Digest Number 378

> > Every frontier that has been opened up has been opened by people
> > who are ambitious and willing to take risks in order to create wealth
> > for themselves and their descendants. There is no reason to believe
> > that the high frontier will be opened in any other way.
>
> Clearly your view of history is fairly defficient. Every frontier -
> including the USAmerican inland, which is probably the most misrepresented
> history in history - has been opened up by employees; primarily of the
> resident or controlling state authority;

This is simply false. North America was settled by various groups looking
to improve their own personal lot (and this includes the first nations).
Even the initial voyages of discovery were financed with an eye to short
term profit. Later waves of settlement were driven by the profit motive as
well. Individuals made their way to the new world primarily on their own
initiative, not at the behest of bureaucrats. There are notable
exceptions, such as the Roanoke colony, which was a horrible failure
precisely because it started from the premise of wanting to have a
colony and then looking at economic issues rather than the other way
around.

The history of frontiers has always involved some government involvement,
but that's not what creates the wealth that sustains the growth of the
frontier. Individuals attempting to make money is what sustains
the frontier.

>& secondarily by the employees of a
> loose - sometimes not so loose, as in the Dutch East Indies Co. -
> partnership between the state & the local temporal equivalent of corporate
> interests.

Corporate fatcats in other words. That's exactly what I meant when I
said that the profit motive is what opens frontiers. India wasn't
brought under British dominion out of spite for the locals or out of some
"mission civilizatrice" despite the colonial apologists' protestations
to the contrary. It was brought under British dominion because that
served the interests of the Company and its' shareholders. Likewise
the opening of the Canadian west - trappers looking to make some
money and to live in freedom.

>This critical work was followed at a very distant third by the
> individual enterpreneurs who basically capitalised - some would say: ripped
> off - on the work of the first two groups.

To the contrary, the lone enrepreneur (often in the form of groups of like
minded individuals pledging to help each other out) has been an essential
element in the true frontier openings. Note that the colonization of
India doesn't count since it was more on the lines of replacing
established governments with Company approved governors. If you look
at the colonization of North America there is a consistent pattern
of european entrepreneurs living well beyond the limits of government
authority (and for many that was the whole point).

>Space development is barely in
> the first (nationalist) stage of its development;

Well, I don't buy your viewpoint on the historical development of
frontiers. Suffice to say that frontiers, by their very nature, are
extraordinarily complex and messy places, not given to the kind of
tidy historical narrative that we are used to from the history of
nation-states. Given this fact it's likely we can both martial
reams of examples of development along one path or another.

That said: If we expect governments to lead the way in opening the
high frontier we are, IMO, never going to see it opened in our lifetimes
in any meaningful way. The payoff for the politicians is simply too
remote. I expect that there will be spectacular discoveries by unmanned
probes (government funded), and this is a legitimate use of taxpayer
money. Basic research *should* be gov't funded. But the extraordinary
creativity of the market (or more properly of individual entrepreneurs
empowered by market opportunities) is so much greater than anything the
government can hope to do that it is folly to rely on anything else to
create a viable spacefaring civilization.

>yet this fantasy view
> story lead some people to believe that we can - & therefore must - jumpcut
> to the third.

There has never been a frontier opened in tidy little stages. It's a
mess, and that's good. Messiness maximizes the chances of the critical
path being discovered. Looking back from two hundred years in the
future the necessary steps to creating a spacefaring civilization will
hopefully be obvious. But we are not omnipotent, so we can only
speculate about what the next step should be. Obviously the majority
of our speculations will be wrong. The only way to ensure that *something*
succeeds is to try many, many, things, and the best way to do that is
to encourage many people to try their best ideas. In the end of the
day there will be winners and losers, but having the government make
the call based on agendas that are only marginally interested in opening
the high frontier is a sure-fire route to failure. The best thing
the government can do is to perform basic R&D, perhaps offer guaranteed
payloads at set prices to help reduce market risk, and otherwise stay out
of the way.

>It won't happen; which in itself isn't so much of a problem;
> but this mythology is somewhat blocking real work which could be done in
> developing the nationalist sector by pretending that only private &
> entrepreneurial development is acceptable

The "nationalist sector" has consistently produced lousy launch vehicles
despite the fact that it's been known for decades how to produce good
launch vehicles. The requirements to have contractors in every
congressional district hobbles every element of the US space program.
Note that the current cheapest launch service provider (Russia)
doesn't suffer from this issue due to not having been democratic
when their launchers were developed. Sadly Russia lacks the capital
for new LV development.

The best hope for cheap launch is the evolution of simple, reliable
rockets from sub-orbital tourism (and similar applications like
micro-g research and imaging) into simple, reliable orbital launchers.
The incentives for governmental interference in launcher development
on gov't contract are simply too great, and these incentives are
in direct opposition to what is required to build cheap launchers.

......Andrew

Andrew Case
acase@... |