OK, so I read this essay by Lou Friedman, and what’s obvious to me, and completely not so to him, is the reason that he and others have made so little headway in selling human space flight. It’s because they continue to use the wrong reason. He uses the word “exploration” a dozen times, by my count. Not once does he use the words “development,” “exploitation,” “colonization,” “settlement.” Once you agree that the purpose of human spaceflight is mere exploration as an end, and not as a means, you completely cede the rhetorical field to the robots, as he points out himself:
Unlike in the 1980s, the lack of new accomplishments in human exploration will be paralleled by the greater accomplishments in robotic exploration. And the danger is that the public will join those politicians who say, “Save money, let the robots do it.”
Hey, if all we’re doing is “exploring,” then count me in with the robots, at least if we’re going to insist on doing human exploration the way we did it in the sixties, and the way that many insist that we continue to do so, including Lou himself:
…we can’t even seem to develop the rockets to take us beyond what we achieved four decades ago.
Lou, if you want to see humans go beyond earth orbit for any purpose at all, including exploration, go write on the board five hundred times, “We don’t need new rockets.”
[Update a few minutes later]
One other amusing point:
Looking at the political history of US human space flight decisions, the only two positive ones were based on international (or more precisely, geopolitical) considerations. They were Kennedy’s decision to take on the Soviets in a race to the Moon, and Clinton’s decision to engage the Russians in the International Space Station. (The shuttle decision by Nixon resulted in a flight program, to be sure, but was a negative decision to ratchet back space objectives and not let NASA build a space station or go beyond Earth orbit). It is also worthwhile to note that neither of these Presidents was interested in space science or exploration.
While it’s true, he writes this as though there has ever been a president interested in space science or exploration. There never has been, and there likely (barring some weird political accident) never will be. The kinds of people interested in those things are unlikely to become president. The closest politician I can think of with that kind of interest, with the slightest chance of becoming president, is Newt Gingrich. And he’s not actually particularly interested in space science or exploration. What he’s interested in is…wait for it…space development.
There is no economic argument that justifies space colonization. I’d love to be wrong but no one has ever presented a case that holds together. If the argument is species-survival that is still done better on Earth, the most habitable body in the solar system under all conceivable conditions, even after an asteroid strike.
Species survival requires leaving the solar system before the sun’s lifecycle makes Earth uninhabitable. How are we to do so if we remain Earth-bound?
Not a very pressing problem though.
I’d love to be wrong
I feel the love.
You left out economic development, it is viable and will be done. The only question is who will do it.
Dennis, show me a way to take lunar resources and make money on Earth and I’ll be a willing convert. Heaven knows I’ve tried to figure it out myself. I’ll even buy you lunch at Costco while you explain it! 😉
Species survival requires leaving the solar system before the sun’s lifecycle makes Earth uninhabitable. How are we to do so if we remain Earth-bound?
You might as well claim that species survival requires that there must be a way around the second law of thermodynamics because maximization of entropy will make the universe uninhabitable.
Humanity can either thrive in space or not. If it can, you don’t need to indulge in scaremongering which serves only to undermine what credibility space settlement has. If it can’t, then space settlement is of no use to species survival and a waste of resources.
Agreed, but I didn’t bring-up the point.
If the argument is species-survival that is still done better on Earth, the most habitable body in the solar system under all conceivable conditions, even after an asteroid strike.
That depends on the size of the asteroid. Dinosaurs are unavailable for comment.
Jim,
I have to agree with you. Space development will stand or fall on its economics.
Kirk,
While I agree that lunar resources are currently subeconomic, I still think there are ways to develop the transportation infrastructure (by focusing on near-term profitable markets) to the point where they could become economic down the road. But my focus right now is finding ways to make money in the near-term by providing those needed technologies as ways to solve existing problems.
~Jon
There is no economic argument that justifies space colonization. I’d love to be wrong but no one has ever presented a case that holds together. If the argument is species-survival that is still done better on Earth, the most habitable body in the solar system under all conceivable conditions, even after an asteroid strike.
Might I suggest a quick cursory glance over the evolutionary history of the Pan genus perhaps with specific attention to the Toba event and its effect on the human gene pool. Some economic history would also not go a miss – an interesting question to ask is what enabled economic advancement in the few societies that actually managed it (if temporarily) compared to the vast majority that did not – with attention to scale and surplus wealth. The rise of the human species always was, and perhaps always will be a near run thing, well, until such time as it loses the never ending fight. Suffice it to say, it is the economy stupid, and humanity can not survive without it.
Please do not take this personally but talent for logic and the assumptions on which it is based has a tendency to be somewhat mutually exclusive (for obvious reasons). Some people are biased towards articulating certainty, other towards articulating uncertainty, it is generally advisable to stick with what you are good at – the world desperately needs both talents.
I would specifically note this comment of yours:
There is no economic argument that justifies space colonization. Sorry to do this but no scientist could ever make such a statement (God might), it is a very telling statement. I would prefer let others explain the why.
Dennis, show me a way to take lunar resources and make money on Earth and I’ll be a willing convert. Heaven knows I’ve tried to figure it out myself. I’ll even buy you lunch at Costco while you explain it!
It will take longer than a lunch hour to explain.
I just had this discussion this morning with a very good person who wants to do commercialization and here is what it boils down to.
You must crawl before you fly or it is a psychological problem. The reason that it is a psychological problem is that here on the earth right now mining companies committed $132.9 billion dollars in new mine development spending just in the last quarter. That is a lot of money in anyone’s book. If lunar resources were the difference between life and death of our civilization, we would invest the capital necessary to make it happen.
Back in the real world of today’s mindset regarding space, we must bridge the gap between commercial LEO operations like Elon’s and commercial lunar development. GEO is the place to do that as well as other orbits. That is why I continue to develop my on orbit assembly methods to help lower costs in that realm. People keep talking about lowering the cost of access to orbit but it is the cost to get from orbit to lunar orbit that is the killer today. You know about the difference in costs of different technologies, we have even done some work together on it.
Developing commercial markets well beyond where we are at today in GEO is the key to the future and the door to get us to the Moon in a cost effective manner.
Once on the Moon with a minimum infrastructure, it will be self sustaining.
People keep talking about lowering the cost of access to orbit but it is the cost to get from orbit to lunar orbit that is the killer today.
I still don’t understand your reasoning on that one. Brute force LEO to LLO costs scale with ETO costs. Make ETO ten times cheaper and you’ll make LEO to LLO ten times cheaper. If you can reduce IMLEO too, then you can reduce it by another factor of ten. I don’t see why we must start by reducing IMLEO especially as it doesn’t help commercial manned spaceflight in LEO in the short to medium term.
Can we please not overlook the value of freedom? Keep in mind most people came to the New World in the late 1600s not to make money — “triangular trade” was 100 years in the future — but to escape the oppressive regime at home.
Let it be possible to merely survive on the Moon, or another planet, all by yourself, and I predict there will be people willing to move there to escape conditions here on Earth. Like about 50 million Chinese, to start with. A few million Americans. Plenty of others.
That depends on the size of the asteroid. Dinosaurs are unavailable for comment.
????
Earth was far more habitable than any place off earth, even after the asteroid strike that ultimately led to their extinction.
Where in space do you imagine the dinosaur could have survived longer?
Or am I missing your point entirely?
People keep talking about lowering the cost of access to orbit but it is the cost to get from orbit to lunar orbit that is the killer today.
I continue to take issue with this. As much as I would like to see cheap access to the moon I am not sure that it is the enabler that cheap access to LEO is.
The initial objective is perhaps to grow the human economy and population beyond Earth (hopefully many times over). If transport costs to LEO are low (mature rocket transports – does not look that hard comparatively) then the cost of Earth resources in LEO would also be low, and space would have access to cheap mass produced low labor cost items from Earth. It seems to me that this would advance initial space settlement far faster than very expensive and limited crude products made off planet. Self sufficiency off planet will come with scale, scaling up as quickly as practically possible by all productive methods seems advisable.
Where in space do you imagine the dinosaur could have survived longer?
The L5 Jurassic Habitat from Silverberg’s “Our Lady of the Sauropods”?
The L5 Jurassic Habitat from Silverberg’s “Our Lady of the Sauropods”?
Don’t tell me, let me guess…that’s a work of fiction, right?
Let it be possible to merely survive on the Moon, or another planet, all by yourself, and I predict there will be people willing to move there to escape conditions here on Earth.
But that’s a daunting task. As far as we know not so much as a microbe has managed to survive off earth. The new world had a flourishing biosphere just waiting to be exploited – once the natives had been shoved aside.
If you want freedom, you’ll have to get it the old fashioned way – fight for it.
He uses the word “exploration” a dozen times, by my count. Not once does he use the words “development,” “exploitation,” “colonization,” “settlement.” Once you agree that the purpose of human spaceflight is mere exploration as an end, and not as a means, you completely cede the rhetorical field to the robots
Rand, “Colonization” and “settlement” require humans by definition, but as for “development” and “exploitation”, I think the arguments regarding humans+robots vs just robots are the same as those for exploration — humans in conjunction with robots are more useful than robots alone for development, exploitation, and exploration, but humans will only be used when costs are reasonable. I see no reason why exploration is different from exploitation and development regarding the tradeoffs involving humans.
Carl has it nailed. The real threat to humanity is not an asteroid or a volcano, but humanity. Being on Mars *does* make it easier to survive an asteroid (though the logic is rather obscure), but one doesn’t have to worry about vulcanism at all.
Freedom is the real prize, and if it can’t be found on Earth, it can certainly be made in space.
“There is no economic argument that justifies space colonization. ”
There is no economic argument that justifies having a child in a non-agrarian culture either yet people do it every day.
There actually is an economic argument for an industrial presence in LEO. The one and only thing we know that can actually be built better in space than on the earth is spacecraft. Having a human manufacturing infrastructure in LEO would be supportable on the GEO SAT-COM market alone… but only with RLVs that flew frequently…
I’m a fan of space exploration, exploitation, settlement, etc, but did Carl really nail it? When I think of the political freedoms that “millions of Americans” want which could be found off-Earth, I think the same freedoms could be found, in practice, in frontier settlements (or on the high seas) on Earth.
that’s a work of fiction, right?
Ah, or prophesy.
The point being that after an impact of the size that wiped out the dinosaurs, the only habitable place to be is off-planet. For a few years anyway.
After that, sure. Land some folks and start over.
Of course, if you have the infrastructure, you can avoid the impact. But don’t let me interfere with your reasoning.
“The point being that after an impact of the size that wiped out the dinosaurs, the only habitable place to be is off-planet. For a few years anyway.”
Why do you think this? You know life didn’t go extinct, so you know there were all sorts of life-sustaining resources available. Why would Earth after an impact of that magnitude be less habitable than Mars or an O’Neill colony? Lack of sunlight due to the dust? Can you not imagine a non-solar power source that might be a good substitute? I wonder if you’re picturing a much more catastrophic impact, something more similar to the sort of impact that might have caused the moon to form.
To put my argument in starker terms: whatever caused the extinction of the dinosaurs did not cause the extinction of small mammals (including our direct ancestors), and yet you are arguing an Earth where mouse-like creatures flourished would be less habitable than off-Earth locales.
The point being that after an impact of the size that wiped out the dinosaurs, the only habitable place to be is off-planet. For a few years anyway.
I’m sorry I don’t follow this. If the idea is to have redoubts where some humans could survive an asteroid and then repopulate the earth after an interval, surely dozens could be built on earth for the same effort as one in space.
Consider the maximum possible economic state of the human species (and its derivatives) spread across the solar system/galaxy/universe. Then consider the economic path that most effectively gets to that maximum economic state.
Economic arguments that stray from that optimal path tend to be poor economic arguments. The current lack of space settlement is a very poor economic argument.
I do not exactly know what that optimal economic expansion path might be however I very much doubt that it involves dallying on Earth – total economic growth rate will I expect want to be near maximized (on and beyond Earth). The meek will not inherit the universe.
If the idea is to have redoubts where some humans could survive an asteroid…
I guess you don’t follow this. The idea isn’t so much about “saving a few folks in a redoubt”, it’s about expanding the options for the continuance of our species.
Again, if we have the infrastructure, all else is just details.
Pete, I agree with you for purely emotional reasons, but
1) your argument doesn’t address a timeframe — why start leaving Earth now, and not in 5,000 years when we’re just so much more adept than now?
2) I’ve seen arguments (and you’ve probalby seen them too) that predict that people will stay clustered together for maximum bandwidth. Maybe the future population of the solar system will consist of trillions of intelligent entities….. …but all residing on the equivalent of one tiny computer chip.
I think the answer to both “why now” and “why not turn inward” lies in exploration rather than “development,” “exploitation,” “colonization,” “settlement.” To quote one Rand’s favorite song writers “There is so much left to know”, we might benefit from finding the answers, and contrary to Cat Stevens, the answers don’t lie within..
( http://www.musicsonglyrics.com/C/catstevenslyrics/catstevensontheroadtofindoutlyrics.htm )
show me a way to … make money on Earth
Kirk, it’s easy to show it. The hard part is getting some to accept the fact.
You start with Carl’s point that people are driven to go into space for their own reasons… freedom. The bootstrap is wealth made here will be spent to get there. Eventually you have diverse economic activity there. Which means both winners and losers. So how does the money of winners make it’s way to earth? Shareholders. Notice this requires absolutely no imports to earth to happen. You don’t have to sell a single thing to earth for people on earth to profit from space activities.
Where in space…
The argument that we can’t live in space is a losing argument. But we do have to actually do it rather than theorize about it.
For those that think living conditions will be primitive, you’ve no sense of how people operate. We create our environment even on earth. Most of us are not barefoot wearing loin clothes (except to get on an airplane.) Don’t expect primitive living conditions elsewhere over time. BEO has an unprecedented growth potential even if most are blind to it.
I can’t imagine a single tangible substance we could return from the surface of the Moon that would exceed the cost of returning it. The appeal of using space resources to further more space activity–that’s a self-licking ice cream cone. You need something that will make money returned here, and that’s a null set. Anything you’ll find on the Moon can be found on this planet, and much cheaper. Part of the drawback of both bodies being part of the same primordial body.
…it’s about expanding the options for the continuance of our species.
Okay, fine. But thus far space settlement isn’t an option. It might be in the future but there is no way to know if and when it might be.
1) your argument doesn’t address a timeframe — why start leaving Earth now, and not in 5,000 years when we’re just so much more adept than now?
Yes, I was leaving that more complicated argument for later – here are a few points:
1) With all the eggs in one basket any risk no matter how small is too great – the safe option is to get off planet at the first available opportunity.
2) A life not made possible in the future is a life taken in the past, maximizing the total number of people who get live, love and be happy means getting out there and making the best future we can for the most people we can as soon as possible.
3) Like bacteria in a petri dish, life in the universe may be a race, with those who grow first having the greatest advantage.
4) Once out in the universe there will be many more and greater problems to solve, the sooner we get there and at scale the more time and opportunity we have to solve those problems and advance to the next level, so to speak.
5) Say we get out there 5000 years sooner, that is 5000 years of however many trillions of trillions of lives at the other end of the life of the universe that get to live that otherwise would not.
6) It is the unknown unknowns that truly worry me, spreading life at the first opportunity is the best insurance policy I can see for this. What we know worries me greatly, but what we do not know worries me far more. What reason do we have to assume that dallying on Earth is safer than pushing off planet?
Consider how many lives this universe might support (as compared to how many lives this Earth currently supports). The very existence of all those trillions upon trillions of lives rest upon what we do now. Our responsibility to those people of the future is incredible, we hold their lives in our hands, we dare not fail them.
Kirk, instead of saying “self-licking ice cream cone”, why not say what you really think: any activity, even an activity in space, which uses material gathered on the moon could be more profitable using material gathered on earth instead. So, for example, you think that building a lunar hotel would be more profitable using material gathered on Earth instead of on the moon, right?
Regardless of whether mining the moon pans out, non-tangibles like tourism experiences and scientific information might be quite profitable to gather, if people value tourism or science.
He uses the word “exploration” a dozen times, by my count. Not once does he use the words “development,” “exploitation,” “colonization,” “settlement.”
Bravo ! I have been discounting anyone that uses the ex word about space from the group i consider serious about it for a while now.
About time people start getting called on it.
With all the eggs in one basket any risk no matter how small is too great – the safe option is to get off planet at the first available opportunity.
Unfortunately, no one has made anything close to a compelling case that the first available opportunity is now or in the near future. Whether humanity can thrive in other “baskets” is very much an open question. Personal convictions, no matter how fervently held, cannot answer this question.
Given the ability of undersea life to survive quite a few severe catastrophes (eg snowball earth scenarios, & gamma ray burst scenarios), isn’t there a good case to be made for undersea baskets? We can put more undersea baskets in the various subsurface oceans of the icy outer solar system, but it would be quickest to start with our own ocean.
Dennis, show me a way to take lunar resources and make money on Earth and I’ll be a willing convert. Heaven knows I’ve tried to figure it out myself. I’ll even buy you lunch at Costco while you explain it!
Given that you didn’t mention a time frame, this becomes a lot easier. The first step is to build a totally automated infrastructure on the Moon so that the cost of building and shipping things to Earth, from the Earth point of view, is paying someone to write some high level computer code to describe the whole process and maybe a bit of one time R&D.
That reduces the problem to building said totally automated infrastructure. There, all you need is a von Neumann machine. Given that we already have examples of von Neumann machines, called “cities” and far simpler almost von Neumann machines called “machine shops”, it seems reasonable that we can come up, given our generous time frame, a solution that is far smaller than either example.
For example, one could start with a self-replicating factory and build more such factories until enough have been assembled to start building a launch infrastructure. Oxygen delivery to Earth orbit (mostly for propellant) is an obvious economic good. An aluminum/LOX hybrid probably would be adequate to launch stuff from the lunar surface.
With a bit more work, one might be able to deliver all sorts of structural, but massive components to Earth orbit, such as tanks, wire and tethers, struts, etc.
Meanwhile some goods such as platinum group metals would be likely first candidates for export directly to Earth. Ultimately, the Moon is likely to be a better place for mining simply because land is much cheaper, resources aren’t depleted (even if you have pure recycling, you still need more resources, if you want to use more than you currently have), and regulations are far weaker (no environmental harm can occur on the Moon, for example, because there is no environment to harm).
I wouldnt’ be surprised if common metals such as aluminum or iron were exported to Earth due to marginal cost orders of magnitude lower than anything we’ve seen before.
Keep in mind that nothing on the Moon currently has value (aside possibly from some historical sites such as the Apollo landings). That means the cost of any early infrastructure built on the Moon comes solely from Earth-side inputs. I assert that these inputs can be made arbitrarily small, though probably not on near future time scales.
Whether humanity can thrive in other “baskets” is very much an open question.
Indeed. We don’t even know if we can make babies or even keep adults healthy at 0.16 gee or 0.38 gee yet. We’ve never tested a radiation shield on living creatures outside Earth’s magnetic field during a solar event. We don’t know what minimum ecosystem is required to keep people alive indefinitely in a closed system (other than energy input and heat dissipation).
These are all basic research questions that must be answered if we are ever to expand humanity beyond Earth orbit. If NASA is going to be doing anything, it is these sort of issues that it should be addressing – the fundamental enabling technologies. In other words, NASA shouldn’t be exploring other planets, it should be enabling the US Geological Survey (or National Geographic, or someone else) to explore other planets.
It really is a matter of the survival of humanity. As MfK mentioned above, the biggest threat to humanity is humanity. Global Thermonuclear War is still a non-zero probability. Gray Goo would be even more devastating. Who knows what nightmares we will dream up in a few decades?
There are also a few known natural disasters that could befall the human race. They’ve started calling some strains of drug-resistant bacteria super-superbugs. The Yellowstone Caldera would ruin your whole afternoon if it blew its top. The poles could shift. Or oh yeah a big asteroid could hit us.
If all of humanity is permanently living on this one planet, then over a long enough time scale all those million-to-one odds add up to one.
Bob, why did people move to Arizona in the 1880s? With 1880s technology, that wouldn’t be lots easier than moving to the Moon in 2010. Same thing with moving to Jamestown in 1608. It is anachronistic to imagine these were easy things to do. Let us recall half of Jamestown died of starvation the first winter, and loads of would-be settlers died on the Apache trail.
I make no prediction per se about when, if ever, the pressures of the human need for liberty and opportunity will drive people to move off planet. I only note that the actual reasons for essentially all human migrations into less friendly territories, since we lolled about on the African veldt, were not economic, but socio-political. People moved away to get away, for the most part, and it was expensive and often fatal. First we needed clothes, then we needed houses and indoor heating, then piped-in water and air conditioners — now we’ll need piped-in air, I suppose.
I don’t deny it’s a big step, and will take much time. But is it not inevitable? I don’t see what you mean about “frontiers” here on Earth as an alternative. Like what? There’s no frontier nation left on Earth. There’s no unclaimed land or sea, any where. And to my eye the slow progression to where we are all mere shiny cogs in the giant all-pervading State seems inevitable, even if there may be half-century hiccups (I hope) during which Tea Parties shovel back the tide for a little while.
your argument doesn’t address a timeframe — why start leaving Earth now, and not in 5,000 years when we’re just so much more adept than now?
Alternatively, a simple answer by analogy:
Should the US take those difficult steps necessary for economic development now or should it put it off for another 5000 years until it is far more adept and able to do so?
If it should not put economic development off, why not?
Why should the economic development of space be put off? Because NASA has “proven” it to be too hard and too expensive? 🙂
We know that the economic potential of this solar system alone is many millions of times the economic potential of Earth (space has many millions of times the resources), hence the ultimate ROI of space is far beyond that of Earth. The Mars advocates actually do space a huge disservice in this regard as the economic case for Mars is rather pitiful – not even an Earth’s worth.
Currently the world sees space as an expense, not as the source of most all future economic prosperity. Hopefully that will change in the not too distant future – with this economic return in mind it is worth most any investment.
Given the ability of undersea life to survive quite a few severe catastrophes (eg snowball earth scenarios, & gamma ray burst scenarios), isn’t there a good case to be made for undersea baskets?
Creating a self sufficient first world economy under water that can survive in perpetuity and rebuild society on Earth in every scenario is not really trivial. Modern technological society requires considerable economic scale to function and being knocked back into the dark ages is not necessarily something that humanity would survive. There would be no cheap oil/gas/coal and various other resources next time around.
I would also note that the Tasmanian Aboriginals regressed to the point of not being able to make fire after an algal bloom some 3000 years back killed most of the population via poisoned fish. Why in 3000 years did they not regain that knowledge? If the human race was severely knocked back it is not assured that it would necessarily rise back up again.
You need something that will make money returned here, and that’s a null set.
Or perhaps to LEO. In the long run I can see how building large orbital infrastructures from lunar resources could be economical, but only once there is a way to launch people to orbit economically. And even then it isn’t clear that lunar resources would be cheaper. They could be, but it isn’t obvious.
While it’s true, he writes this as though there has ever been a president interested in space science or exploration.
What about George Bush Sr?
Unfortunately, no one has made anything close to a compelling case that the first available opportunity is now or in the near future.
Bigelow, Musk and many others would beg to differ. Compelling is in the eye of the beholder and some behold the numbers better than others. 🙂
By my figuring a billion dollars spent in exactly the right place would probably be sufficient to make this happen. Say a $100m spent on each of five very high flight rate 1-2 person RLVs (which might quickly evolve to ~$100/kg to LEO) and another $500m spent on payloads for them that could be assembled into satellites, depots, tugs, space stations, etc. This would I think be enough to start the ball rolling, boot strapping off existing space markets to get to a scale a couple of orders of magnitude larger than existing space infrastructure, hopefully reaching the tipping point for exponential growth in space. At such low launch costs no seriously new technologies or extra terrestrial resources are immediately required, though with such low costs and scale they would hopefully quickly start to happen – the tipping point.
Sensible economic development is required with specific attention to the tipping points, this is not something that has ever really been tried before in the space industry, which has traditionally had other objectives.
This solar system alone could support the construction of the equivalent of something like a million Earth sized habitats. That is a million times the possible GDP of Earth. Space is the economic future and eventually dwarfs most any economic opportunity on Earth.
Space development does not need to make money on Earth to be economically justified. It needs to make money in space, that money can be reinvested in space. The economic case for space is not actually contingent on an Earth based market – beyond gene spreading, although such markets would help. The killer space app/market is life in space.
Bigelow, Musk and many others would beg to differ. Compelling is in the eye of the beholder and some behold the numbers better than others. 🙂
You might as well say that Bigelow’s involvement in MUFON means there’s compelling evidence UFOs exist.
Bob, why did people move to Arizona in the 1880s? With 1880s technology, that wouldn’t be lots easier than moving to the Moon in 2010.
Given that people moved to Arizona (and less hospitable climes) with neolithic technology, I call shenanigans.
Lou, if you want to see humans go beyond earth orbit for any purpose at all, including exploration, go write on the board five hundred times, “We don’t need new rockets.”
Good one-liner! I think people should start using it on the various blogs.