Re: starship-design: Lawmen, Taxmen and Bureaucrats

[KellySt@aol.com]

In a message dated 10/12/02 3:21:31 PM, lparker@cacaphony.net writes:

>Hey Kelly,
>
>Glad to see some of us are still around.

Still hanging in ther -- and answering mail from the web site.  ;)




>> -----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. 

Turf wars as the true faith!!

;)


>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, or rather NACA, was a increadable aeronautical research agency that 
made huge advances in aeronautics.  But that was a long time ago, and NASA as 
spectical producer with little if any time for such research, has been the 
rule since it formed.

Personally I badly want NASA forced out of the space launch busness.  Turn 
Kennedy over to the FAA or Florida or something.  Contract launch services to 
commerce launch companies etc.  Get back just into reseach, aeronautical or 
space related.

Not that NASA wouldn't fight tooth and nail to stop that.



>> 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.

Na, there job is getting reelected.

;)


>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.

Agree, basicaly your looking at FAA teratory.



>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.

Agreed.



>> 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...

Except its not the military that trying to restrict access, but NASA.  NASA 
even tried to force the military out of space.

Thou the Clinton Whitehouse did squelch space launcher research specifically 
to limit access for security reasons.




>> >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.

Reminds me of a old quote that society reveers living conformists and dead 
successful revolutionarys.

;)

Folks want peace quiet, and prosperity.  Course to get that someone had turn 
things upside down for a while.




>> >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, it was populated by a bunch of senior engineers in shirts ties and crew 
cuts.  Very conformist experts in their fields with years of good performance 
in industries.  I.E. mega governments contracting to mega corps.  Hell even 
the Astrounauts found they wanted squeeky clean more then great pilots.  They 
guys they first hired wern't as squeeky cleen as they would heve liked, but 
they weer the most confirmist they could get out of the test pilot corps of 
the air force, and they put a lot of effort to push and test them to make 
sure they .

Later more "correct" astrounauts were selected.



>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.

They we're risk takers by order not inclination.  They hated being pushed out 
to the frounteer.  They were however very skilled, and often 



>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


I've seen mega-corps drill for oil in the deep ocean, in the arctic, etc.  Do 
mines in the tops of mountains, deeps of jjungles, etc.

Corps are quite willing and able to take risk and handel frounteers.  Even 
hire some real characters to work out there.  BUT -- they need to see money 
at the end of it.  So far there is nothing out there thats a real draw.

The focus of the origional editorial seemed to be that it would not / could 
not be the big powerfull corps or organizations, but would be radical 
nonconformists.  Folks like the individuals who went out on their own and 
pioneered the west on the lawless frounteer.  But it is the big corps and 
organizations, with their demands for reasonable order, that pioneer on the 
kind of nasty frounteers we do now on earth, or will do in space.  They won't 
be crooks and pirates, because such folk get each other killed and are to 
much trouble to put up with.  They will be agressive, arogent, probably often 
not real polite, or not conformists.  But not exactly crooks or pirates.

Kelly