You laugh, but most people are not Bill Gates - and even he knows he was lucky and smart, not just smart.
What you should be considering is the effect of "taxing the rich" on new businesses. I create (on average) a new business every two years. I have created a lot of new jobs, given people opportunities that simply did not exist prior, etc, etc. When I start a business, it is typically not profitable for 2-3 years (for those doing the math, yes, I try to have at least 3 businesses going at any point in time - remember, starting a business is high risk). So I go 2-3 years with no pay, and then get all my pay in the last years when the company is finally profitable.
So, when my income is $0, I pay no taxes at a very low rate. When my income is $500K, I pay maximum taxes (about half my income). So, I actually earn just over $100K a year but pay taxes at the maximum rate.
And yes, if Obama gets elected I am not doing that any more - I will just retire. (Obama is raising taxes over 50% - that is insane, and I will not be their slave)
Why would it be impossible to use light amplification and split the light into "inside" and "outside" parts. That way, for the cost of a little energy you can see and not be seen.
Interestingly enough, I do know someone that won the lottery - but do not know anyone that was beaten by a cop. The only "cop abuse" story that I have first hand info on was a cop that was put away for a long time for what he did...
Perhaps you need different friends... at least luckier ones!
Well, yes, but it is far more likely that Joe will dump his inferior product and sell mine - which sort of amounts to the same thing...
My point was that marketing matters - not what form it would take. (Look at how real markets work - inventor makes great product, sells it to large corp that markets it. Drugs, software, and many other markets follow this pattern.)
And how much did you spend giving away treatments? A thousand people, so you added probably a few million dollars of up front cost to your program. Now you can't afford to pay the manufacturing bill - so you go into bankruptcy, and no one gets the cure.
A few million would buy a Super Bowl spot! If you have millions of dollars and no accountability, obviously marketing will not be your primary concern. But for the rest of us, it is!
(No startup can afford that type of marketing unless they are extremely well funded, or their product is extremely inexpensive and requires multiple purchases.)
Turn it around - which is better: the cookie that brings a lot of yumminess to the ten people that buy it, or the cookie that brings mediocre yumminess to millions?
Would you suggest that a product which is garbage but has a good advertising campaign is actually a better product?
While on it's face this seems to beg the answer no, there are times when the correct answer is yes. For example:
If I make a drug that saves the lives of all cancer patients, 100% success rate, but can't market my way out of a box, I save no one.
If Joe makes a drug that only saves half the people, but he can market like no one else, he saves millions of lives - and makes enough money to buy my product, and market it as well.
Creating the great product is only half the work - matching up products with customers is a lot harder than people think. When I am evaluating a new business venture, the first question I ask is "how will you get customers?"
Throwing stuff away saves on labor on current designs, because (as you say) the current designs are extreme cutting edge.
What we need to do is take a 1960s design, cut the rated payload in half, update all the materials to more recent stuff, and use the mass savings to make it reusable - as in old truck reuseable.
Why are we trying for a minimum mass solution when mass has no bearing on cost?
If you ignore the political ramifications (and you want to spend several billion anyway), it is good for LEO and out. Up to LEO, it could do the mission, but the environmentalists would eat you alive - probably with good reason. Containment just isn't likely to be very good in a minimum mass engine, especially if something goes wrong.
Personally, I think there are better ways to spend a billion dollars to improve space access. I'm currently spending my own money on one - we'll see how that works out, but there are a lot of other smart people working on the LEO problem; one of us is going to solve it.
A wise man once said: "You cannot decrease the cost of space access by spending a lot of money." I believe there is a lot of truth to that - you need a cash conservative organization to make it cheap.
Really cool technology. Totally impractical, mainly for political reasons.
If you gave me one for deep space missions, I would use it. But I wouldn't pay for it - and it really does nothing for the real problem, going from Earth to LEO.
Obviously, you have never designed a rocket. Fortunately I have!
Here are the real equations:
delta-v = 9.8 * Isp * ln(launch_mass/orbit_mass)
delta-v to orbit is about 9000 m/s
Isp is an engine parameter. Simple Lox/Kerosene engines come in around 350s, complex lox/hydrogen engines come in around 450s. (Rocket engines do not run stochiometric, they run fuel rich - the reasons are complex, but essentially hydrogen is better at converting heat into thrust than water.)
So you need 14 pounds of propellant for every pound of orbited mass. of that 14 pounds of propellant, about 3/4 are LOX - which is essentially free (pennies per pound in large quantities). So really you are paying for 10 pounds of kerosene, about $5 or so.
Now, for real rockets it ends up closer to $20 per pound, because 1) rockets tend to use more expensive liquid hydrogen, and 2) rockets stage, which is slightly fuel inefficient.
But my original numbers are correct. Yours are wrong - or at least misrepresented. 5.5 kg of propellant, 3/4 of which is LOX would not get you to orbit, but would cost about $1.
Um, no. It costs $20 per pound delivered to orbit for rocket propellant. Since only, say, 1/4 of that is payload, say the true cost of propellant is $80 per pound of payload in orbit.
The vast majority of rocket launch expense is human salaries. The next largest expense is the expendable hardware. The propellant costs are down in the noise, approximately the same price as the celebration pizza party.
If you want to lower the cost of space access, don't bother with the engine technology - launch more often (so those salaries can be spread across more launches and people can get better at there jobs), and don't throw so much away (the shuttle throws away almost as much hardware as an expendable rocket).
Except that you can never really know the side effects - we don't really know what global warming will do, for example.
All I am saying, is that anything that you are not willing to do to combat global warming shows something that you prioritize higher than global warming. I'm not making any judgment on reasonability - you are doing that.
If global warming was a bad enough threat - surely you remember the "hockey stick" curve, where we pass the point of no return in 6 months and we all die a year later? (some exaggeration added) If we were facing that, then acting now (even blindly) would be better than not acting. (Leadership and military training studies show that acting is better than not acting in those situations - torpedoes be damnded and all).
You are saying we are not in that situation. I'm saying that is your belief (one I share), but that there are other beliefs out there. And if someone says that global warming will kill us all and will not allow nuclear reactors to be built, they have a low opinion of human life.
True enough - but as your example shows, you are saying that the spider is lower risk than the bullet.
So, in this case, global warming is apparently lower perceived risk than the dolphins dying - taking you out of option 1 and putting you into option 2.
If you really think global warming will kill you all, then any side effects are of secondary concern - go nuclear, kill all the dolphins be damned.
If you think global warming is going to annoy us all, side effects are questions to be answered - go study, weigh the economics, look for good and bad in it.
If global warming is your religion, side effects must be zero - you will not accept any solution not your own.
Not only that, but the most likely interpretation of the data says that the astronauts did survive Challenger, all the way to ground impact. If the shuttle had had survival capsules with parachutes for the crew, they would have survived - humans are very hardy, and have survived 20G+_reentries.
When designing a system that pushes the envelope, you want to make it survive with a minimum set of stuff working. Ask yourself "what is the absolute minimum set of working equipment that gives me an alive crew?" Then work on decreasing the number of systems in the answer.
1) Mission profiles don't really change - you don't need to throttle, you only need "go" and "abort". Solids are much more simple than liquids, so that can be simpler and therefore safer.
2) You can shut down a solid - the shuttle SRMs were only allowed in the baseline design because they could be shut down in flight. Other solids that have flown have been shut down for precision orbital insertion - all you do is vent the engine (normally by blowing the forward panel). The problem with the shuttle is that the first attempt didn't work (it would have shook the shuttle to pieces), and there wasn't any money to continue the work.
SRBs do have their challenges, but the ones you mention are not really the hard parts.
Interestingly enough - it was survivable. The astronauts (at least some of them) were alive until impact. The shuttle just didn't have very good "final redundancy" measures - because such things would greatly effect the payload capability.
First they came for the oil companies, no one spoke out because oil companies were unpopular - then they came for me.
This is an EXTREMELY dangerous precedent - it would most likely (and I kid you not) totally destroy our economy. I know I would instantly move all my business (and my family) overseas... if a congressman can steal money from anyone unpopular, they will select targets and steal, until there is no one left. This is exactly what people go to war over.
That's fine, if we decide to do that. But how long will they stay in power using the slogan:
We cost you more at the pump so that the environment will be preserved.
They have enacted an environmental tax. That should not be allowed to be used as the excuse for "profit taxes" on oil company investors, let alone nationalization of the oil industry.
You jest, but why is this dismissed out of hand? If zinc really did get expensive, and really was impossible to replace - why wouldn't we at least mine the moon and mars? Sure, it would cost a lot - but we are already conceding the highly unlikely irreplacibility and rarity of zinc. By the time we mine it all out if the Earth, space access costs will be very low...
By the way, my day job is with a company that is building commercial, manned, orbital space flight - so I certainly will let you know!;-}
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You laugh, but most people are not Bill Gates - and even he knows he was lucky and smart, not just smart.
What you should be considering is the effect of "taxing the rich" on new businesses. I create (on average) a new business every two years. I have created a lot of new jobs, given people opportunities that simply did not exist prior, etc, etc. When I start a business, it is typically not profitable for 2-3 years (for those doing the math, yes, I try to have at least 3 businesses going at any point in time - remember, starting a business is high risk). So I go 2-3 years with no pay, and then get all my pay in the last years when the company is finally profitable.
So, when my income is $0, I pay no taxes at a very low rate. When my income is $500K, I pay maximum taxes (about half my income). So, I actually earn just over $100K a year but pay taxes at the maximum rate.
And yes, if Obama gets elected I am not doing that any more - I will just retire. (Obama is raising taxes over 50% - that is insane, and I will not be their slave)
Why would it be impossible to use light amplification and split the light into "inside" and "outside" parts. That way, for the cost of a little energy you can see and not be seen.
Really? I read that one as a challenge of sorts...
Interestingly enough, I do know someone that won the lottery - but do not know anyone that was beaten by a cop. The only "cop abuse" story that I have first hand info on was a cop that was put away for a long time for what he did...
Perhaps you need different friends... at least luckier ones!
Well, yes, but it is far more likely that Joe will dump his inferior product and sell mine - which sort of amounts to the same thing...
My point was that marketing matters - not what form it would take. (Look at how real markets work - inventor makes great product, sells it to large corp that markets it. Drugs, software, and many other markets follow this pattern.)
And how much did you spend giving away treatments? A thousand people, so you added probably a few million dollars of up front cost to your program. Now you can't afford to pay the manufacturing bill - so you go into bankruptcy, and no one gets the cure.
A few million would buy a Super Bowl spot! If you have millions of dollars and no accountability, obviously marketing will not be your primary concern. But for the rest of us, it is!
(No startup can afford that type of marketing unless they are extremely well funded, or their product is extremely inexpensive and requires multiple purchases.)
Turn it around - which is better: the cookie that brings a lot of yumminess to the ten people that buy it, or the cookie that brings mediocre yumminess to millions?
Would you suggest that a product which is garbage but has a good advertising campaign is actually a better product?
While on it's face this seems to beg the answer no, there are times when the correct answer is yes. For example:
If I make a drug that saves the lives of all cancer patients, 100% success rate, but can't market my way out of a box, I save no one.
If Joe makes a drug that only saves half the people, but he can market like no one else, he saves millions of lives - and makes enough money to buy my product, and market it as well.
Creating the great product is only half the work - matching up products with customers is a lot harder than people think. When I am evaluating a new business venture, the first question I ask is "how will you get customers?"
Throwing stuff away saves on labor on current designs, because (as you say) the current designs are extreme cutting edge.
What we need to do is take a 1960s design, cut the rated payload in half, update all the materials to more recent stuff, and use the mass savings to make it reusable - as in old truck reuseable.
Why are we trying for a minimum mass solution when mass has no bearing on cost?
If you ignore the political ramifications (and you want to spend several billion anyway), it is good for LEO and out. Up to LEO, it could do the mission, but the environmentalists would eat you alive - probably with good reason. Containment just isn't likely to be very good in a minimum mass engine, especially if something goes wrong.
Personally, I think there are better ways to spend a billion dollars to improve space access. I'm currently spending my own money on one - we'll see how that works out, but there are a lot of other smart people working on the LEO problem; one of us is going to solve it.
A wise man once said: "You cannot decrease the cost of space access by spending a lot of money." I believe there is a lot of truth to that - you need a cash conservative organization to make it cheap.
My take:
Really cool technology. Totally impractical, mainly for political reasons.
If you gave me one for deep space missions, I would use it. But I wouldn't pay for it - and it really does nothing for the real problem, going from Earth to LEO.
It's not wreckless if you crash.
(Laugh, its a joke!)
True that - it is often said that we dream of having fuel costs matter in this industry!
(Actually, right now the airline industry launch costs are almost entirely fuel!)
Obviously, you have never designed a rocket. Fortunately I have!
Here are the real equations:
delta-v = 9.8 * Isp * ln(launch_mass/orbit_mass)
delta-v to orbit is about 9000 m/s
Isp is an engine parameter. Simple Lox/Kerosene engines come in around 350s, complex lox/hydrogen engines come in around 450s. (Rocket engines do not run stochiometric, they run fuel rich - the reasons are complex, but essentially hydrogen is better at converting heat into thrust than water.)
OK, so let's do some numbers:
9000 = 9.8 * 350 * ln(launch_mass/orbit_mass)
ln(launch_mass/orbit_mass) = 2.62
launch_mass/orbit_mass = 14
So you need 14 pounds of propellant for every pound of orbited mass. of that 14 pounds of propellant, about 3/4 are LOX - which is essentially free (pennies per pound in large quantities). So really you are paying for 10 pounds of kerosene, about $5 or so.
Now, for real rockets it ends up closer to $20 per pound, because 1) rockets tend to use more expensive liquid hydrogen, and 2) rockets stage, which is slightly fuel inefficient.
But my original numbers are correct. Yours are wrong - or at least misrepresented. 5.5 kg of propellant, 3/4 of which is LOX would not get you to orbit, but would cost about $1.
Um, no. It costs $20 per pound delivered to orbit for rocket propellant. Since only, say, 1/4 of that is payload, say the true cost of propellant is $80 per pound of payload in orbit.
The vast majority of rocket launch expense is human salaries. The next largest expense is the expendable hardware. The propellant costs are down in the noise, approximately the same price as the celebration pizza party.
If you want to lower the cost of space access, don't bother with the engine technology - launch more often (so those salaries can be spread across more launches and people can get better at there jobs), and don't throw so much away (the shuttle throws away almost as much hardware as an expendable rocket).
Except that you can never really know the side effects - we don't really know what global warming will do, for example.
All I am saying, is that anything that you are not willing to do to combat global warming shows something that you prioritize higher than global warming. I'm not making any judgment on reasonability - you are doing that.
If global warming was a bad enough threat - surely you remember the "hockey stick" curve, where we pass the point of no return in 6 months and we all die a year later? (some exaggeration added) If we were facing that, then acting now (even blindly) would be better than not acting. (Leadership and military training studies show that acting is better than not acting in those situations - torpedoes be damnded and all).
You are saying we are not in that situation. I'm saying that is your belief (one I share), but that there are other beliefs out there. And if someone says that global warming will kill us all and will not allow nuclear reactors to be built, they have a low opinion of human life.
True enough - but as your example shows, you are saying that the spider is lower risk than the bullet.
So, in this case, global warming is apparently lower perceived risk than the dolphins dying - taking you out of option 1 and putting you into option 2.
You give away your bias too easily...
If you really think global warming will kill you all, then any side effects are of secondary concern - go nuclear, kill all the dolphins be damned.
If you think global warming is going to annoy us all, side effects are questions to be answered - go study, weigh the economics, look for good and bad in it.
If global warming is your religion, side effects must be zero - you will not accept any solution not your own.
Not only that, but the most likely interpretation of the data says that the astronauts did survive Challenger, all the way to ground impact. If the shuttle had had survival capsules with parachutes for the crew, they would have survived - humans are very hardy, and have survived 20G+_reentries.
When designing a system that pushes the envelope, you want to make it survive with a minimum set of stuff working. Ask yourself "what is the absolute minimum set of working equipment that gives me an alive crew?" Then work on decreasing the number of systems in the answer.
SRBs are not really that bad:
1) Mission profiles don't really change - you don't need to throttle, you only need "go" and "abort". Solids are much more simple than liquids, so that can be simpler and therefore safer.
2) You can shut down a solid - the shuttle SRMs were only allowed in the baseline design because they could be shut down in flight. Other solids that have flown have been shut down for precision orbital insertion - all you do is vent the engine (normally by blowing the forward panel). The problem with the shuttle is that the first attempt didn't work (it would have shook the shuttle to pieces), and there wasn't any money to continue the work.
SRBs do have their challenges, but the ones you mention are not really the hard parts.
Interestingly enough - it was survivable. The astronauts (at least some of them) were alive until impact. The shuttle just didn't have very good "final redundancy" measures - because such things would greatly effect the payload capability.
By the way, my day job is with a company that is building commercial, manned, orbital space flight - so I certainly will let you know! ;-}
Why is that? Are the laws of physics to be repealed?
I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill -9 you...
First they came for the oil companies, no one spoke out because oil companies were unpopular - then they came for me.
This is an EXTREMELY dangerous precedent - it would most likely (and I kid you not) totally destroy our economy. I know I would instantly move all my business (and my family) overseas... if a congressman can steal money from anyone unpopular, they will select targets and steal, until there is no one left. This is exactly what people go to war over.
That's fine, if we decide to do that. But how long will they stay in power using the slogan:
We cost you more at the pump so that the environment will be preserved.
They have enacted an environmental tax. That should not be allowed to be used as the excuse for "profit taxes" on oil company investors, let alone nationalization of the oil industry.
You jest, but why is this dismissed out of hand? If zinc really did get expensive, and really was impossible to replace - why wouldn't we at least mine the moon and mars? Sure, it would cost a lot - but we are already conceding the highly unlikely irreplacibility and rarity of zinc. By the time we mine it all out if the Earth, space access costs will be very low...
By the way, my day job is with a company that is building commercial, manned, orbital space flight - so I certainly will let you know! ;-}