There are now more government jobs than jobs that produce real wealth.
And we wonder why the country’s going broke.
59 thoughts on “A Depressing Milestone”
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There are now more government jobs than jobs that produce real wealth.
And we wonder why the country’s going broke.
Comments are closed.
Karl,
Yes, and that would probably be the controling mass as it would difficult to build it on the Moon given both the complexity and materials needed. And of course on the Moon it would need to either be electric or have a source of oxygen and biodiesel to run it (closed system). So my bet is that it would be replaced with some sort of electric system.
Also the truck is just one example. Personally I think the tunnel borers would be the early constraint as they will be critical to build large lunar habitats. The lunar subsurface is ideal for boring since it has so little water. It fact the tunnels may well be self-sealing as a result so all you would need is to add atmosphere and you will have a lot of living and working area. Here is a typical TBM to show the size.
http://www.khi.co.jp/products/infrastructure/popup/CE02_e.html
But even if you choose to cast many of the parts on the Moon you will need the furnances, etc. to produce the metal to pour into the castings. And as some point you will need to have a way to bring large masses from Earth.
My point is that a system capable of delivering semi-trailer loads to the Moon is I feel reasonable since that is the current standard for the vast majority of shipments on Earth.
Edward.
[[[If colonizing the Moon/Mars/fill-in-your-favorite-planet requires the massive investment you say, why should we make that our immediate goal and ignore all the possible intermediate steps? ]]]
Because if you want to move beyond NASA you need to develop a space based economy, an economy based on shipping products to the existing market – Earth. And to be able to do it in quanitities to recover the cost of investing and building the infrastructure.
Tourists won’t do it, small robots won’t mine enough to pay their way. The reason I like the rebuildable Sea Dragon is that the economies of scale involved will get the launch costs down to the range ($300-$600 lb) to make it practical. It its capable of moving the mass into orbit needed to make the logistics for commercialization economical.
As for the Moon, the answer is simple. Its the only body in space close enough to have near real time telebotics so you are able to leverage an Earth base workforce to multiple your lunar workforce. Time delays of 5 to 40 minutes are fine if all you are running is a science rover, but for industrial machinery you need rapid turn around. The Moon is also in a constant relationship to Earth so its easy to develop external powered (i.e. mass driver, slingatrons, etc) systems to deliver bulk cargos to Earth economically (under $1 lbs sliding down the gravity well).
Yes NEO’s are nice and I would love to have one in Earth orbit especially one rich in metals, but the Moon is here now and waiting, a store house of wealth waiting to be tapped.
You seem to want to use a Viking approach of an occasional mission using ships too small to really carry any substantial cargo. The only exports from Greenland to Europe were Greenland Falcons… I want to progress to the English stage of settlement with the ability to send real cargos to Earth for real profits.
Yes, the lunar competitions are interesting, and the model robots are nice, but here is where the real cutting edge of robotic mining is.
http://www.metalbulletin.com/Article/2064238/Automated-mining-becomes-a-reality.html
[[[The miner has achieved an automated mine-to-port iron ore operation, which is due to be commissioned at its Pilbara site in Western Australia this month. It has driverless trains, driverless trucks, remote-control production drills and, remarkably, an operation centre located 1,300 km away in Perth.]]]
Yep, today their operations center is 1300 km away from the mine, in the near future it may will be 400,000 km 🙂
And their payoff is not a prize of a few hundred thousands dollars but cost savings in the hundreds of millions by reducing the number of personal they need to support in the barren outback of Australia. Call it the Real World Prize.
One thing New Space prophets need to recognize is that the cutting edge of technology has move far beyond space in most fields. Most of the technology needed is COTS – Commercial Off The Shelf to restore the term to its Real World meaning. All we need is the logistic system to get it to the Moon. And NASA is not the solution as you seem to think.
And unlike Von Braun and Kennedy I am not interest in exploring the Solar System, I am only interest in exploiting it for Profit and Wealth because that is the only path to sustainable space settlement.
Because if you want to move beyond NASA you need to develop a space based economy, an economy based on shipping products to the existing market
Developing a space economy does not depend solely on “shipping products.” You recognize that mining and manufacturing are not the only “real” industries on Earth. Why do you continue to believe that mining and manufacturing will be the only real industries in space?
And shipping products does not require spending hundreds of billions of dollars on unsustainable Giant Leap to the Moon/Mars/Alpha Centauri. The
The reason I like the rebuildable Sea Dragon is that the economies of scale involved will get the launch costs down
And because you still don’t understand how to calculate economies of scale. Transportation costs scale only weakly with vehicle size. They scale strongly with utlization rate — the thing you want minimize.
Mining companies don’t build a huge railroad then operate it only one day a year, which is what you would end up doing.
As for the Moon, the answer is simple. Its the only body in space close enough to have near real time telebotics so you are able to leverage an Earth base workforce to multiple your lunar workforce.
Not true. ISS is close enough for near real-time telerobotics — much closer to real-time than the Moon. So are Genesis I and II, Hubble, and several hundred other satellites.
You’re like a man telling the Pilgrims they should give up trying to settle in Massachusetts and head straight for the goldfields in California (while simultaneously arguing with Bob Zubrin, who thinks they should go to Hawaii). If the Pilgrims had done that, they would have failed. Frontiers are not developed by stepwise, incremental progress, not “giant leaps” like Apollo.
You seem to want to use a Viking approach of an occasional mission using ships too small to really carry any substantial cargo
No, Tom, I want *frequent* missions. What you fail to grok is that a dozen vehicles, each capable of carrying 10,000 pounds and flying once a day, can deliver much heavier cargoes than a 1,000,000-pound “heavy lifter” which you can only afford to fly once a year.
And unlike Von Braun and Kennedy I am not interest in exploring the Solar System, I am only interest in exploiting it for Profit and Wealth because that is the only path to sustainable space settlement.
Von Braun claimed that Apollo would do that, too. There’s an old say, “Not everyone who talks about heaven is going there.”
Have you had any success selling your ideas to politicians, Tom? Have you talked to Al Gore and other environmentalists, who should be your big supporters according to the polls you always talk about?
Even George W. Bush didn’t fund NASA at the level you wanted — let alone your Lunar Development Corporation.
That leaves you with three choices: You can look for ways of developing the Moon for less money, put the Moon on the back burner and concentrate things that are easier to do, or keep banging your head against the wall.
I predict you will select the less productive option. Care to prove me wrong?
Edward,
[[[ISS is close enough for near real-time telerobotics — much closer to real-time than the Moon. So are Genesis I and II, Hubble, and several hundred other satellites.]]]
Last time I looked the ISS didn’t have any ore bodies to mine, nor much room for a smelter or other production facilities. Find me a NEO full of metal and put it in Earth Orbit and I will be interested. Otherwise the only game is the Moon if you want to stop shipping goods from Earth.
Also you really don’t get it about the Sea Dragon do you? Its not a launcher that would fly once a year. It would be flying daily, eventually hourly. Again we are not taking about low volume activities like space tourism or exploration but building an economy. That takes a lot of up mass. You want to settle and develop a entirely new world using the space equivalent of row boats. I want to use Caravels at the least and perhaps even work up to Galleons.
A semi-trailer mass of good delivered to the lunar surface daily. That is how you reach the critical mass needed for lunar economic sustainability.
Ed, despite being a new space prophet you just are not able to shake the “mission” mindset when think of space launch. That is why you still think row boats (capsules) to the stars is the answer. But then if you still think NASA is in the critical path that is the only way you know to think about space.
Last time I looked the ISS didn’t have any ore bodies to mine,
Once again, you’re hung up on the notion that mining ore is the only way to generate wealth. Until you overcome that mental block, you’ll get nowhere.
Also you really don’t get it about the Sea Dragon do you? Its not a launcher that would fly once a year. It would be flying daily, eventually hourly.
That’s fine, in an imaginary world where there’s no limit to how much money Congress is willing to spend on space.
In the real world, no one is going to give you trillions of dollars for fantasies about launching million-pound payloads every hour.
If you have no interest in realistic projects with realistic budgets, I expect that you will continue to be very frustrated.
That is why you still think row boats (capsules)
Now, you’re just making stuff up. You were the guy who was infatuated with Constellation capsules — even if you suddenly want deny it now.
Have you forgotten all the FUD you posted about how Columbia “proved” that reusable vehicles are impossible and capsules are the only “safe” way to get into space? Ignoring all of the historical data, which show a ~1% fatal accident rate for capsules?
Ed,
The only wealth generated by the ISS is the government payments to the contractors hired to support it. Its not well suit to either private sector research or manufacturing.
At $300’lb the Sea Dragon would cost $360 million a launch to put 550 mt in LEO and about 40 mt on the Moon. If you launch it daily that would be around 132 Billion USD annually, not Trillions. And it would deliver only about 15,000 tons to the lunar surface per year. That may seem a lot to new space prophets like you, but its really not that much in terms of an industrial venture.
But again, what do YOU want to do with the Moon? Gawk at the scenery or create a viable dual planet economy? My goal is the latter, not the former. If I want pretty pictures of the Moon I will just send a robot to take them.
The only wealth generated by the ISS is the government payments to the contractors hired to support it. Its not well suit to either private sector research or manufacturing.
Correct, because it costs too much to access ISS with current systems.
You seem to think that ISS didn’t cost enough, and the government needs to build something even *more* expensive.
Sorry, Tom, but the key to wealth generation is doing something that costs *less* than what you get out of it.
At $300′lb the Sea Dragon would cost $360 million a launch to put 550 mt in LEO and about 40 mt on the Moon. If you launch it daily that would be around 132 Billion USD annually, not Trillions.
$132 billion annually x 10 years = $1.32 trillion, Tom. Simple math.
You also forgot the cost of building the payloads.
That may seem a lot to new space prophets like you, but its really not that much in terms of an industrial venture.
Boasting aside, it’s roughly $1.32 trillion more than you have in the bank. There seems to be a disconnect between your rhetoric and your fundraising.
But again, what do YOU want to do with the Moon? Gawk at the scenery or create a viable dual planet economy?
I don’t know. I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about what people will do on the Moon, Mars, and Europa. I’m more concerned with the practical, near-term steps and building blocks that will enable people to get to those places.
Ed,
[[[I don’t know. I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about what people will do on the Moon, Mars, and Europa. I’m more concerned with the practical, near-term steps and building blocks that will enable people to get to those places.]]]
And that is the core of the problem with the New Space Movement – “build it and they will come”…
The Caravel was not develop because people wanted to just cruise around in the big ocean (a push approach”) its development was driven by the logistic needs of Portugal to replace the commercial boats available which were too fragile for the exploration they decided to pursue. In short it was a classic case of technology pull versus push as with CATS. Its size was driven by the logisitic needs of exploration.
When the New World was discovered it was found to be inadequate for the logical needs of support it so the Galleon was developed to replace it. Again its development was driven by the specific goals Spain had in the New World.
If you have NO idea what you plan to do on the Moon once you get there you will not have a logistic system in place to support it. And like the Vikings, fail to make your New World economy sustainable.
Also $132 billion is only half the current global space industry expenditures, less then 1% of the U.S. GDP and less then .02 of the Global GDP of around 60 Trillion USD. You need to stop think in terms of 1960’s economics, the world’s economy as expanded greatly since then and will keep on expanding. And if space settlement is going to be economically sustainable it must be at a level that contributes to that expansion. Stop thinking like a NASA groupie in terms of nickel and dime budgets.
Is this push or pull? I might suggest that latter. It seems to fit well with Joel’s writing on the increasing centralization of economic decision making in Washington. I saw someone tweet that “This completes Northrup Grumman’s transition from a defense contractor to a lobbying firm.” There is a certain logic in being close to your customer.