Some thoughts on the history of transportation from Wayne Hale. One part he leaves out of the story, though, is the Great Northern.
39 thoughts on “The Railroad To Space”
Comments are closed.
Some thoughts on the history of transportation from Wayne Hale. One part he leaves out of the story, though, is the Great Northern.
Comments are closed.
Revealing myself to not be the railroad buff I probably ought to be, I ask, “What about the Great Northern”?
It was done privately. It was also one of the few railroads that survived the Panic of 1893. There’s probably some sort of lesson there.
Rand and Google are your friends David.
I learn more history from things Rand says in passing then I did in decade of grade school.
“The technology was ready, the need was there, and with the subsidies the project took off. The rest, as they say, is history.”
Which once again begs the question: What is the national need for human spaceflight?
I was thinking how the analogy breaks down as well. Trains brought people west and beef east among other things. Trade is not so clear for space.
I think it’s immensely short sighted not to colonize space, but can’t actually prove it. Plus I’m not going to live long enough to say, “told ya so.”
Somebody will. No doubt about it.
Actually Hale leaves out nearly the entire story. Such as the fact that horse-drawn railways had been in use in private sector mines for hundreds of years. That iron rails and steam locomotives had also been pioneered by the private sector in England for use in mines, and then later used by the private sector to develop cargo transport railways, at first in association with canals, and then later still, again by the private sector, for passenger as well as cargo transportation.
The railroad business and its technologies were developed by a long sequence of small incremental projects, not by the later grand projects Hale discusses. The role of government in property law, for example in adjudicating right-of-way disputes, in these early years was considerable but subsidies were negligible. The later subsidies Hale focuses on were still usually quite small compared both to the amount of the private investment and the previous revenues generated from private passengers on comparable transportation lines as well as subsequent revenues generated from the railroads. Which could be estimated because they were not roads to nowhere — they were roads to for example California and the Oregon country which had already been heavily settled via wagon trains and ships long before the coming of the railroad. The pioneers, the people who decided where civilization was spreading to next, were millions of families making individual family decisions to move west. The railroads followed their lead, not the lead of government prophets and planners.
The main role of governments was in securing right-of-ways for the railroads, in the case of the federal government by buying or taking land from natives and giving some of it to the railroads. In the case of the Transcontinental Railroad, Hale falsely implies that a per-mile loan by the U.S. government in the middle of the Civil War to the two companies who were designing this strategically important line was a grant or payment for services. It was neither, and the loans were paid back in full after the real commerce between the Eastern U.S. and already-settled California provided ample revenue, as was quite reasonably expected for a road built with mature technology and connecting well-populated regions.
By 1862 railroads were a very mature technology. At no point were governments dishing out large sums of money to develop novel kinds of railroads. At no point were government engineers designing or writing specifications for “commercial” railroads — only occasional requests (as during the Civil War) to meet pressing military needs. So the lies that self-professed “government bureaucrat” Hale is trying to leave in the minds of his readers, that railroads wouldn’t have been built were it not for government subsidies, and that small subsidies and securing right-of-ways for a mature industry are analogous to vast sums doled out to novel kinds of space infrastructure, or that government must lead commerce rather than the reverse, are absurd. Unfortunately, these kinds of gross distortions of history are very convenient for government space agencies and contractors who want to build things that real commerce won’t buy, so I’m afraid we’ll keep seeing such nonsense being bandied about among space activists lobbying for the vast funds that slip out of our W-2s and into the hands of Hale and his ilk.
Rand,
I think you mean the panic of 1883, there was no panic of 1893. 1893 was when the Great Northern finally reached the pacific, a generation after the Golden Spike.
I think you mean the panic of 1883, there was no panic of 1893.
Well, Thomas, I don’t know what planet you’re posting this from, but on this one there was a Panic of 1893.
Rand,
My mistake, I was thinking of the Depression of 1882-1885 which was the third worst on record, only the long depression of 1873 and the Great Depression being worst. The Depression of 1882-1885 was triggered by the boom in railroad construction triggered by the government’s land grants to western railroads so it seemed more related to the story.
Yes, in our modern regulated economy we tend to forget that panics, bank runs, etc. used to be a common occurrence in the golden days of the free market in the 19th Century 🙂
googaw,
[[[The role of government in property law, for example in adjudicating right-of-way disputes, in these early years was considerable but subsidies were negligible.]]]
Don’t overlook the Railway Mail Act of 1838 in the U.S. and the Railways Act of 1838 in England. Mail was just as important for the early railroads as it was for the early airlines.
Yes, in our modern regulated economy we tend to forget that panics, bank runs, etc. used to be a common occurrence in the golden days of the free market in the 19th Century
Yes, common, because that’s the nature of free markets, but brief. Remember the Great Depression of 1920?
Oh.
Yeah. I forgot.
It never happened. Because the government didn’t step in.
We didn’t have a Great Depression until it did, in the thirties. Beginning with that “right winger,” Herbert Hoover.
Ah, you have to love revisionist history. It seems the libertarians are as good at it as the Marxist were.
Tom, you’re the one who is rewriting history to fit your ideological preconceptions of government as a prophetic force leading the way for commerce. Reality is very different: the reality is that commerce innovates novel infrastructure and government follows. You suggest that laws of 1838 sparked the early railroads. In fact, the private sector engineer Trevithick designed and built the first steam rail locomotive, privately funded, in 1804. The private sector engineer Blenkinsop designed what became first successful cargo locomotive railroad in 1812, again with the investment and customers both completely private sector. The first intercity railroad, and the first to regularly carry passengers as well as cargo, was designed by the private sector engineer Stephenson in 1825. Aside from a routine act of Parliament needed to establish way-rights, as had long been done for private canals and turnpike roads, the endeavor was again completely private: privately funded both in terms of investment and in terms of private passengers and cargo being the dominant revenue.
By 1838, there were many intercity railroads in England and the U.S., and it had long since become obvious that where a railroad linked two cities it was far faster and cheaper to send mail already going in that direction via the railroad than via the postal roads. Thus the acts of 1838 to allow the government postal monopolies to do this. The idea that government is a prophetic force leading the way for commerce with novel kinds of infrastructure is preposterously backwards.
googaw, you have to admit though, compared to the railroads, the US government is being outright obstructionist to the commercialization of space. And yes, I even mean those traditional commercial space markets that you are so fond of.. ITAR is a lot worse than just protectionist policy.
What is the national need for human spaceflight?
The nation isn’t the only one with needs. However, you could make a list…
1) National security. Modern warfare is dependent on orbital assets.
2) Technology advancement. We can’t predict what tech. will give us what advantage, but a tech. literate workforce is a national advantage.
3) Keeping up with other nations. We may be surprised by the advantages we gift to others if we don’t stay in the game.
I think private needs are as or more important. The taxpayers shouldn’t pay for it unless it’s also a national need.
1) National security. Modern warfare is dependent on orbital assets.
So little does national security depend on astronauts that the DoD abandon its plans for them in the 1960s and has never used them for anything substantial. Indeed, the period they were forced to use a manned rocket, the Shuttle, had very deleterious effects on our national security, delaying the deployment of many critical reconnaissance spacecraft by many years.
2) Technology advancement. We can’t predict what tech. will give us what advantage, but a tech. literate workforce is a national advantage.
The way to research and test technology is to research and test technology, not to build useless “infrastructure” in hopes of the mostly mythical “spinoff”. Astronaut safety dictates conservative choices which prevents use of technology that has not already been proven.
3) Keeping up with other nations.
The Heavenly Olympics. This is indeed the dominant political motivation for HSF funding, as lame as it is.
Trent, I agree that ITAR is a problem, but the far bigger problem is that space activists have used copious taxpayer money for decades to delude each other into believing ludicrous economic fantasies that have nothing to do with the real commerce and real national security uses that have been developing in space.
I think it’s immensely short sighted not to colonize space, but can’t actually prove it
Ok, we are at the point in history where for the first time people are seriously discussing putting limits to our growth. You have heard the arguments, our planet is finite, our ecology can only take so much abuse, there are only so many resources available, something or other will eventually run out, food, water, this or that strategic mineral or material .. anything.
So, you may not agree with what the “greenies” and finite-world-conservationists say at any given point of time, but they will be right eventually. We cannot grow unbounded.
On one planet, that is. ( note that the conservationists never keep talking about one, finite planet )
Thats it, i think i did the proof : if we dont want to step away from our paradigm of growing forever, we have to get another planet. Or celestial body, or whatever.
forever
Is a very long time. Space-colonization from the point-of-view of our human lifetimes a very long-term task: a task for our grandchildren and their grandchildren. A blink of an eye in astronomical timescales.
space activists have used copious taxpayer money for decades to delude each other into believing ludicrous economic fantasies that have nothing to do with the real commerce and real national security uses that have been developing in space.
Ah, here we go again. The satellites and robots that you love so much benefitted from huge government investments, Googaw. There is no truth in your belief to the contrary.
You condemn human spaceflight because it is not 100% free market, and won’t become so overnight. Okay, that’s fair enough, if you truly believe that, and apply the same standard to other industries. But you don’t.
Robots and satellites have never met your 100% pure free-market standard, and you don’t demand that they do. You’re not only willing to overlook any government subsidies they receive, you’ve called for more government subsidies for your favorite industry (e.g., you want NASA to develop propellant depots for commercial communication satellites instead of NASA exploration missions).
You maintain double standards for human spaceflight and unmanned space — and that is not fair. You love satellites and robots and hate anything that involves flesh-and-blood humans — fine, we get that. That does not mean “real commerce” is (or should be) limited to satellites and robots.
Once again, if you really believe in free markets, you ought to support policies that *move* in the direction of free markets. Even though we won’t get there overnight. What David Freidman called “creeping capitalism.” Instead, you argue for preserving a government monopoly that is the antithesis of the free market. It appears that you prefer stagnant socialism over creeping capitalism.
So little does national security depend on astronauts that the DoD abandon its plans for them in the 1960s and has never used them for anything substantial.
DoD didn’t “abandon” its plans for human spaceflight. The plans were canceled by the political Administrations in the 1960’s.
Obviously, since DoD was never allowed to fly humans in space, it was never able to use them for anything substantial. That is not an argument, it’s a tautology.
Indeed, the period they were forced to use a manned rocket, the Shuttle, had very deleterious effects on our national security, delaying the deployment of many critical reconnaissance spacecraft by many years.
This is a classic example of “reasoning from a single data point.”
No one claimed that the Shuttle was useful for military spaceflight. The fact that one manned rocket is not useful for military spaceflight does not prove that *no* manned rocket will be useful for military spaceflight. The Boeing 727 is useless as a military fighter. Does that prove that all jets will be useless as military fighters?
In the near future, we will have space vehicles that are much more flexible, reliable, and low-cost than the Space Shuttle. Trying to infer their capabilities and uses from the single example of the Space Shuttle is foolish in the extreme. It’s like saying the Spruce Goose failed to be an effective airlifter, therefore all aircraft will fail in that role.
Astronaut safety dictates conservative choices which prevents use of technology that has not already been proven.
On the contrary, astronauts have often been used to test technologies that were destined for use on unmanned satellites but not yet ready for demonstration in a fully automated mode.
Space-colonization from the point-of-view of our human lifetimes a very long-term task: a task for our grandchildren and their grandchildren.
There is no technical or economic reason why space colonization needs to be deferred to our grandchildren’s time. We can begin in our lifetimes.
Don’t believe your own bull***t.
googaw,
What should I say? Please read some textbooks on the history of economic development. Or take a course or two in it.
Technology development is always pulled by the economy and environment, which the government has a major role in shaping. Its never pushed by inventors in isolation from it. That is why the Greeks never did anything with the steam power or hydraulics although its clear now that they had stumbled in the principles of both. The economic environment was not right at the time.
Providing antidotes without understanding the economic environment that created them is really next to useless.
Ask yourself, why did railroads emerge in the early 1800’s and not before? What government policies in England created the economic environment for them to emerge? Answer that and you might have some understanding of the relationship between government policy and technological progress.
As for the U.S policy and railroads and the West. The Railway Mail Act of 1838 provided the stable market to set off a boom in railroad construction in the eastern U.S. just as the Kelly Act did for airlines. The 1862 and 1864 Railway and Telegraphs Acts trigger a similar boom in the U.S. West. Within 20 years the U.S. west was crisscrossed by railroads as a result of the government subsidies and the frontier was all but gone. It would have probably taken a couple of generation or more without those policies to develop the west. Yes, and the Great Northern would probably have not made it to Seattle until after 1900 without the huge stimulus to the western economy the other railroads already provided. So it benefited from the government policy even if it “remained too pure” to take the money.
The transcontinental RR was driven in large part by the fact that we had a large, rich area on the West Coast and a bunch of undeveloped territory in between. But a gold strike on the moon is probably not going to attract many prospectors. Maybe in a century.
Also, would it have been built if California still belonged to Mexico? If we develop a base, say, on the South Pole of the Moon, how good is our claim to the real estate, especially with our current foreign policy driven by a namby pamby need to be liked?
We probably have as much right to claim the moon as we did to California, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Colorado and Texas. Back then you owned what you could defend. Would we really be that bold dealing with extraterrestrial I doubt that India, China or Russia(?) would concede our claims dating from 1969 and early ’70s. Europe would just expect us to donate part of whatever we have to it, following the NATO precedent.
How about having Congress award homesteading rights on the Moon and Mars, with the stipulation that the grantees have to defend their own title (quitclaim)? How much would be adequate to make the private investment worth risking?
Like your name says, just some musings.
AST,
[[[We probably have as much right to claim the moon as we did to California, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Colorado and Texas.]]]
No we don’t because of the Outer Space Treaty the signers of which gave away any rights to claim the Moon, Mars or other Celestial Bodies.
Lacking reasonable argument, Tom has reverted back to nonsensical insults and repeating arguments that I have long since debunked. Sigh.
Back then you owned what you could defend.
Back then, now and forever in the future.
A blink of an eye in astronomical timescales.
Yes, where future results are enormously affected by current actions. This is exactly why I have have been such a fanboy of the idea of mars settlement happening now rather than later. I believe the sooner we have economic development in a colony the faster we start to exploit the resources of the solar system and the impact a thousand years from now will be huge. HUGE!
Lacking reasonable argument, Tom has reverted
Easy Googaw. Most arguments are not final.
It sounds more like googaw has simply run out of arguments to defend his view that government programs didn’t accelerate the development of railroads, especially in the American west, the original topic of this thread.
Interestingly no one seems to even remember the huge impact the USRA had on railroad development in the early 20th Century, especially in terms of technology.
Transportation as always been the realm of government support. In fact I am able to think of only two transportation technologies that didn’t benefit from government involvement, the bicycle and Clipper Ships.
“Transportation as always been the realm of government support. In fact I am able to think of only two transportation technologies that didn’t benefit from government involvement, the bicycle and Clipper Ships.”
Horses, steamboats, motorboats, dogsleds, catamarans, gliders, skis, rollerskates… Government involvement is inevitable on large systems, but involvement does not always mean benefits. Sometimes the involvement speeds up things early on at the cost of stagnation at later dates. Rocketry for instance.
I finally figured out why I disagree with a lot of your viewpoints Thomas. You tend to see economics from the top down and I see it from the bottom up. It’s like you flying over the clouds and seeing thousands of square miles of pretty cottontops bringing life giving rain. I’m looking up at perhaps one square mile of the same clouds with an awareness that they also bring lightning, hail, tornados, and flooding. With clouds, that is just the price of the life giving rain. With government, sometimes the price is too high and we would be better off paying for our own irrigation.
John,
Under complexity economics government policy is macro in terms of creating the environment for an industry or innovation to flourish.
Also in terms of steam boats, government mail contracts were a major factor in stimulating their development and making them economically viable, as well as military spending for advancement of the power plants. The military also had a hand in motorboat technology for similar reasons.
Horses are debatable since nomadic groups in pre-government days first domesticated them, but Kings always have had a major interest in breeding better quality because of the key role they had in warfare from their earliest domestication until the early 20th Century.
Also glider technology got a huge boost from the German government, just as early rockets did, until the Treaty of Versailles got thrown out and they could start developing powered warplanes. The ME-163, the first operational rocket plane, benefited from both.
Thomas,
A few questions about your proposed Space Development Corporation:
1. I’m guessing that your plan is to issue bonds to finance it. What do you think will be the amount of the bond issue?
2. How long will the bonds take to mature?
3. What will be the interest rate on the bonds?
Thanks.
The people in charge of the macro plans don’t seem to have a handle on the complexity. In several cases the massive government spending to solve a problem has made it worse. War on poverty and war on drugs for a couple of examples. One has spent massive dollars creating a situation in which many poor people quit trying to work to escape poverty problems and depend on taxpayer support for generations. The other has spent massive dollars creating jobs for police, lawyers, prison guards, and such while not reducing the original problem. Depending on the government to do things that should be done by the individual just makes things worse. The negative effects of both of these ‘wars’ are visible from where I am, though possibly not from your location.
If the macro planning has no comprehension of the micro effects, results will as often as not be the opposite of that intended. It would be hard to argue with a straight face that the current crop of government efforts are well thought out with full understanding.
John,
Yep. That is because most economists and policy makers are still basing their decisions on the old economics which attempted to view the economy like a simple mechanic clock, just like classic physics view the universe, which allows you to easily break down problems into individual parts that may be modeled and solved with simple math.
The new complexity economics recognizes that the world is a complex interwoven system, much like an ecosystem (in fact its called an Econsystem in the new economics) in which the final results are very sensitive to the starting condition and in which actions may have unintended consequences. The key in the new economics is to first understand the environment that created the econsystem and then determine which factors must be adjusted to get the result you want in a direction that makes it more likely to happen.
For example, Dennis Wingo’s Zero G/Zero Tax proposal to offset the increase risk from investing in space with the promise of greater rewards, who be a typical approach using complexity economics.
Jim,
For its first phase I estimate the Lunar Development Corporation needing about a $2 billion bond to fund the construction of a lunar communication/navigation system. That assumes a 6 satellite system. Keep in mind that the volume of traffic will be lower, but the power requirements higher that existing comsats. Also the station keeping dynamics are different.
The funding would be by 20 years zero coupon agency bonds at the market rate at the time they are issued, which currently would be around 4.75 percent.
The bonds would be paid back from revenue from the system which would need to average around $13 million a month. The unknown is the determination of how many nations operating lunar missions will pay for rental of transponders and the number of missions over the next 20 years. But the ability to simply rent time on an existing system, then building independent deep space systems, would be attractive to both sovereign customers as well as commercial ones.
It is also why I see an international lunar development corporation having merit as nations could just buy shares in the system in exchange for using it. India, China, Russia, and ESA are looking at lunar missions along with the U.S. A common system would divide the costs among them. Surplus capacity could then be made available to commercial systems, unless a commercial partner bought into the system for specific use which it would then resell to other smaller firms as needed.
BTW a potential second revenue stream would be renting space for science instruments aboard the satellites that would be compatible with their function.
Once demonstrated with a lunar communication/navigation system the model could then be applied to other lunar infrastructure by the lunar development corporation, including perhaps a lunar base.
Thomas,
Given the track record of most recent macro projects, I consider them all to be guilty until proven innocent, including the ones that I propose. What source would you suggest for a quick overview of your complexity economics?
Thomas,
Thanks for a very detailed answer. Very much appreciated.
The bonds would be paid back from revenue from the system which would need to average around $13 million a month.
That’s really tough, a very hard sell.
The unknown is the determination of how many nations operating lunar missions will pay for rental of transponders and the number of missions over the next 20 years.
Indeed.
But the ability to simply rent time on an existing system, then building independent deep space systems, would be attractive to both sovereign customers as well as commercial ones.
Terrestrial experience suggests it would not be so attractive. Both Russia and Europe are pursuing their own independent GPS-like systems despite an existing American one.
My own feelings are that systems such as you propose need an already existing customer base, much like the transcontinental railroad needed existing population centers on both coasts with existing traffic between them before becoming viable.
Jim,
GPS is not a good example because its military based. The reason both Russia and Europe are pursuing their own is based more on fear they will lose access to GPS during an international crisis, then economic ones
That was one of the advantages of Intelsat, it was “owned” by over a 100 member nations who had stock it in, before it was privatized completely in the 1990’s.
Its also why I believe an International Lunar Development Corporation, modeled on Intelsat, is a more practical solution. Nations like India, China, Russia would be more comfortable depending on its communication system if they owned a piece of it while it will still drive the cost down for commercial firms.
For example, let’s say you have the six shareholders in the system. 5 are sovereign owners (India, China, Russia, U.S. ESA), one commercial. That would drive the monthly cost of ownership to $2.16 million with annual ownership of $26 million. This is within the range of a small start-up. If they lease their responders to a couple of New Space lunar start-ups the cost would be only $1.05 million a month, a reasonable fee for access to their lunar systems, even if they are on the farside, compared to the alternative of creating their own lunar communication system.
This is why a government based International Lunar Development Corporation would be valuable for moving New Space forward even if New Space firms didn’t supply the systems.