| Wednesday, January
3, 2001
The CHAOSMANOR domain is now served by one Windows 2000 server whose
hard disk is mirrored, and a second Windows 2000 server that doubles as a
backup storage system. Now all I need is a schedule for pulling critical
files off to CD-R and another to move things to a good magneto-optical
drive system. And finally a THIRD Windows 2000 server with a full RAID
array. Tape sounds more convenient and reliable than it has proven to be
for me. A full backup computer with dual mirrored hard drives costs less
than tape systems did not long ago, and they're a heck of a lot more
convenient.
Regarding what I was saying about 2001 and Lunar Colonies. I could have
done it in 1986 for about $4 billion. Now I think I would need $10 billion
as a private non-profit foundation (I have one if you have $10 billion). A
military project done black -- that is exempt from Americans with
Disabilities Acts that require you to hire deaf programmers and provide
them with a hearing programmer who can do signing so your deaf programmer
can sit in meetings, and yes, that happened to a company last year -- and
exempt from other regulations designed to provide employment for
regulators at a cost of enormous inconvenience to most of us and a small
benefit to a few people -- could probably manage for $20 billion
now. I don't think a straight civilian contract, competitive bidding,
could get it done for any price, and NASA, which once said it could do it
for $80 billion, would probably want twice that and still wouldn't be able
to get the job done.
Why? What has changed since 1984 when I was certain a Lunar Colony
could be built with a single item of legislation:
"The Congress of the United States has determined that an American
owned Lunar Colony is in the national interest of the United States. The
sum of $10 Billion Dollars is hereby authorized and appropriated to be
paid by the Treasurer of the United States to the first firm owned by US
citizens and chartered in the United States which shall place no fewer
than 39 US citizens on the surface of the Earth's Moon and maintain them
continuously there for a period of not less than 3 years and one
day."
That would have done it. It might now; it certainly would have a better
chance of getting the job done than contracting The One Big Aerospace And
Defense Company to do the job.
But in 1984 I estimated that it would take about $4 billion for me to
do it. (Incidentally, by "me" I mean a non-profit that I chair.
It's not that I am so smart or so good at this, as that the people who are
will work for me, and many of them will not work for each other.) Second
note: General Graham would have been an even better choice, and him being
dead is one reason it will cost a lot more. In any event, we thought we
could get the job done a lot cheaper 16 years ago: why so much now?
Well part is inflation, but that's not the major part. The major
reason it would cost so much now is that we've lost most of the capability
for doing that sort of thing. The great management and engineering teams
of the old days are gone, gone, gone, replaced by a management style that
is inimical to bold and innovative large projects. By the time I was 30
years old I had been in charge of several large research projects. Most of
us in aerospace who were headed upward had been. Now it is rare to find
anyone under 50 who has actually made something happen, built something
that flew or even built a component that flew. Software and computer
companies are the exception, of course, but no one has the kind of
experience in structures, propulsion, and dynamics that is needed. The
teams have been broken up, or never allowed to form.
Half my $10 billion will go to developing reusable spacecraft and
building a fleet (something like 6) of them. And of that $5 billion, about
half would go to rebuilding experience, small projects and small steps,
parallel approaches to keep things competitive, learning how to compete
again; rebuilding the kind of splendid teams we had back in the days when
we built the first IRBM and ICBM systems; back when we had the "good
old American know-how" and the experimental mechanics on the
production lines capable of devising new ways to make complex parts and
just get the job done.
People are still smart, and computers are very useful, but we don't
have people who know how to do the kinds of things needed to build
reusable space ships, fly them, do the on-orbit assembly (our only
on-orbit assembly people are 40 year old Ph.D.'s; if you were going to
build a deep sea oil well would you send a 40 year old geologist down to
the bottom or would you want a 20 year old rigger? Same with space), and
generally apply human ingenuity to situations where we don't know in
advance what the problems are.
A Lunar Colony could still be built and be operational by 2010. It's
clearly too late for 2001. Oh well. The Cold War is over.
In 1984 if you had asked me which was more probable by 2000, a US Lunar
Colony or the defeat of the USSR, I would have chosen the Lunar Colony;
but offered my choice of a Lunar Colony or having those 20,000 nuclear
weapons pointed at the United States taken off line, I'd have chosen the
collapse of the USSR. But now that the Seventy Years War is over, we've
dismantled many of the teams that won it -- and doubled the numbers of
bureaucratic parasites who lived off the war effort and who will not go
away.
Over in Mail I have had another request for the Chaos
Manor Reading List. I have at least a partial answer there.
HELP WANTED: I need furniture. To be exact, a way to stack two
mini-towers one on the other and still be able to get the bottom one out
when needed. I need several of these, preferably in a system with
adjustable shelving. I don't think I want to go three high. Anyone know
sources? What I need would be easy to design and have built, but that
takes time I don't want to put into it.
At Niven's New Years party Warren James who does the Hour 25 Web site
(formerly a KPFK radio SF review broadcast) took the trouble to find me to
tell me how happy he was with my recommendation of PAIR.COM as the place
to host their web site. They've been there a while and they are very
pleased. So am I, after a couple of years. Pair will get an orchid in the
next column.
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