Aucbvax.4374
fa.space
utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!space
Mon Oct 12 06:38:41 1981
SPACE Digest V2 #12
>From OTA@S1-A Mon Oct 12 06:19:35 1981
SPACE Digest Volume 2 : Issue 12
Today's Topics:
A Glossary
SPACE Digest V2 #11
Rebuttal to SPS flame
What about NASA
Rebuttal to E.jeffc on SPS
SPS and Fusion
A hot time at L-5 tonight??
Long flame on SPS and fusion
Costs of SPS vs. fusion
Finite energy
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Date: 11 Oct 1981 1644-PDT
From: Ted Anderson <OTA SU-AI AT>
Subject: A Glossary
To: space at MIT-MC
I was quite surprised to see the message from Bob Kristoff asking what
SPS stood for. I guess I should know better than to assume everyone
knows the Jargon. To help remedy this problem which I suspect is far
from exceptional, I will put together a Glossary/Index to help new
people on the list get up to speed. To get me started, I would appreciate
it if anyone on the list who has been confused about the terminology send
me (OTA@SAIL) a message listing the stuff you are/were confused about.
I will send out another message anouncing the glossary's existance when
it does.
Ted Anderson
PS. I would also like to commend the readership for not flooding the
general distribution list with dozens of nearly identical replys to this
question. There has been quite enough traffic on this lists as it is.
------------------------------
Date: 11 October 1981 09:23-EDT
From: Steve Kudlak <FFM MIT-MC AT>
Subject: SPACE Digest V2 #11
To: SPACE-ENTHUSIASTS at MIT-MC
cc: SPACE at MIT-MC
Why doesn't NASA get private funding if it's going to be so popular? Because
private industry will not fund long-range projects even if they are near-
certainties. Our executives who make these decisions are paid primarily on
the bonus system, which means they are paid according to how well the profit
picture looks this year, not ten, twenty, or thirty years from now. They
therefore try to maximize short-term profits, sometimes at the expense of long-
term ones. Corporate presidents may not even be alive that far in the future,
and they almost certainly won't work for the same firm. Chief executives
change companies at an ever increasing rate, and it's quite high already.
Thus they may not want to spend their short time in power making things come
out well for those who will succeed them. Witness all the old machines in our
factories.
The other factor is that space may never profit existing companies. It may
only profit socialised nations (who can afford to put up the capital) or only
new companies sprung into existence specifically to work in space. No one
knows what form the government will take in space, who will govern, how the
profits will be distributed, etc., and few companies want to risk that by
funding "pie-in-the-sky" research today. In the discovery of the new world,
remember, Columbus had to get funding from Queen Isabella because no one could
risk their hard-earned cash for such a wild proposal. And for the first few
years it looked like they were right--all they got for quite a few years were
reports of failed colonies, sickness, freezing winters, starvation, etc. And
existing firms never did make the bulk of the profit off the New World, new
companies and governments did instead. Yet I doubt that the world--even just
Europe--would have been better off if the New World had never been developed.
Incidently, can you name any project one could expect to take more than about
20 years to complete which has EVER been funded privately? (I don't mean ones
of the variety which were projected to take 5 years and came in behind-time,
but ones which were originally expected to take that long.) If not, how can
you expect them to start now, with such high interest rates, economic hard
times, and threats from the U.N. about making space "the common heritage of
mankind"?
------------------------------
Date: 11 October 1981 11:16-EDT
From: Steve Kudlak <FFM MIT-MC AT>
Subject: Rebuttal to SPS flame
To: SPACE-ENTHUSIASTS at MIT-MC
cc: SPACE at MIT-MC
I support building the SPS, for two reasons: Philisophical and practical.
I know philisophical arguments can (and frequently do!) go on forever, but
I should present at least one alternative view to the "scraps-of-the-universe"
theory.
The use of machines (currently semiconducting computers, since that is the
smartest machine we have to work with at the moment) as metaphores for human
thought goes way back. This does NOT suggest that machines are BETTER than
men. All it means is that people always look for analogies, models, and
simplifications of many things, their own behavior included. Even our
best AI programs are incapable of drawing analogies in any real way (and I
am beginning to think that's what the biggest difficulty will be in making
an "intelligent" machine). Anyway, the very idea that computers could come
up with solutions to such complicated questions involving morality, ethics,
philosiphy, and, further, that those solutions would be somehow different from
those a human being might give, reminds me of the "golden age" of pulp science
fiction (little green priestesses worshipping a computer, which makes all
their decisions and tries to scare off intruders--who promptly pull the plug
on this "evil", "dehumanizing" machine! Such stories may have done more to
discourage home computers than all IBM horror stories combined.)
Philisophically, I don't see why one source of power isn't as good as
another, given that they are both clean and sufficient for our needs. If we
can meet our needs by a souce of energy that doesn't require large amounts
of waste, why not do it? We have more than enough energy coming our way
now; why not use it instead of constructing wasteful, enefficient generators
using up water (or some other source of hydrogen) for something we already
have? The first commandment of the universe is Thou Shalt Not Waste, but it
is not as limiting as it may sound: It does not mean "limit your growth to
Earth," nor "Make do with less," nor even "Stop expanding." It DOES mean
that when you have two ways of achieving some end you should use the one that
requires the least impact on the rest of the universe. Earth's is the only
biosphere we've got, let's not further destroy it by generating our power there
and polluting it (while fusion is better this way than other sources, it isn't
perfect--in thermal pollution, for example) when we can do just as well (if not
better--lower maintenance, less down-time) with solar power satellites?
I don't see any difference between using fusion power generated at a safe
distance (about 93 million miles) and recollected than using power generated
here except that we will have to contain it here, dispose of the radioactive
peices (The housing and containment machines will cause some radiation,
although not any directly from the fusion reaction--a tiny fraction of that
from fission reactions) here, get the hydrogen from here (electrolyzing it from
water is an incredible inefficient process--even after the water is purified,
not easy on a huge scale anyway), and risk terrorist attacks here (a generating
station is a prime target anyway, but with plasma that hot in it a well-placed
bomb could kill many people more than a standard (hydroelectric, say) plant).
I have seen nothing to indicate that large-scale building of fusion plants
would be cheaper than SPSs. Granted, my information on fusion is about a year
behind the latest, but I think I would have heard any very major developments
(e.g. reaching engineering viability). SPSs suffer most now from lack of any
research funds (due to its image as a wild project). Fusion has been heavily
researched for decades (always "just around the corner," too), and has been
given the sanction of government and industry, while SPSs sat in a corner,
researched only by crazy graduate students and their crazy professors. Only
very recently has the idea been popular enough to admit belief in public,
let alone endorse; yet it is gaining popularity now.
Certainly SPSs are a high capital project, but so is any proposal big
enough to allow near-total energy independence. The argument that we should go
all-out to build fusion plants doesn't hold water if you then argue that we
should not go all-out to build SPSs because the economy can't stand it. I
think the economy can support such a large industrial effort, and will benifit
more from SPS development than from fusion development. The opening of space
will mean all sorts of new products which can be produced only in zero gravity,
similar to the wealth of new products arising from the invention of the vacuum
pump. This is even aside from the spinoffs that happen constantly already from
space research, now ranging from 3 or 4 to 10 times (depending on whether you
ask a program fan or foe) that which is invested in it. And most of it is
unclassified, unlike fusion with its military applications. The economy is
suffering not from a lack of industrial resources--steel mills and such--but
from a lack of the demand for them. That's why existing mills are closing, why
high unemployment rates, the decline of the industrial sector. Reagan may be
doing the right thing in cutting the budget, but he is most decidedly doing
the wrong things in cutting taxes before spending is firmly reduced, increasing
defense at the greatest rate since Vietnam (and that was in wartime!), and
cutting research money for research and education. We need the education and
research for making better new products and cheaper ways of doing things, we
do not need research into weapons which will become classified and unusable by
the private sector anyway; nor do we need government to risk not balancing the
budget by so drastically cutting taxes.
We should go onward and upward, and the way there is not by way of backward
and downward, but up into space.
------------------------------
Date: 11 Oct 1981 (Sunday) 1214-EDT
From: DREIFU at WHARTON-10 (Henry Dreifus)
Subject: What about NASA
To: space at MIT-MC
Might I humbly ask the following: Why does'nt NASA stay out of space and
allow private industry to go-after space?
o NASA allows more government control at the very begining of our space
program and will always have a purpose in future space exploration.
o The purpose of NASA is now becoming outdated. I liken it somewhat to
the instantiation of the ARPA net by ARPA, and now we see many commercial
networks upspringing.
o The future should look something like this:
DoD and military space missions will be handled separately, probably
a little bit of NASA helping (tracking/technical people . . .)
Strictly commercial flights/missions will be handled mostly by
private companies ready to jump in; ROCKWELL intn'l, Boeing Corp,
TRW and perhaps MD. NASA will be a government AGENCY handling
cross coordination, paperwork and 'slot' space. Research experiments
in the future I have a feeling will piggyback Dod/military or fly
inside commercial subsystems.
The point I contend is that NASA will never go away, they will be playing
a useful and basic role in the entire 'game'.
Henry Dreifus
------------------------------
Date: 11 October 1981 12:38-EDT
From: Marvin Minsky <MINSKY AT MIT-AI>
To: MINSKY at MIT-AI, space at MIT-MC, E.jeffc at UCB-C70
Subject: Rebuttal to E.jeffc on SPS
:mail E.jeffc@Berkeley, minsky, space@mit-mc
Your arguments are weak:
This is pure nonsense, as man created the machine, and surely
the creator is something more than the created!
Why "surely"? That's a good way to prove a man can shovel more than
a bulldozer!
To a human being they can be but secondary concerns. The
reason why we must go into space is the same reason why this
country of ours grew from sea to shining sea: it is the des-
tiny of man to rule over nature.
The destiny of man, if anything, is the destiny of intelligence --
perhaps to rule but perhaps more to know.
The SPS would have us live off the table scraps of the
Universe, like some parasite, instead of feasting on the meal
itself - fusion power.
SPS IS fusion power, an energy collector near a fusion reactor called the
sun. It would be nice to have small, local fusion reactors, but they appear
to be at least many years away, with no good reason to think that they
can be made to produce power as cheaply as SPS. See below.
We do not have the resources to build a SPS. --- The SPS is too
capital intensive! --- Fusion power can be developed and put
into commercial use long before the first SPS could possibly
be built, assuming that it can be built without straining the
economy past its breaking point.
Fusion power is a mere gamble, as noted above. We simply don't know how to
build a fusion reactor yet, so we can't know how much it will cost!
As for SPS costs, the design will change over the next years -- if the
subject is studied. I believe that the launch costs will be trivial,
once the earthmen let themselves study the feasibility of launching
heavy loads into space using ballistic nuclear launch methods, from
deep holes in the ground. (Lunar materials, also proposed for this,
would take longer to develop, I think, but perhaps worth it for
exploration technology reasons.) So, the "capital costs" of such
projects have been overestimated because of assuming that the stuff be
launched by chemical (!) rockets.
------------------------------
Date: 11 Oct 1981 2231-PDT
From: Jim McGrath <JPM SU-AI AT>
Subject: SPS and Fusion
To: space at MIT-MC
CC: e.jeffc at UCB-C70
(Actually, this discussion might be more appropiate to ENERGY)
I found your message interesting. You correctly point out that throwing
money at SPS will not, in itself, create SPSs (although money is a
perrequsite for such construction). But you then go and ruin your point
by essentially saying that if we threw enough money at fusion then we
would have power plants by the year 2000 (afterall, Congress just mandated
that we do so).
I pride myself a bit on an understanding of the current state of physics
research, and I was lead to believe that they is no fundamental scientific
reason to believe that it is POSSIBLE to use fusion as a power plant
resource. Am I wrong on this? And if so, can you cite any recent
experimental results on this matter? I would like to believe fusion
is practical, but need some facts.
SPS IS practical, in the sense that only engineering and economics,
not fundamental scientific principles, seen to hinder us. In a
technical sense I believe SPS could be a reality FAR earlier than fusion.
The engineering challenges would seem to be greater, as are the
economic challenges, but I do not believe this is clear either. All
the proposals for fusion reactors I have seen (all assuming the
critical densities could be obtained under existing experimental
reactor designs) are EXTREMELY capital intensive, and it appears
that far less hard engineering studies have been done on the design of
fusion reactors than on SPS (once again, since we are not sure what a
fusion reactor will look like, while we pretty much know what a
SPS will look like if we can build it).
Does anyone have harder facts on this matter? I would like to have
reasonable fusion power plants, but they seem to me to be more
unlikely than SPS is, given our current science and technology.
And unless we know HOW to build them, disscussions of economics seem
a little bit pointless.
Jim
------------------------------
Date: 12 October 1981 04:19-EDT
From: Jerry E. Pournelle <POURNE MIT-MC AT>
Subject: A hot time at L-5 tonight??
To: TAW at S1-A
cc: SPACE at MIT-MC
The paper was in the third conference on radiation in space,
held at Ames a year or so ago. I thnk I summarized it in a
column once.
If you pitch and catch in the right geometry the total force
changin the orbit of the system is nil. Pretty nifty.
The concept of using hot ddust streeams as radiators is just one
ofthe possibilities studied.
------------------------------
Date: 12 October 1981 04:36-EDT
From: Jerry E. Pournelle <POURNE MIT-MC AT>
Subject: Long flame on SPS and fusion
To: E.jeffc at UCB-C70
cc: SPACE at MIT-MC
I confess I have not read all your flame. The reason is that
you have put forth an assumption at the beginning that is
certainly open to challenge.
Why is SPS and solar energy the "table scraps" while fusion is
the meal itself? I grant you that fusion is useful (if we get it
working;); but it is not the end of all. Fusion does produce
radioactive wastes. Not as many as fission, and the fission
waste problem is a non-problem, technically, although hardly
that politically.
There are other disadvatntages to fusion. it's big, and
may not at all be what you want in orbit.
SPS as as power source for Earth may never happen. It
is a string to our bow; a means of powering a civilization
although we've been told that there is no such source of power.
But for space itself, SPS seems to be a fairly good way to get
the power needed.
At any rate, most SPS enthusiasts have asked for no more
than $30 million a year -- about what Health and Human Services
spends in five minutes -- for technology development studies.
The technology would be useful in almost ANY space exploitation.
As to your defense of the right to make a philosophical
attack, none was needed; I presume many of us would like to
believe that we are part of something larger than any one of us,
and that there are things which are, plainly speaking, worth
while.
I'll try to read the rest of your piece later. I regret the
typos in my above; I get absolutely no feedback from the net,
the TIP I must use lately seems to play through a VERY noisy
line. sigh.
[I confess, there were so many typos, I went through and corrected
most of them. I occasionally do this to mail. I hope no one
objects. -ota]
------------------------------
Date: 12 October 1981 04:43-EDT
From: Jerry E. Pournelle <POURNE MIT-MC AT>
Subject: Costs of SPS vs. fusion
To: CC.CLYDE at UTEXAS-20
cc: SPACE at MIT-MC
Given lunar bases, it's conceivable that SPS would be "free" in
the sense that almost nothing need go from Earth to anywhere.
Use of lunar resources through lunar colonists produces NEW
wealth, not redistribution of something already around. It
takes a bit of capital to get that going, but not all that much
(trivial compared to, say, the liquor budget); and the result is
pretty impressive.
Fusion can be good stuff, but the capital costs won't be cheap,
and I will bet large sums that the anti-nuke crowd will NOT
allow fusion plants to be built economically. After all, they
claim that fission is not economic (and given their actions, it
ain't)...
Stalin once said that there was no subway in the world except
that in Moscow. He had been to Paris. Hannah Arendt
interptreted it to mean that the totalitarian believes that
given the power, he can make any statement true by putting
anything contradictory down the memory hole...
------------------------------
Date: 12 October 1981 04:53-EDT
From: Jerry E. Pournelle <POURNE MIT-MC AT>
Subject: Finite energy
To: REM at MIT-MC
cc: SPACE at MIT-MC, E.jeffc at UCB-C70
SPS can be used to power space ships. One uses a laser to beam
energy to the ship. The ship now uses any one of several high
ISP drive concepts; it need not carry th epower source along,
and thus can get much better thrust/weight ratios.
The laser power shipis probably the way we will
explore/mine asteroids. The more one looks at it the better it
looks. It can also be used to aid light-sail vessels.
------------------------------
End of SPACE Digest
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