Answer to Ian Wollard

--- In spacesettlers@egroups.com, Ian Woollard
> rehaulku@h... wrote:
>
> > Thank you for your reply.
>
> No problem.
>
> > Subjects in order of appearances:
> >
> > End of human kind: We have parallel mentalities on this subject.
But
> > there is a nuance: After 1945 atom bombs, collective unconcsious
> > oriented to the space because life on the earth potentially
finished.
> > And there was Cold War. That is why space exploration
competitively
> > continued till 1990's. Europe and Japan were not successful at
> > this
> > race. To me reason is that their immediate culture is not
interested
> > in space or they are immanently closed to the Other concept.
>
> Well, I live in the UK, so I can tell you that that isn't
> true. The American and Russian and German space tech
> comes out of the second world war and the cold war- it was
> intimately related to ICBMs- the technology was identical.
>
> e.g Saturn V was an ICBM launch platform. That gave them the
> ability. Europe hasn't had the path to get that ability.
> My father worked on 'Blue Streak' in the UK but it was
> cancelled.
>

Not only that, but the German scientists who worked on the V2 rocket
were quickly sent to Russia and the United States after the war.
These were brilliant men, hundreds of them. They were central
figures in both the US and Russian early manned programs. Wehrner
von Braun was the chief scientist in the US space program. All of
the early R&D work on ballistic missiles was done during world war 2,
at Peenemunde, Germany.

> Also cost is crucial- America and Russia could afford to
> develop these space systems- europe has been too fragmented
> to build them until fairly recently. Don't forget that you need
> maybe 10,000 people to launch a rocket right now and a lot
> of money. The costs are going to come rapidly down from now
> on I feel though. There's a lot more competition now.
>
> Still, Ariane is a decent enough launcher, China has just
> launched a 'living organism' whatever that means; Japan
> is doing stuff too. Its more to do with economics and
> ability.
>

The main problem with rockets for orbital insertion is that they have
to take their fuel and engines along with them. Ariane, Titan,
Energia, SaturnV, all of them are able to carry a small payload to
its destination in space. Most of the mass remains fuel, tanks,
engines, structural support and associated systems. Only a small
percentage is payload.

For a private individual or corporation, launching a payload into
space means launching all of that other weight as well. That is why
it costs $20000USD/kg to launch a payload into space.

On top of that, if you are a taxpayer in the US, Canada, or any of
the other countries that has a government-sponsored space program,
you also each contribute through taxes to the infrastructure that
make such launches possible. There are a few private launch systems
out there (SeaLaunch comes to mind), who factor the infrastructure
costs into total flight costs. They need more innovative ways to
launch for less than the Space Shuttle and still turn a profit.

The electromagnetic gun I propose could bring launch costs down by a
factor of 1000, by leaving most if not all of the fuel on the
ground. Multiple daily launches means that the same operation that
used to take tens of thousands of people could be largely automated,
with people working on payloads in an assembly line structure. Think
of something like the daily operations of a large automobile
manufacturing plant.

>
> > I am not sure about money. Till today space exploration has
negative
> > sum at the balance sheet for billions of dollars.
>
> Satellites aren't negative balance. They represent most
> of space at the moment. Exploration is always costly
> pretty much by definition, but there's profit being
> made- satellite TV?
>

The space program has always had a positive balance sheet in the long
run. All of that money is spent ON THE GROUND. McDonnell Douglass,
Boeing, Martin Marietta, SpaceHab, all have made money on the
ground. RSC Energia would, too, if they had Japanese or American
management (the Russians are still too new at capitalism, but they
are learning).

Everytime you drink Tang, somebody has made money from the space
program.

> > That is why
> > humanists are against gong to the space. I don't mind about
> > humanistic behavior.
>
> 'Why are we bothering with space when we haven't solved
> all the problems on earth yet?' as if all problems are
> ever solvable; it's not conceivable.
>
> I actually believe that quite a lot of human problems
> are easier in space, power, materials, labour and
> green house gases; room for population growth. All
> these problems go away in space to a large degree.
> Robotics is much easier when you have massive power
> supplies; massive power supplies are easier when
> you have robotics. Robotics means that building
> things in mass production is easier- the loop
> spins around and around and O'Neills and similar
> habitats come slingshotting out too.
>

Much more massive industry is also possible, particularly at
relatively stable orbits like the libration points L4 and L5. With
solar furnaces (large, flimsy sheets of reflective material, perhaps
kilometers wide, focused on a point in space) incredible temperatures
are possible, in a nearly zeroG gravity, and a nearly perfect
vacuum. The materials industry would be changed forever. Mass
production of alloys that are not possible on the earth (due to
gravitational separation) would be possible at such a location. Raw
materials rich in resources are also available in the form of Near
Earth Asteroids, belonging to whoever changes the orbit of one and
can protect their claim.

> Will robotics spell economic disaster? Probably not
> unless humans cease to have any value. That doesn't
> seem likely. People have much better intelligence
> and skills than machines, and are likely to still
> have this in 20 years time (just).
>

I have worked in the artificial intelligence field for the last ten
years. I often hear this question about when machines will be
smarter than human beings. It is like asking: which is smarter, my
dog or my cat? Is my dog smart for guarding the house, playing
fetch, rolling over, and so on, or is the cat smart for not doing
those things?

Computer programs already surpass human beings in many specialized
areas, such as chess-playing (this may change, as Deep Blue has not
played Kramnik yet). However, if he so desired, Garry Kasparov could
have literally (not figuratively) run circles around Deep Blue. The
computer program was only aware of the chess game, not of anything
going on around it.

Are Kasparov or Kramnik the smartest guys in the world, just because
they are the best chess players? Of course not. You could teach
them a thing or two about fixing a car engine, or about anything else
for that matter. Ask them anything about chess, however, and they
will know the answer.

Our chief advantage as human beings is twofold:
1) we have an existing intelligence and a self-reproducing structure
2) we are all unique, with different strengths and weaknesses

An artificial intelligence is not better or worse than a human
intelligence, it is different. It can only be compared to another
artificial intelligence for the comparasin to have meaning. I can
say that my spider robot has more intelligence than the one the MIT
team made, but I can't reasonably compare it to a human being, or
even the subtle personalities of the dog or cat.

> > The last and added value subject:
> > What will happen to man in the space? We have only 500 examples.
I am
> > not sure whether it is enough.
>
> Enough for what? Nobody has ever died in space (although
> 3 russians and Challenger came close to it.)
>
> > The moon base and permanent space
> > station is certain to exist. (Low or) Non-gravity is still
unsolved
> > problem.

Also, there have been some deaths on the launchpad (Gus Grissom died
during a test on the pad, along with two others). The Russians died
during re-entry, the Challenger during acceleration to orbital
speed. Space travel is inherently dangerous, but nobody has died as
a direct result of long term exposure to a space habitat
environment. The longest anybody has lived in space is something
like 500 days. We use the data from Skylab, Mir, Salyut and now the
International Space Station to infer the results of long term
exposure. If it turns out that we can safely send somebody to live
for more than two years in a microgravity or low gravity environment
and still live normally on earth (presuming some time spent
rehabilitating), then we can assume that longer periods are possible,
perhaps entire lifetimes.

I agree, 500 examples is far too little. There should be a permanent
presence in space, with greater expansion than is currently
underway. Millions if not billions will eventually live in space; I
want to go, too!

:) ed