From: ewright@convex.com (Edward V. Wright)
Newsgroups: sci.space
Subject: Re: Bootstrap hardware for LunaBase
Date: 16 Oct 92 15:58:26 GMT
Article-I.D.: convex.ewright.719251106
Organization: Engineering, CONVEX Computer Corp., Richardson, Tx., USA
X-Disclaimer: This message was written by a user at CONVEX Computer
              Corp. The opinions expressed are those of the user and
              not necessarily those of CONVEX.


>Neither asteroid or lunar enterprises have any signficant commercial
>funding.   Neither are ready for that yet.  My point is that these
>enterprises can and should be analyzed from an industrial and
>commercial viewpoint, 

Oh?  That's a far different point from the one you've made in the
past.  The *old* Nick Szabo claimed that lunar enterprises (or any
manned enterprises) were the "socialist road to space" with no
commercial potential to analyze.  And that communications satellites,
mining robots, and other unmanned ventures were the "free-enterprise
road to space."  No further debate possible or necessary.

>and NASA should support them with exploration and tech R&D accordingly.  

Well, so much for the "free enterprise" line.

>It is ridiculous to devote most of the resources 
>to the moon because of obsolete "next logical step" dogma, or because
>one wants to include astronauts. 

Nick, if you want to get into bed with government, you've got to
play by government's rules.  Like it or not, the astronaut office
is enormously powerful within NASA.  As Tom Wolfe said in The Right
Stuff, "No bucks without Buck Rogers."

However, the *old* Nick Szabo attacked the idea of lunar development
as inherently "socialist" even if it was done by a private enterprise
with no ties to the Federal government.

Moreover, some of us believe that government bureacracies like NASA,
while they may be good at space exploration, are not the best vehicles
for space industrialiation and colonization.  We would like to see NASA's
role *restricted* to exploration.  This makes us much less socialist and
mroe libertarian than you are, Nick. 


>We need diveristy -- lunar exploration 
>_and_ asteroid exploration _and_ comet exploration.  Doing them all
>can be quite cheap if we start taking a sophisticated, in-depth look
>at the problem and the technology available, instead of dogmatically
>insisting on the traditional, ridiculously huge and expensive methods.  

Exactly.  However, the *old* Nick Szabo refused to look at *all* the
technology available.  Anything that involved human beings in space
was attacked because "Comsat didn't do it that way." 


>We also need to look at the material needs of industry and start designing 
>future commercial scenarios around the bottom line.  It is ridiculous
>to focus on the moon when the vast majority of industrial processes
>require volatiles, and by far the largest industrial input is volatiles,
>and volatiles are not found on the moon.

It's ridiculous to estimate that industry in space will use exactly  
the same processes and have exactly the same requirements as industry 
on Earth.  "The vast majority of industrial processes" may require volatiles 
on Earth, but space industry is going to be based on entirely new processes.
You have to examine what those individual processes will be before you
can say what they will and will not require.

And how do you *know* that volatiles are not found on the Moon?  
Because a handful of explorers wandering around for a couple
of days on a land mass larger than the continent of Africa
didn't find any?


>I'm objecting to NASA dictation of the direction of space industry, 
>especially the style that snubs the real users of space in commerce 
>and the military.  

To be more precise, you're objecting to the fact that NASA does
not dictate the direction of space industry *your* way.


>And "is" does not mean "will always be".  One of the 
>big benefits of extracting volatiles and organics, and after that metal 
>regoliths, is that the cost of space habitation comes way down.  

Which is a good reason to extract volatiles and organics, *using
technology that can do the job*.


>Ice rockets alone provide enough propellant and shielding to drop 
>the cost of an astronaut Mars mission by a factor of ten.  

Yes, but the automated systems that you claim would run these ice
rockets do not exist outside your imagination.  And no one knows
how to build them.  You have no understanding of what current
computers and automation systems can and can't do, and you
stubbornly refuse to educate yourself on the subject, preferring
instead to call other people, who propose *practical* means of
getting those resources, names like "socialist" and "Luddite."


>So it turns out that automation is critical to affordably living 
>in space, not the enemy as the Luddite "manned is more flexible 
>than unmanned" bozos portray it.

No one has claimed that automation is not critical in space.  What
people have been trying to tell you -- people who know more about
such things than you do -- is that there are certain things automation
cannot do.  Things that are required to make missions like your "ice
rockets" succeed.

Now, my dictionary says a Luddite is someone who smashes machines.
The surest way I know to smash a few billion dollars' worth of 
high-tech machinery would be to send out to mine the asteroids
without having a Maytag repairman along to fix it when it breaks
down.  (Don't believe the commercials, Nick.  In the real world,
the Maytag repairman never gets lonely.)  If you want to see the
real Luddite in this discussion, Nick, take a look in the mirror.
Newsgroups: sci.space