[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

RE: starship-design: Lawmen, Taxmen and Bureaucrats



Hey Kelly,

Glad to see some of us are still around.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: KellySt@aol.com [mailto:KellySt@aol.com]
> Sent: Saturday, October 12, 2002 11:59 AM
> To: lparker@cacaphony.net; starship-design@lists.uoregon.edu
> Subject: Re: starship-design: Lawmen, Taxmen and Bureaucrats
>
> In a message dated 10/12/02 10:30:39 AM, lparker@cacaphony.net writes:
>
> >OPINION SPACE
> >
> >
> >
> >Lawmen, Taxmen and Bureaucrats
> >
> >The Spacefaring Web 2.17
>
> 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.

I don't think he "missed" the point, but you are on track about its original
genesis and goal. Which is the point, it was a bureaucracy established to
accomplish one thing only, which it did very well. However, the nature of
bureaucracies is not to evolve, but to  grow and protect themselves. The
analogy of the Indy racer and the family sedan was very apt.

Each represents a separate entity, not an evolution of one into the other.
Granted, much of what is learned from Indy racing eventually get
incorporated into the family sedan. The engine in my truck began life as a
race car engine design. Which is what should have happened (and still
should) to NASA. It should be the one testing the technologies that no
company feels comfortable putting in to the 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.

No, commerce per se, is not the business of Congress. Protecting commerce
and furthering commerce on the other hand, IS the business of Congress. As
such, perhaps what is needed is to put space transportation (as opposed to
research) into the hands of a different government agency, like maybe the
DOT or FAA or some such. Note, that I am not saying that they will
physically run the shuttle fleet, merely administer its operations. The
actual ownership and day to day running should lie in the hands of private
industry.

Of course, this assumes that ANY agency will be interested in promoting
access to space, see my point further below about the government's vested
interest in denying ANYBODY access.


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

All to true, which is what I was saying above. Of course, they are under
directions from Congress to provide these spectacles. NASA's mission is
ultimately designed by Congress. So if NASA's mission in snot what it should
be, we have only ourselves to blame.

> 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.

Again, this is Congress. Keeping other countries, and by extension, private
industry, out of space access effectively allows are government to control
the high ground. Unrestricted access would make it almost impossible to
guarantee the security of our country, our "turf", but not in the sense that
you meant it...

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

Well, the entrepreneur thrives in chaos, because with chaos comes
opportunity, as well as danger. The public (as an entity) on the other hand
fears chaos for danger it brings, it wants only safety, which is ultimately
dichotic because the entrepreneurs that embrace at the individual level are
part of the larger entity that fears it. Naturally, the government, whose
responsibility it is to see to the public safety also fears the chaos.

This is ultimately self defeating because the better a job they do of
protecting us from this chaos, the less healthy the system as a whole
becomes. The chaos is necessary for a healthy and thriving society and a
society where it doesn't exist in sufficient measure eventually collapses.

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

I think you missed the point here entirely, chiefly because you got caught
up in what you perceived as an error in what was after all, only an analogy.
His point in this analogy was not that the Internet was built by hackers,
but rather pioneered by them. They caused the change and growth in DARPANET
into what is now the Internet.

But that isn't really relevant to what he was trying to say. The thrust of
what he was saying agrees with and reinforces what you said above about
NASA. When NASA was first established, it was populated by just the sort of
"dropouts, crooks, pirates, gamblers and misfits" that he is talking about.
No they weren't actually those sorts of people, but that represents the
character traits essential to risk takers. True, these risk takers also
possessed brains, guts, determination and discipline in varying degrees, but
they weren't bureaucrats (yet). Risk taking, and the inevitable accidents
that went with it were expected - not encouraged mind you - but expected.

Today's NASA is a whole different animal. Risk taking is anathema at NASA.
Even looking like you once had a reckless brain cell is bad news there. NASA
will not and indeed cannot ever be the vehicle for moving us into space. The
very lack of risk taking in their corporate culture and in their mandate
from Congress guarantees that it will never happen. What they can do and
should be doing, is research. Building and testing the technology necessary
for others to do what NASA cannot.

On the other hand, the entity, be it an individual, a corporation or
whatever, that does move us into space  must resemble his list of "dropouts,
crooks, pirates, gamblers and misfits", whatever they may actually be.
Without the traits that make those people what they are, even a mega
corporation is not going to be able to do the job.

Although the point you make about the amounts of money required are correct
and almost require the backing of large multinationals, the corporate ethic
that drives such corporations is even more of a risk suppressor than what
NASA is experiencing. Which explains why few mega corporations are willing
to get into the space game except in a peripheral way.


Lee