From: szabo@techbook.com (Nick Szabo)
Newsgroups: sci.space
Subject: Re: SPS feasibility and other space development
Date: 3 Sep 92 13:22:38 GMT
Article-I.D.: techbook.1992Sep3.132238.18446
Distribution: sci
Organization: TECHbooks --- Public Access UNIX --- (503) 644-8135

In article <BtHtp9.7wF.1@cs.cmu.edu> amon@elegabalus.cs.qub.ac.uk writes:

>There are times when you follow hunches and gut feel on engineering  
>issues because you simply don't have solid fact to go on. 

This is quite different than persisting with a narrow set of hunches, 
turned into religiously held beliefs, even if they have failed over
and over, at great cost, while ignoring the many superior alternatives.

>I think both Dennis and I and Allan would all agree that the fastest  
>way to drive a technology (rather than science) into the the future  
>capabilities we want is to build lots of quick and dirty prototypes  
>that we can crash, blow up and otherwise mangle as a means of  
>collecting EMPIRICAL data.

This is not at all what Dennis and Allen have been promoting.  They
have been advocating huge, expensive projects like HLVs, space stations,
astronauts to Mars, and SPS that, when they fail, bring big chunks of 
the space program down with them.  They say we lack "vision" 
or "guts" unless unless we are willing to bet the house on such singular
spectaculars.

I say we have lost too many houses on such bets, and look where we 
are.  Let's indeed learn from our failures, and invest in projects 
that, when they fail, indeed let us learn quickly and move on.  
Let's invest in small, automated spacecraft that can hold a
wide variety of payloads, from biological adaptation to planetary
prospecting.  Let's explore the entire solar system, which we can do
with just a fraction of NASA's budget with many small spacecraft,
instead of prejudicially planning our space future as if we know all we 
need to know, and any barriers or failures are of just due to "lack of 
will" (what a god-awful cliche, used by everybody from HUD-boosters to 
astronaut fans to promote their favorite piece of pork).  

Let's make NASA support the commercial space industry, by buying their 
launchers and leasing their communcations networks, instead of NASA 
dictating their narrow, obsolete plans for the shape, size, and orbit of 
space infrastructure to all the other space users.  

Let's stop pushing $10's of billions of scarce funds down the ratholes of 
bureacracy that surround the HLVs, the shuttles and space stations, long 
after they have failed.  These techno-sacraments have little to do with 
discovery, of either the scientific or engineering sort, and everything to 
do with a disturbingly narrow, obsolete vision of how to move civilization 
into space.

In short, you have expressed a great strategy for the space program, 
a visions of diverse and quick experiments, nearly 180 degrees opposed 
to the way things have been promoted in the space advocacy community 
and done at NASA.  Let's turn the keel and get on course.


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