Re: starship-design: Lawmen, Taxmen and Bureaucrats

[KellySt@aol.com]

In a message dated 10/12/02 10:30:39 AM, lparker@cacaphony.net writes:

>OPINION SPACE
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>Lawmen, Taxmen and Bureaucrats
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>The Spacefaring Web 2.17
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>by John Carter McKnight
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>Scottsdale - Sep 11, 2002
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>Technocratic infatuation with the state-directed master plan helped smother
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>the first Space Age. Today, the nascent second Space Age faces challenges
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>not just from NASA's continued addiction to central planning and control,
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>but from groups of well-meaning reformers within the space community. Like
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>their governmental counterparts, they want space development, but without
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>uncertainty, disorder and upheaval. Without bold gambling and creative
>chaos
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>there is no frontier, and the greatest value of expanding into space is
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>lost.
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>Technocracy was the primary ideology of the Industrial Age. In East and
>West
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>alike, it was widely believed that economic and social activity was so
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>complex as to require a master plan for coordination. Everything, from
>steel
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>production to medical care, required a governmental system of rules and
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>regulations in order to be licensed to occur. Space, as an outgrowth of
>the
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>military and of heavy industry, the two most managed activities, was deeply
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>imbued with the technocratic ethos.
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>In its day, the Plan was effective enough, transforming a Soviet Union
>of
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>peasants briefly into a superpower and enabling the United States -
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>briefly - to put men on the Moon. What it achieved in single-pointed efforts
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>it lost in failures of coordination and sustainability. It proved
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>increasingly ineffective as advances in communications technology rendered
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>the "manager" a redundant intermediary.
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>NASA failed to evolve when its political and cultural environment changed
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>after Apollo 11. Its ongoing adherence to grandiose mega-engineering plans,
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>cost-plus contracting and reckless accounting has smacked of the voodoo
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>ritual, an attempt to reanimate the corpse of technocracy's glory days.

Agree with a lot of thios but he missed a big point.  NASA and the other 
programs didn't fail to evolve.  They were designed as one shot "money is no 
object" race programs.  Expecting them to evolve into a program fostering 
commercial development, or opening th final frounteer, is like rexpecting a 
Indy racer to evolve into family sedan.  

NASA responds to congress, and comerce isn't their busness.  Further, it 
would so overshadow them, as to doom them back to a technolygy reseach 
agency.  So they don't really want to support it.






>Using the very methods that industries and governments worldwide were
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>beginning to abandon, NASA failed to produce a viable product with the
>Space
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>Shuttle, which has never come anywhere near delivering the outcomes touted
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>for it.

On the contrary, it did what was demanded of it.  Its manufacture costs were 
shuffled out to all the right districts.  It looks pretty impressive. Good 
political PR.  Keeps a huge NASA staff employed in the right congressional 
districts.  etc.

I was in the shutle and statin programs, and they ae not driven by what you 
think.  Stations design was optimized to utilize shuttle a lot to make it 
look good, and designed to involve a lot of internatinals.  The cost was 
stageringly increased costs for us, greatly extended developoment times, and 
greatly reduced capacity and size.  But those were not big issues.


NASA is about providing political specticals, not commerce - science - or 
economic growth.

========
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>Along with the all-encompassing, over-promising central plan, NASA has
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>repeatedly tried to limit access to space. It attempted to force a satellite
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>launch monopoly with the Shuttle, but the Challenger disaster allowed
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>Arianespace to stage a market coup and drove the US Air Force to fund a
>new
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>generation of expendable launch vehicles to ensure its own access.

True.  A major commercial, or competeing government, launch program would 
cost them turf.   
NASA is about providing political specticals, they can't do that if they ae 
just one of many in space doing the same kinds of things; and they don't want 
to take the chance of doing something new and risky on the frouteers of space 
or technology.



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>This urge to control is, unfortunately, the technocratic reflex. For the
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>planner, the greatest fear is chaos, the greatest need, control. The
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>critical economic role, the planner feels, is performed not by the producer,
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>nor by the consumer, but by their intermediary and master, the planner.

Or the politicians.  ;)

Gov agencies respond to voter interests, and responce.  Specticals wor -- as 
long as they can keep control.

More then that, they ae far more woried about bad press from someone doing 
the wrong thing, or worse saying the wrong thing, then they are at limiting 
themself.





>It is simply unimaginable that beneficial outcomes could occur otherwise:
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>the hand of undirected market forces is not just invisible, it is
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>inconceivable. Where the entrepreneur sees a vibrant marketplace, the
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>planner sees a terrifying chaos. The land beyond the plan is a place clearly
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>marked "here there be dragons."

This however is often the view of politicians - who love such planing, or the 
public - who fears the chaos as well.  Prefers safty.






============
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>A spacefaring civilization will not be the fruit of NASA Five-Year Plans,
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>nor of incremental progress by Big Aerospace. It will be the product of
>an
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>open frontier or it will come not at all.
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>The American frontier was not settled by the government, with cowboys and
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>farmers trotting behind an army of county clerks and safety inspectors.
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>Restless explorers, military scouts, resource speculators, malcontents
>who
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>couldn't abide the strictures of ossifying Eastern cities - they were first
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>to the West. Hobbyists, hackers and pornographers pioneered the Internet
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>long before AOL made it family-friendly.
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>That means that our future in space will not be built by people that the
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>planner, the guaranteed-return investor and the moral traditionalist will
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>easily approve of. It will be built by dropouts, crooks, pirates, gamblers
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>and misfits, same as any other frontier. And it will be built only in the
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>absence of laws, regulations and government plans made here on Earth. Their
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>presence, so reassuring to the cost-plus contractor and prissy schoolmarm,
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>is anathema to innovators in business, politics and culture.

Of course it was the military that developed and built the internet.  Banks 
and industry that made the conputers and telecomunication gear.  No hackers 
using equipment they built themselves opened the digital frounteer.  They 
were just like the "pioneers" who settled the west after the towns weer 
built, regular railroad service established, and tons of dime novels and 
woild west shows popularized the "wind west".

The real follks opening space won't be mountain men in furs, or pioneers in 
conastoga wagons.  No lone prospectors with a mule and a pan.  It'll have to 
be mega corps that can put up the money for the fleets and the platforms in 
space.  And they will demand and enforce you major laws.











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>Rather than asteroidal ore or Lunar ice, those spaces, and the hope they
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>offer for vibrant growth and beneficial, if messy, change, are the most
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>precious space resource. Their development is the standard by which space
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>planning should be judged.


Problem is there is no place in space unless you build it.  And they must be 
big and therfore expensive.