From his ability to program computers at only 12 years old
In response to all the slashdotters saying "That's lame, I started programming way before that," I guess that in itself isn't too impressive. Heck, I started programming when I was 8 myself. However, keep in mind that Kurzweil was born in 1948, which would mean that he started learning to program with the computers of 1960. I find that a little more impressive, although there's undoubtedly also slashdotters who learned to program at a similar age and time. I find them impressive too.
To get an idea of what computers were like in 1960:
The next major step in the history of computing was the invention of the transistor in 1947. This replaced the fragile and power hungry valves with a much smaller and more reliable component. Transistorized computers are normally referred to as 'Second Generation' and dominated the late 1950s and early 1960s. By using transistors and printed circuits a significant decrease in size and power consumption was achieved, along with an increase in reliability. For example, the vacuum tube based IBM 650 of 1954 weighed over 900 kg, the attached power supply weighed around 1350 kg and both were held in separate cabinets of roughly 1.5 meters by 0.9 meters by 1.8 meters. It cost $500,000 or could be leased for $3,500 a month. (Its drum memory was originally only 2000 ten-digit words, and required arcane programming for efficient computing. This type of hardware limitation was to dominate programming for decades afterward, until the evolution of a programming model which was more sympathetic to software development.) By contrast, the transistorized IBM 1620, which replaced the 650, was the size of an office desk. Second generation computers were still expensive and were primarily used by universities, governments, and large corporations.
In 1959 IBM shipped the transistor-based IBM 7090 mainframe and medium scale IBM 1401. The latter was designed around punch card input and proved a popular general purpose computer. Some 12,000 were shipped, making it the most successful machine in computer history at the time. It used a magnetic core memory of 4000 characters (later expanded to 16,000 characters). Many aspects of its design were based on the desire to replace punched card machines which were in wide use from the 1920s through the early 1970s.
In 1960 IBM shipped the smaller, transistor-based IBM 1620, originally with only punched paper tape, but soon upgraded to punch cards. It proved a popular scientific computer and about 2,000 were shipped. It used a magnetic core memory of up to 60,000 decimal digits.
Also in 1960, DEC launched the PDP-1 their first machine intended for use by technical staff in laboratories and for research.
For those of you who don't know me - i went to columbine, i was friends with both killers and the killed, had reported the killers to the police, the cops did nothing, etc.
From Davison's blog:
Today I got a note from Brooks Brown, who if you can cast your mind back all the way to 1999 was the Columbine student who warned police deputies that Eric Harris was building pipe bombs and had threatened to kill him. "I was that guy on the show with you," he said. "Wondered a few things - first, wanted to say nice job, and it was fucked up what they did. They actually edited the show's content so my points weren't let in."
I'm not sure if that necessarily makes him an expert, but it's enough to make me interested in his thoughts on the topic.
Indeed, the LA Times recent experiment with wiki-ized editorials shows the true nature of their fear. They realized quite quickly the true power of the wiki, realizing that it was introducing true debate and discussion.
Similarly, CNET News.com just launched a wiki where readers/contributors collaborate to predict the future of India's technology industry. It's quite an interesting read so far.
Simple really: a space vehicle is always going to be expensive to build - you have very stringent quality controls and tolerance requirements, as well as exotic materials and complicated fabrication procedures. A reusable vehicle should allow you to amortize that construction cost over many flights. Imagine how much it would cost to fly from Boston to LA if they threw away the 737 after every flight.... And a 737 is a lot less complicated than a space launcher.
That logic may apply in the future, but it doesn't apply today. When you look at the something like the space shuttle or just about any other launcher, construction costs aren't the largest cost component. Rather, paying the standing army of workers, needed to get the system ready and check/repair it between launches, is the most expensive part.
During World War 2, Project Pigeon was American behaviourist B. F. Skinner's attempt to develop a pigeon-guided missile.
The control system involved a lens at the front of the missile projecting an image of the target to a screen inside, while a pigeon trained (by operant conditioning) to recognise the target pecked at it. As long as the pecks remained in the center of the screen, the missile would fly straight, but pecks off-center would cause the screen to tilt, which would then, via a connection to the missile's flight controls, cause the missile to change course.
Although skeptical of the idea, the National Defense Research Committee nevertheless contributed $25,000 to the research. However, Skinner's plans to use pigeons in Pelican missiles was apparently too radical for the military establishment; although he had some success with the training, he could not get his idea taken seriously.
He has long been struck by the fact that promised advances were not appearing as quickly as predicted. "I wondered if there was a reason for this," he says. "Perhaps there is a limit to what technology can achieve."
In an effort to find out, he plotted major innovations and scientific advances over time compared to world population, using the 7200 key innovations listed in a recently published book, The History of Science and Technology (Houghton Mifflin, 2004).
Is anyone else confused by this? Did he do anything other than show that a particular history book lists more past innovations than current ones?
Well, I've been trying to submit a story to slashdot over the past few days about a "parallel path" to government-built shuttle-derived that NASA recently announced, but I haven't had any luck. I've already had four or five variations on it rejected. Anybody have ideas on what might be wrong with the following submission?
At a recent talk, Michael Griffin outlined NASA's plans for helping to generate a robust and competitive commercial market in orbital spaceflight. The speech and Q&A transcripts from the talk are available. In a move reminiscent of the US government kickstarting the early airline industry by purchasing airmail services, NASA plans on supplementing government-derived transport by purchasing cargo delivery services to the International Space Station from commercial providers, followed by crew transportation after the systems have proven themselves. Unlike traditional government contracts, sellers wouldn't see a profit before the services are delivered and the emphasis will be on actual performance instead of process and specifications. Aviation Week has some commentary on the announcement.
We don't even know what consciousness is, so why do we look for its biological basis first?
Last I checked, not having a good definition of what "life" is didn't keep up from discovering the biochemical basis of it (DNA). 50-some years after DNA's discovery, we still aren't sure what life is.
Believe me, if they discover massive amounts of oil in antarctica, and an easy way to extract and ship it, we'll be doing it as fast as possible.
Actually, if I understand correctly, the reason is that the Madrid Protocol of 1998 put a 50 year moratorium on drilling for oil in antarctica. It actually looks like there may be a significant amount of oil there:
The 1991 Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty, also known as the Madrid Protocol, entered into force in 1998 and serves as an additional mechanism for ensuring the protection of the Antarctic environment. The Madrid Protocol goes further than the original treaty as it designates Antarctica as a natural reserve devoted to peace and science and places a moratorium on mining and drilling for oil for a minimum of 50 years. The Protocol sets forth basic principles and detailed, mandatory rules which apply to all human activities in Antarctica.
The call for an environmental protocol to the Antarctic Treaty came after scientists discovered large deposits of natural resources such as coal, natural gas and offshore oil reserves in the early 1980s. Antarctica is considered to be part of the theoretical super-continent known as Gondwanaland, which separated near the end of the Paleozoic era and consisted of South America, Africa and Australia. And, because it once was completely covered in vegetation, many scientists believe it may hold one of the last supergiant oil fields yet to be discovered. The continental shelf of Antarctica is considered to hold the region's greatest potential for oil exploration projects, and although estimates vary as to the abundance of oil in Antarctica, the Weddell and Ross Sea areas alone are expected to possess 50 billion barrels of oil - an amount roughly equivalent to that of Alaska's estimated reserves. However, Antarctica's extreme conditions make oil field accessibility in many areas economically problematic.
You just have to hope some Congressman or a President doesn't wake up one day and say to themselves, we've been throwing all this money at NASA and getting nothing for it, maybe we should throw some of it Burt's way just to see what he can do with it.
You have to be careful there. A big part of the reason Burt Rutan did so well with so little is because he was operating in a competitive atmosphere with a funding source that he was directly accountable to. If you just give him billion dollar cost-plus government contracts and all the paperwork which goes along with it, I guarantee that in a matter of years his organization will be just as inefficient and bloated as that of the traditional aerospace companies.
I'll take Burt hands down. I'm never gonna make it to the ISS, Burt maybe I have a chance to at least get in to space for a reasonable price.
Burt Rutan is cool and all, but as far as inexpensive commercial orbital spaceflight goes, I suspect Elon Musk's SpaceX is going to be first. They've already announced their intent to compete for America's Space Prize.
(The following is from a slashdot story I've tried submitting variations on a few times over the past few days, which has gotten rejected repeatedly for whatever reason. Since it's relevant to the topic of what NASA's planning on doing once the shuttle is retired, I'm posting it here)
At a recent talk, Michael Griffin outlined NASA's plans for helping to generate a robust and competitive commercial market in orbital spaceflight. The speech and Q&A transcripts from the talk are available. In a move reminiscent of the US government kickstarting the early airline industry by purchasing airmail services, NASA plans on purchasing cargo delivery services to the International Space Station from commercial providers, followed by crew transportation after the systems have proven themselves. Unlike traditional government contracts, sellers wouldn't see a profit before the services are delivered and the emphasis will be on actual performance instead of process and specifications. Non-traditional space companies such as SpaceX and t/Space have found Griffin's remarks encouraging, and Aviation Week has some commentary.
Glenn Reynolds (i.e. the Instapundit) recently wrote a piece for Tech Central Station on the failure of the Planetary Society's Cosmos 1, which I thought was quite well-said. Here's a quote:
Some might accuse [Planetary Society directory] Friedman of putting a Pollyannaish spin on things, but I'd say he's learned the most important lesson of all: It's hard to accomplish much if you're afraid to fail.
The history of success in all sorts of endeavors -- including the early days of space travel, when we were making rapid progress -- is a history of repeated failures. I don't think it's a coincidence that when the failure rate declined, so did our rate of progress. You learn from failure, and you learn from trying lots of different things. Unfortunately, fear of failure -- like fear in general -- is contagious. But fortunately, so is bravery. When people act unafraid of failure, other people may pick up on the message.
The Planetary Society's mission was, really, a failure: It was supposed to test solar sails, and it never got the chance. But, simply by happening, and by having the Planetary Society emerge with its head bloody, but unbowed, it accomplished something useful by opening up (metaphorical) space for others to try risky but low-cost approaches without worrying too much about the fallout. And that's good.
Because, as I've noted before, when you're not afraid of failure you can try lots of different things and figure out what works best. If you're afraid of failing, on the other hand, you build huge, process-laden, documentation-heavy, behemoths that -- in a way -- are already failures before they ever start because they're too hard to change and improve, and because they don't generate enough useful knowledge to allow further progress. (See, e.g., the Space Shuttle program).
The Planetary Society's launch, despite Lou Friedman's views, failed. But the approach it embodied is the only approach that's likely to achieve substantial success in the long run. And that's a kind of success in itself. Let's hope that we'll see more of this sort of thing in the future.
Yeah... futarchy is a great idea, but it'll take some work to figure out how to introduce it to people in a way that doesn't lead to knee-jerk reactions like yours.
Democracies often fail to aggregate information, while speculative markets excel at this task. We consider a new form of governance, wherein voters would say what we want, but speculators would say how to get it. Elected representatives would oversee the after-the-fact measurement of national welfare, while market speculators would say which policies they expect to raise national welfare. Those who recommend policies that regressions suggest will raise GDP should be willing to endorse similar market advice. Using a qualitative engineering-style approach, we present three scenarios, consider thirty design issues, and then present a more specific design responding to those concerns.
Skimming through the Wikipedia article on Scientology, I really think Hubbard should've gone through and made a movie version of the scientology back-story. It would've been a pretty fun B-rated sci-fi flick:
Most famously, those who reach OT level III will learn about Xenu, the galactic tyrant who stacked hundreds of billions of his frozen victims around Earth's volcanoes 75 million years ago before blowing them up with hydrogen bombs and brainwashing them with a "three-D, super colossal motion picture" for 36 days. The traumatised thetans subsequently clustered around human bodies, in effect acting as invisible spiritual head lice that can only be removed using advanced Scientology techniques. Reportedly, the cost of reaching OT III approaches $360,000.
Seeing so many posts describing this as a "man versus machine" thing compels me to mention advanced chess, a new form of chess recently proposed by Garry Kasparov. The gist of it is that instead of humans and computers working either alone or against each other, a human player and a computer player team up. Personally, I think competitions like that are great for exploring how humans and computers can achieve a better symbiosis with each other, taking advantage of the strengths of each.
From wikipedia:
Advanced Chess is a relatively new form of chess, first introduced by grandmaster Garry Kasparov, with the objective of a human player and a computer chess program joining forces and competing as a team against other such pairs. Many Advanced Chess proponents have stressed that Advanced Chess has merits in:
* increasing the level of play to heights never before seen in chess;
* producing blunder-free games with the qualities and the beauty of both perfect tactical play and highly meaningful strategic plans;
* giving the viewing audience a remarkable insight into the thought processes of strong human chess players and strong chess computers, and the combination thereof.
Incidentally, some folks over at Indymedia are apparently convinced that the solar sail was actually a plan to test a "DEATH RAY WEAPON PLATFORM IN SPACE." Um... yeah.
Although I somewhat agree with his conclusion, Derbyshire relies on a number of fallacies to get there. The following sites all do a fairly good job of pointing out the errors in Derbyshire's information and logic:
Group differences in average IQ tend to mirror group differences in brain size. Numerous historical and modern studies, using skull and head measurements, weighing of brains at autopsy, and more recently, magnetic resonance imaging report racial differences. These studies are usually accompanied by a great deal of controversy.
In his 1839 Crania Americana, anthropologist Samuel George Morton reported that the mean cranial capacity of the skulls of Whites was 87 in, while that of Blacks was 78 in. Based on the measurement of 144 skulls of Native Americans, he reported an a figure of 82in.
Morton's work has been criticized by Stephen Jay Gould, who alleged in his 1981 book The Mismeasure of Man that Morton was guilty of fudging data and "overpacking" the skulls with filler. Despite Gould's retabulation of Morton's data, however, the differences in brain size among different races still persist, with the data still showing a difference of about four cubic inches between modern Caucasians and Africans. Gould writes that the differences are "trivial", but J. Philippe Rushton (1996) responds that a difference of only a single cubic inch equates to millions of neurons.
In 1988, J. S. Michael remeasured a random sample of Morton's skulls and concluded that Morton had made very few errors. J. Philippe Rushton (1989) additionally reanalyzed Gould's retabulation, concluding that Morton had shown a pattern of decreasing brain size proceeding from East Asians, Europeans, and Africans.
In 1873, Paul Pierre Broca found the same pattern by weighing brains at autopsy. Other historical studies showing a Black-White difference in brain size include Bean (1906), Mall, (1909), Pearl, (1934) and Vint (1934).
In his controversial 1995 work Race, Evolution, and Behavior, J. Philippe Rushton reported an average endocranial volume of 1,415 cm for "Orientals [sic]", 1,362 for Whites, and 1,268 for Blacks. When adjusted for average body size, the differences become more pronounced; i.e., the encephalization quotients (EQ) display greater differences than do absolute brain sizes (Jerisen, 1973, 2000; Rushton, 1991). Rushton (1991) found an EQ of 7.26 for East Asians as compared to 6.76 for Caucasians. Differences in brain size between Asians and Europeans sometimes do not appear until adjusted for body size (Rushton, 1997). In some cases Europeans averaged higher absolute brain sizes than East Asians but lower relative brain sizes when adjusted for body size (Rushton, 1994).
Other studies that have shown similar patterns in average brain size include Ho et al. (1980), who measured brains at autopsy, and Beals et al. (1984), who measured approximately 20,000 skulls, finding the same East Asian European African pattern. Other studies have shown the same pattern in average head size, including Rushton (1992), Rushton (1994), and the National Collaborative Perinatal Project [7] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligenc e#endnote_ncpp) (described by Broman, Nichols, Shaugnessy, & Kennedy, 1987) which collected anthropometric data, including head measurements and IQ, on approximately 35,000 children from 1959 to 1974 (although the study began with over 50,000 subjects, some attrition occured as with many longitudinal studies). Analyses of the data found the East Asian White Black pattern in head size and IQ at 4 months, 1 year, and 7 years of age.
Modern studies using MRI imaging have revealed similar results (Harvey, Persaud, Ron, Baker, & Murray, 1994) and have shown that brain size correlates with IQ by a factor of approximately.40 am
Although NASA of course never directly stated it like this, here are the ISS (official and unofficial) objectives the article mentions:
# demonstrating leadership in space # forging international cooperation with Cold War allies # conducting human biological research to benefit biology and medicine on Earth # conducting materials research to benefit Earth # serving as a construction platform for Lunar and Mars missions # supporting ex-Soviet aerospace workers and institutions, and symbolizing post-Cold War US-Russian cooperation # learning how to construct large structures in space # learning how to operate in space # providing an engineering testbed for space equipment # conducting human biological research to support future long-duration space missions # pork barrel politics
Some of these it's succeeded at, but for most of them it hasn't.
Slashdot Mirror
From his ability to program computers at only 12 years old
_ hardware#Second_generation_--_late_1950s_and_early _1960s
In response to all the slashdotters saying "That's lame, I started programming way before that," I guess that in itself isn't too impressive. Heck, I started programming when I was 8 myself. However, keep in mind that Kurzweil was born in 1948, which would mean that he started learning to program with the computers of 1960. I find that a little more impressive, although there's undoubtedly also slashdotters who learned to program at a similar age and time. I find them impressive too.
To get an idea of what computers were like in 1960:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_computing
The next major step in the history of computing was the invention of the transistor in 1947. This replaced the fragile and power hungry valves with a much smaller and more reliable component. Transistorized computers are normally referred to as 'Second Generation' and dominated the late 1950s and early 1960s. By using transistors and printed circuits a significant decrease in size and power consumption was achieved, along with an increase in reliability. For example, the vacuum tube based IBM 650 of 1954 weighed over 900 kg, the attached power supply weighed around 1350 kg and both were held in separate cabinets of roughly 1.5 meters by 0.9 meters by 1.8 meters. It cost $500,000 or could be leased for $3,500 a month. (Its drum memory was originally only 2000 ten-digit words, and required arcane programming for efficient computing. This type of hardware limitation was to dominate programming for decades afterward, until the evolution of a programming model which was more sympathetic to software development.) By contrast, the transistorized IBM 1620, which replaced the 650, was the size of an office desk. Second generation computers were still expensive and were primarily used by universities, governments, and large corporations.
In 1959 IBM shipped the transistor-based IBM 7090 mainframe and medium scale IBM 1401. The latter was designed around punch card input and proved a popular general purpose computer. Some 12,000 were shipped, making it the most successful machine in computer history at the time. It used a magnetic core memory of 4000 characters (later expanded to 16,000 characters). Many aspects of its design were based on the desire to replace punched card machines which were in wide use from the 1920s through the early 1970s.
In 1960 IBM shipped the smaller, transistor-based IBM 1620, originally with only punched paper tape, but soon upgraded to punch cards. It proved a popular scientific computer and about 2,000 were shipped. It used a magnetic core memory of up to 60,000 decimal digits.
Also in 1960, DEC launched the PDP-1 their first machine intended for use by technical staff in laboratories and for research.
From Brown's blog:
For those of you who don't know me - i went to columbine, i was friends with both killers and the killed, had reported the killers to the police, the cops did nothing, etc.
From Davison's blog:
Today I got a note from Brooks Brown, who if you can cast your mind back all the way to 1999 was the Columbine student who warned police deputies that Eric Harris was building pipe bombs and had threatened to kill him. "I was that guy on the show with you," he said. "Wondered a few things - first, wanted to say nice job, and it was fucked up what they did. They actually edited the show's content so my points weren't let in."
I'm not sure if that necessarily makes him an expert, but it's enough to make me interested in his thoughts on the topic.
Indeed, the LA Times recent experiment with wiki-ized editorials shows the true nature of their fear. They realized quite quickly the true power of the wiki, realizing that it was introducing true debate and discussion.
Similarly, CNET News.com just launched a wiki where readers/contributors collaborate to predict the future of India's technology industry. It's quite an interesting read so far.
Link to CNET's Indian Tech Renaissance Wiki
Wikinews article on it
Simple really: a space vehicle is always going to be expensive to build - you have very stringent quality controls and tolerance requirements, as well as exotic materials and complicated fabrication procedures. A reusable vehicle should allow you to amortize that construction cost over many flights. Imagine how much it would cost to fly from Boston to LA if they threw away the 737 after every flight.... And a 737 is a lot less complicated than a space launcher.
That logic may apply in the future, but it doesn't apply today. When you look at the something like the space shuttle or just about any other launcher, construction costs aren't the largest cost component. Rather, paying the standing army of workers, needed to get the system ready and check/repair it between launches, is the most expensive part.
This reminds me a little bit of the pigeon guided missile, a project that the noted behaviorist B.F. Skinner worked on during World War II.
e
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigeon_guided_missil
During World War 2, Project Pigeon was American behaviourist B. F. Skinner's attempt to develop a pigeon-guided missile.
The control system involved a lens at the front of the missile projecting an image of the target to a screen inside, while a pigeon trained (by operant conditioning) to recognise the target pecked at it. As long as the pecks remained in the center of the screen, the missile would fly straight, but pecks off-center would cause the screen to tilt, which would then, via a connection to the missile's flight controls, cause the missile to change course.
Although skeptical of the idea, the National Defense Research Committee nevertheless contributed $25,000 to the research. However, Skinner's plans to use pigeons in Pelican missiles was apparently too radical for the military establishment; although he had some success with the training, he could not get his idea taken seriously.
From the article:
He has long been struck by the fact that promised advances were not appearing as quickly as predicted. "I wondered if there was a reason for this," he says. "Perhaps there is a limit to what technology can achieve."
In an effort to find out, he plotted major innovations and scientific advances over time compared to world population, using the 7200 key innovations listed in a recently published book, The History of Science and Technology (Houghton Mifflin, 2004).
Is anyone else confused by this? Did he do anything other than show that a particular history book lists more past innovations than current ones?
Sure, go right ahead. I don't have an account there yet, and I'm too lazy to create one. ;)
Well, I've been trying to submit a story to slashdot over the past few days about a "parallel path" to government-built shuttle-derived that NASA recently announced, but I haven't had any luck. I've already had four or five variations on it rejected. Anybody have ideas on what might be wrong with the following submission?
At a recent talk, Michael Griffin outlined NASA's plans for helping to generate a robust and competitive commercial market in orbital spaceflight. The speech and Q&A transcripts from the talk are available. In a move reminiscent of the US government kickstarting the early airline industry by purchasing airmail services, NASA plans on supplementing government-derived transport by purchasing cargo delivery services to the International Space Station from commercial providers, followed by crew transportation after the systems have proven themselves. Unlike traditional government contracts, sellers wouldn't see a profit before the services are delivered and the emphasis will be on actual performance instead of process and specifications. Aviation Week has some commentary on the announcement.
We don't even know what consciousness is, so why do we look for its biological basis first?
Last I checked, not having a good definition of what "life" is didn't keep up from discovering the biochemical basis of it (DNA). 50-some years after DNA's discovery, we still aren't sure what life is.
Believe me, if they discover massive amounts of oil in antarctica, and an easy way to extract and ship it, we'll be doing it as fast as possible.
Actually, if I understand correctly, the reason is that the Madrid Protocol of 1998 put a 50 year moratorium on drilling for oil in antarctica. It actually looks like there may be a significant amount of oil there:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/antarctica.html
The 1991 Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty, also known as the Madrid Protocol, entered into force in 1998 and serves as an additional mechanism for ensuring the protection of the Antarctic environment. The Madrid Protocol goes further than the original treaty as it designates Antarctica as a natural reserve devoted to peace and science and places a moratorium on mining and drilling for oil for a minimum of 50 years. The Protocol sets forth basic principles and detailed, mandatory rules which apply to all human activities in Antarctica.
The call for an environmental protocol to the Antarctic Treaty came after scientists discovered large deposits of natural resources such as coal, natural gas and offshore oil reserves in the early 1980s. Antarctica is considered to be part of the theoretical super-continent known as Gondwanaland, which separated near the end of the Paleozoic era and consisted of South America, Africa and Australia. And, because it once was completely covered in vegetation, many scientists believe it may hold one of the last supergiant oil fields yet to be discovered. The continental shelf of Antarctica is considered to hold the region's greatest potential for oil exploration projects, and although estimates vary as to the abundance of oil in Antarctica, the Weddell and Ross Sea areas alone are expected to possess 50 billion barrels of oil - an amount roughly equivalent to that of Alaska's estimated reserves. However, Antarctica's extreme conditions make oil field accessibility in many areas economically problematic.
You just have to hope some Congressman or a President doesn't wake up one day and say to themselves, we've been throwing all this money at NASA and getting nothing for it, maybe we should throw some of it Burt's way just to see what he can do with it.
You have to be careful there. A big part of the reason Burt Rutan did so well with so little is because he was operating in a competitive atmosphere with a funding source that he was directly accountable to. If you just give him billion dollar cost-plus government contracts and all the paperwork which goes along with it, I guarantee that in a matter of years his organization will be just as inefficient and bloated as that of the traditional aerospace companies.
I'll take Burt hands down. I'm never gonna make it to the ISS, Burt maybe I have a chance to at least get in to space for a reasonable price.
Burt Rutan is cool and all, but as far as inexpensive commercial orbital spaceflight goes, I suspect Elon Musk's SpaceX is going to be first. They've already announced their intent to compete for America's Space Prize.
(The following is from a slashdot story I've tried submitting variations on a few times over the past few days, which has gotten rejected repeatedly for whatever reason. Since it's relevant to the topic of what NASA's planning on doing once the shuttle is retired, I'm posting it here)
At a recent talk, Michael Griffin outlined NASA's plans for helping to generate a robust and competitive commercial market in orbital spaceflight. The speech and Q&A transcripts from the talk are available. In a move reminiscent of the US government kickstarting the early airline industry by purchasing airmail services, NASA plans on purchasing cargo delivery services to the International Space Station from commercial providers, followed by crew transportation after the systems have proven themselves. Unlike traditional government contracts, sellers wouldn't see a profit before the services are delivered and the emphasis will be on actual performance instead of process and specifications. Non-traditional space companies such as SpaceX and t/Space have found Griffin's remarks encouraging, and Aviation Week has some commentary.
Glenn Reynolds (i.e. the Instapundit) recently wrote a piece for Tech Central Station on the failure of the Planetary Society's Cosmos 1, which I thought was quite well-said. Here's a quote:
http://techcentralstation.com/062905J.html
Some might accuse [Planetary Society directory] Friedman of putting a Pollyannaish spin on things, but I'd say he's learned the most important lesson of all: It's hard to accomplish much if you're afraid to fail.
The history of success in all sorts of endeavors -- including the early days of space travel, when we were making rapid progress -- is a history of repeated failures. I don't think it's a coincidence that when the failure rate declined, so did our rate of progress. You learn from failure, and you learn from trying lots of different things. Unfortunately, fear of failure -- like fear in general -- is contagious. But fortunately, so is bravery. When people act unafraid of failure, other people may pick up on the message.
The Planetary Society's mission was, really, a failure: It was supposed to test solar sails, and it never got the chance. But, simply by happening, and by having the Planetary Society emerge with its head bloody, but unbowed, it accomplished something useful by opening up (metaphorical) space for others to try risky but low-cost approaches without worrying too much about the fallout. And that's good.
Because, as I've noted before, when you're not afraid of failure you can try lots of different things and figure out what works best. If you're afraid of failing, on the other hand, you build huge, process-laden, documentation-heavy, behemoths that -- in a way -- are already failures before they ever start because they're too hard to change and improve, and because they don't generate enough useful knowledge to allow further progress. (See, e.g., the Space Shuttle program).
The Planetary Society's launch, despite Lou Friedman's views, failed. But the approach it embodied is the only approach that's likely to achieve substantial success in the long run. And that's a kind of success in itself. Let's hope that we'll see more of this sort of thing in the future.
Yeah... futarchy is a great idea, but it'll take some work to figure out how to introduce it to people in a way that doesn't lead to knee-jerk reactions like yours.
As such we should abolish voting and replace it with something better.
I prefer futarchy, myself.
http://hanson.gmu.edu/futarchy.pdf
Democracies often fail to aggregate information, while speculative markets excel at this
task. We consider a new form of governance, wherein voters would say what we want, but
speculators would say how to get it. Elected representatives would oversee the after-the-fact
measurement of national welfare, while market speculators would say which policies they
expect to raise national welfare. Those who recommend policies that regressions suggest
will raise GDP should be willing to endorse similar market advice. Using a qualitative
engineering-style approach, we present three scenarios, consider thirty design issues, and
then present a more specific design responding to those concerns.
Skimming through the Wikipedia article on Scientology, I really think Hubbard should've gone through and made a movie version of the scientology back-story. It would've been a pretty fun B-rated sci-fi flick:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientology#Xenu
Most famously, those who reach OT level III will learn about Xenu, the galactic tyrant who stacked hundreds of billions of his frozen victims around Earth's volcanoes 75 million years ago before blowing them up with hydrogen bombs and brainwashing them with a "three-D, super colossal motion picture" for 36 days. The traumatised thetans subsequently clustered around human bodies, in effect acting as invisible spiritual head lice that can only be removed using advanced Scientology techniques. Reportedly, the cost of reaching OT III approaches $360,000.
Where is the Coconut Monkey!?!
He would wave hello, but he has no hands.
(Yay for obscure references)
Seeing so many posts describing this as a "man versus machine" thing compels me to mention advanced chess, a new form of chess recently proposed by Garry Kasparov. The gist of it is that instead of humans and computers working either alone or against each other, a human player and a computer player team up. Personally, I think competitions like that are great for exploring how humans and computers can achieve a better symbiosis with each other, taking advantage of the strengths of each.
From wikipedia:
Advanced Chess is a relatively new form of chess, first introduced by grandmaster Garry Kasparov, with the objective of a human player and a computer chess program joining forces and competing as a team against other such pairs. Many Advanced Chess proponents have stressed that Advanced Chess has merits in:
* increasing the level of play to heights never before seen in chess;
* producing blunder-free games with the qualities and the beauty of both perfect tactical play and highly meaningful strategic plans;
* giving the viewing audience a remarkable insight into the thought processes of strong human chess players and strong chess computers, and the combination thereof.
Alas, poor Cosmos 1.
Incidentally, some folks over at Indymedia are apparently convinced that the solar sail was actually a plan to test a "DEATH RAY WEAPON PLATFORM IN SPACE." Um... yeah.
Right. I'd like to see a thorough analysis of those factors, but my googling hasn't turned up anything solid yet.
Congrats on the submission. :)
Although I somewhat agree with his conclusion, Derbyshire relies on a number of fallacies to get there. The following sites all do a fairly good job of pointing out the errors in Derbyshire's information and logic:
Curmudgeons Corner
RLV News
Transterrestrial Musings: Derb's Rant
....which race has, on average, the biggest brain?
.40 am
There's been some research done on this, although it's definitely still a feisty issue:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence #Brain_size
Group differences in average IQ tend to mirror group differences in brain size. Numerous historical and modern studies, using skull and head measurements, weighing of brains at autopsy, and more recently, magnetic resonance imaging report racial differences. These studies are usually accompanied by a great deal of controversy.
In his 1839 Crania Americana, anthropologist Samuel George Morton reported that the mean cranial capacity of the skulls of Whites was 87 in, while that of Blacks was 78 in. Based on the measurement of 144 skulls of Native Americans, he reported an a figure of 82in.
Morton's work has been criticized by Stephen Jay Gould, who alleged in his 1981 book The Mismeasure of Man that Morton was guilty of fudging data and "overpacking" the skulls with filler. Despite Gould's retabulation of Morton's data, however, the differences in brain size among different races still persist, with the data still showing a difference of about four cubic inches between modern Caucasians and Africans. Gould writes that the differences are "trivial", but J. Philippe Rushton (1996) responds that a difference of only a single cubic inch equates to millions of neurons.
In 1988, J. S. Michael remeasured a random sample of Morton's skulls and concluded that Morton had made very few errors. J. Philippe Rushton (1989) additionally reanalyzed Gould's retabulation, concluding that Morton had shown a pattern of decreasing brain size proceeding from East Asians, Europeans, and Africans.
In 1873, Paul Pierre Broca found the same pattern by weighing brains at autopsy. Other historical studies showing a Black-White difference in brain size include Bean (1906), Mall, (1909), Pearl, (1934) and Vint (1934).
In his controversial 1995 work Race, Evolution, and Behavior, J. Philippe Rushton reported an average endocranial volume of 1,415 cm for "Orientals [sic]", 1,362 for Whites, and 1,268 for Blacks. When adjusted for average body size, the differences become more pronounced; i.e., the encephalization quotients (EQ) display greater differences than do absolute brain sizes (Jerisen, 1973, 2000; Rushton, 1991). Rushton (1991) found an EQ of 7.26 for East Asians as compared to 6.76 for Caucasians. Differences in brain size between Asians and Europeans sometimes do not appear until adjusted for body size (Rushton, 1997). In some cases Europeans averaged higher absolute brain sizes than East Asians but lower relative brain sizes when adjusted for body size (Rushton, 1994).
Other studies that have shown similar patterns in average brain size include Ho et al. (1980), who measured brains at autopsy, and Beals et al. (1984), who measured approximately 20,000 skulls, finding the same East Asian European African pattern. Other studies have shown the same pattern in average head size, including Rushton (1992), Rushton (1994), and the National Collaborative Perinatal Project [7] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligenc e#endnote_ncpp) (described by Broman, Nichols, Shaugnessy, & Kennedy, 1987) which collected anthropometric data, including head measurements and IQ, on approximately 35,000 children from 1959 to 1974 (although the study began with over 50,000 subjects, some attrition occured as with many longitudinal studies). Analyses of the data found the East Asian White Black pattern in head size and IQ at 4 months, 1 year, and 7 years of age.
Modern studies using MRI imaging have revealed similar results (Harvey, Persaud, Ron, Baker, & Murray, 1994) and have shown that brain size correlates with IQ by a factor of approximately
The Space Review has an article by Dwayne Day, titled "Twenty-five gigabucks of steel: the objectives of the International Space Station." Basically, it discusses the objectives of the space station, and whether or not it has met those objectives.
Although NASA of course never directly stated it like this, here are the ISS (official and unofficial) objectives the article mentions:
# demonstrating leadership in space
# forging international cooperation with Cold War allies
# conducting human biological research to benefit biology and medicine on Earth
# conducting materials research to benefit Earth
# serving as a construction platform for Lunar and Mars missions
# supporting ex-Soviet aerospace workers and institutions, and symbolizing post-Cold War US-Russian cooperation
# learning how to construct large structures in space
# learning how to operate in space
# providing an engineering testbed for space equipment
# conducting human biological research to support future long-duration space missions
# pork barrel politics
Some of these it's succeeded at, but for most of them it hasn't.