| Monday
September 22, 2003
There was much mail on the weekend.
Do have a look.
From a friend whose
views I generally take seriously. :
"But if
the present trend continues we will probably end up with a new
President who will cut and run. This is one of the worst possible
outcomes."
Surely it is the best possible outcome. I certainly
will do whatever I can to make it happen. Why do you think otherwise?
Here is my reasoning. First, at a billion dollars a
week - two billion a week next year, probably - the longer you stay, the
more money you blow. So considering that alone, the time to leave is now.
Next I want to consider what we might accomplish by
staying longer - is it something that is worth the cost? What might we
hope to accomplish, what is the probability of success, and what is the
likely cost?
I guess one might want Iraq as a permanent military
base in the Middle East. But why? To flog the locals into selling their
oil, which they do anyhow? To keep someone from conquering the Gulf? Our
bases in Kuwait and Qatar and Oman are more than sufficient for that. I
can't see it.
Well, I hate even to talk about something so silly,
but the fools at the top talk about political reformation of Iraq and
perhaps the Middle East as a whole, suggesting that this would
automatically make them friendly to the US and, more importantly I guess,
Israel. I give this zero probability, so it cannot be a reason to stay.
As for getting a new President, that is a plus,
because Bush and company are unusually dangerous fools. I want to make
sure that they never, ever get a chance to do anything like this again -
and the only way to make this happen, make it plain to the American
political class is to have him lose the election. Look, Jerry, do you want
us to invade and occupy Syria and Iran? Because Rumsfeld and Cheney do.
Bush might go along again. Personally I would like see them all up on
crosses, but since this a government of law, defeat and disgrace will have
to do.
You want more oil, we're going to have to leave.
Sabotage is too easy. It can only be stopped ( at any reasonable cost) by
a local government that has some degree of credibility - who knows, maybe
even some legitimacy. We don't have that in Iraq and we never will. As
long as we stay there will be no big increase in exports: I suspect we'll
never even reach the prewar level. In part, because capital is a coward -
there will be no big private investments as long as there is a low-level
guerrilla war. Mind you, by adopting some unacceptable policies we _could_
get oil - simply put the native population ( certainly the Sunnis) into
concentration camps, as the British did to the Boers. Of course they might
dislike us for a few generations if we ever let them out again, but
perhaps by then the oil would be gone anyhow. But even then it'd probably
be expensive oil.
It's hard for an Empire to pay its way today. Our
armies are simply too expensive, extractable resources are a far smaller
fraction of the economy than they used to be, foreign labor is hard to
exploit and usually of low productivity anyhow. And if it doesn't make any
money, what's the point? Legions were cheap.
While we stay, much of the Army is unavailable for
any real need that might come up. That has to be bad - exactly how bad is
unpredictable, depends on the whims of various assholes in the world. On
the other hand, as long as our plate is full in Iraq, we aren't going to
gratuitously invade anyone _else_ and that's certainly a good thing. A new
cut-and-run Administration would, hopefully, be less susceptible to the
temptation to invade. I suppose a truly sane Administration is impossible
in this day and age.
While we stay, world opinion solidifies against us.
Most people I talk to say that they don't care what other peoples think.
Is this smart?
The longer we stay, the more Iraqi opinion is
turning against, us, which reduces the chance of political hopes coming
true. The State Department is running secret polls - I know you will be
shocked, but it turns out that a growing fraction of Iraqis want us out
_now_. They just don't enjoy occupation by trigger-happy young foreigners
who don't speak the language. How human of them.
What reasons have even a chance? Two. First, you may
think that kicking out the Republicans is bad, that the other things Bush
might be for might counterbalance this particular mistake. That's a
judgment call - but I don't agree. I think that I'm never going to get
much I want domestically out of this guy - not fiscal responsibility for
sure, not an end to racial favoritism - and I think totally trashing the
US position is the world is pretty serious.
France is not the enemy - Bush is.
Second reason - credibility. Obviously we lose
credibility if we quit. But then, what kind of credibility do you get from
persisting in something stupid, and how much is credibility worth in the
first place? There is nobody big and powerful waiting to grab everything
when we lose our nerve - the closest might be China and Taiwan - and if
you look back at the late 1970s, the last time we lost our nerve, the
Soviets took advantage by mucking around in Africa and invading
Afghanistan - which did them no good at all. If I have to pick sanity or
credibility, I'll take sanity.
I hate imperialism, and I hate money-losing
imperialism even more. I didn't start out hating Bush - I am, or was, more
of a Republican than anyone you know-. I _despise_ the Democratic party.
I've voted straight-ticket for thirty years. But this is unbearable. I
hate Bush, I hate his minions, and they have to go. They're worse than bad
- they're fools.
[name withheld; call him XX
for reference]
The problem is I have trouble
answering this, because it gets close to my views at least as held before we
got into this mess over there.
If we stay the course and build
democracy it will be expensive: worse, it will get us used to the notion of
governing people for their own good but without their consent.
Government without the consent of
the governed, no matter its benign purpose, is empire, and contrary to the
very founding concepts of these United States of America; and you can see
the effects of negating that idea right here at home as the enlightened
decide to do what's best for the benighted. On immigration? A vast
majority of the population wishes we'd stop for a while and assimilate
what we have; and enforce the border laws. That will not happen because
our rulers know better.
On religion? A vast majority wishes
we would keep the separation of church and state where the framers put it
and stop this endless campaign to remove all traces of piety from our
public life. That will not happen because our rulers know better.
I could go on, but it is clear: we
have imperialistic notions in Washington as regards the rest of the
nation. Will the Iraq experience make those who rule us more or less
inclined to do what they know is best for us?
But perhaps I am just depressed this
morning.
A few points: Legions have always
been expensive. Praetorians even more so. Think of Legions as those who
can occupy countries; think of Praetorians as the elite who can defeat
anyone including the Legions. At the moment we are using Praetorians as
Legions, and this doesn't work well.
Regarding the gentleman last week
who said we are an empire and ought to learn from the Brits: I think the
Roman example more appropriate, and that will probably be the thesis of
the book on The Coming American Empire I am contemplating.
And the comment that loss of
prestige cuts both ways is clearly one we don't like to think about.
And see next letter and then below.
Subject: What Might Be Done
About Iraq
Identify the middle-class intelligentsia that forms
the core of most terrorist and resistance movements and coopt them. There
was an interesting analysis in the G2 section of the Guardian about
psychological profiling of terrorists/resistance leaders. They're usually
educated members of the middle to upper middle class who have become
politically marginalized. They don't seem to be nuts. Rather they do what
they do because they feel those are the most effective choices left to
them.
-- Harry Erwin, PhD, Senior Lecturer of Computing,
University of Sunderland. Computational neuroscientist modeling bat
bioacoustics and behavior. <http://osiris.sunderland.ac.uk/~cs0her/index.html>
Would that we could, but if the
Riverbend commentator http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/
is genuine, and there seems to be
considerable evidence (see below) that she is, we have lost that class
already.
And see below.
====================================
Hello, Jerry,
(I was just adding a last touch to an eloquent reply
when I hit the wrong button...I hate Hotmail...and so maybe you saw it,
but if not, and with less words...)
Riverbend has nothing whatsoever to do with
Christian Fundamentalism. She is trying to warn us against Islamic
Fundamentalism. I think someone sent you a link to a Christian
fundamentalist school (a creationist science fair?) when you asked if
anyone knew if Riverbend was honest. They were teasing you, or being
downright malicious.
Her point is that she wants to go forward from
Saddam, not back to Saddam or to either a Suni or to a Shiite
fundamentalist "Islamic Republic". She is not worried about the
Baathists, because they really are beaten. But she sees that the Coalition
has had to make compromises with several fundamentalist Islamist factions,
such as the "Badr Brigade", an armed gang led by the ayatollah
who was blown up last month. The Badrs were founded in Iran, and she sees
them as a dangerous bunch trying to take over the CPA. That ayatollah had,
essentially, said: include me or my armed group can make trouble. She
claims that several of the other groups in the CPA have recruited from the
former members of the Iraqi army -- 400,000 men with some guns but no
jobs. The factions offer money to the ex-soldiers if the ex-soldiers do
"favors", as the mafia used to put it.
She, and the more famous Salam Pax, and Salam's
friend G (a Christian who works as photographer and interpreter fro the NY
Times) are the sort of people who gave the neocons hope that their
"quick strike" strategy might work in Iraq. Wolfowitz and
friends talked often about the large number of westernized, well-educated
Iraqis, the technical and professional middle class, who might be Muslims,
but in a more modern and tolerant way. The neocons hope seems to have been
that, once we killed off Saddam and his torturers, the westernized,
modernizing Iraqis could quickly lead the country to become the sort of
decent, modern, country that we've never seen in the Middle East.
Wolfowitz and friends miscalculated badly...now we have the awful mess. I
think that the necons should have known that this mess was a more likely
outcome than their golly-jolly predictions ("everything's comin' up
roses!" Was Ethel Merman the official singer at Rumsfeld's meetings
last year?). Anyway, we're stuck in the mess, now.
Riverbend points to systematic attacks on liquour
store owners, professional women (a woman on the CPA council was shot and
badly wounded yesterday), the two women school principals who were
assasinated by the Badrs, threats to parents to take their daughters ought
of school (quote from a mother: I'd rather have a live daughter than a
diploma...let someone else be heroic), and the kidnappings and rapes
carried out by the new poltical militias and old-fashioned criminals.
Nothing about Christian fundamentalists.
The story from Najaf about the first woman judge
appointed and then dis-appointed is the sort of story that is beginning to
appear.
Regards,
John Welch
You will note that simply handing
the country over to the locals will probably not result in restoring her
job or appointing women judges.
On George Soros
Dear Jerry:
First of all, I think it is overreaching to say that
Soros wants to invade anyone. He expressed a preference for "regime
change" but I don't think it rises to the level of armed conflict.
His various foundations are looking for ways to promote democracy and this
is something he specifically said could not be imposed on a nation by
force. Perhaps the gentleman should read the entire article. More than
once. And recall that this is a man who has studied the ways things really
work. He's one of the richest men in the world and once made two billion
dollars in one day by shorting the British Pound. A proto-capitalist. I
said his ideas were intriguing, meaning worthy of consideration. It was
not a wholesale endorsement. In the current situation anyone with a fresh
set of ideas deserves a hearing.
We also need to look at this idea of reporting
"good news". As a journalist for over 30 years, I can tell you
that no one quantifies news in such terms. It is strictly event driven,
and value neutral. The most interesting and dramatic events are the ones
that involve loss of life and treasure. In a market economy, you have to
realize that a publication, online or off, has to attract eyeballs to pay
its way. Newspapers generally depend upon advertising and in a bad economy
there's not much of that. It's one of the first things to get cut in a
down economy. So the resources (reporters, photographers, broadcasters,
etc.) follows the news that is cheap and easy to get (pun intended).
Yours, Francis Hamit
Well your experience does not always
match mine and the lessons learned from journalism and intelligence work
don't either. I do have a little experience in both.
Date: 9/21/2002 subject:
Our current situation
Dear Jerry:
Yeah,
you're right, we've lost the rule of law. Where I disagree with
you is your persistent belief we lost it recently.
Back when
you were a tyke, the Supremes ruled that growing food on your own land,
for your own consumption, constitutes interstate commerce. The
reason is, to put it honestly, that Washington is only allowed to
regulate interstate and foreign commerce, and the govt. really needed to
regulate all agriculture. Hey, presto, all agriculture is
interstate commerce!
The
USAmerican people supported this, because they agreed that the govt.
ought to have the power to regulate agriculture. They didn't hold
with the rule of law notion that nothing should be done till the
Constitution was amended. As far as I can see, they still don't.
We've lived with this for nearly seventy years now, and no disaster has
occurred.
Similarly,
when you say "I also see a request for 80
billion dollars and I think what I could do for energy independence with
that much money," the truth is that you couldn't actually do
anything for energy independence, because the only way the money would
be voted is with strings attached that would forbid you to do the things
you want to do. The strings would be attached because, ultimately,
the voters don't want nuclear power, and don't want space solar
satellites. We think they're wrong, but the majority
disagrees with you and me.
The real
"problem" we have is serious political divisions over
what needs to be done for the common good. One day, their will be
a majority on one side big enough to get its program implemented.
I think that's how self-govt. is supposed to work.
Best,
Stephen
DELENDAM ESSE SAUDI ARABIA!
I feel better already.
Harry Erwin on
computer security:
Subject: Computer Security Research to be Classified
See page 228 of the 18 September Nature. DARPA has
decided to classify its major research program into building defenses
against computer worms. Apparently initial discussions on the program
included protection of civilian networks. Then in March, the program was
restricted to military networks, but there were to be unclassified
elements, so that the academic research community could participate. Now,
DARPA has decided to classify all elements, excluding most academics and
preventing the remainder from doing the work in campus labs. Additionally,
DARPA has apparently zeroed new money for computer security research, and
the other possible funding agencies (NSF, DHS, and NIST) have no funds.
Pity--there's a lot of work to be done, particularly
in intrusion detection, trust analysis & management, automated
sanitization & release, risk analysis, and data integrity
analysis.
-- Harry Erwin, PhD, Senior Lecturer of Computing,
University of Sunderland. Security engineer and analyst. <http://www.theworld.com/~herwin/>
re: trusted Computing
Go to < http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/tcpa-faq.html
> and read. Ross Anderson seems to be a good guy--I use his text in my
computer security class, although I wish he was a bit more formal in the
way he approaches security analysis.
-- Harry Erwin, PhD, Senior Lecturer of
Computing, University of Sunderland. Security engineer and analyst.
<http://www.theworld.com/~herwin/>
And we can look forward to the future:
Jerry:
From the sublime to the ridiculous:
"Manufacturers of a seemingly innocuous product
-- a garage door opener -- are embroiled in a battle that tests the limits
of a controversial copyright law.
Skylink Technologies manufactures a universal garage
door opener that can be used to open and shut any type of garage door. Its
competitor, the Chamberlain Group, claims that Skylink violates the
Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or DMCA, by selling such a
product."
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,60383,00.html
Oy.
Henry Stern Dayton, OH
Joy and rapture. More work for
lawyers. Hurrah!
Subject: Secure Computing
I think it is a hoot that Bob Barr is writing about
personal liberty! Part of the reason he was routed from congress can be
laid to his actions against personal liberty. He was one of the targets of
the Libertarian party in their anti "drug warrior" campaign.
--- Al Lipscomb
I have said for years that we have
lost the war on drugs, or perhaps won it: but we get essentially nothing
but corruption for the money spent on it, and we keep the prices up a bit;
but any high school girl knows someone who can supply drugs. We have not
slowed their use.
Whether legalization would help I do
not know; but we could at least make it like smoking and drinking. Taxed,
forbidden to the young, and otherwise discouraged but taxed and legal.
What we do now is spend money, pay a
large bureaucracy and keep the prices high enough that it is worth while
corrupting the police; while consuming police resources.
Subject: The Riverbend Blogger
John Welch comments: She, and the more famous
Salam Pax, and Salam's friend G (a Christian who works as photographer and
interpreter from the NY Times) are the sort of people who gave the neocons
hope that their "quick strike" strategy might work in Iraq.
Wolfowitz and friends talked often about the large number of westernized,
well-educated Iraqis, the technical and professional middle class, who
might be Muslims, but in a more modern and tolerant way. The neocons hope
seems to have been that, once we killed off Saddam and his torturers, the
westernized, modernizing Iraqis could quickly lead the country to become
the sort of decent, modern, country that we've never seen in the Middle
East. Wolfowitz and friends miscalculated badly...now we have the awful
mess.
I think the miscalculation was that in any socialist
tyranny, someone who is managing to live a middle-class lifestyle is
probably tucked quite comfortably into the current regime, and has little
to gain and a lot to lose from its defeat. From what I have read, both
Salam Pax and Riverbend fall into this category. Not collaborators as
such, but just people who worked inside the system and kept their heads
down. As far as I can tell, they had good jobs, nice houses, and the rest.
With rare exceptions, their class did not fill mass graves.
I notice many media interviews with Iraqis of this
type who used to be computer network operators, business managers, and the
like under Saddam. Naturally, they have come down in the world now, and
most had little to fear from the regime they worked for. So you hear
complaints about how much better things used to be.
Few people interview the Marsh Arabs, Kurds,
Shiites, and those who lived in places other than the protected and
favored streets of Baghdad.
If one had gone over to Germany just prior to WWII
and interviewed only blond Aryans, I'm sure most of them would have said
things were going quite well, thank you.
Tom Brosz
Subject: orbis.4703.ryn.ideologyamericanempire
Well worth the read on today's Neo-Jacobin American
Empire:
http://fpri.org/pubs/orbis.4703.ryn.ideologyamericanempire.pdf
NOLI ME TANGERE --swb
Excerpt:
In spite of its great influence, the ideology of empire is
unfamiliar to most Americans, except in segments that appear disparate but
are in fact closely connected. Drawing these connections is essential to
assessing the import and ramifications of the evolving Bush
Doctrine.
Though heavily slanted in the direction of international
affairs, the ideology of American empire constitutes an entire world view.
It includes perspectives on human nature, society, and politics, and it
sets forth distinctive conceptions of its central ideas, notably what it
calls ‘‘democracy,’’ ‘‘freedom,’’ ‘‘equality,’’
and ‘‘capitalism.’’ It regards America as founded on universal
principles and assigns to the United States the role of supervising the
remaking of the world. Its adherents have the intense dogmatic commitment
of true believers and are highly prone to moralistic rhetoric. They
demand, among other things, ‘‘moral clarity’’ in dealing with
regimes that stand in the way of America’s universal purpose. They see
themselves as champions of ‘‘virtue.’’ In some form, this ideology
has been present for a long time.
=============================
Dear Dr. Pournelle,
U.S. Rep. Jim Marshall went to see for himself.
"I found myself wondering whether the news
media were somehow complicit in his death."
http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/opinion/
0903/22international.html
?urac=n&urvf=10642377116960.8839345774896111
Randy Storms
jkjg
Dr. Jerry,
The first article here
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/22/international/22CHIR.html?
is an actual interview with Jacques Chirac. I find
it quite striking given that Thomas Friedman declared
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/18/opinion/18FRIE.html
that the French plan identified in the article
amounted to France declaring themselves our enemies. Close reading of what
Chirac actually says suggests that his plan is for the US to declare
victory and go home and give it to the UN.
The problem is, is that I can't see how the plan
would hurt US - quite the contrary, it would bail us out of the muck and
free up our units to do something else, and stick the UN with the blame if
the whole thing goes south.
Unless of course, we're WEDDED to the idea of
occupying Iraq.
The other other article here
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/22/opinion/22PAPE.html?th
I'll just quote:
"However, this presumed connection between
suicide terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism is wrongheaded, and it may be
encouraging domestic and foreign policies that are likely to worsen
America's situation.
I have spent a year compiling a database of every
suicide bombing and attack around the globe from 1980 to 2001 — 188 in
all. It includes any attack in which at least one terrorist killed himself
or herself while attempting to kill others, although I excluded attacks
authorized by a national government, such as those by North Korea against
the South. The data show that there is little connection between suicide
terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism, or any religion for that matter. In
fact, the leading instigator of suicide attacks is the Tamil Tigers in Sri
Lanka, a Marxist-Leninist group whose members are from Hindu families but
who are adamantly opposed to religion (they have have committed 75 of the
188 incidents)."
Help for the Win98SE guy:
"I daisychained the Wireless Compact USB
Adapter to my laptop and after fiddling with the settings, I got green
lights saying the adapter was in wireless communication with the router.
The router WLAN light is on showing it "hears" the USB adapter.
So far, so good, but this is where I become an ignoramus.
I am confounded when trying to set up the Microsoft
network so the laptop and desktop can talk with each other and share
files, printers, and the DSL modem. I'm running Win98 SE on both PCs and
have flailed around with the Network and Network Neighborhood settings
until I'm stumped."
The fix for a small network is to edit the HOSTS and
LMHOSTS file in the Windows directory. In this instance, on each machine,
disable WINS, specify a 192.168.x.x address for each machine [192.168.1.1
and 192.168.1.2 should work], and then add those addresses to the the
LMHOSTS and HOSTS files on both machines, along with the machine names.
Make sure that both machines are in the same workgroup, and add the
individual machine names to both files. They should then be able to see
each other with ping at a minimum.
Note that this kind of setup will work with any
Windows OS with TCP/IP [back to Win 3.11 and NT 3.1], OS/2, the MS DOS
client and just about every Unix box with or without Samba.
The only complication here is how the router works:
it may require it's own 192.168.x.x address or it may operate invisibly. I
don't know that particular piece fo hardware.
Once that is all setup, and the machines can share
files and whatnot, you can then point DNS resolution on both machines to
the provider DNS servers.
ash
['Hope That Helps.']
A long space
screed by Rick Tumlinson:
This is going out to a private list. The following
was published over the last two weeks in Space News in an unusual move for
them. For those who only caught one installment I am including both for
context. These aren't my complete thoughts ( I am working on a book which
is much more extensive in that area) and in fact, especially in part II,
many of them aren't my thoughts at all. I have just tried to put together
some solutions into a cohesive plan that can clarify the roles of
government and the private sector.We can create a mutually beneficial
synergy that can lead to great feats of human exploration and set the
stage for a real expansion of human civilization into space.
I have been fighting for the frontier for almost 20
years now. Some on this list probably hate me, some tolerate me, and some
are going "Who?" But I believe that at last the pieces are there
for a catalytic reaction that can throw open the airlocks, and open the
space trails. IF a lot of someones act now. (and many are)
It shouldn't be about government vs. the private
sector. It needs to be about both lifting each other.
Feel free to forward this to anyone you think should
see it, or to your trash bin..whichever works for you...lol Any comments
or if you wish to be taken off this list, let me know directly. Rick
Tumlinson PS - This essay is US centric, for no other reason than that is
the government and system I can best influence. It is not mean to be
jingoistic in any way. I am for all of us going.
Scuttle the Shuttle: Part One — The Problem
One might have hoped that in the aftermath of the
Columbia accident, NASA would take the opportunity to make dramatic and
substantive changes in its space transportation activities and plans.
Of course, this hasn’t happened, and just as after
the Challenger accident, the agency is already swinging back to its usual
course of inaction and self preservation.
Unfortunately, the agency’s actions are completely
predictable and completely useless in advancing the cause of opening the
space frontier. In essence, the exercise underway consists of:
A. Get the media to focus on a single technological
smoking gun such as foam insulation (or "O" rings);
B. Move a few folks around;
C. Retire a few more;
D. Bravely proclaim it will get back to business as
soon as possible.
E. Weather any scathing reports tossed its way by
pointing to A, B, C; and .
F. Get more congressional funding to add some
cosmetic safety measures for the same contractors and centers that blew it
all in the first place.
This exercise in media management is of course being
followed by the real game, the trotting out of an already existing plan
for the "next logical step" in space transportation — which by
the way means even more billions for guess who? Come on, this isn’t
hard. I will give you a few hints: X-33, X-34, National Space Plane, the
international space station. Got it yet?
Of course, once again, it is those same contractors
who have spent billions of taxpayer dollars not getting us into space.
Hiding behind high sounding words and emotionally laden images of lost
heroes and our future in space — and by invoking science and education
— those running and profiting from our human space program have nearly
killed off hope of an open frontier in space for Americans. Erecting a
facade of excellent sounding rationales, the current shuttle-space station
program delivers on none of them at all. The space shuttle fleet as
constituted and operated serves no real purpose other than to feed
corporate, political and internal NASA constituencies.
I have dedicated my life to the human settlement of
space, and publicly debated those who would end human space activities,
but even I recognize there is no reason to endanger human lives to do most
of the missions given to the shuttles.
Take Columbia for example. If the international
space station (ISS) were a $50 billion dollar science building here on
Earth, then Columbia was a van driving around its parking lot doing high
school science. Its mission was not critical to construction of the ISS,
carried no important shuttle specific payloads and was redundant with the
mission of ISS as repeatedly stated for over a decade.
As brave and great as those folks were, they were on
a showcase flight that contributed almost nothing to the opening of the
space frontier. That is the real tragedy of Columbia, beyond the terrible
loss of those lives, as they and all who enter space know they risk all.
But risking our entire human space enterprise again when we do not need to
— and for all the wrong reasons is — almost criminal.
I do think the American public could be educated to
understand even significant numbers of people putting their lives on the
line to open space as a frontier, if that were what we were doing, but the
current program has little or nothing to do with that goal.
It is simply not worth betting the entire future of
humans in space on make work, constituency feeding stunts. In fact, most
space shuttle missions do little that could not be done "better,
cheaper and faster" some other way.
One very eloquent speaker, with whom I often and
loudly disagreed in years past, seems to have shared my views in this
regard.
His perspective is interesting, and very disturbing
given his position at the time. But this is one of the best quotes I have
ever heard with regard to this debate. To wit: "Now I don’t want to
be demeaning to the people that worked on the shuttle, but the shuttle has
suppressed a lot of science we could be doing. We haven’t landed on a
planet in 20 years because we’ve been so excited about the service
support contract on the shuttle that we haven’t been doing science. We
spent $10 billion on the space station and didn’t produce a piece of
hardware, but boy did the contractors have fun. It’s shameful. It’s
stealing from the American public." This came from the mouth of Dan
Goldin, who was NASA Administrator at the time he gave this speech to the
American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1996.
It is refreshing that for once, a government
official while moving his lips did indeed speak the truth.
But now, people have died, the rest of us are not
happy and it is time for this cynical game to end.
It is time for real change in our space
transportation system. It is time to move from our government owning a
capability to do its own specific and self-defined (with contractor help
of course) tasks in space, to a system that, at its core, is designed to
encourage ever-widening participation and access to space by the taxpaying
public that pays for it all.
It is time for a new system that increases
reliability, frequency of access, and lowers risk and cost dramatically.
In other words, it is time to begin planning the retirement of the space
shuttle fleet. And it is time to make way for the improvement in safety,
innovation, and competitive pricing that can occur if the private sector
is given the chance to do for space travel what commercial aviation has
done for air travel.
Thanks largely to decades of pioneering work by many
in the space agency over the years, the technologies and elements are
there right now. The people who want to build the new fleets are there
right now. The people who want to take the risks and put up their own
money to build and fly in the new ships are there right now. The potential
for commercial markets based on human space travel and other innovative
ideas is there right now.
And in a few months, when the Chinese announce their
plans in space, the national competitive will might be there too.
Unfortunately, if the current incestuous and self perpetuating space
establishment continues as it has for so long, if nothing dramatic is done
to leverage this potential, we may witness the end of American leadership
in space in the next few years. NASA and the U.S. government need to get
out of the trucking and passenger carrying business, and back to
supporting real exploration and scientific progress. It has been said that
sometimes leadership is defined by turning around and going back to get on
the right course.
In this case it means we must scuttle the shuttles
to save the dream.
Next Week, Part 2: What can be done to create a true
revolution in access to space.
Rick N. Tumlinson is the founder of the Space
Frontier Foundation
Scuttle the Shuttle Part Two: The Solution NASA is
trapped in the past. It costs about the same today to put a human in space
on the government shuttle as it did 30 years ago, thanks to the
incestuous, self-preserving and self-feeding institution that our shuttle
program has become. And according to NASA its new replacement program will
not help that situation and may make it worse, while costing us billions
of dollars we need not spend.
It is time for change. NASA and the U.S. government
need to get out of the trucking and passenger-carrying business as
represented by the shuttle and current follow-on programs, and back to
supporting exploration and scientific progress. NASA and its parasitic
contractors must no longer be allowed to manage the designing, building
and operation of what are essentially glorified government space trucks
and vans. Can you imagine if the government had done the same thing with
an airline? It would be as if the Federal Aviation Administration owned
our single national air carrier. With no real competition it would never
get cheaper, better or more efficient — and no one would be able to
afford to fly on it.
That is the socialist monopoly we have in
spaceflight. It has not improved safety or access to space, but it has
wasted billions of tax dollars. And with the announced plans for the
Orbital Space Plane (or what some call the Orbital Stupid Plane) our
nation will be pouring even more billions into a giant step backwards when
it comes to access to space.
A new lean, mean set of alternative space
(alt/space) firms are out there building truly innovative systems for
carrying paying passengers and payloads on sub-orbital flights for what
may turn out to be less than $100,000 a flight. Often self-funded and
working close to the economic edge, they have waited and watched as our
government has not done the job and are now going to open space their way
— if they survive. These little mammals are doing their best to dodge
the smothering feet of government regulations and paranoia and hold out
hope for a whole new path into space, but they need help to survive. In
order to truly contribute to our national space efforts they need the
current system changed dramatically, to acknowledge them, to support
rather than hinder them, and to let them in to where some of the big money
is.
According to some experts, $1 in market potential
offered to the private sector would produce $10 in the type of
technological and operational breakthroughs we might get from the current
government-centric approach we have today.
Some put the ratio even higher. If Burt Rutan can
build a reusable sub-orbital space ship system for under $40 million, what
can he and the other alternative firms out there do for let’s say the
$10 billion we are about to waste on the Orbital Space Plane? Rather than
waste that money on yet another specific-use dead-end program, let’s
offer that money to the private sector to demonstrate it can carry humans
and cargo to and from space and get $100 billion to $200 billion of
innovation and common sense. An ongoing $2-3 billion-a-year market for
separate payload and passenger flights to and from the international space
station and to fulfill other NASA and Department of Defense needs would
produce a huge change in our nation’s space access capabilities.
Imagine, rather than one or two inside firms working
on cost-plus contracts to fulfill single use needs they helped develop in
the first place, we could have a dozen space delivery and transportation
firms. NASA and the Defense Department would no longer fund multi-million
dollar studies, multi-billion dollar development programs or prop up aging
technologies, but would simply pay on delivery when their payloads were
delivered — just like the rest of America and most of the world does on
Earth.
These new commercially oriented space trains,
trucks, buses and taxis would carry not only government payloads, but also
compete to carry commercial passengers and payloads to a rapidly expanding
human frontier in space – as NASA moves out beyond LEO to push the edge
even farther out.
To get there we must make radical changes, not just
operationally, but most importantly, mentally, and in the structure and
management of our current space activities. To that end I offer a 10-point
plan to turn our space agenda around. This plan will assure the maximum
science and commercial activity in space, while creating an expanding
wedge of human activities that will lead to a prosperous and growing human
frontier in space. It will also save the taxpayers a huge chunk of change.
* NASA should immediately be ordered to begin
planning the retirement of the shuttles, and all human oriented shuttle
and future Earth to low Earth orbit vehicle development offices, programs
and studies should be canceled as soon as possible.
* Congress should kill the Orbital Space Plane
immediately and transfer the $10 billion it was about to waste on this
program to a set of new activities to open LEO to the people and new
industries that should by right follow our 30 years of federal exploration
of this area. To do this, while also seeding the agency’s return to real
exploration beyond the Near Frontier, the following things should be
implemented ASAP:
* A set of National Space Prizes (NSP) – To assure
multiple players and real competition down the road, 1/2 the OSP money
would be used to fund four/five prizes for the first teams to fly four
people (or relative mass) safely to and from LEO at the lowest
demonstrated cost, with the shortest turn around period.
* $1 billion of former OSP related funds should be
transferred to the Alternative Access to Space program to begin the
re-education of agency managers away from exclusionary cost-plus
contracting methods and start implementation of commercial LEO freight
delivery.
* To provide an ongoing market for the NSP winners,
all federal entities needing access to LEO should be mandated to use their
current multi-billion dollar budgets (such as that about to be wasted on
shuttle flights) to buy their rides using roughly the same criteria as the
NSP. They must begin creating new procedures that will allow them to sign
multiple payload and passenger delivery contracts at some date certain in
the future, just as they do when using Fed-Ex, UPS or American Airlines to
move valuable cargo and employees around on Earth.
* To further assist their new partners in the
national space effort, all federal space transportation regulations should
be streamlined to allow the maximum freedom of development for the
alternative space firms. This includes giving them the same regulatory
over-rides now given to government systems such as government space
launches, the space shuttles and the airline industry.
* NASA and the Department of Defense should
implement a series of X-vehicle programs in cooperation with the private
sector based on the old NACA model of enhancing commercial and military
capabilities. And this effort must not be allowed to morph into
development programs for government vehicles.
* As this space revolution is implemented, near term
access to ISS should be purchased from the Russians, using Soyuz, Progress
and other very capable vehicles.
* We should mothball or give our very capable
Russian friends managerial leadership of the current high inclination
space station and use the remaining elements still on the ground to build
a lower inclination, more commercially accessible station. In either case,
the international space station management structure should be changed to
an Airport Authority model, designed to not just allow, but encourage
access to the station and its airlocks by the widest range of commercial
space transporters.
(Ok NASA, I admit I have been beating on you a bit,
so now comes the fun part!)
* It is time to set our national Vision high! It is
time for the President to announce our return to the Moon and the
beginning of the human exploration of Mars! Freed from mundane LEO
activities such as trucking and real estate management, our explorers can
get back to exploring. Taking advantage of our huge shuttle infrastructure
investment in people, hardware and facilities, we can allocate the
remaining $4-5 billion OSP dollars to replace the orbiters now on the
shuttle stack with an automated massive lift cargo carrier to support the
exploration of the Far Frontier.
Note to nervous contractors - Although you have
helped create the current space as a corporate earmark culture, the
traditional contractors have a lot to gain in the long run from this
pro-commercial market-making approach to our space. After all, you aren’t
doing too brilliantly well in the current climate, so you might want to
look a little into the future too. You can pull away from your current
lobbyist-driven approach and cost-plus space contracts, and adapt and
innovate, as GM did when it created its Saturn division. Or reach back
into your collective roots and encourage the modern equivalent of the
brilliant Kelly Johnson and his Skunkworks. You can even take the lazy
way, let the new alt/space firms go for the NSP, do the innovating and
then buy them!
This American Space Agenda is the difference between
opening space as a Frontier, and continuing a specific government program
that is failing to deliver on any of its promises, and by its very inertia
might, in the end, kill our entire human space effort. It is the
difference between leveraging off of the incredible work that has been
done so far in our national space program, by at last partnering the
massive power of free enterprise to innovate and operate, with the
government’s ability to fund exploration, or letting our dreams of space
die the slow death of bad central planning and command economics.
It is time for America to fly again. But this time,
not in circles.
Rick Tumlinson is a founder of the Space Frontier
Foundation.
My own view
remains: take what you think it will cost and put it up as a prize for the
first one to do it. A few billion in prizes and we will have new space
ships.
Guarantee a market for using them
and we will have a fleet of new space ships.
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