/craft/dynas
Of course we have had the technology to make technically* workable fusion power plants for quite some time. You just build a geothermal-style power plant in someone else's back yard. You then drop a Hydrogen Bomb... er... I mean "fusion powered heat generating device" down a deep shaft and set it off. The heat released is recovered in a method similar to the way geothermal power plants work. Two H-bomb sites... er... I mean "heat recovery areas" would be needed for continous electricity generation so that one would be functioning while the other was being prepared for the next detonation... er... I mean "heat release event". I can't find the source of this design, but I know it has been around for a while.
* I doubt it would be economically workable; and that is the important measure of a power plant. It certainly isn't politically workable; it would undermine non-proliferation efforts by introdicing the idea of non-military H-bombs.
"is this a reference to the Nazi project in Philip K. Dick's Man in the High Castle?"
No, I haven't read that book. It is a reference to a proposal in Willey (or Willy) Ley's book _Engineer's_Dreams_. Considering that Ley was German, I suspect Philip K. Dick took the idea of the Nazi project from him also. Ley's book is out of print, but worth looking at (IMHO) if you can find a copy at a library or used book store.
"I wouldn't go executing all the scientists just yet. "
Oh, I wasn't proposing that we do; I was just pointing out that Scientists tend to go from specific applications (like experiments and observations) to general knowlege (theories and "laws") while it is the Engineers that are the ones who go from general knowlege (usually, but not always the ones the scientists developed previously) to specific applications (products, like you listed). It is, as you point out, semantics; real people rarely fit neatly into either category. In reality almost all engineers are also trained in the scientific method; and I have known plenty of scientists who were also very good engineers. If I had to pick a profession to excecute, it certainly wouldn't be the scientists. I also wanted to subtly suggest that if science can discover and accurately model how man is accidentally altering the climate (and perhaps even if they can't), then those principles can be used to deliberately engineer changes. Not something I think we will be ready to try anytime soon; but it may be something we need to do eventually.
"Portuguese ditch diggers would dam the Strait of Gibraltar." True, it was improper of me to overlook the tradesmen (who, in practice, also overlap with the other 2 categories).
"it doesn't look like Bush did anything more than parrot the Kyoto accord dissenters"
I wasn't suggesting that they had people in the White House running enviromental science experiments that the rest of us haven't seen. I merely meant that whoever Bush is listening to, and has write his speeches, is up to date on the scientific weaknesses in Kyoto. The administration was also well informed enough not to dismiss the whole global warming concern as crap just because they didn't like the specifics in Kyoto. Despite the science window dressing, I think that Kyoto was "killed" for political reasons (although very good ones as far as the U.S. is concerned); but at least the science window dressing was reasonably well informed science window dressing. Better than I can say for some of the crap that I ran across in _Earth_in_the_Balance_; though to be fair to my former senator, I only read about half the book.
flashms010 claims: "Here are some things science (in general) has given us: windmills,iron, steel, computers, telephones, electricity, lots of great drugs, atomic energy / bomb, rockets, you might be able to think of a few more."
2 0010611-2.html) that he has people on his staff who understand science.
SCIENCE didn't give us those things; ENGINEERING did. And if you want that climate changed, just give us the go ahead and we'll do that too. Dam the Strait of Gibraltar? Put a sea in the Sahara? Start a new Ice Age? All it takes is money.
flashms0101 then asks: "And has he even assigned a science advisor yet!?"
He nominated John H. Marburger III last month. Even without a science advisor, it is clear from the content of the speech he gave last month in the Rose Garden when he discussed the Kyoto accord (http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/06/
"A scientist can discover a new star but he cannot make one. He would have to ask an engineer to do it for him." -Gordon L. Glegg
The problem I have with "each person pitches a contribution (intellectual, labor, economic, whatever) into the pot, and then we all share the fruit of the project" is that each person pitches what THEY WANT to contribute into the pot. To a lot of people that is pictures of their cat. I don't want to share a bunch of personal feelings, strange rants on UFOs, and pictures of people's pets. I want more good music, useful data, provactive fiction, and maybe even some pin-ups of cute girls; and I'm willing to pay for them on the internet just as much as I am anywhere else. Those things take effort to produce, and have value in other media forms (CDs, books, etc.) so people need to have an incentive (probably an economic one) to create them and post more of them on the web. I'll be willing to post more useful stuff too (instead of this relatively valueless opinion piece) if people would compensate me for it. In a capitalist Internet, where people are rewarded for good content, each of us would have an incentive to "pitch in" something that someone else would find valuable. And the people who are already pitching in valuable content would suddenly have more resouces to produce even better content (or buy themselves something nice, perhaps someone else's content... or a new car). If the Internet is supposed to be a work of art, like a quilt or something, then the "pitch in what you want" socialist method is fine. But I think the Internet could be sooooo much more; if there were an effective* way to provide positive feedback to the content providers so it became "pitch in more of that good stuff that I find useful and in return I'll give you something you will find useful**". Of course, an effective means of rewarding good content doesn't prevent people from posting pictures of their cat (I am assuming no one wants to pay to see images of Fluffy the kitten in a party hat... but I could be wrong, there are no doubt plenty of strange niche markets in the world), if they want to; so the artistic "community quilt" sort of feeling can still remain alongside the more valuable content. * I realize people have been working on this for a while; I just don't feel that the true "capitalist Internet" is a reality... yet. ** Whether that useful reward is "here is some money" or "I'll pay attention to your advertisers" or something else entirely; I don't know.
I see a lot of different versions of two complaints. First, you have some people complaining that they want the information on the Internet for free, or the related complaint that somehow they already paid for the content on the internet when the paid their ISP or computer manufacturer*. Second, you have some people complaining that there is little or no good content on the Internet to pay for. There is a very strong connection between these! It is the problem of "How do producers in a non-market based economy know what to produce?" If people don't get paid for what they produce, or if they are paid the same amount regardless of how much their product is needed or wanted, then the producers are only going to produce what they (or the people bossing them around, in communism)want. Only by chance will that be what people need. If, as is so often the case now, content providers get no money in return for their efforts then they are going to post what THEY want to, not necessarily what WE want them to. That is why the Internet is full of people's opinions and pictures of their pets. If there were a better way for the content provider's to be financially rewarded based on the success of their content, then there would be a lot better content on the Internet. Personally that can't come too soon as far as I am concerned. I don't know if it will be a micropayment system where people pay with money, or a better advertising system where people pay with their attention, or both, or something different. Whatever form it takes, as soon as there is a more effective way for wealth to flow from the people using content on the Internet to people who create it, then the quality and variety of content on the Internet will increase quickly as they (and a sudden influx of new, greedy content providers) try to figure out what content they could create that the rest of us would be willing to spend our wealth on. Of course, some of this commerce is already going on. One of my younger brother's pays a subscription to access Steve Jackson Game's Pyramid e-zine that is published on the Internet (to paying customers only) every Friday, and he is quite happy with the arrangement. Many other companies and organizations, from pornographers to Jane's Defense Weekly have their own pay-to-access sites; but I think there is a lot of room for improvment. For those people who don't want to pay for content and also don't want advertisements, I have no sympathy for them. If the writers, editors, photographers, managers, and capitalists who are responsible for generating quality content are providing a useful service to you, then they deserve to be compensated. I know some generous or concerned (or insecure?) people provide good content for free; just as even under socialism or communism a few people will try to figure out how to make good, useful products to satisfy their work ethic (or other reasons). But if we can figure out how to make providing good content** profitable, a lot more people will get in that business and those already in it will have better feedback and more resources to continue their work. If anyone reading this still believes content should be free or wonders why the content on the Internet doesn't seem to live up to its promise, then perhaps they should read something by F.A. Hayek or Milton Friedmen; they can explain "the invisible hand" much better than I. Of course I'm sure people will want assurances that the content is good before they finish the transaction, but that is a problem all merchants have to solve; and I'm sure anyone who wants to make a profit by providing useful content will figure something out... or at least one of their competitors will. To use the SJGames example from earlier, Pyramid relies on a combination of free sample issues and the reputation of the provider to convince people to subscribe. And of course they have to keep providing good content of people wouldn't resubscribe. * I'm not sure how people think that money is supposed to get from their ISP or computer retailer into the hands of the content providers; but I promise I have heard that opinion spouted by several people. ** I know there will be some discussion of what "good content" is, but for these purposes I assume that if you aren't willing to part with some hard earned greenbacks (or whatever funny color the currency is where you are) for the information, text, summary, pictures, data, music, results, etc. then it can't be that good.
I made the same suggestion to Dr. Stanley Borowski, who is doing great things with nuclear propulsion at the Glenn Research Center, at a conference a couple of years ago. He explained to me that they (I assumed by "they" that he meant either NASA in general or at least the nuclear propulsion community at Glenn) figured that they would not be able to keep the press and the protesters from figuring out that they were launching radioactive material just by changing the name, and that it was better to be up front about it and get bad press for the radioactivity than to try to be sneaky with the American people and then get in trouble for both the radioactivity AND for trying to deceive the public by renaming the technology. I suppose that the right thing to do is to convince people on the merits of the technology, but if it were up to me I'd still change the name. I learned from Nadar's _Unsafe_at_Any_Speed_ which wins out in the public's mind: hype or technological merits. Then again, perhaps Dr. Borowski's efforts will pay off; I do seem to remember an AP poll a couple of months ago that claimed nuclear power had a greater than 50% approval rating.