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December 31, 2003
More Year-End Space Reviews

Fresh from a tour in the belly of the space beast, Laughing Wolf describes the sad state of NASA at the end of 2003, and offers hope for the future similar to mine.

Clark Lindsey has some good roundups as well.

[Update at 4 PM Central Time (I'm still in Columbia, MO)]

My New Years Fox column is up. As some may have guessed, it's a reprise of this post. I should issue a correction, since my editor is probably out partying by now and won't be fixing it any time soon (it's my fault, not hers--she ran it as submitted, instead of correct). I say that Lockheed is the only remaining provider of large commercial expendable launchers. That should have read, of course, the only domestic one. There are others, in Europe, China and Russia.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:32 AM

Why He Is A Democrat

Iowahawk explains.

He also has the lowdown (and I do mean low) on Dean's southern strategy.

Cover your data-entry device with something sputum impermeable before reading, and don't say that I didn't warn you.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:24 AM

For The Children

The idiotarians over at TomPaine.com think that we have to make a choice between "the children" and the moon. Thomas James, thinks...errr...otherwise.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:43 AM

Challenging The Gatekeepers

Laughing Wolf has a long, but interesting post on the state of journalism at the end of 2003.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:38 AM

Out With The Old, In With The New

2003 will be viewed by historians as a crucial year in the development of space, though not for the reasons that many present-day commentators might suppose.

For those who support America's national space program, the year started out with a tragedy, and a seemingly major blow to NASA's manned spaceflight endeavors, with the loss of the Space Shuttle Columbia on the first of February.

The conventional wisdom is that this will be seen as the key space event of the year, one that set off a major investigation into the catastrophe, resulting in recommendations that would ultimately lead to a reform and revitalization of the space agency, with new goals. The cynic in me (that part of me that has, unfortunately, been much more prescient than my more idealistic side) is unsurprisingly skeptical about the prospects for such an outcome. Bureaucracies have remarkable inertia and staying power, particularly when their status-quo activities benefit powerful political interests, and sending humans to other planets, lofty a goal as that may seem to many, is not now, and never has been such an activity.

Such skepticism is borne out, so far, by the fact that many in the space community were disappointed a couple of weeks ago in hoping for an early Christmas present from President Bush--that the administration would announce some bold new goal for NASA on the centennial of flight. Such a goal may still be announced, perhaps at the upcoming State of the Union address next month (and close to the first anniversary of the loss of Columbia), but simply announcing a new destination, as many hope, will not solve the fundamental problem.

Already, it seems clear that, in pursuing and even accelerating the Orbital Space Plane (OSP) program, those running NASA plan to stick with business as usual, if the administration allows them to, and there are no indications as of yet that it won't. The Gehman Commission on the Columbia accident misdiagnosed the problem, thinking that our faltering manned spaceflight program is a symptom of a simple design issue, rather than a fundamental institutional and philosophical one, in which we designate NASA to build and operate a single vehicle type (of whatever design) to accomplish its paltry goal of sending a few government employees into space each year. That was the fatal flaw of the shuttle program, and it will be just as flawed an approach if we replace shuttle with OSP, because it will remain a fragile monoculture, with too little activity to ever make it cost effective.

OSP won't cost any less, and while it may be slightly safer, as the old inspirational management poster says, a ship in a harbor is safe, but that's not what ships are built for. Sadly, Administrator O'Keefe apparently neither made nor kept any of my suggested resolutions for this past year.

It wasn't just NASA that seemed to be on its last legs in the past year, however. The existing commercial launch industry is in dire straits as well, with a huge glut of launchers on the market, and no prospects for an increase in demand any time soon, given the proliferation of new technologies that are supplanting orbital telecommunications. This was the year that Boeing announced that it was dropping out of the commercial launch market for the Delta program, leaving only one remaining provider of large commercial expendable launchers.

Both NASA and the traditional launch industry remain mired in a vicious cycle: they do too little, because it costs too much, because they do too little, because it costs too much, because... In retrospect, this past year may be seen as the beginning of the end for the space program as we've known it over the past four decades of its existence, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.

More hopefully, there were other events this year that may have marked the end of the beginning of a nascent, but far more vibrant and dynamic space industry that will more likely characterize the remainder of this young century.

The regulatory situation with respect to reusable launch systems (or as I prefer to call them more simply, space transports) became much more clear this past year, significantly reducing the uncertainty that has been a major barrier to private investment.

Legislation to explicitly authorize the FAA to license passenger vehicles, and to define suborbit for the purposes of launch licensing was introduced in the Congress this past year, and the FAA has already started to implement new rules in anticipation of its passage. More importantly, at least one company's license application has been declared by the FAA to be "sufficiently complete," meaning that they will likely be granted such a license within a few months.

One of the other companies seeking such a license, Scaled Composites, celebrated the hundredth anniversary of the Wright brothers' achievement by accelerating a rocketplane beyond the speed of sound (a first for a privately-developed aircraft), with funding provided by Microsoft co-founder, and billionaire Paul Allen. This was one of several test flights that are planned to ultimately culminate in an attempt at two consecutive flights to a hundred kilometers altitude, to win the X-Prize. The prize expires next year, but whether by Scaled or someone else, the chances that someone will win it are looking increasingly good.

Paul Allen wasn't the only investor to come out of the space-entrepreneur closet in 2003. John Carmack, developer of Doom, Quake and other best-selling video games, is funding his own X-Prize entry, and may win it should the Scaled attempt falter. Jeff Bezos, founder and owner of Amazon.com, is now directing some of his own riches to a life-long passion as well, with the announcement this past spring of a project to build a suborbital tourism vehicle. Elon Musk, founder of Paypal, announced the development of a new small commercial launcher, on a fast-track schedule, with first flight next year--a breakneck development pace unseen since the dawn of the first space age in the fifties and sixties. Dennis Tito, the first man to buy his own ride into space, has declared that he plans to invest in the space tourism industry. He was only awaiting a clearing of the regulatory fog and, given the welcome news from the FAA, described above, may be announcing specific investments soon.

There's an old saying in commercial space circles that the way to make a small fortune in that business is to start with a large one. These are all very astute businessmen, and at least one of them is likely to turn a small fortune into a larger one. When they do, it may set off a new investment trend, one that will finally break the monopoly of NASA and big aerospace on the new frontier, both manned and unmanned, allowing not just dozens, but thousands, and perhaps even millions to seek their own adventures and fortunes there. Ultimately, historians may in fact view 2003 as significant a year for spaceflight as 1903 was for aviation.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:01 AM

December 25, 2003
Off To The Midwest

I'm flying to Missouri for the holidays. Non-existent posting today, and probably sparse for the next week.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good day (and night).

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:58 AM

"In The Beginning"

Thirty-five years ago, on another Christmas Eve, men first rounded our nearest planetary neighbor. They were in radio silence on the far side, for a few minutes the loneliest men in existence.

The reentered the world of humans as they emerged from the shadow of the moon, and read from Genesis. At that time, despite the government funding, the ACLU had no complaints, as far as I know.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:29 AM

December 24, 2003
Masters Of Diplomacy

Amir Teheri writes that French foreign policy is in disarray, and some are starting to point fingers:

...it is unlikely that France can restore its credibility without a reform of the way its foreign policy is made.
Villepin may end up as the scapegoat .

Liberation complains about what it sees as Villepin?s decision to ?practice the art of eating humble pie? by praising the Anglo-American success in Libya.

?What happened to Villepin?s flamboyance?? the paper demands. ?How far have we come from the famous French Arab and African policies!?

And just how naive was this?

Many Arab leaders regard France as a maverick power that could get them involved in an unnecessary, and ultimately self-defeating, conflict with the United States.
?I cannot imagine what Chirac was thinking,? says a senior Saudi official on condition of anonymity. ?How could he expect us to join him in preventing the Americans from solving our biggest problem which was the presence of Saddam Hussein in power in Baghdad??

Another senior Arab diplomat, from Egypt, echoes the sentiment.

?The French did not understand that the Arabs desired the end of Saddam, although they had to pretend that this was not the case,? he says.

The true "Arab street" speaks.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:40 PM

December 23, 2003
Speaking Truth To Power

Jeff Greason apparently made a very politically incorrect (i.e., correct) speech to a very prestigious audience last week:

...this future is not inevitable -- and it will not happen without massive private investment and the prospect of profit. Government must move from the center of the stage to play a supporting role. If government actions discourage investment, forbid risk-taking, and pile up red tape, we can look forward to a future very much like the present.
I was born after the last flight of Gemini, and I have lived long enough for my son to ask me "Dad, did they really used to fly to the Moon when you were a boy?" The choices we make in this decade will determine whether my grandchildren have to ask the same question.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:47 PM

An Idle Thought

A Florida judge has denied Rush Limbaugh's attempts to keep his medical records private. On Fox News, I heard a replay of Rush reading a statement from his attorney, Roy Black, in which Mr. Black claimed that this was a violation of Rush' "constitutional right to privacy."

I wonder if Rush agrees with his lawyer that he has such a thing?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:23 AM

The Schmirk That Stole Nanotech

Howard Lovy has a classic Christmas tale by J. Storrs Hall.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:19 AM

December 22, 2003
Peasants With Pitchforks

Ron Bailey has a long, but worthwhile article about the current state of nanotechnology, and its stasist enemies.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:46 PM

I'm Dreaming Of A White Kwanzaa

Mark Steyn reminisces about the one-year anniversary of Trent Lott's well-deserved self immolation.

And in commemoration, I'll replay this golden oldy.

By the way, if you Google "hexidecaroon," you get very limited, but appropriate results.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:17 PM

That's Why It Was Successful

The French are whining that they were kept in the dark about Libya.

Too bad we couldn't have kept them in the dark about Iraq. We might have fixed things there a lot sooner.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:51 PM

We Play Right Into Their Hands

Here's an interesting, and disturbing article claiming that the powers that be are now concerned that Al Qaeda already has trained pilots working for foreign airlines. Just in case you can't tell, this makes me...mad.

Here's the key point:

Reinforced cockpit doors intended to thwart hijackers after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks would now protect any terrorist pilot at the controls, the officials said on condition of anonymity.

After 911, we didn't change our (failed) philosophy toward aircraft hijacking--we just reinforced it and made it all the more idiotic and potentially disastrous.

Before 911 we were treated as sheep--if your airliner is hijacked, assume a docile position, let the grownups handle it, and hope that everything comes out all right.

The only lesson that our fearless/feckless leaders seemed to learn from that experience was that they didn't do enough to disarm the sheep, and the wolves in sheep's clothing. They stepped up the faux-sheep disarming campaign, carrying it out to the level of nose-hair clippers, further increasing the annoyance and waste of time, on the assumption (regrettably not unfounded) that most people would associate annoyance with safety. They decided that even those responsible for the safety of the plane and passengers wouldn't be allowed to arm themselves, relying instead on the notion that the pilots should be vaulted up in the cockpit so that no one could take it over.

Thankfully, due to a public uproar and a response from some of the few people in Congress with intact minds, the pilots were finally allowed to carry, but the administration continued to drag its feet for months in actually implementing it.

But now we learn the (what should have been obvious) folly in our approach. What if the pilot is the hijacker? What if the pilot is the terrorist? All he has to do is disable his flight crew (or better yet, ensure that they're already on his side) and he can deliver his passengers to their deaths while immolating another skyscraper, or nuclear plant, or government facility unmolested, thanks to the armored door, which prevents anyone of the possibly hundreds of people on the plane from preventing it. Now the only solution is to shoot it down, with all aboard.

D'oh!!!

Brilliant.

Consider an alternate scenario.

We stop wasting peoples' time looking for tweezers, and let them take care of themselves, which ultimately they already have to do, given the reality that the police cannot be everywhere everywhen.

Yes, occasionally a nutball will get on a plane with a weapon, but he will be subduable (as the Flight 93 people proved) and almost certainly subdued. If he's subdued prior to his access to the cockpit (which would have happened with Flight 93, and indeed all other flights that day had they realized the stakes), they don't suffer the fate of Flight 93--they get the aircraft safely to the ground, and only lose those few passengers who are overcome before the passengers (aka air militia) realize what's happening.

He doesn't get into the cockpit, not because it's armored and locked, but because no one lets him in there. And if he somehow gets in there nonetheless, as occurred in Flight 93, in the last extreme, the militia can still ultimately break in and prevent his fiendish mission, even if it costs them their lives.

But this administration continues to treat the people like a herd, rather than a pack, and so in the next incident, they may leave us even more defenseless, not only unable to save themselves, but this time, unable to save the White House or the Capitol Building.

And if the residents of those locations die, they'll fully deserve it for their elite arrogance and insufficient faith in the ability of free men to defend themselves and their country.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:30 PM

A Twenty-One Silent Dog Whistle Salute

The man who sold sea monkeys and X-ray specs in the backs of the comic books that were long a staple of my misspent youth has died. I never ordered them, but I was always tempted. I did get a hypnocoin, but I couldn't find any willing subjects.

He was definitely a marketing genius. I particularly liked this one, even better than pet rocks:

He sold invisible goldfish by guaranteeing that owners would never see them.

And just to show that it takes all kinds:

In a radically different sphere, von Braunhut's hard right-wing beliefs drew notice. According to a 1996 Anti-Defamation League report, he belonged to the Ku Klux Klan and the Aryan Nations.
The Washington Post in 1988 published an article on him and his affiliations, adding that his relatives said he was Jewish. He repeatedly refused to discuss his beliefs on race or his own religious background with journalists, and in an interview Thursday his wife declined to comment on the subject.

He changed his name from Braunhut to Von Braunhut.

Weird.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:34 PM

Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On

I'm hearing about a 6.5 quake up off the California central coast a half hour ago. I'm down in southern California right now (Redondo Beach) and didn't feel anything, but if it was really that big a quake a few miles from San Simeon and Cambria, I hate to think what this place looks like right now. Every time I go in there, I can't help but think about what a disaster in waiting it is, in the event of a significant quake. They have some beautiful art glass there, but their insurance company may have a big bill, assuming they carry quake insurance.

I'm also wondering how many of the antiquities at Hearst Castle in San Simeon were damaged.

[Update a few minutes later]

It also occurs to me that this isn't far from the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant, the one that was being protested by Martin Sheen and other loons back in the eighties. I wonder how it held up?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:53 AM

A Vision, Not A Destination

Jason Bates has an article on the current state of space policy development. As usual, it shows a space policy establishment mired in old Cold-War myths, blinkered in its view of the possibilities.

NASA needs a vision that includes a specific destination. That much a panel of space advocates who gathered in Washington today to celebrate the 100th anniversary of powered flight could agree on. There is less consensus about what that destination should be.

Well, if I'd been on that panel, the agreement would have been less than unanimous. I agree that NASA needs a vision, but I think that the focus on destination is distracting us from developing one, if for no other reason than it's probably not going to be possible to get agreement on it.

As the article clearly shows, some, like Paul Spudis, think we should go back to the moon, and others, like Bub Zubrin, will settle for no less than Mars, and consider our sister orb a useless distraction from the true (in his mind) goal. We are never going to resolve this fundamental, irreconciliable difference, as long as the argument is about destinations.

In addition, we need to change the language in which we discuss such things. Dr. Spudis is quoted as saying:

"? For the first time in the agency?s history there is no new human spaceflight mission in the pipeline. There is nothing beyond" the international space station."

Fred Singer of NOAA says:

The effort will prepare humans for more ambitious missions in the future, Singer said. "We need an overarching goal," he said. "We need something with unique science content, not a publicity stunt."

Gary Martin, NASA's space architect declares:

NASA?s new strategy would use Mars, for example, as the first step to future missions rather than as a destination in itself, Martin said. Robotic explorers will be trailblazers that can lay the groundwork for deeper space exploration, he said.

"...human spaceflight mission..."

"...unique science..."

"...space exploration..."

This is the language of yesteryear. This debate could have occurred, and in fact did occur, in the early 1970s, as Apollo wound down. There's nothing new here, and no reason to think that the output from it will result in affordable or sustainable space activities.

They say that we need a vision with a destination, but it's clear from this window into the process that, to them, the destination is the vision. It's not about why are we doing it (that's taken as a given--for "science" and "exploration"), nor is it about how we're doing it (e.g., giving NASA multi-gigabucks for a "mission" versus putting incentives into place for other agencies or private entities to do whatever "it" is)--it's all seemingly about the narrow topic of where we'll send NASA next with our billions of taxpayer dollars, as the scientists gather data while we sit at home and watch on teevee.

On the other hand, unlike the people quoted in the article, the science writer Timothy Ferris is starting to get it, as is Sir Martin Rees, the British Astronomer Royal, though both individuals are motivated foremost by space science.

At first glance, the Ferris op-ed seems just another plea for a return to the moon, but it goes beyond "missions" and science, and discusses the possibility of practical returns from such a venture. Moreover, this little paragraph indicates a little more "vision," than the one from the usual suspects above:

As such sugarplum visions of potential profits suggest, the long-term success of a lunar habitation will depend on the involvement of private enterprise, or what Harrison H. Schmitt, an Apollo astronaut, calls "a business-and-investor-based approach to a return to the Moon to stay." The important thing about involving entrepreneurs and oil-rig-grade roughnecks is that they can take personal and financial risks that are unacceptable, as a matter of national pride, when all the explorers are astronauts wearing national flags on their sleeves.
One reason aviation progressed so rapidly, going from the Wright brothers to supersonic jets in only 44 years, is that individuals got involved ? it wasn't just governments. Charles A. Lindbergh didn't risk his neck in 1927 purely for personal gratification: he was after the $25,000 Orteig Prize, offered by Raymond Orteig, a New York hotelier, for the first nonstop flight between New York and Paris. Had Lindbergh failed, his demise, though tragic, would have been viewed as a daredevil's acknowledged jeopardy, not a national catastrophe. Settling the Moon or Mars may at times mean taking greater risks than the 2 percent fatality rate that shuttle astronauts now face.

Sir Martin's comments are similar:

The American public's reaction to the shuttle's safety record - two disasters in 113 flights - suggests that it is unacceptable for tax-funded projects to expose civilians even to a 2% risk. The first explorers venturing towards Mars would confront, and would surely willingly accept, far higher risks than this. But they will never get the chance to go until costs come down to the level when the enterprise could be bankrolled by private consortia.
Future expeditions to the moon and beyond will only be politically and financially feasible if they are cut-price ventures, spearheaded by individuals who accept that they may never return. The Columbia disaster should motivate Nasa to set new goals for manned space flight - to collaborate with private groups to develop a more cost-effective and inspiring programme than we've had for the past 30 years.

Yes, somehow we've got to break out of this national mentality that the loss of astronauts is always unacceptable, or we'll never make any progress in space. The handwringing and inappropriate mourning of the Columbia astronauts, almost eleven months ago, showed that the nation hasn't yet grown up when it comes to space. Had we taken such an attitude with aviation, or seafaring, we wouldn't have an aviation industry today, and in fact, we'd not even have settled the Americas. To venture is to risk, and the first step of a new vision for our nation is the acceptance of that fact. But I think that Mr. Ferris is right--it won't be possible as long as we continue to send national astronauts on a voyeuristic program of "exploration"--it will have to await the emergence of the private sector, and I don't see anything in the "vision" discussions that either recognizes this, or is developing policy to help enable and implement it.

There's really only one way to resolve this disparity of visions, and that's to come up with a vision that can encompass all of them, and more, because the people who are interested in uses of space beside and beyond "science," and "exploration," and "missions," are apparently still being forced to sit on the sidelines, at least to judge by the Space.com article.

Here's my vision.

I have a vision of hundreds of flights of privately-operated vehicles going to and from low earth orbit every year, reducing the costs of doing so to tens of dollars per pound. Much of their cargo is people who are visiting orbital resorts, or even cruise ships around the moon, but the important things is that it will be people paying to deliver cargo, or themselves, to space, for their own purposes, regardless of what NASA's "vision" is.

At that price, the Mars Society can raise the money (perhaps jointly with the National Geographic Society and the Planetary Society) to send their own expedition off to Mars. Dr. Spudis and others of like mind can raise the funds to establish lunar bases, or even hotels, and start to learn how to operate there and start tapping its resources. Still others may decide to go off and visit an asteroid, perhaps even take a contract from the government to divert its path, should it be a dangerous one for earthly inhabitants.

My vision for space is a vast array of people doing things there, for a variety of reasons far beyond science and "exploration." The barrier to this is the cost of access, and the barrier to bringing down the cost of access is not, despite pronouncements to the contrary by government officials, a lack of technology. It's a lack of activity. When we come up with a space policy that addresses that, I'll consider it visionary. Until then, it's just more of the same myopia that got us into the current mess, and sending a few astronauts off to the Moon, or Mars, for billions of dollars, isn't going to get us out of it any more than does three astronauts circling the earth in a multi-decabillion space station.

There's no lack of destinations. What we continue to lack is true vision.

[Monday evening update]

As is often the case, Mark Whittington utterly misstates my position, which is clarified in the comments section. Also as usual, I don't mind that much, because most people can figure that out on their own, and links are links.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:26 AM

December 20, 2003
Drinking Their Own Bathwater

Hugh Hewitt thinks that being a cybercampaign has made the Deaniacs too insular, insulating them from reality.

The nuttiest 1 percent of the American electorate is going to number around 1 million voters. Gather those people in one place, let them talk to each other and cheer each other on, and they are going to begin to assume that their 1 percent is much more numerous than it is, much more powerful, much more authentic than the 99 percent not at the rally.
This appears to be happening among the Deaniacs. They believe themselves to be far more numerous than they are, and to think that their self-referential assurances of virtue and victory carry weight beyond their chat rooms.

Someone over at Free Republic commented that the Dean campaign is just "one extended flash mob." I think that's a good characterization.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:45 PM

The Beginning Of A Bloodba'ath?

Would this have happened a week ago?

Unfortunately, it's inevitable that there are a lot of old scores to pay. It happened in Europe after the end of the Nazis, and it's been delayed in Iraq by fear of the return of Saddam, but it may be beginning now. The most challenging period may lie immediately ahead, in the struggle to prevent a full-fledged civil war, and keeping the whole country from being thrown out with the Ba'ath water.

[Update at 3 PM PST]

Here's a more in-depth story from the WaPo.

Nima said the assassinations have centered on Hussein followers implicated in violence, not all former party members. The murders seem meticulously planned, and the perpetrators leave behind no clues, he said. With few leads, detectives have made little progress in figuring out who is killing the Baathists, but Nima said this does not trouble him.
"There's only a limited number of them. Once they're all dead, this will have to end," he said.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:07 PM

Geronimo!

I predict that once we have operational suborbital vehicles, one of the markets will be people willing to pay for one-way rides.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:16 AM

Bilk The Dumb Guardian Columnist

Polly Toynbee wrote a really dumb column, even for her, in which she posits that George Bush is responsible for Nigerian email spam.

The Birdman of Iowa (who has finally, belatedly, come up with archives for his site) is celebrating by running a contest.

Check out the two previous posts as well. He has the scoop on the latest humiliation of Saddam and the Arab world, and laudable efforts by the government to ensure that public education isn't sullied by Christmas.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:16 AM

December 18, 2003
Off To Mojave

...for the day. See you later.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:26 AM

December 17, 2003
Contrast And Compare

Jay Manifold has a sobering coda to my Wrightathon.

On this anniversary, half a million people will be in the air in this country alone at any given moment.
For comparison, on the fortieth anniversary (12 April 2001) of the first manned space flight -- a period of breakneck technological and economic advances -- there were exactly three human beings in space, the Expedition Two crew of Usachyov, Voss and Helms aboard the International Space Station.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:32 PM

Brazilian Broadcasting Corporation

Michael McNeil says that the BBC chose today to clumsily, in fact mindlessly attempt to throw cold water on the notion that the Wrights were first. What a shocker.

[Via emailer Mike Daley]

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:17 PM

More History

As not totally unexpected, to commemorate the hundredth anniversary of the Wrights' first flight, SpaceShipOne lit its hybrid rocket engine in flight for the first time and busted the mythical sound barrier today. A friend of mine, Brian Binnie, was the pilot, and I'm glad to see that he's finally getting a chance to fly a rocketplane.

It's a significant event, though it would have been better had they been able to go into space. It will be interesting to see if mainstream media picks up on it.

[Update before bed]

CBS covered it, but there was no tie-in to the Wright anniversary, and much focus on the landing-gear problem.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:14 PM

Daring

A hundred years ago, two airplane scientists took off, and landed a heavier-than-aircraft, inaugurating the past century of powered flight.

On that chilly December morning on the Atlantic dunes of North Carolina, looking at the fragile forty-foot box kite, with its noisy gasoline engine, a man lying gingerly on the lower wing, tugging at control wires, few if any of those present could have imagined where it would lead in the coming decades. The notion of a man flying solo far beyond the dunes, across the Atlantic less than a quarter of a century later, of aircraft releasing tons of bombs over European and Japanese cities, setting them ablaze in firestorms killing tens of thousands, of aircraft that split the air at speeds so fast that sound could not keep up, of jumbo airliners with wingspans longer than that first flight, carrying millions of people all over the world every year, or with cargo compartments carrying nothing but fresh-cut flowers--all of these would have seemed notions fantastical. Perhaps, had they had an inkling of the events they were setting in motion, and powers they were unleashing, the brothers Wright, devout sons of a midwest Bishop, would have hesitated themselves.

But probably not. Like all pioneers, successful or otherwise, they were risk takers. They would have had no fear of the future that they were ushering in--after all, they had no fear even of losing their own lives, at least not enough so to hinder their progress, though they knew that others had died in similar attempts, and even been inspired by them.

They had a competitor, though--one who was risk averse, and partly because of that, he failed. It should be no surprise that he was funded by the U.S. government.

Professor Samuel Pierpont Langley had successfully built small unmanned flyers. On the basis of this work, he was provided with a grant from the War Department of fifty-thousand dollars (which was matched by the Smithsonian Institution, of which he was the Secretary). There were many flaws in his approach, but a major one was his unwillingness to do flight test over land. Instead, he devoted a large amount of his budget to building a houseboat that could launch his craft over water via catapult.

Though his aircraft almost certainly wasn't capable of flying anyway, due to numerous design flaws arising from a lack of understanding of aerodynamics, the problem was compounded by the fact that it couldn't sustain the acceleration loads of the catapult. On both flight attempts, it underwent severe damage from the launcher, and on the second was nearly destroyed, plunging the remains into the Potomac River and almost drowning the pilot.

Of course, the real risk aversion, as always, was on the part of the government. On paper, Professor Langley looked like a good bet, compared to the Wrights. He seemed qualified--after all, he was a professor, while they had no college at all. He had built flying machines--they had only built bicycles. It was only natural that the government would lay their bet on what they perceived to be the best horse in the race--they had to safeguard the taxpayers' money, after all--they couldn't go gambling it on unknowns with dangerous and crazy notions.

But there's another, almost inevitable symptom of risk aversion that plagued Professor Langley's project, and many government-funded projects today.

In Greek mythology, it was said that Athena sprung fully formed, in full armor, from the head of Zeus.

Unfortunately, that often seems to be the goal of government agencies as well. A long, drawn-out program, with many incremental tests, offers many opportunities for test failures with their attendant bad publicity and potential for embarrassing congressional hearings. Moreover, the risk of such failures is increased if there is inadequate analysis before committing to hardware--hardware made all the more expensive by attempting to minimize the risk of failure, thus making any possible failure more expensive as well.

This leads to a vicious cycle of spending money to prevent failure which in turn increases the cost of the failure, which in turn results in further expenditures of funding for analysis and increased reliability, which in turn...

Professor Langley's Aerodrome was an example of this, in which he went directly (after analysis, though not good analysis, even given the paucity of aerodynamics knowledge of the times) from small-scale models to a full-scale powered manned vehicle, with no intermediate steps.

The Wrights, in contrast, slowly developed and understood each aspect of the problem, testing as they went, with many failures, but with lessons learned from each one. So, when they rolled out their powered version of their glider, in which they had many hours of flight experience, they could have some confidence that they were adding only one new element to the mix, and it worked.

Unfortunately, the same mindset prevails in modern government programs as well. The most notable example is the Space Shuttle.

While there was a lot of testing of individual elements of the system, at the end, the goal was to take a lot of pieces that each worked individually and integrate them into a system in which they all had to work together the first time, with crew on board. Because the goal was to jump immediately to an orbital vehicle, there was no way to do incremental testing of the system, because once a Shuttle leaves the launch pad, it has to go into orbit, or at least all the way across the Atlantic. But even if it had been designed to be capable of incremental testing, the costs of operating it were so high that a test program would have been unaffordable. Ironically, in their efforts to avoid risk, they've ended up with a program that is, on almost any measure by which it was originally advertised, a failure.

As the Wrights opened up the air, the people who open up space will take a methodical approach, testing, flying a little, expanding the envelope, until they become comfortable in the new environment of suborbital space, then slowly increase their speed and altitude until the trajectory simply drops the "sub" and becomes orbital. Perhaps the government will learn the lesson, but history and the very nature of governments show that the incentives for them to continue along the past failed path are still in place, and strong.

Fortunately, a hundred years after the first true airplane flight, spurred by new markets and prizes, and just fun, we're seeing new innovative people emulating those resourceful and daring brothers, with a potential to once again transform the world in ways at least as amazing as the Wrights did ten decades ago.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:26 AM

No Space Announcement Today

It looked like miserable weather in Kitty Hawk--a cold rain, as the president spoke. I doubt if they got off the reenactment of the flight.

Though some were hoping for a major space policy announcement, most of the indications were that it would come later. I suspect that the policy is still being worked out, and they didn't want to rush it just for an anniversary.

He did get in a nice dig at the Gray Lady, pointing out their editorial after Langley's disastrous first flight into the Potomac, in which they declared that one to ten million years would be required to develop an airplane. The Wrights flew a few weeks later. It was as dumb an editorial as their one a few years later, in which they said that Goddard was ignorant of physics.

Maybe my last Wright piece will be about risk, and risk aversion.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:59 AM

One They Walked Away From

My next Wright essay is now up at National Review Online.

Lawrence Reed has a piece that also contrasts the Wrights to Langley.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:18 AM

December 16, 2003
Frequently Questioned Questions

Phil Fraering is putting together an FQQ on Iraq, and seeking inputs.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:36 PM

Airplane Scientists

The first of my Wright essays is up, at TechCentralStation.

[Update at 10 PM PST]

While I'm at it, I'll scoop the professor and note that his latest TechCentralStation column, on the regulation of nanotech, is up as well.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:28 PM

Busy

Sorry, but I'm working on three Wright essays today.

But meanwhile, go over to RLV News, (which I think should have the name changed to "Space Transport News") and check out the latest news on the X-Prize.

[Update at 5:26 PM]

According to the same source, Clark Lindsey, there's a rumor that there may be "special test flight activity on Wednesday morning" at Mojave Airport...

Will Burt Rutan be lighting the engine on SpaceShipOne on the Wright anniversary?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:35 PM

December 15, 2003
Internationalizing The War

MoveOn.org has decided that they're tired of these jingoistic, unilateral cowboy national elections--they want to build a coalition and involve the international community.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 04:26 PM

How Long Will It Take

...before a lot of the people who were castigating Bush as a "miserable failure" because he couldn't find Saddam start saying that catching Saddam isn't that big a deal?

I suspect it's already happening.

By the way, I wonder how effective a commercial showing Dick Gephardt repeating the words "this president is a miserable failure" over and over would be for the Republicans ten months from now?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:32 AM

She Should Start Selling These Tee Shirts

It might be a better income than writing plays.

Living in New York, actress Carmen Peláez overdoses on Che Chic. They're everywhere, the hip-hoppers and hippies and post-grungers who go around with Che on their T-shirts like he's Biggie or John or Kurt or somebody cool like that.
One day, tired of the cliché parade, Peláez took out some felt and some glue and made her own T-shirt. It features what you might call a counter counter-culture message: ''F*-- Che.'' She stuck Che's star where the letter u would go.

''I walked around in it and you would think I was throwing babies into a meat grinder,'' says Peláez, a would-be poster child for So-Uncool-She's-Cool, except few are cool enough to get that about her. "The guy was an assassin. Treating him like a rock star is the epitome of trendy ignorance.''

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:24 AM

Road To Orbit?

...or a dead end?

Clark Lindsey has a good survey of opinions on the utility of suborbital vehicles, in terms of their applicability to orbital space transports. Regular readers will know that I concur with Dan DeLong and Henry Spencer, and that I have little respect for the opinion of John Pike.

We're slowly recapitulating manned spaceflight the way it should have been done in the first place, had we not been derailed by Apollo.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:09 AM

A Promising Career Cut Short

Maybe they'll allow him to continue to blog from prison.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:16 AM

Will The Chickens Come Home To Roost?

I wonder if the mainstream media is making enemies for life among a very important segment of the American population?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:11 AM

December 14, 2003
Jack Up The Winnebago

OK, a space post. I'm a little jealous, because Clark Lindsey got a scoop (well, not really, it's just a release by the Space Access Society, but whenever Henry Vanderbilt does a Space Access Update, it's usually worth reading, and it's not yet available on the Space Access Society site).

Fortunately, Clark published it on his site. It has, as usual, some common-sense advice as to what to do about NASA which, as equally usual, will probably not be followed. Henry is more optimistic than I, but I hope he's right.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:06 PM

Shelly Had His Number

Just to finish off this glorious day:

I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read,
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed,
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:10 PM

Why Should We Die?

Caroline Glick explains why what happened to today is so momentous, and such a crucial psychological blow to the enemies of freedom (registration required).

Saddam's ability to remain at large bolstered his henchmen and empowered jihadists throughout the Arab and Muslim world to the cause of defeating the US and its allies.
The psychological impact on Saddam's loyalists and on terrorists around the world of the picture of the tyrant's dirty, mired face and meek complicity during his medical examination by a US army doctor is immeasurable. Today they are forced to ask the question, "Why should we die when Saddam surrendered so abjectly?"

It has been argued that it was wrong for the Americans to show such pictures of Saddam. Doing so, it was said, will enrage jihadists who will fight all the more desperately to regain the honor lost by Saddam's humiliation.

The problem with this argument is that it fails to take common sense into account. Saddam's surrender is a signal to his allies as much as to his victims.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:08 PM

An Endless Battle

If you don't realize what an uphill battle we have to get the Europeans in touch with reality, go read this account by an Israeli of a conversation in Germany.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:03 PM

Six Weeks More War, Or Is It Over?

When they pulled Saddam out of his hole, did he see his shadow?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 03:10 PM

Another Fake Turkey

Bush tries to pull another fast one (scroll to the bottom of the post).

[Via Iowahawk, who's hit the blog running.]

[Update at 2:30 PM PST]

Eye on the Left has a scoop--the latest cover of Prison Life magazine.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:52 AM

Pity The Mice And Rats

...with whom the still-defiant Saddam reportedly shared his hole.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:15 AM

Another Thought

Will this end the whining about "mission accomplished"?

Probably not.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:59 AM

A Fitting Fate?

It's the classic "riches to rags" story, with a very happy ending.

[Via HappyDogDesign at Free Republic]

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:21 AM

The Continuing Quagmire

Now that he's in custody and supposedly cooperating, I wonder if Saddam will have anything to say about this.

I should add, head over to Instapundit, The Corner and The Command Post for a steady roundup of the news and reaction to it. The press' reaction is the most interesting.

[Update just before the President's statement]

OMG! As if things weren't bad enough for the idiotarians, on the same day as Saddam's capture, after years of prodding, cajoling and threats, the inimitable Iowahawk has finally started a blog. Behold it, and despair.

[Update just before noon]

He's continuing to build the site in real time. I just checked a few minutes ago, and he now has finished (or at least better populated) his "About" page, and he's steadily adding to the blogroll. No Paypal button yet, though, despite his admonition.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:11 AM

December 13, 2003
A Smoking Gun?

One of the many strawman arguments that war opponents trot out is that there's no link between Saddam and September 11 (irrelevant, of course, since the administration never claimed one, and none was necessary to justify removing Saddam). But the Telegraph says that the new Iraqi government has uncovered evidence that Mohammed Atta was trained in Baghdad by Abu Nidal two months before the towers came down, something that wouldn't have happened without the knowledge and encouragement of Saddam's regime.

Don't hold your breath waiting to read about this in the New York Times.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 04:39 PM

December 12, 2003
Carl's New Digs

Carl Zimmer has moved over to Corante. Go welcome him to his new bloghome, where he has an interesting post about unintended evolutionary consequences of hunting and fishing.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:44 AM

So What Am I, Virginia?

Chopped liver?

I thought bloggers were writers. Some of us, anyway.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:29 AM

December 11, 2003
Stupid Bureaucrat Tricks

Matt Welch has the scoop. It's amazing that we haven't had any major attacks since September 11--it's got to be incompetence on the part of the terrorists, because we sure can't attribute it to competence on the part of the government. It's a shame that there's no one running against Bush who would do any better.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 03:16 PM

Sons Of The Midwest

To kick off the coming week of centennial posts, go over and read an interesting exposition about the Wrights, and perhaps one of the secrets to their success, at Two Blowhards.

[Via Brian Micklethwait at Samizdata]

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:51 PM

December 10, 2003
Lessons Learned Encore

For anyone who wants to read this recent post with ads, my Fox column is up.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 03:38 PM

Progress?

I've got mixed feelings about a couple pr0n spams I received this morning, subject: "Liberated Arab Women."

On the one hand, they do indicate some level of progress toward liberalizing the Middle East, a state that's to be highly desired, and in fact necessary before we can consider the war on "terror" over and won.

On the other hand, is this really the kind of "liberation" that Arab women were seeking?

[Update a few minutes later]

Just coincidentally, Johah Goldberg has some related thoughts on affirmative action in the pr0n industry.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:10 AM

Lessons Learned

There's an old aphorism that those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

Unfortunately, there's another, related one, to the effect that the main thing we learn from history is that we don't learn from history.

To digress for just a moment, scientists and engineers, and rationalists in general, try to expand their knowledge about the world by formulating theories, performing experiments to test them, gathering data, and drawing conclusions about them. But such experiments have to be controlled--that is, they have to be structured in such a way as to allow a focus on a single aspect of it. If one gets different results from different cases, but there are multiple factors involved, there's no way to tell which factor caused the difference, and the experiment isn't particularly useful.

This is what makes history so problematic for such people--it's not possible to do controlled experiments. All that we can do is dig through the entrails of events, capture what we think (and being human, often hope) were the most significant aspects of them, try to draw conclusions about why they occurred from those aspects, and then attempt (often in vain) to make predictions about the effects of future events. But we can never know for sure which factors were the most important ones, because they can't be tested in isolation--with history, what you see is what you get, and there's no rewind button.

Those who make and pontificate about space policy are largely such people, so it's all the more frustrating to them that it's so difficult to come to a consensus on what's worked in the past, and what will work in the future. Sadly, absent a large body of data, it's actually very hard to learn from history, a fact that's demonstrated by this article, in which, in the face of turbulent times in space policy, a number of disparate viewpoints are offered about NASA's future direction. Some of those viewpoints are ones that I've expressed in this space, and others, for many years.

The disparity of viewpoints arises from two sources, that often get intermingled. The first, and a point that I've made repeatedly, both here and in other fora, is that it's difficult to get a consensus on means when we can't even agree on ends. Not all of the people quoted in the article desire the same thing from a space program, so it's not surprising that it's hard to get agreement from them on how to go about getting it.

The second source of dispute is that, even if two people agree on an end goal (e.g., large-scale space colonization), it's not at all clear what the best government policy might be to achieve that goal, because of the scant historical basis for past successes (and because of the first factor, it's difficult to even get agreement on what constitutes a success).

Everyone views history through the lens of his or her own experience and prejudices. William Hartmann, quoted in the article, is a scientist. He is also, apparently, knowingly or otherwise, a transnationalist.

Hartmann thinks international governmental cooperation is the best way to get humans to the Moon or Mars. Eventually, if a proper framework can be set, commercialization could and should blossom, Hartmann figures...
...Hartmann, whose latest book is "A Traveler's Guide to Mars" (Workman Publishing Company, 2003), worries whether any possible new Bush directive on human spaceflight would serve long-term global interests, however.

"Do we want to hand over this unique moment and all those resources to a bunch of deregulated CEO's with their short-term, self-serving accountant mentality?" asks Hartmann. "Or can we design a strategy that fosters a better global payoff for our grandchildren?"

He believes that the primary, if not sole, purpose of having a space program is for science (though he's apparently willing to allow some exploitation of resources, as long as it's done under the auspices of some appropriate international bureaucracy). He also believes that doing such a program internationally is not just a good idea because we can share the expense of such an endeavor, but because international programs are somehow more noble, and higher of purpose than national ones. He doesn't want to sully the pristine, untrammeled scientific preserve of space with the greed of unbridled capitalism.

For him, the lesson of history is that we once had a space program that was paid for by all the people, and that it sent men to the moon "in peace, for all mankind." Somehow, we lost that noble spirit, and frittered away all of our capability to even repeat it, let alone go on to the next unexplored world. It was a failure of political leadership, because the president that launched us on such a grand adventure was assassinated. Now, he can only hope for another president of such vision.

But such a lesson is a mistaken one, for a number of reasons. The first, of course, is that, as I've noted before, the legend of the visionary space president isn't true. JFK pursued Apollo for temporary political reasons, and for him, it wasn't a space program--it was a national security and propaganda program. Were space, or science, the point, we wouldn't have waited until the last flight before we sent an actual scientist to the moon (and it should be noted that, on this coming Sunday, it will be the thirty-one years since man last walked on our sister orb).

But the second reason is that, even if it were true, it would have been an anomalous event, not a normal one. Historically, governments rarely expend vast amounts of national resources on exploration for exploration's sake, or for science. Isabella didn't pay for Columbus' voyages out of intellectual curiousity--she was seeking better trade routes for known riches.

As much as Dr. Hartmann disdains it, abundant evidence from history should teach him that greed is one of the primary human motivators, the other being fear. Apollo was an example of the latter. Only when we stop living in a past that never was, and embrace and harness the former, will we start to truly make the new frontier a significant part of human history and make true exploration of the cosmos affordable and sustainable. Let us hope that, to the degree that the Bush administration is reconsidering space policy now, it understands that lesson as well.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:01 AM

December 09, 2003
Risk Taking

Jane Galt has an explanation of market bubbles from an evolutionary-psychology perspective. Well worth reading.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:01 PM

Alternate Universe

Robert Roy Britt has an interesting roundup of opinions about the future of human spaceflight, including some envisioning such a future without NASA, and some that yours truly has espoused once or twice in the past.

William Hartmann remains firmly mired in the past, however.

"This is naive and wrong-headed," says author and artist William K. Hartmann, also a senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona.
Hartmann thinks international governmental cooperation is the best way to get humans to the Moon or Mars. Eventually, if a proper framework can be set, commercialization could and should blossom, Hartmann figures...

...Hartmann, whose latest book is "A Traveler's Guide to Mars" (Workman Publishing Company, 2003), worries whether any possible new Bush directive on human spaceflight would serve long-term global interests, however.

"Do we want to hand over this unique moment and all those resources to a bunch of deregulated CEO's with their short-term, self-serving accountant mentality?" asks Hartmann. "Or can we design a strategy that fosters a better global payoff for our grandchildren?"

Newsflash, Dr. Hartmann. CEOs with short-term, self-serving accountant mentalities don't put their own personal fortunes into developing reusable tourist vehicles. This is exactly what has to happen to foster a global payoff for our grandchildren. The "give NASA billions of dollars and hope for the best" approach has been an unmitigated failure.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:09 AM

December 08, 2003
The First Time As Tragedy, The Second Time As...Tragedy

It's looking more and more like a replay of Kristallnacht in Europe.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:36 PM

Goodnight, Moon

Gregg Easterbrook gets it half right, sort of, which is usually the case when he pontificates about space policy.

Once again, he uses Shuttle as the exemplar of launch costs to argue that we can't afford a lunar base. In addition, his numbers are simply pulled out of the air, or perhaps some danker, less sanitary location--I don't want to know...

He also remains hung up on science as the raison d'etre of doing such things, and assumes that the ISS is representative of what a space station should or could cost, which is just as absurd as using Shuttle costs for the estimates.

Now, I'm not a big proponent of sending NASA off to build a moon base, but if one is going to argue against it, it should be done for sound policy reasons, not financial handwaving.

He finishes up with one final flawed argument:

A Moon base would actually be an impediment to any Mars mission, as stopping at the Moon would require the mission to expend huge amounts of fuel to land and take off but otherwise accomplish nothing, unless the master plan was to carry rocks to Mars.

This misses the point. The purpose of doing a lunar base is to learn how to do planetary bases in general, in a location that's only two or three days from earth if something goes wrong, not to provide a way station on the way to Mars. And of course, it's possible that we might be able to generate propellant on the moon. If that's the case, and it can be done for less cost than lifting it from earth, then the moon may indeed be a useful staging base for deep-space missions.

I do agree with his last graf, though, as far as it goes.

NASA doesn't need a grand ambition, it needs a cheap, reliable means of getting back and forth to low-Earth orbit. Here's a twenty-first century vision for NASA: Cancel the shuttle, mothball the does-nothing space station, and use all the budget money the two would have consumed to develop an affordable means of space flight. Then we can talk about the Moon and Mars.

My only quibble is that this should not be interpreted as giving NASA the money to develop the affordable means of space flight. That will simply result in another attempt at another single monoculture vehicle that will leave us no better off than Shuttle. It should be given to people who have the motivation and organization to do so, probably via prizes or other forms of market guarantees.

[Via Tyler Cowen]

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:37 PM

A "Bold New Vision" for NASA

The new edition of The New Atlantis is out, and editor Adam Keiper has what he says is a "bold new vision" for the nation's space agency. He wants to go to Mars or, to be more accurate, he wants NASA to send a few people to Mars while we stay home and watch.

Yawn...

Not that Mars is boring, but the notion that this is a bold new vision is kind of silly. It's a vision, and a flawed one, as old as the space program itself.

It's a long piece, and has some good history of the space program, but it also contains a lot of conventional wisdom.

Space tourism is often put forward as a viable industry, although no one has yet convincingly made a case that explains the economics of how it would work. Two tourists have already been in space: American Dennis Tito in 2001 and South African Mark Shuttleworth in 2002 each paid $20 million for a stay on the International Space Station. Some companies claim to have data that show that a vast percentage of the population would pay to go to space, and some studies have estimated that the market for space tourism might reach as high as $20 billion in the coming decades. But it just isn’t clear how space tourism will transition from the exploits of a few adventurous millionaires into an industry with any hope of making profits.

Flashback to the early 1980s:

Video cassette recorders are often put forward as a viable industry, although no one has yet convincingly made a case that explains the economics of how it would work. A few people have already bought them, but they cost thousands of dollars each. Some companies claim to have data that show that a vast percentage of the population would pay to have one, and some studies have estimated that the market for VCRs might reach as high as several billion dollars in the coming decades. But it just isn't clear how the VCR will transition from the entertainment of a few adventurous millionaires into an industry with any hope of making profits...

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:06 AM

Where Are The RLVs?

Rocketman explains. I find little with which to disagree except, like Mitchell Burnside Clapp of Pioneer Rocketplane, I'd like to dispense with the phrase "reusable launch vehicle" (one that has many misleading connotations) and call them space transports.

Also, go check out Jeff Foust's interesting first-hand report on the SpaceX rollout in Washington.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:44 AM

December 07, 2003
No Race At All

For those who are worried that the Chinese are going to beat us in the space race, let it be known that they can't even launch a woman. They'll never catch up with politically correct NASA.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:57 PM

Overreach

Airbus made a dumb bet. It thought that what the world's airlines wanted was bigger airplanes. What they'd really like, of course, is economic supersonic aircraft, but none (or, should I say, neither?) of the major aircraft manufacturers understand the problem well enough to go after that market.

Now, it turns out that, for some strange reason, their customers (and their customers' customers, the actual passengers) didn't want airplanes that took a humungous amount of time to board and unboard, and wouldn't fit in many of the existing terminal gates. Not to mention how attractive a target a 900-passenger aircraft would be to a terrorist...

Somehow, while Boeing hasn't been impressive in the commercial air industry as of late, I don't think that they would have made a marketing blunder like this, if for no other reason than, well...they haven't. They've been looking into more economical smaller planes instead (though they still don't understand the supersonic issues). Only a quasi-government aircraft company like Airbus could get way with a dumb decision like this one, and I suspect that they'll be bailed out of any negative consequences.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:35 PM

So What Else Is New?

The BCS is totally screwed up. But we already knew that, didn't we?

I don't know how anyone, even a computer, can think that a team should be playing for the national championship after being clobbered in its last game of the season and losing its conference championship. It should be like that high-school kid who's suing the university that accepted him, but then rejected him after he blew off his last semester.

Removing disparity of scores from the calculation was a good notion, in that it discouraged coaches from running it up for BCS points, but it went too far. They should have retained it, but capped it (perhaps at thirty points or so). Had they done so, I suspect that yesterday's trouncing of Oklahoma by Kansas State would have (justly) knocked them out of a trip to New Orleans in January. And as for LSU, seriously, considering how weak the SEC is this year, how hard is it to survive that conference with only one loss?

Anyway, as many people are saying, it looks like there will be two national championship games this year--one in the Big Easy, and one in Pasadena. There's no question that USC got screwed by the system (particularly because they had a weak strength-of-schedule ranking due to playing in the Pac 10). And as for their opponent, consider the situation had scores been a factor in the BCS calculation. Michigan was only two scores from being undefeated at Oregon and Iowa--they were blown out by no one. It could be just a couple of my degrees talking, but if the number-four team beats the number-one team on New Year's Day, why shouldn't they be considered the national champions?

Anyway, even if not, a Michigan-USC Rose Bowl will seem like old times, and good ones. Let's just hope that it's officiated by NCAA rules, instead of west-coast rules (in which apparently it's not necessary--scroll down the page to number ten of the worst calls in officiating history--to have possession of the ball when one breaks the plane of the goal line).

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:10 PM

A Day That Lives In Infamy

Sixty-two years ago.

[Evening update]

Laughing Wolf expands on the subject (not difficult, given my brevity).

Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:14 PM

December 06, 2003
Curses, Foiled Again

John Kerry, his misbegotten campaign in an uncontrollable tailspin, is getting very frustrated.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:47 AM

Dangerous New Technology

Howard Lovy says those damned technologists are scaring the children again. This latest schtick of his reminds me of an old Bob Newhart routine.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:02 AM

An Intelligent Democrat

Here's a Democrat who could give George Bush a real challenge on foreign policy. Luckily for the Republicans, he's not running, and if he were, he'd almost certainly not be nominated by the moonbattery that is the current Democrat Party.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:36 AM

December 05, 2003
RLV Potpourri

Clark Lindsey has a lot of good stuff today over at RLV news, including SpaceShipOne's first in-flight test of their rocket engine, the SpaceX extravaganza in Washington, and some promising developments by the Japanese (perhaps I was a little too hasty in dissing them--we'll see if they allow this effort to flower).

I do want to clarify one point, though.

...I'm sure that Elon would agree with Rand Simberg and others who say that man-rating is an obsolete term. All vehicles should be built to the highest degree to not fail, regardless of whether the payload includes people or not.

To be precise, all reusable vehicles should be built to the highest degree not to fail. Optimal reliability for an expendable is an economic trade based on payload value and insurance rates, so it may still make sense to talk about man or (to use the current PC NASA term) human rating of the Delta IV and Atlas V for OSP. It's pretty clear, at least to me, that for a number of reasons, neither of those vehicles are going to be usable off the shelf for that mission, despite public impressions to the contrary.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:53 PM

December 04, 2003
An Open Letter To President Bush

...about the possibly upcoming space announcement--from Laughing Wolf.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:45 PM

Meteor Strikes Earth--Women, Minorities And Endangered Species Hardest Hit

That's not exactly the headline of this dumb NYT editorial, but it almost could be.

Let's leave aside that no meteor has ever struck the earth, or anything else, other than eyes (a meteor is the flash of light that an object makes when it hits the atmosphere--not the physical object itself). They talk about how life has been devastated in the past by bombardment from extraterrestrial objects, but instead of proposing that we do something about it, they use it as an opportunity to preach about how we're extincting too many species. In fact, they not only don't propose doing anything about it, they deny that anything can be done.

There's no controlling the possibility of a meteor strike. But there's every reason — ethical and practical — for preventing our own habitation of earth from having the same impact.

Well, in fact, there is "controlling the possibility of a meteor [sic] strike." One starts looking for them, and as Clark Lindsey (from whom I got the link) points out, one develops the spacefaring capability to divert them, which is entirely feasible, and relative to the cost of being hit, quite affordable.

It's particularly ironic that the Gray Lady publishes this silliness on perhaps the eve of a major change in space policy that might, in fact, ultimately lead to such a capability, but I guess that there's some comfort in knowing that, even under new management, some things at the Times never change.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:54 AM

This Week's Fox Column

...is up. Nothing new for regular readers. It's an encore presentation of this post.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:01 AM

December 03, 2003
On Again?

Dennis Powell is still hopeful about a major space policy announcement by the Bush administration two weeks from now. It's not clear whether or not he knows something that the rest of us don't, or if he's just going on the same contradictory rumors.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:30 AM

December 02, 2003
A Quality All Its Own

The Japanese lost a rocket with its payload of surveillance satellites the other day.

Given the current dangerous situation in the Korean peninsula, in their own backyard across the Sea of Japan, it was a painful loss, and one that they really couldn't afford. The North Koreans have launched missiles across Japanese territory, and are developing nuclear weapons, so far unhindered by either diplomacy or threats, and a lack of space-based intelligence about their behavior and intentions could prove disastrous in the future, perhaps even in the near future.

Unfortunately, in developing their own space capabilities, the Japanese have taken a cue from our own failed space activities, having no successful ones to emulate. Like NASA and, for the most part, the Air Force, they delude themselves that affordable and reliable launchers can be built by souping up ballistic missiles and flying them a few times a year.

In the 1980s, the Japanese became renowned for the high quality of their automobiles, an ironic turn of events, because a scant few years earlier they had developed a reputation for cheap, unreliable toys masquerading as cars. I can attest to this personally, as an owner and semi-daily driver of a Honda from that period with over a quarter of a million miles on it, and still on its first clutch with no major repairs to date.

They accomplished this by importing American concepts of statistical quality control from people like W. Edwards Deming. By continually improving their production processes over millions of units, they gradually achieved a world-class ability to build reliable and long-lasting cars that eventually forced the American auto industry out of its complacency, though not before entirely restructuring it and, in some cases, forcing mergers or causing parts of it to be bought out by foreign interests.

They were so successful in adapting American techniques for their terrestrial transportation industry, that they hoped they could be equally successful in space transportation by following the same strategy.

There were only two problems. First, neither the Americans nor the former Soviets were actually that good at doing space. Their launch systems were extremely expensive and highly unreliable. They only seemed good at it because there was never any truly good space program with which to compare them.

Consider--the most reliable proven launch system is probably the Soviet (now Russian) Proton. According to International Launch Services, the western firm that markets it, and has a strong interest in putting the best face on its capability, it has a 96% reliability record in about 300 launches over the past four decades. They state this with apparent pride.

Let's put that in everyday terms.

Imagine that once out of every twenty five times you drove to the grocery store, you not only didn't get there, but your car was destroyed with all aboard.

Imagine that four times out of every hundred flights of an airliner, it was lost with all passengers. That would amount to thousands of downed aircraft per year and millions of lives, assuming that you could get the airlines to continue to buy replacement airplanes, and people to purchase tickets on death's lottery, with such appalling odds.

Can you imagine anyone with a straight face, and not a hint of irony, calling such a vehicle "reliable"? It's no way to run a railroad or, for that matter, an airline or auto industry. We shouldn't accept it in space either, yet we do.

What's the problem? I've written before about how the low volume of activity leads inevitably to high costs. But it also leads to low reliability.

The biggest difference between Japan's auto industry and Japan's rocket industry is not the almost unfathomable power that the rockets put out, or the harsh environment in which they operate, or their high cost per rocket. The biggest difference is that, as noted above, they built millions of cars, and they've built, at most, dozens of rockets.

There's an old aphorism that "quantity has a quality all its own." For this particular case, there's a reverse corollary--quality requires a quantity all its own. Statistical quality control is very useful when running a million cans of beans, or a million Honda Accords off a production line.

However, it's meaningless when only building a few of something, and only using (and in this case, expending them) a few times a year. There's almost no measurable learning curve, and because they're expendable, making each flight a first flight, there's no opportunity for the traditional "shakedown cruise." Infant mortality is high, and so, when we lose the baby, we also lose the bathwater, the bathtub, the bathroom, and the house that contains them all.

There's only one way out of this dilemma. We have to make a conscious national decision to do enough in space to start climbing the learning curve, rather than remaining at a base camp at the bottom. Until we make a deliberate choice to become a truly spacefaring nation, we will never have either affordable launch, or reliable launch (and unreliability has its own obvious costs, making the status quo even more unaffordable).

If the government, whether ours or Japan's, wants and needs assured access to space (and both must clearly think they do, because they continue to spend and perhaps misspend billions of dollars on it), it will have to decide to buy more than it thinks it needs to ensure that it has what it needs at an acceptable price. The decision makers must consider the possibility of simply putting out an order for currently-unthinkable numbers of launches and pounds of payload to orbit, to allow the private sector to do what it does best--driving down costs and increasing quality through competition and volume.

In the long run, it may turn out to be a bargain, and it's hard to imagine how we could do much worse--we certainly can't afford to continue with the failed thinking that carpeted the seabed with two more expensive (and perhaps, considering the stakes, priceless) satellites just a few days ago.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:15 PM