Too Strong A Claim

August 21, 2005 Rand Simberg

Glenn points out an article touting space elevators at IEEE Spectrum. I like space elevators, but I think that their proponents overstate the case when they say things like this:

SO WHY CAN’T WE DO ALL THIS with rockets? And why is the space elevator so cheap?

The answer is that chemical rockets are inherently too inefficient: only a tiny percentage of the mass at liftoff is valuable payload. Most of the rest is fuel and engines that are either thrown away or recycled at enormous expense.

Well, it’s a myth that “WE CANT DO ALL THIS with rockets.” Space elevators are clearly better, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t open up space without them. They are a sufficient technology, but not a necessary one. Rockets are still far from a mature technology, and the costs that he claims for the initial space elevator ($200/kg) are achievable with rockets as well, once we start flying them enough to get suitable economies of scale.

Weird

Has Howard Dean Been Visiting Ohio?

August 21, 2005 Rand Simberg

It’s a mystery in Cinci.

Space

Next Trillion Dollar Colonization

August 20, 2005 Sam Dinkin

Today’s NYT reports that Iraq and Afghanistan if they drag on for another five years will comprise, “The Trillion Dollar War”. World War 2 was a multitrillion dollar war. Every war with more than a million casualties is a trillion dollar war if you take the value of a life at a million dollars. That might not be reasonable some time and place where the median income is less than ten thousand dollars, but I would call for measuring by purchasing power parity. While the article is a pretty poor analysis considering opportunity costs. First, that veteran’s health costs would have been big without the war. Second, that salary and so on would have to be paid without the war. Third, that there would be some major price to pay in blood and coin keeping the prior regimes in place in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Seen in that light, a trillion dollar war is a bargain. Especially if it results in friendly economies (if not friendly polities) in Iraq and Afghanistan going forward.

As I have stated before, we should step up to the plate and spend the next trillion colonizing the Moon and Mars. $50 billion a year could launch 20 times as much stuff into orbit as was launched last year and colonists could pay for their own payload. With the long bond rate at 5%, the net present value of $50 billion a year forever is a trillion dollars.

There are a bunch of good reasons why the Moon would be a better bet than Iraq. Colonizing the Moon would not face any guerilla warfare. There are no existing users of Lunar resources. There is no government worthy of note to displace. There are no Lunar sympathizers that would start violent revolution if we went. (If you are out there, keep quiet until after the colonization gets going so you can have your fifteen minutes while I have my colonization.)

No air on the Moon? Oxygen is there and nitrogen costs $0.50/gallon on Earth. Let’s say we imported 11,000 liters of air a day and just vented it into space. A liter of air weighs about 1.25 grams. Importing your 14 kg of air a day is not a big deal. $50 billion a year could deliver enough air for 1,000 people to just vent every single breath to space at today’s launch rates. Don’t you think a thousand people could work out a way to recycle and replace air from local materials? There are 4000 kilograms of nitrogen in every 1000 tons of regolith. At 1300K, some of it will come out as Nitrogen gas (a ton worth of various gases). If I could get $50 billion a year for selling air on the Moon, I would sure as heck work hard to figure out how to do it for less.

So we could have our lunar colony and if people consumed two pounds of earth imported food per day (which should be plenty) and we can get air and water recycling down pat, we could support 7,000 folks. If we can get food production going then we can support a lot more for $50B/year. We would need to get the cost of the mass to the Moon down to $100,000 per year if we wanted to support 500,000 on the Moon like we have in Wyoming for $50 billion/year. That would either mean just 5 kg in Earth imports at $20,000/kg to the Moon or about 20 kg at $5000/kg to the Moon which is roughly what Elon Musk is promising by 2010.

By Sam, not Rand

Satire

Grieving Mother Demands Answers From President

August 19, 2005 Rand Simberg

March 12, 1944

WARM SPRINGS (Routers) A Minnesota woman whose son was killed in the recent Anzio offensive has demanded a private audience with President Roosevelt, and has taken up residence outside his Georgia retreat until she gets one.

Mrs. Etta Mae Hanberg, of Fergus Falls, had a son, Lawrence, who died after stepping on a land mine near the Italian village of Aprilia on January 25th. Overcome with grief, she now questions the war, and laments the apparent purposelessness of her son’s sacrifice. She has set up camp outside the president’s vacation retreat here, and refuses to leave until the president agrees to meet with her. Her plight has attracted many who are equally unhappy with the war, and they’ve established a tent city nearby.

Following a rousing speech to the assembled by Father Coughlin, in his first public appearance in many months, she was interviewed.

“I just want answers,” she says, in her soft-spoken, upper Midwest manner. “Why are our helpless babies dying in Italy when it was Japan that attacked us? And I think that the president knew that the Japanese were going to attack, but let it happen so he could get rich off this war in Europe.”

She is just warming up.

“The president says that Germany declared war on us, but I haven’t seen any declaration of war, and I don’t believe that there are any Germans in Italy. And even if there were any Germans there, who can blame them, with all of our support for Britain? If it weren’t for that nasty little island, always interfering with the rights of German lebensraum and Vichy self determination, and their desire to get rid of all those Jews that are occupying their land and stealing all their money, there wouldn’t be any trouble in Europe. And the way we treat our war prisoners is just a disgrace.”

“I don’t blame whoever planted that land mine. This president is the murderer of my son. With all due respect to the office, I think that this is all just an imperialist grab for olive oil to benefit him and the rest of his crooked business cronies. I think that Franklin Delanodamngood Roosevelt and everyone in his corrupt and bloodthirsty administration ought to be impeached, all the way down to his little dog Fala.”

Sympathetic demonstrators who have gathered from all around to support her cheer at the words, with shouts of “Roosevelt lied, Larry died!” and “No blood for pesto!”

When it was pointed out that she was just one mother of many, and asked how the president could possibly meet with all of the mothers of the hundreds of thousands of American men killed in this war to date, she replied, “My child died. I’ll never see him again. I have absolute moral authority here. And anyway, it’s not hundreds of thousands. I think that there have been hundreds of millions of our children killed and that this lying administration is just covering it all up.”

Roosevelt administration officials have pointed out that the president regrets the loss of Mrs. Hanberg’s son, as he does the losses of all of the families of casualties of this war, but that he can’t meet with just one mother without slighting the thousands of others who are in similar pain. But this, appropriately, doesn’t assuage the grief-stricken woman.

“I have a right to see the president,” she responded. “Are they trying to silence me? Are you? I have a right to be heard. I have a right to have my words broadcast across this nation, and printed in every newspaper. I have a right to this press attention. Why are you trying to deny me my rights?”

Political Commentary