| Wednesday,
August 20, 2008 Some Conclusions from the
DC/X Reunion
I am home and exhausted. I slept in until Noon (more or less: I did get
up for breakfast but went back to bed, and actually I feel like taking a
nap now (2:00 PM).
I'll catch up in a day or so. It was well worth going, and my thanks to
Henry Vanderbilt and Larry Niven for taking care of me on the trip and
during the conference. I am not used to being handicapped; I am used to
thinking of myself as the toughest guy you know, and it's both odd and
difficult to let someone else carry my briefcase (with ThinkPad; it was
heavy) and get my coffee and so forth. Fortunately everyone was very
helpful, and I got through the conference.
I came to a number of conclusions, the most important of which was that
$1 billion spent right would in fact develop the technology -- all
engineering, no new science needed -- to build an orbital ship that would
operate as airlines do. Fly, inspect, refuel, fly again. Once that ship is
built, additional orbiters will cost about what big commercial airplanes
cost, and operate about the way airlines do. Airlines operate at about 3
to 5 times fuel costs, with about 110 employees per airplane (half of
those sell tickets). With orbital access at about the cost of a first
class ticket from America to Australia, free enterprise and commerce will
take care of the rest. It is probably time for me to revise A STEP FARTHER
OUT to reflect all this. Much of America has forgotten just how important
expansion into space can be for a developing economy.
It is also time to revise THE STRATEGY OF TECHNOLOGY. The silly
argument that technology development causes arms races, and that arms
control agreements can prevent arms races, is back, and apparently
prevails among much of the civil service. Peace is a worth goal, and those
who seek it have good intentions: but it just isn't the case that
deliberately halting technology development will bring peace. We have
peace in this world because of US superiority, and the recent events in
Georgia demonstrate the current limits to that superiority. The old Cold
War with Mutual Assured Destruction -- MAD -- complete with Viet Nam is an
even better illustration.
McNamara cancelled the X projects in the name of arms control. Reagan
started up technological research and expanded the military budget.
Reagan's actions ended the Cold War, but we have parts of the bureaucracy
and establishment slowing down military technological research and
development, particularly in access to space.
DC/V looked like MARV (Maneuverable Aerodynamic Reentry Vehicle if I
recall my acronyms; anyway that is what it did, and is a war-fighting
rather than deterrence weapon). Never mind that DC/X has nothing to do
with MARV -- it would have aided in development of that technology, and
thus upset the arms race. This cost it considerable support, and when
Clinton brought in his people with their proclivity to favor arms control
and agreements to military superiority, that was the death knell of DC/X
2; and DC/X 2 and SSX ( see my
paper on that), which will develop low cost routine access to space;
and the arms control/no military actions in space group is back. Strategy
of Technology was a textbook in the service academies way back when, but
it's a bit out of date now. It needs to be revised and put back to work.
The good news is that we are a lot closer to space access than we were
fifteen years ago -- in technology. The recent economic crises have
changed that, and what is needed is a new A STEP FARTHER OUT to show that
space is a great investment for the United States and the human race. I
said all that in the original book -- Survival With Style is still quite
current -- but the book was written 30 years ago, and that shows.
That gives me a lot of work to do in addition to what it takes to stay
alive, because I doubt those projects will make enough for me to live on.
So it goes.
============
Catching Up: I'll post a lot of interesting mail, mostly without
comments; and if you sent something you think important and it doesn't
appear soon, consider sending it again. I was unable to do much work while
in Alamogordo; now it's time to catch up.
I got a good writeup in the Alamogordo news. See
http://www.alamogordonews.com/news/ci_10208502
============
Meanwhile, there is interesting news on the computer front,
particularly about Vista. I'll get to that for the column next week. Or I
hope I will.
=============
If you haven't bought EXILE -- AND GLORY! yet (or even if
you have) go read the review:
http://www.fourmilab.ch/fourmilog/archives/2008-08/001040.html
======================
=================
Everything You Need to Know About
USB 3.0, Plus First Spliced Cable Photos
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/
features/everything_you_need_know_
about_usb_30_plus_first_spliced_
cable_photos?page=0,0
Mike
==============
This story will also be in the
column:
My Kindle was a Christmas gift from one of my sons, and I
have very much liked it, as I have reported here and elsewhere. I took it to
the Writers of the Future last week, where I was to talk to the writer
finalists, about 40 of them. I was going to show it off; but alas, about 1/3
of the screen did not rewrite, and it was useless. Of course I left for
Alamogordo the next day, so I could not take it with me, nor did I have time
to get it fixed.
Today I called the Amazon customer service number
866-216-1072 and got a telephone tree, all of the choices of which had to do
with book purchases and shipments; but there was a "for anything else"
number and I tried that. It took a while but I got a human being, who had
nothing to do with Kindle but would transfer me to the Kindle Support Line,
After another wait -- probably a lot shorter than it seemed to be, of course
-- I got a nive young lady named Myria, who found my Kindle account, walked
me through several tests including a hard reset which did nothing to fix it,
and has promised to send me a new unit along with the instructions on how to
return the old one after the new one arrives. All told it took perhaps
fifteen minutes. I'll let you know when the new one arrives.
It was annoying not to have the Kindle on my trip, but the
Amazon warranty service seems to be well organized and have good policies.
And if an Amazon official reads this, I commend Myria as both competent and
pleasant and willing to speak up when I had trouble hearing her. And I
suspect that while I wasn't deliberately rude, I wasn't as pleasant as I
might have been, but she was constantly cheerful and police.
===============
Regarding prizes: the problem is that with a single prize,
when it is found that a competent company with financing is going for a
prize, it is very difficult to raise capital for anyone else to try.
I am not sure I care: what I want is the technology; for it
to happen. I agree that having a second prize will help a lot in building in
industry, and if the goal is to encourage and build industries that is
preferable; but what I want is the reusable airline operations spacecraft!
Discussion invited, but I am inclined toward one prize for
first place.
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