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Subject: SPACE Digest V10 #359

SPACE Digest                                     Volume 10 : Issue 359

Today's Topics:
              Re: Japanese MIR?
         Re: manned v unmanned (exploration of Mars)
               Re: Mars Mission Agenda
           Economy of scale (launch market)
       Re: Scientific value of Apollo (was Re: Motives)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 16 Dec 89 22:35:33 GMT
From: ibmpa![e-mail]  (Nick Szabo)
Subject: Re: Japanese MIR?

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Charles Daffinger) writes:
>
>o From: [e-mail] (United Press International)
>o Subject: UPI NEWS AT A GLANCE
>o Date: 13 Dec 89 16:08:45 GMT
>o (this is from biz.clarinet.sample, so I guess I can include it:)
>o
>o
>o     TOKYO -- A Japanese firm has bought Moscow's only surplus Mir space
>o station and an experimental science module for $10 million to help
>o promote Japan's space industry, the company's president said Wednesday.
>o
>
>Say what?  I figure the price may be off by a few orders of magnitude,
>but what's this really supposed to mean?
>


No, the $10 million figure is correct.  That is about how much a Mir is really
worth.  Granted, the entire Mir project probably cost the Sovs three orders
of magnitude more than that, but every good engineer knows the difference
between work and energy, just as every good businessman knows the difference
between cost and revenues.  When you do things via socialism, a la the
Soviet Union or NASA, these kinds of ridiculous things happen.

For the Japanese, this is a trivial sum of money.  The station will continue
to be used as a tourist attraction in Nagoya, and secondarily to see
if they can learn anything to apply to their small investment in Freedom
(see my previous posting).

The Soviets gain some badly-needed hard currency.  In 2000, the U.S. may
well be selling Freedom modules to Japan for $30 million, to obtain
badly needed hard currency.  Come to think of it, we have some old Saturns
sitting around, maybe they would buy those.  Reduce the trade deficit a
bit.  Too bad about Skylab and Challenger.  They might have brought in
a few thousandths of a billion.   1/2 :-)


******** These opinions are not related to Big Blue's *********


--
---------------------------
Nick Szabo
[e-mail]
uunet!ibmsupt!szabonj

------------------------------

Date: 15 Dec 89 22:25:42 GMT
From: ibmpa![e-mail]  (Nick Szabo)
Subject: Re: manned v unmanned (exploration of Mars)

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Raymond Lister) writes:
>
>SHOULD we, like the crew of the starship "Enterprise", boldly go where
>no man has gone before? Or should we be content to send a robot?
............
>Now that Voyager has completed the initial survey, future missions will
>attempt the much more difficult act of rendezvous and and direct
>physical contact with the outer planets and their moons.

Voyager has nowhere near "completed" the survey.  Most of the moons,
all of the asteroids, and all of the comets in our solar system remain
unmapped.

>Its a task
>that will require great intelligence. The question is, should that
>intelligence be natural or artificial?

Thus, we set up the artificial battle of "human vs. robot".  The same
battle fought and lost by the Luddites in 19th century England, and the
same argument that has caused Detroit to fall before the highly automated
Japanese auto industry.  The Japanese _love_ robots _and_ people.  So
do I.

>Venus is perhaps the robot's only complete victory.

Oh no!  Klingons!  Zap 'em!

>Either there is life on Mars, or, as
>Mr. Spock might have put it, "It's soil chemistry Jim, but not as we
>know it".  Viking wasn't smart enough to decide either way.

Fascinating!  I bet Mr. Spock would be smart enough!  ("Common sense,
Spock!  You have loads of logic but no common sense!")

>As anyone who has ever driven an
>off road vehicle would testify, it will take a skilled driver to
>negotiate the boulders and sand dunes of Mars.

Yes, and only birds can fly; if you sail too far west you will fall off
the edge of the world; there is maybe a market for a dozen computers in
the entire U.S.; ad nauseum.  BTW even if a rover is a bit difficult
(I'll leave it up to the folks working on the Carnegie-Mellon ALV to
answer your arguments about that), there are also balloons, gliders,
hoppers, and other kinds of machines that could be used to find and
retrieve samples.  The Russians and French are building a balloon, for
example, that will cost less than one-tenth of one percent the cost
of this Men on Mars proposal.  And I mean they are _making_ one,
not just fantasizing about it.  I got to see a large protype on the lawn
at JPL a couple summers ago.  An unmanned contraption as black as Darth
Vader's helmet.  Get out your laser sword!

>Recently, I watched my nine month old godson explore his lounge room.
>He spotted something interesting (try programming "interesting" into
>your Macintosh!), safely negotiated his way through a maze of chair
>legs, reached out, grasped the object, and ... put it in his mouth.  No
>student of Artificial Intelligence can watch a baby, and not be
>humbled.

I'm sure your godson is very charming, but do you want to put him
on the surface of Mars without any machines?  Neither do I.
Quit kissing babies; there's more to this than politics.

>The Mars rover is typical of the American taste for technological
>overkill.

Big overkill.  Ignore the fact that its cost is over an order of magnitude
less expensive than what you are proposing.  Yes, we Americans sure have a
taste for putting robots in our factories and outcompeting the Japanese,
don't we?  Why can't those Americans just go back in the caves where they
belong?

>
>However, neither a rover nor a balloon will settle the old question "Is
>there life on Mars?" We won't know for sure, at least in our lifetime,

They are quite sufficient to answer this question.  Astronauts
bringing their own biological materials could confuse the issue forever.

>
>The question of unmanned versus manned space travel is really a
>question of short term versus long term goals.

Heaven forbid we should try to get something done today.  Fantasies
about space adventures 30 years from now, using the technology of the
1930's, are much to be preferred.

>Voyager II is one of
>the great technical accomplishments of the 20th century, but when
>compared with the 21st century potential of manned space flight -- the
>search for life on Mars, for minerals among the asteroids -- the data
>it returned resembles the work of an amateur photographer on vacation
>("See! That's me. Next to Triton.").

What do you know about this "potential"?  The only evidence you have
provided for manned spaceflight comes from a fictional TV show.

>computers capable of matching Mr Spock's Vulcan logic, but as is shown
>in every episode of "Star Trek", logic has its limitations, and Captain
>Kirk's human intuition will prove essential for exploring the final
>frontier.
>

You've convinced me!  Star Trek==Space!  Fascinating!  Logic,
McCoy!  Damn your green-blooded logic, Spock!  Science?  Try a TV
show instead!

I love Star Trek, too, but I'm not asking other folks to shell out
tax dollars for it, and I don't learn my science from it.


********* These opinions are not related to Big Blue's *********

--
---------------------------
Nick Szabo
[e-mail]
uunet!ibmsupt!szabonj

------------------------------

Date: 15 Dec 89 22:59:45 GMT
From: ibmpa![e-mail]  (Nick Szabo)
Subject: Re: Mars Mission Agenda

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Eric C. Garrison) writes:
>All this talk about which is better, manned or unmanned, is getting worn.
>Let's try a new game.  Let's suppose that we were designing a mission to Mars.

Why Mars?  There are several hundred thousands asteroids, a billion comets,
dozens of moons, that have not been explored at all, and several planets
that have not been explored as well as Mars.  Thousands of the asteroids
are much closer in energy than Mars, closer even than the surface of the Moon.
So why Mars?  Because it's the fad?  Nail him, Henry!  :-)

>The object is to design a Mars landing/sample return mission, with minimum cost
>and maximum results.  There is a soft limit on the Budget at $200 billion, and
>a hard limit at $400 billion.

Where are you going to get this kind of money?  It is nearly an order of
magnitude more than we spent on Apollo, back in the days when space really
did equate to national prestige.  A more realistic budget would be
an average of $2 billion for each planetary system and the Moon, plus
another $10 billion for the asteroids and comets.  There is quite a bit we
could do with this budget, among them:

(1) long-term observation of the volcanoes on Io and Triton
(2) a resource survey of the asteroids and comets, based on ground telescopes,
meteor samples, on-site flybies, and on-site sampling, including core
drilling.
(3) a resource survey of the Moon and Mars, based on meteor and on-site
sampling, and thorough geochemical mapping from polar orbit.
(4) complete mappings of all the planets and larger moons in the solar system.

BTW, put this under your "manned" category.   Manned from Earth.

The scope of this project is several orders of magnitude wider than
just Mars, with a cost at least an order of magnitude less.   We can
start building this stuff today, instead of fantasizing ("planning") for
the next 30 years.  The technology produced by this project will be
scaled on a human scale, ie directly applicable to medicine, manufacturing,
mining, and commercial space enterprise, rather than being gigantic dead
ends like Saturn/Apollo.  Thus the spinoffs, too, will be much greater than
from a manned mission.

I posted the details of this scenario a few months ago.  I can repost them
if you like, but technology changes and I will have to update them.  As
should be.  NASA hasn't updated its plans since the 60's.


"Manned landing on Mars: 1980"
From a NASA planning document, 1970


**** These opinions are not related to Big Blue's ********


--
---------------------------
Nick Szabo
[e-mail]
uunet!ibmsupt!szabonj

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 18 Dec 89 20:12:33 EST
From: John Roberts <[e-mail]>
Disclaimer: Opinions expressed are those of the sender
    and do not reflect NIST policy or agreement.
Subject: Economy of scale (launch market)


>From: swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!wuarchive!kuhub.cc.ukans.edu![e-mail]
>Subject: Re: proposed "space-mail" incentive

>This is one of the major shortcomings of a pure capitalist, market-based
>economy. There are some, possibly a lot, of processes that would make
>money at a high level of activity, but that would lose money at a low
>level of activity.

>Travis Butler                    Argue ideas, not sources.
>University of Kansas, Lawrence   [e-mail]

Economy of scale is *not* specifically tied to a capitalist economy - it
applies to almost every area of human endeavor. Because of design costs,
the need to develop a skill base, bulk discounts for materials, and (in
some cases) promotional costs, it is almost always cheaper per unit to
produce many copies of a given item than just a few. Noncapitalist economies
may be able to cover up this phenomenon as far as price is concerned, but
it is still evident in its effect on productivity. As a very simple example,
suppose you have a woodworking shop in your home, and like to build furniture
as a hobby. You will almost certainly be able to build ten copies of the
same item much more quickly and easily than you would be able to build
one each of ten different pieces of furniture. This is especially true if
you must also come up with the designs. If you have nine friends with
woodworking shops, and each person wants ten pieces of furniture, it makes
sense for each craftsman to specialize in a particular type of furniture,
if you want to minimize construction time. If you use an accounting system
that includes labor costs, savings in construction time represents concrete
savings in costs.

The usual question in commercial enterprise is not whether there will be
economy of scale, but over what range it operates. There are many products
for which near-maximum economy is attained at a volume that is a tiny
fraction of the total market. Such products can support many suppliers,
freely competing with one another. Other products continue to show
considerable increase in economy of production up to a volume that is a
major portion of the market. In such a market, some of the suppliers tend
to increase volume and drive the smaller producers out of the business,
until a few large producers control the entire market (an oligopoly).

I don't think the potential economy of scale for commercial launches has
been established. If it turns out that economy of scale is not significant
above a small volume, then the envisioned market with many small launch
companies competing with one another will be practical. If, however, there
is significant economy at large volumes, then there will be a tendency for
only the larger companies to survive, unless the smaller companies are
protected by legal measures such as subsidies or guaranteed contracts.
Since there are already several large companies in the business, they would
have a considerable "head start", provided that they are willing to innovate
and compete directly. Once an oligopoly is established, it tends to be
self-sustaining, and prices are not controlled by competition quite as
effectively as in a market with many suppliers.
                                 John Roberts
                                 [e-mail]

------------------------------

Date: 18 Dec 89 18:16:05 GMT
From: cs.utexas.edu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!utzoo![e-mail]  (Kieran A. Carroll)
Subject: Re: Scientific value of Apollo (was Re: Motives)

[e-mail] (John McKernan) writes:
>
> In article <[e-mail]>
>  [e-mail] (Henry Spencer) writes:
> >accomplished much more than some of its detractors admit, and it would
> >have taken a very large and costly unmanned program to get similar
> >results.  It *may* be true that it would have been cheaper to do things
> >that way, but it is *not* a self-evident fact.
>
> Our experience in space makes it empirically evident that unmanned space can
> currently achieve as much or more than manned space for orders of magnitude
> less. Everything that Apollo accomplished (sample returns, pictures, etc)
> could have been done for less with unmanned technology. Given the greatly
> increased capabilities of unmanned technology that is even more true today
> than it was then.
>

Simply repeating the contention that it would have been cheaper unmanned
>still< doesn't make it a self-evident fact :-)

Seriously, >we don't know< if it would have been cheaper to accomplish all
that Apollo accomplished, using unmanned missions. Nobody ever designed
a set of unmanned missions that would do what Apollo did; nobody has ever
costed out an unmanned version. There were elements of Apollo that would
have been very expensive to automate, such as putting a geologist on-site in
order to select which samples to return; it's likely that "telepresence"
>still< isn't good enough to allow the same amount of judgement to be
exercised, despite 25 intervening years of technology development.

Also, as Henry has pointed out earlier, the cost of Apollo itself
(i.e. developing the CM, SM and LEM, as well as the training facilities,
and support facilities required for supporting men in space) was quite
a bit less than the cost of (Apollo+Saturn). If a large number of >unmanned<
missions had been sent to the moon, they would have required a launch vehicle
too; maybe not as big as Saturn, but probably many more launches would have
been required in order to accomplish what Apollo did in six missions.
Do you attribute the cost of the launcher development to each program that
used the launch vehicle? By that measure, Voyager probably "really" cost a
couple of billion dollars (and Galileo "really" cost about 6 billion :-).
If you don't do it for unmanned missions, why do it for Apollo?

Sure, Apollo/Saturn was an expensive program. Too bad Congress decided to
throw away all the infrastructure the program had developed, just after
it had been payed for; otherwise, follow-on manned missions could have
been cheap enough to satisfy even Van Allen.

As far as I can tell, >nobody< on the net has addressed Henry's main points
yet.
--

     Kieran A. Carroll @ U of Toronto Aerospace Institute
     uunet!attcan!utzoo!kcarroll [e-mail]

------------------------------

End of SPACE Digest V10 #359
*******************