A Great Future Behind Us
I posted this at Instapundit, where I’ve been sitting in recently, but I think it’s worth sharing here as well. Earlier this week there I linked to a series of Seagram’s ads that ran right around the conclusion of World War II and were titled, perhaps portentously for a series of ads merely hawking blended Canadian whiskey, “The Men Who Planned Beyond Tomorrow.”
But as I wrote in my Insta-post, sadly, the tomorrow those ads promised us is now in the past, as Bill Whittle further explores in a heartbreaking, yet must-watch video, which begins with the final victory lap of the Space Shuttle, followed by a beaming Wernher von Braun standing next to the first stage of the Saturn V, his mightiest invention.
“Oh, that? Just some stuff I built,” as the meme making the rounds goes. Bill then mentions Boeing’s enormous late 1960s SST design, which would have dwarfed the Concorde (which also isn’t available for passenger service these days). When the Boeing project was cancelled in the early 1970s, Whittle says in the video:
I remember my dad telling me, “Once you stop going forward, you start going backwards.” I was ten or 11, but this made me worry, because it made my dad worry. But that was it though, wasn’t it? We walked on the Moon, we lost our way home the day after.
In 2010, British academic Bruce Charlton posited, “I suspect that human capability reached its peak or plateau around 1965-75 – at the time of the Apollo moon landings – and has been declining ever since:”
This may sound bizarre or just plain false, but the argument is simple. That landing of men on the moon and bringing them back alive was the supreme achievement of human capability, the most difficult problem ever solved by humans. 40 years ago we could do it – repeatedly – but since then we have not been to the moon, and I suggest the real reason we have not been to the moon since 1972 is that we cannot any longer do it. Humans have lost the capability.
Of course, the standard line is that humans stopped going to the moon only because we no longer wanted to go to the moon, or could not afford to, or something…– but I am suggesting that all this is BS, merely excuses for not doing something which we cannot do.
It is as if an eighty year old ex-professional-cyclist was to claim that the reason he had stopped competing in the Tour de France was that he had now had found better ways to spend his time and money. It may be true; but does not disguise the fact that an 80 year old could not compete in international cycling races even if he wanted to.
Is he right? Well, as Whittle notes, compared with the aerospace engineering of the 1960s, these days, we should all be worried that we’re going backwards – or at the very least just technologically spinning our wheels.
And you lament our failings, and post your lamentations on the Internet, which is one of the greatest, most revolutionary, advances of all time.
Which was developed over the last 30 years.
And you used a computer to do it which is more powerful than all the world’s computer combined that existed in 1960.
We haven’t stopped advancing. We’re just advancing in different directions now.
Hi Steve,
That’s a fair cop — electronics have made remarkable progress in the last forty years, which I’m well aware of. But the irony of the left constantly calling for big Hoover Dam-style projects — or as Obama himself was quoted as saying to his speechwriters during the planning for (IIRC) a State of the Union speech, “We need more moon shot!” and yet, that level of industrial engineering seems to be beyond our grasp these days, at least for the moment.
The Empire State Building was built in less than 18 months during the Great Depression. Over 11 years after 9/11, the replacement building still isn’t finished. It took a few years to build the Hoover Dam. Today, you’d never get another large dam past the environmentalists. There’s no such thing as “shovel-ready” projects because the crippling burden of regulations drags out everything for years, if ever.
I think the day will come when we’re going to have to tell the environmentalists to go color.
As for aerospace, it’s in a mess. Boeing was years late and billions over budget developing the 787. Airbus was years late and billions over budget developing the A-380 and A-400. The F-22 was years late and billions over budget and the F-35 is likely even worse. Military space projects like SIBRS and AEHF were seriously late and over budget. As much as I love SpaceX, they are seriously behind their original schedule projections, too.
Yes, but the point is that the left don’t want “Hoover Dam” projects. As one of The One’s tsars said, “You’ll never see another big dam built”. Which got cheers and applause from the deep-ecology activists she was pontificating to.
Our progressive enlightened elite’ do not like science, technology, or advancement. They want a “simple” world, in which everything is understandable to them. And frankly, most of them couldn’t screw in a lightbulb without specific instructions which they would require a literate person to read to them. (They can argue about Proust all day, thanks to a college makework class, but few have ever actually read his work.)
They hate our technological world, because they see it as having been built on the backs of the downtrodden masses. Whom they claim to want to lift up, but which they really want to be worshiped by. This is why, as Tom Clancy has said, their stock response to the space program was “But we have things we need to do HEEEERRREEE!!!!!!“- with the money spent on it. (Which, from 1958 to 1974, was less than LBJ spent on his “Great Society” in the first six months of 1967. And way less than we’ve spent on progressive brainstorms since then.)
The only use any of this lot ever had for the space program was ranting about all the “good” they could do with that money if it was spent “properly”- on their pet projects. Like Cabrini Green, to cite only one example. Or Solyndra, for that matter.
When you couple leftist dreams of “simplification” with those of the environmentalists, who are simply leftists of an even more egregious sort, you get no nuclear plants built since Jimmy Carter, rolling blackouts, AGW being used as an excuse to demand total control of everything… and NASA using its budget for “proving” AGW, plus “Muslim outreach”.
This lot cheer when they see “evil technology”- like the shuttle- discarded. And they won’t be satisfied until we are living in a Stone Age agrarian socialist state, with them as the rulers.
I expect that before long (within a few months if The One is re-elected) Burt Rutan will be out of business, because laws will be passed prohibiting private spaceflight research. Think it can’t happen? The British Interplanetary Society has never launched a single rocket, even when the American Rocket Society was sending their small ones up in the 1930s. Because British law prohibits private experimentation with “dangerous, explosive, or flammable substances and chemicals”- like rocket propellants.
And with BATFE at his beck and call, you can bet the ranch that The One would love to do it here, too. In the name of “public safety”.
They want to go backward- to an imaginary Eden that never existed. And they simply do not give a single, solitary damn what the rest of us think.
Or how many of us survive their Magickal Mystery Tour.
Except for the ones who hope that we don’t, that is. You know, the ones who think there are too many of us already, and want to reduce the population to the “carrying capacity” of “Holy Mother Gaia”. They’re counting on us going under the bus before it gets to Strawberry Fields.
If necessary, they’ll throw us under themselves. And laugh as they do it.
clear ether
eon
The British fool you’ve quoted should be able to name one thing wwe’ve forgotten how to do. It should be easy.
Since any effort to return to the moon since the first one, would be a net loss–and it must be acknowledged the “gain” to the first one was non-economic and it’s purpose eclipsed by history–why should we return a la Apollo?
He didn’t say we stopped he said we peaked. There’s a difference.
I disagree with a lot of this. The Apollo and Boeing SST programs, among other projects, were examples of American national socialism, which peaked in the late 60′s. None of this stuff was economically viable on a sustaining basis (e.g. profitable). The SST could never have made it commercially without the federal subsidies, which is why Boeing dropped it like a hot potato when the federal subsidy was cut in ’71. A reality illustrated by the fact that Boeing had no problem at all with shouldering the development cost of the 747 jumbo jet all on their own.
Commercial stuff that has progressed since this time has been semiconductors, MEMS, and biotechnology; all of which has been done on an economically self-sustaining basis. Materials science has developed a lot since then.
As far as the inability to return to the moon, this remains to be seen. SpaceX is now routinely placing payloads into LEO on a profitable basis. They have developed an Apollo-like manned capsule that could transport astronauts to the ISS once NASA gives its approval. This capsule, which is larger than the Apollo capsule, could certainly transport astronauts to the moon. The only thing left is to manufacture the landing craft, which is certainly within SpaceX’s capability.
SpaceX is one of several start-up companies that are targeting the space transportation market.
Not to denigrate SpaceX, which is doing fantastic work, but there’s still more work than a lander to be done. The Falcon 9 version which is putting Dragon capsules into LEO could reach the moon, but not with much payload. The Falcon 9 Heavy they have in development would be enough to send a serious cargo lander to the moon, but not enough to send something capable of manned ascent and Earth return, so they’d also need some kind of orbital assembly and/or refueling capability.
If you have automated rendezvous and docking capability like Dragon has, you are most of the way toward orbital assembly. Space suits will come out of the growing suborbital tourista business. They will also come out of extreme sky diving (over 100,000′ fall).
Bigelow Aerospace has been flying Transhab man capable modules for several years now. They form the basis for spacecraft and platforms.
We already have an asteroid mining company starting business – Planetary Resources. Despite what the general public may believe, the single most valuable commodity out there is water ice, for you can use it as propellant. And there is more water ice in the inner solar system than you may ever believe.
The trick was breaking the government monopoly on manned spaceflight so that the marketplace could get off the ground. Once broken, things will (and are moving) move pretty fast. Cheers -
so they’d also need some kind of orbital assembly and/or refueling capability.
Bingo. That’s exactly the kind of capability we need to develop in order to build some space infrastructure which can then be built upon, so that we can establish a permanent, sustainable presence in space.
In the early planning stages of Project Apollo, three methods of reaching the moon were examined and debated. The first was Direct Ascent. With this method, the Apollo spacecraft was all-in-one. The entire spacecraft would land on the moon with its three-man crew. This would have required a rocket larger and more powerful than the Saturn V. It was tentatively called Nova.
The second method was Earth Orbit Rendezvous. It would require three (I believe) Saturn I launches to assemble and fuel the Apollo spacecraft in Earth orbit, which would then set out for the moon.
The third method was Lunar Orbit Rendezvous. The Apollo spacecraft would be broken up into two pieces, the Command & Service Module and the Lunar Module. It could be launched on a single Saturn V. Only the LM portion would land on the moon, with two of the crew. The LM would then blast off and meet the CSM. The astronauts would transfer back to the CSM, which would then set out for Earth. The LM would be jettisoned.
Since the primary purpose of Apollo was to beat the Russians to the moon, LOR was the method chosen. It was thought to be the fastest approach. It required a large rocket, but not an insanely huge one.
But if we weren’t in a big hurry, then EOR would have been the best approach. It doesn’t require giant rockets, and it has the potential to establish an infrastructure in space, such as refueling depots, which can then be refilled and used for future missions. Frequent launches of smaller rockets can be more economical in the long run than occasional launches of large rockets. A true interplanetary spacecraft would be assembled in Earth orbit, not launched all at once on an enormous rocket. Both science and science fiction writers depicted that as far back as the 1950s. They assumed that space stations would be places where lunar and interplanetary spacecraft would be assembled, fueled, and crewed. The present ISS doesn’t do that.
Apollo was a magnificent success. It achieved its objective, but it left nothing behind to build upon. In that sense, it was a dead end.
Actually, a combination of EOR and LOR would’ve been the most efficient. EOR would’ve still landed the entire vehicle needed to return to the Earth on the moon. That would’ve been hugely inefficient. There was no need to take the heat shield, parachutes, and the fuel needed to return to the Earth down to the lunar surface. That would’ve made the vehicle far larger and heavier than needed. The LM was a very efficient design. It only took what was necessary for the trip down to the lunar surface and back to orbit. All of the stuff needed for the trip back to Earth and reentry were left in lunar orbit.
Had they used multiple launches to put command module and lunar module together in Earth orbit along with the stage needed for TLI, they wouldn’t have needed to develop the Saturn V. As it was, the Saturn V was the smallest vehicle necessary to fly the mission with a single launch. It might’ve even been more efficient to send the CM and LM to the moon separately.
You are correct that the Falcon 9 will not reach the moon. However, they are working on a larger booster that will (Falcon XX). They are also developing a reusable launcher as well. This will make it cheap ($100/Kg) to place things in LEO, which can then be assembled into a craft that can land on the moon (or go to Mars).
Boeing did not shoulder the cost of the 747 on its own: Northrop shared the huge risk with Boeing, and then manufactured every part, every spar, every hat clip and every skin of every 747 fuselage ever built — a huge piece of the aircraft, from just behind the cockpit to just in front of the tail — right there in Hawthorne, Califoria’s Northrop Plant III on Crenshaw Blvd between Northrop Avenue and 120th Street, ironically in the same building that now houses SpaceX.
Boeing submitted the 747 design to the Air Force in the competition for what became the C-5 transport (and lost to Lockheed) but turned their design into what might be the most successful commercial aircraft in history, the 747.
Why limit the discussion to aerospace engineering? The same trend might also seem to apply to nuclear engineering, or to the speed and cost with which a skyscraper can be constructed (which peaked well before the 60s IIRC).
The trend might seem to be contradicted by materials science, or by computer engineering, robotics, and software engineering.
The trends in most fields also depend strongly on how you measure. There were fewer passenger-flights than there were people in the USA in 1975; that ratio more than doubled (gross flights tripled) by 2010. It’s honestly sad that nobody travels at 2200 km/hr on the Concorde any more, but surely the increased efficiency which allows us to travel at 800 km/hr twice as often is some evidence against stagnation.
As a nuclear engineer I think I can address this trend as it relates to nuclear engineering.
In engineering school in the early 1970s, I helped out with projects relating to nuclear rocket engines. The US indeed had a flight-ready nuclear engine, what we would need for a survivable round trip to Mars but it was cancelled by Richard Nixon, partially as a chip in arms negotiation talks.
Our commercial nuclear reactors were all basically laid out by the early 1960s. While we’ve learned to scale them up in total power output, the basic design and pressures and temperatures and efficiencies are unchanged. Any improvements since has been in the details, the nuts and bolts. We’ve certainly improved our discipline in running them and enhanced our analysis tools. but building one today would just use the same old/same old technology.
So what’s the reason? Society just didn’t want any better, overall. That was reflected in the political and legal entanglements allowed for new development. When our system deliberately allows a “little old lady in tennis shoes” to block a mega-project, that is giving anyone power to stop them, to do the elites work for them at no risk for the elites.
Look at the last two appointments to the chair of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to see if either had ANY intention of allowing better, improved nuclear power plants.
“The same trend might also seem to apply to nuclear engineering, or to the speed and cost with which a skyscraper can be constructed (which peaked well before the 60s IIRC).”
http://nextbigfuture.com/2012/10/broad-group-j220-sky-city-funded-with.html
“Once you start going forward, you start going backwards.”
should be
“Once you stop going forward, you start going backwards.”
Thanks–fixed (both here and at Insta.)
I wish to heck I could verify this, but I remember hearing that the Boeing SST was a defense department ploy to egg on the Soviet’s Tu-144 program. The Boeing effort never seems to have gone past the flashy mock-up stage before they decided it was economically infeasible. That was a pretty good decision, as both the Tu-144 and Concorde would later prove. As an avid model builder I thought Boeing had crapped out on me, but if this urban myth is true, it was a pretty sneaky way of bankrupting the Evil Empire.
In the 1970s, I was an Aero Engineering Student at a large US university. Out of interest, I spent some time in their library studying the technical reports on the US SST effort. It wasn’t some Pentagon plot – it was real. The level of engineering design and development that had been completed was far beyond anything that could be considered PR. Further, the US SST was more technically advanced than the Concorde. I remember being saddened that the US had forsaken its technological edge in this field, but what’s become clear over the years since is that it was purely an economic decision. The Concorde always operated at a loss, as a “halo” project for France and England and their national airlines. In the absence of federal subsidies, no US airline could have operated the US SST at a profit.
I wonder if one of the things that contributed to the cancellation of the SST were the heating and structural problems suffered by the XB-70 during their test flights in the mid 1960s. By the time of the cancellation, they had extensive heat and structural history with the SR-71 and X-15 flights, but that was all for smaller aircraft. And the SST was a big jet. 1973 was a terrible year to graduate as an Aero Engineer. Cheers -
The biggest problem with the Boeing and Lockheed SST projects was fuel. Both were originally intended to run on the borane-based “Zip” fuels developed for the XB-70 project;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zip_fuel
Without which they couldn’t achieve the Mach 3 performance they were intended to give.
The problem is that borane-based fuels can’t be used in jet engines. While they burn cleanly (and give high ISp- Specific Impulse) when reacted with fluorine-based oxidizers in rocket motors, in a jet engine, at any temperature below 1800 degrees C. they leave glassy deposits of boron trioxide (B2O3) behind. These end up on the turbine blades- which are spinning at RPMs in the five-figure range with clearances slightly less than the thickness of a gnat’s hair.
The result tends to be what they used to call “catastrophic self-disassembly” at RAE Farnborough.
While the SSTs, like the SR-71 and (while it lasted) XB-70, could have been run on JP-7 kerosene, there are only a few refineries around that can make it. It’s basically RP-1 rocket fuel with a couple of different isomers to allow for it having to live with both the cold of the stratosphere and the heat of Mach 3 flight. (RP-1 is designed for rockets that are treated with TLC from fueling to their brief service life.)
Not only couldn’t the airlines afford to foot the fuel bill for running SSTs on JP-7, there probably wasn’t enough high-end refining capacity on Earth to make enough of it to run even a few supersonics on, let alone a few airlines’ worth. (The Air Force never had more than ten Blackbirds flying at any one time, and the fuel bill for those equaled that of an entire B-52 wing.)
Another factor was runways, aprons, etc. The Boeing design team gave their original 2707 proposal variable-geometry wings, like the F-111 or F-14, to reduce runway takeoff length. They found this caused an unacceptable weight vs. payload penalty, so they went to a compound-curve leading-edge delta wing, similar to Concorde, while Lockheed went for a “cranked” leading-edge delta, rather like the Saab J-35 Draken fighter.
In either case, they found that the minimum safe length for unstick and rotation was still about 10,000 feet. The trouble is, most airport runways are around 10,000 feet, total. The only strips longer than that, at about 14,000 each, are the shuttle strips at the Cape and Edwards AFB. The general rule of thumb is that your usual takeoff run should be no more that 70% of the runway length, excluding the overrun. And landing length should be no more than 60% from touchdown to full stop, except in an emergency.
And that was the minimum. They openly admitted to the airlines- and airport port authorities- that they’d be happier with at least 14,000 to 15,000 foot strips (excluding overruns), for safe landing stop in either emergency landing or takeoff-abort situations.
As for aprons, both SSTs were in the same weight/ground pressure class as the new Airbus A380. Which has caused a bit of a problem in the “cracking pavement” department. (The A380 needs special reinforced refueling hardstands- to avoid caving them in on the underground fuel-delivery lines.)
That was when the airlines and airport owners took a look at the costs, not to mention the prospect of finding more real estate to actually extend their runways. (Like Tokyo International? How about Kai Tak at Hong Kong?) And they went into full MEGO (My Eyes Glaze Over) mode.
That was when the “Super SSTs” died.
The environmentalists like to crow that they “killed the SSTs” because of their delusions about environmental damage from sonic booms, etc. But what really did it was simple economics. As the old saying goes, the big SSTs were a beautiful theory- the sort that tends to be murdered impartially by facts.
The jumbo jet turned out to be a better long-term investment in terms of passenger miles. They can carry hundreds of paying passengers, and can take off and land on the same runways as the older 707s, DC-8s, etc.
Of course, the environmentalists hate them, too, but then they hate anything more sophisticated than a travois.
And you’d better not hitch it to a horse. That’s “enslaving an innocent animal” in their world.
clear ether
eon
Nice presentation, eon. What about today? F-22 can do supercruise, we have much better materials and design, much more powerful conventional engines, and experience with the B-1. Airliner doesn’t have to be stealth. Is it time for another cut at a Mach 2 to Mach 3 airliner?
(much less another cut at a Mach 2++ strategic bomber?)
I did not know about the fuel issues. I did know about the runway length issues. I also know that there were materials issues as well. Like how the airframe of the SR-71 has such thermal expansion that the plane had to be aerially fueled following take off, something clearly impractical for commercial airline service.
I also knew that it was mostly economics that killed the larger (250+ passengers, Mach 3 cruise speed) SST’s. The environmental objections actually did not show up until the mid 70′s (several years after the American SST project was cancelled) when people noticed that the Concorde made sonic booms when traveling to inland cities in the U.S. It was the sonic boom that led to laws that limited Concorde service to east coast cities only.
My take on this topic, posted last week: http://www.accidentalverbosity.com/2012/09/rip-shuttles-and-good-riddance/
In short, we’re getting into the golden age for real now! Fumbling if sometimes glorious history is mere prelude to that.
The “we’re going backwards” theme is just crap. The space race wasn’t about advancing knowledge; it was an international game of ‘who’s got the biggest dick.’ Manned spaceflight is impressive and sexy, but it is not and was not the best measure of scientific and engineering achievement.
Scientific knowledge and technological developments have skyrocketed since 1969. The advances in the biological sciences and medicine are especially striking. Our knowledge of immune systems, genetics, bacterial and viral diseases, endocrine systems, etc. vastly exceeds what was known in the 1960s. Computer hardware and software today is beyond what NASA could dream of in the 1960s. The medical imaging world went from X-rays to CAT scans to MRI to PET and beyond. Fiber-optics allows broadband communications and the imaging of your digestive tract, lungs, and arteries. Satellite and wireless communication advances (along with computer technology advances) allow us to talk to anyone from anywhere and to know our exact position at all times. Advances in chemistry brought selective herbicides, lower toxicity pesticides, a huge variety of plastics, better semiconductors, cheaper and more efficient oil refining, more efficient refrigerant liquids, better and cheaper pharmaceuticals, etc. Our cars pollute less, our homes and home appliances use less energy, audio and video equipment are of higher quality or are more portable, and we can carry a small library on a Kindle. Manufacturing productivity increased greatly due to automation, computerization, and computer-aided manufacturing. I could go on, but the point is made: we have not stagnated despite not sending more people to the moon.
People can now build supersonic homebuilt aircraft, although they are drastically uneconomic and essentially illegal to operate at intended cruise over land. In 30 years time, I fully expect homebuilt craft able to orbit and return 1 or 2 people to be possible.
This is a disturbing post. There is an underlying theme to it that if the Federal Government no longer does it then it is not being done. Could we have had a space program, much less successful moon landings, with the Federal government investment? Sure. Maybe not in the 1960′s, but I see nothing that says that lack of Federal involvement is the same as demise or incapability.
Isn’t that the very mind-set that we Conservatives are trying to fight against?
So where IS the private space program? According to the “laws” of the market where stuff happens when it’s needed, I guess don’t need to go into space, because it never happened.
All we’re going to get from private enterprise is the ability to put a rich celebrity in orbit.
That doesn’t inspire me.
Rich celebrities like Anousheh Ansari? She is an immigrant who maxed out her credit cards to start her high tech business and was so wildly successful that she funded the X-Prize and paid for her ticket to orbit. You’re RIGHT, celebrities with drive like that make me sick. Let’s send your mother up into space instead.
The market may be there, and SpaceX, Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic are early pioneers. The big hurdle is regulation. The gov’ts of the world are afraid to recognize property rights in space, afraid that “evil corporations” would rape celestial bodies. It’s a bunch of crap, but many scientists agree because they fear contamination that might goof up their research.
Having said that, there are good reasons commercial aircraft remain subsonic, and any look at a drag vs. Mach curve will demonstrate it. Drag spikes around Mach 1, and doesn’t come back down appreciably. It simply eats too much fuel to fly faster, and the general public won’t pay the price for the extra speed.
Spaceflight is a similar problem. You can only get so much specific impulse out of chemical fuels, and it take a bunch to get into orbit. The asteroid mining idea is interesting, but the asteroid belt is a long way out there. They had better have a lot of patience.
So while there may be a market in space, regulations are the first hurdle but there has to be a huge return to cover the costs of getting there and back.
“Having said that, there are good reasons commercial aircraft remain subsonic, and any look at a drag vs. Mach curve will demonstrate it”
Look at the L/D for the D-21 if you think that’s a real issue. Then consider a “pumpkin seed” Sear-Haack body with leading edge vortex manipulation by retractable winglets/edges. For progressively smaller craft, accept bumps/swellings as neccessary.
I would have thought that with the increasing ubiquity of CNC foam cutting, it would have been done already. Maybe I’ll get to it before I retire, maybe after.
maybe funding is an issue since its illegal to sell ad space on an orbiter/space machine.
One thing’s different: we won’t take life-threatening risks anymore, unless we’re sending ambassadors to Libya.
If the same standards for safety had been enforced 1903-1950, we’d still be in trains and relying on windmills for our power. Oh….
You ain’t kiddin’.
Do you know why all those black men don’t have real jobs any more? The enormous factories where they worked have all been made economically unfeasible by the government that LOVES them, and they can’t pick up trash by the sides of our filthy, broken highways because that’s a union job, and the white union slobs don’t want them.
It’s not just the environment (Libs hate anything dirty, smelly, or noisy. Probably seems too much like work, which they despise.) Entire industries have been wiped out through simple labor regulation and Unions. OSHA is simply an extortion scam run amok.
I always wondered how unions could be so stupid, as I watched them put all their shops out of business in the ’70s and ’80s. Now I know. They really are just stupid thugs. They extort. It’s what they do. When the beast dies, they move on. But, remember: they LOVE the middle class! And blacks! Who they led to the unemployment lines.
The amount of mischief that’s been done in the name of “safety” and “health” is simply staggering. The new WTC buildings are built in slow motion, because those union guys and their overpriced overseers have the same goal: lifetime employment. Now that Obama has made working life between 26 and say, 47, that’s only about 20 years. Any union or government agency that can’t make something last 20 years is simply not trying.
Governmental bureaucracies and large corporations (those that are not driven by a determined innovator) are risk adverse. They prefer to play it safe. The individual spirit of determination and daring are required for innovation. NASA died when it became just one more bureaucracy. I believe that it is innovative individuals that are pushing SpaceX forward. I think it is the Google guys pushing forward the driverless car. The explosion of technology in the 1990s was possible because individuals had the freedom to take risks in a new frontier.
I do not believe that human ingenuity can be complete wiped out. But we do have the choice of creating an environment where it can thrive or one where it is discouraged.
Also, seems to me manned space is a commercial bust. Where’s the foreign gold and treasure brought back to the homeland? Did we discover the equivalent to a new spice route? Tobacco, cotton, corn and its tasty byproduct bourbon? You know, New World wonders? Naw.
Men in space just come back with stories of how beautiful it is to gaze at the earth.
The future of manned space flight is up-and-back tourist flights — the ultimate E Ticket ride. (Definitely showing my age there.) Virgin’s gonna be the first to make real money on this. All the rest’s been government subsidies. Not that putting the comsats and spy sats and telescopes and all the other sats in orbit wasn’t worth it, but did they need to be inserted using the shuttle and by men?
In keeping with your New World analogy, if we equate reaching America from Spain with getting to the asteroid belt (which is where a lot of the profitable stuff is), then going to the moon is like sailing 10 miles off shore, and LEO is a swim of just about 90 yards.
The fact that we haven’t found anything terribly profitable isn’t surprising, we’ve only just begun. And as Heinlein said, once you’re in Earth orbit you’re halfway to anywhere in the solar system.
Is this a plea for asteroid mining?
Or orbital solar photovoltaic?
Or the Next Big Thing which we are too ignorant (as of yet) to name?
Only solution is to try.
We need private spaceflight. Now.
‘We haven’t stopped advancing. We’re just advancing in different directions now.’
And that attitude is exactly why we are no longer advancing. Comparing the internet to the conquest of space is ludicrous.
We’re not retreating. We’re attacking backwards.
Let also remember the advances in production processes that enable us to model in 3D and produce in 3 axis autocad controlled machining centers. We truly are at the edge of our next iteration of Moore’s law.
Bill should watch some of those TED talks videos on his credit card size phone that would make Dick Tracy proud to be American.
I’m confused. Didn’t we just put a fairly decent sized rover on Mars? Are we not beaming back very high resolution video back to earth? Is it not collecting and performing very complex analyses of soil samples and transmitting the results to scientist here on Earth? This, I submit is a far more complex effort than putting a man on the moon.
Sorry. No.
It’s a far more complex operation to carry a payload of living creatures through space, and the stakes are way higher. For one thing: there’s the added need to get them back home, and that’s where our ingenuity is really put to the test.
By this time we should have hundreds (or thousands) of people living and working on Mars. The inspirational value to science is also higher with one or more of our own journeying that far. If you’re going to tell me that you’re just as inspired by a rover… well, you’re either lying or insane.
It’s like the difference between 1.) hiding a camera in the girls’ locker room, or 2.) actually getting laid.
The discussion is about achievement, not inspiration. I’ll grant the return trip adds complexity but life support, not really. We’ve been doing life support for years on end on the Space Station. Still, launching a rocket from Earth and dropping a payload to the surface of Mars using a technique that would be easily survivable for humans is quite an achievement. Combined will all of the other terrestrial achievements mentioned here as well as others not mentioned such as advancements in the life sciences such as sequencing the human Genome, advances in medical technology, communications, computing, robotics, transportation, weaponry etc, makes the case for technical regression a difficult one to make.
Inspiration is not some airy-fairy wisp of meaninglessness. It is the fuel of science. There is a real, pragmatic need for it.
And those landing sequences, all done autonomously, was actually…awesome.
Of course, no life support system. So Apollo continues to be the gold standard of human acheivement.
What would get to me about Shuttle was that Gemini, with the Agena transstage, could fly to 1000 miles.
DAMN, THAT MADE MY DAY WHEN I WAS IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL!
” I am suggesting that all this is BS, merely excuses for not doing something which we cannot do.”
This is just silly. When an 80 year old stops cycling, it doesn’t mean his grandson can’t cycle, either, even if he wants to. What part of getting to the moon is Charlton suggesting we are incapable of repeating?
History is littered with people who thought that they had reached the apogee of human capability and achievement. Shoot there are even got folks who claimed we’d seen the end of history.
I fully agree this Charlton fellow doesn’t pass the giggle test.
We just landed our third robot on Mars. This one is the size of a Volkswagen and carries a laser, a 3D camera, and a full set of geology tools. The technology applied is as far ahead of Apollo as the Apollo is to the biplane. I agree we’ve lost the will for human space flight, and I believe that’s all tied up in political correctness and “social justice” claptrap. Let’s face it, it’s all about team achievement and heroes aren’t good politics anymore.
I grew up in the 60s, and became an aerospace engineer on the promise of the space race. In all likelihood, the USA will cede manned space flight to China and Russia until we can knock more risk out of the equation and fix the economy. I’m not that hopeful about it.
So if we went back to the moon, what would we do there? Look around? Unless it is opened up for commercial operations it is all cost and little return.
But look at your time line. What happened right after the moon shot? All of a sudden the Liberal Arts majors decided to make everything illegal or intensely regulated. The best engineers don’t waste their time on filling out paperwork for some idiot bureaucrat. Instead, the innovators moved to computers, an unregulated area. They made small computers, they made communications, the created ways for girls to take and share nude photos before they sobered up. Question is, is their another the technocrats haven’t infected yet? Is their a chance that we’ll rein in the regulators so the creators can create?
Why are we going backwards? Because we let the ignorant have use the courts and the government to take all the fun out of doing big things.
It’s important to note that Segei Korolyev, the genius reponsible for Sputnik, the Soyuz space capsules and the first spacewalk, was killed by the Soviet version of Obamacare in 1966.
Ooh, good point.
Korolyev was also responsible for the R-7, the world’s first intercontinental ballistic missile, which in turn became the world’s first satellite launcher, and the world’s first manned spacecraft launcher. Its direct descendants are still launching both manned and unmanned payloads today. It’s the space age equivalent of the DC-3, or in terms of longevity, the B-52.
Sad. I’m old enough to have been hired and trained by the generation of engineers that designed and built the systems that allowed Apollo spacecraft to rendezvous an dock, and allowed the landers and LEMs to call home. True story… the LEM uplink antenna had to open like an umbrella, so it was made of a heavy but delicate chain mail. On occasion a unit under test would get kinked or torn. The “specialist” who would fly in and do the repair was an older woman with a set of crochet needles. Apollo was not all about the highest available tech, it was about what worked best with the least risk of failure. Today’s entitlement generation of college grads might know how to do the rocket science and the nanocircuitry, but they will overlook the little old lady with the knitting needles that might get the job done years sooner and billions cheaper. They believe this “Army of one” nonsense. Teamwork, where you can find it, has been perverted into just another means for personal advancement. Where my generation venerated our mentors for their achievements and basked in their counsel, those who came in behind us were taught not just that they have nothing to learn from us, but that what we are a danger to them. God retirement looks better all the time.
If WWII was the “Greatest Generation”, the space age was the hardest working generation. May God bless them all.
In the “From the Earth to the Moon” miniseries, there was an introductory segment about a group of middle aged women who laboriously filled thousands of honeycombed segments to create the heat shields for the Apollo capsules. I looked at the Apollo 16 command module last Saturday. The amount of charring and burn away caused by the capsule hitting the atmosphere at about 25,000 MPH was impressive. Those women did their work with great precision and care. They knew that a failure on their part would cost the astronauts their lives. They were among the 300,000 people who worked on the Apollo program.
Agree with much already posted: (a) development of computers and telecom is amazing, unexpected, widely beneficial, and especially regarding cad/cam, (b) landing Curiosity on Mars is on the order of the Apollo project, yet could be done for a tiny fraction of the cost, (c) the shuttle and manned space exploration so far have zero economic return, the space station in particular was ill-conceived and nearly pointless, just an expensive proof of concept at best.
To which I’d add, it’s been obvious for thirty years that reducing the price of getting a pound to orbit, manned or unmanned (some options like mass drivers include accelerations that would kill human passengers), is worth a twenty year hiatus. And if that’s not possible – and it may not be – then, well, we have to seriously consider the practicality and economics of the whole enterprise, so to speak.
Also, did anybody mention biotech? That is still in its infancy, but it is tremendously important and will become much mores so.
Nonetheless, I was much more woebegon than excited to see the shuttle flying around Los Angeles the other day, on the way to retirement at a museum, when we do NOT have a superior vehicle already in operation. I’m happy to have a nice chunk of MY tax dollars going to even a manned exploration program that does NOT have any economic return on the horizon.
One can hope that SpaceX and others will pick up the slack, though I consider it dubious for many reasons.
But in general – well, I dunno, I’m pretty much assuming these are the New Dark Ages, and we’re in for slow progress at best for a while. Yet that may be too gloomy, see other notes here.
Oh, one more – progress in astronomy has been UNBELIEVABLE in the last twenty years, starting with the Hubble Telescope, one of the best expenditures of money in the history of mankind. Other space-based telescopes, but also ground-based, now that we can churn out 8-meter scopes like peanuts and use adaptive optics to do things better than any satellite can – as long as we’re talking frequencies the atmosphere lets through.
AUTOMOTIVE technology is far, far better than twenty years ago, both design and operation. I don’t even count hybrid cars and the like that are jokes.
Both of these are side effects of the computing revolutions.
Oh, and lithium batteries used in the cars, and phones, and elsewhere, are a nice little advance, aren’t they?
It’s not all gloom, in spite of my and others tendency to feel it is.
Technology increases as we reach out to do something which has never been done before. It was the projects of the late 50s and early 60s which spurred the growth of new technology and miniaturization. You may attempt to pick apart this presentation but it still rings true. The US has stopped being a leader in discovery on many levels due to regulations and political control. If you disbelieve this then check out the tome of EPA regulations and when you are done with this tedious endeavor then look into what it takes to start small research and development business without government aid. Realistically speaking we are living history…
As an Aerospace Engineer for the last 35 years, I think I have a good perspective.
I think it’s criminal that we’ve thrown away the capability to put large payloads into orbit (i.e. the Saturn V – IMHO the greatest technilogical feat of the 20th century – perhaps of all time). But to say aerospace engineering hasn’t advanced since the 60′s is crazy. What’s changed is the focus. Airplanes of today, while externally similar to what flew 50 years ago, are a world away from the 707, DC8, or original 737. The passenger experience hasn’t improved (perhaps gotten worse), but the emphasis has been on what makes money and keeps people safe. If airplanes crashed today at the rate they did in the 1960s, there would be a major plane crash EVERY WEEK! (it’s been years since the last major domestic airplane crash). And even though money is worth maybe 15% of what it was then, the ticket average price has stayed pretty much the same or even dropped. A new 777-300ER will carry as many people or other payload as an early 747, just as far, burning less than half the fuel, way safer, with a small fraction of the maintenance.
Yes, the 787, 747-8 (my program), and A380 went way overbudget and way behind schedule. But a big part of that was bad management, and another big part of it was taking too big of a bite (see Apollo 1). Yes, we’ve become more risk adverse (at least with regard to human life), yet both the Challenger and Columbia shuttle disasters were due to known problems that had been dismissed as ‘not important’ (see ‘bad management’). I’ll never forget the head of NASA getting in front of cameras and stating that Columbia could not have been the result of an impact with “foam” – perhaps the all-time dumb-ass example of a manager not understanding the simple physics that govern how things work (or not work).
The problem with going to space is that there isn’t the obvious profit motive. Hence most of the development has belonged to NASA and other government backed agencys – not a good way to reduce costs or improve efficenty. The introduction of Space X and other private enterprise in the last decade will ultimately change the game.
Tim
Over the ages a major gauge of progress was how fast people could get from point A to point B. I was able to travel faster 40 years ago.
i almost feel sorry for you and bill whittle. all these comments about collective purposes, return on investment, efficencies, etc., all completely missing your point.
your point: all great advances come from *i-n-d-i-v-i-d-u-a-l-s* who have conceived something they would like to create or achieve. they want to make something useful to them. i believe such individuals have arisen most frequently in our nation because they have been inspired and incentivized by the sucesses of other individuals in a free society under God. a great culture creates the space for great individuals to rise and thrive.
lately, our culture has, and is continuing to, cut off all necessary inspiration and incentivization for individual achievement. it changes the emphasis from the individual to the collective with questions like: is it needed by society? is it efficient? what is its purpose? those questions leave no space for future von brauns will to arise. without von brauns there are no future armstrongs to inspire and exploit the advances. and, yes, without the projects like putting armstrong on the moon, no need to develop the small computing power, digital image processing and algorithms to achieve the space project. these ideas trickle down into the public sphere where they inspire private sector ideas like digital cameras. personal computers, etc. bill and ed, these types just don’t see the connection between freedom and individual greatness creating a great culture and a prosperous nation. they’re too carefully taught.
the current culture of gov’t run everything and crony capitalist mega companies limits and destroys such competent individuals and their working dreams. this is the effect and the goal of socialism/communism/leftism: destroy the individual, destroy their dreams. this is why the shuttle is cancelled. this is why we don’t have to capacity to go back to the moon. this is why many of our youth are a faction of stagnant navel gazers, full of nonsense that passes for modern “wisdom.” gung ho for efficencies and social purposes. these group-type things are useful followup but are logically dependent on the initial, very individual breakthrough.
without the individual, there are no breakthroughs; without breakthroughs, society stagnates. a stagnant society, like the old ussr or europe, has to steal or copy breakthroughs from elsewhere. where do you think these stultifying socialist cultures got their ideas anyway? i’ll give you one guess.
The complaint sems to be that because the government can’t get to the moon…that no one else can, either.
…and that because the government can’t get to the moon, we, as a people, can’t get much of anything else done.
Sorry, I think I missed something… You’re supposed to be Conservatives. Remember: Small government, individual liberty, freedom, innovation, opportunities, free market capitalism.
There’s a lot going on out there in the wide, wide world of technological innovation, folks. …including the field of space exploration. The only problem is, much of it is being done by private citizens and private companies, instead of by the government.
I agree. All the real technological advancement in our society now comes from the private sector. The question is how long the big-government advocates will permit private innovation to continue.
Only the government is dumb enough to shovel out massive sums of money and expect no reward. This is why the government provides a useful function for R&D (like the internet) and exploration (like Columbus) and colonization (English settlement of North America).
Why didn’t Spice Importers of Venice, LLC, sponsor Columbus’ voyage to the New World? Because it was expensive and didn’t guarantee any reward… after all, if North America hadn’t been there, he would’ve failed miserably, and might’ve never returned.
Private industry exists to make profits, not earth-shattering discoveries. This is their nature.
All of the educated people of the day knew the Earth was round. The diameter had been determined with good accuracy centuries before Columbus. Columbus believed the Earth was far smaller than that. He was able to convince the Spanish royalty of his idea that he could find a shorter route to Asia by sailing west. Only the royals were dumb enough to buy it.
Private enterprise can accomplish a lot; however certain things like national defense are the reason governments exist. A manned space capability is essential to the survival of the human race. Asteroid or cometary impacts can end the human race as it did the dinosaurs 62 million years ago. Solar events like the Carrington event; a massive solar flare could result in massive dislocation of civilization on the Earth. All of our eggs are currently in one vulnerable basket. Dispersal of the Human race is essential to the survival of the species and manned space capability is required!
It use to be, to coin a movie line, “If you build it they will come.” Sadly today it seems, “If you build it, they take you to court.”
Glenn Reynolds posted last night about a perfect example of the small minds that now work to destroy things.
They want to make bureaucrats of us all. Bureaucrats live in world of permissions. They cannot do anything without a law authorizing it. True, these days Congress has given them authorizing legislation that imposes few limits. But contrast that to the citizen. There was a time, anything you could dream up was available to you, unless it was prohibited by prior legislation. They’ve flipped that idea in hope of making subjects rather then citizens.
BTW, for an excellent trip through what makes innovation possible in America (and Britain before her) I recommend William Rosen’s ‘The Most Powerful Idea in the World’. He tracks the invention of the steam engine but the idea that is most powerful ****spoiler alert**** is patents. That a man or woman could profit from the product of their mind is what drew the great innovators to the English-speaking world and made such transformations as harnessing steam possible. The Space Program was actually an anomaly with its bureaucrat mandates and central agency employer. Almost every other innovation has occurred because the inventor had an idea and wanted to profit from it through capitalist commerce.
I scooped Bruce and Tyler Cowen on this by a year in Takimag. There’s a great IEEE article on the subject as well linked herin:
http://scottlocklin.wordpress.com/2009/09/01/myths-of-technological-progress/
“Progress” stopped at the same time when they decided, all white countries must turn brown. 1965 was the year when America opened its borders to massive non-white immigration, without a vote or discussion allowed and the same was demanded of all white countries and only white countries.
Everybody says there is this RACE problem. Everybody says this RACE problem will be solved when the third world pours into EVERY white country and ONLY into white countries.
The Netherlands and Belgium are just as crowded as Japan or Taiwan, but nobody says Japan or Taiwan will solve this RACE problem by bringing in millions of third worlders and quote assimilating unquote with them.
Everybody says the final solution to this RACE problem is for EVERY white country and ONLY white countries to “assimilate,” i.e., intermarry, with all those non-whites.
What if I said there was this RACE problem and this RACE problem would be solved only if hundreds of millions of non-blacks were brought into EVERY black country and ONLY into black countries?
How long would it take anyone to realize I’m not talking about a RACE problem. I am talking about the final solution to the BLACK problem?
And how long would it take any sane black man to notice this and what kind of psycho black man wouldn’t object to this?
But if I tell that obvious truth about the ongoing program of genocide against my race, the white race, Liberals and respectable conservatives agree that I am a naziwhowantstokillsixmillionjews.
They say they are anti-racist. What they are is anti-white.
Anti-racist is a code word for anti-white.
Warnings That A Massive Stock Market Crash Is Imminent
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/warnings-that-a-massive-stock-market-crash-is-imminent