Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/pc/text/spacedig/v13_7/v13_724.txt

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Subject: SPACE Digest V13 #724

SPACE Digest                                     Volume 13 : Issue 724

Today's Topics:
            Negative Economic Multipliers
        LOW LATITUDE AURORAL ACTIVITY WARNING
              Re: Microgravity?
              Re: Microgravity?
              Re: Microgravity?
            Re: orbiter production

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

Date: Mon, 10 Jun 91 15:30:17 PDT
From: [e-mail] (Jim Bowery)
To: crash![e-mail]
Subject: Negative Economic Multipliers

A basic problem with space activists, as well as many other segments
of society these days, is the lack of recognition that you can do
damage to people and industries by giving them money.  For example some
people are convinced that they should support the space station program
because the money would have gone to social programs instead of other
space activities.  Aside from this being false, it presumes that
all dollars spent on space are beneficial to our long-term goals in
space.

I don't know how to deal with this problem exactly, but I think it is
a cognitive fallacy that underlies welfare state philosophies in general,
so the conservative think-tanks should have an idea of how to deal with
it (if they are doing their jobs).

Since our friends at RAND Corp., Aerospace Corp. etc. tend to come up
with studies that continually tout the "economic multiplier" effect of
spending on space, it is interesting there are no countervailing voices
that study the negative impact of spending on space even though it's
obvious to anyone who tries to invest in space that the majority of the
government's space budget is currently having a negative impact on the
competitiveness of the space industry.

The "economic multiplier" issue has been confused by our friendly
"economists" from places like RAND Corp., to the point that it  includes
industrial policy, Keynesian economic growth and the  supposed "spin-offs"
from crash programs.  When you're paid to write for a credulous crowd that
wants government money for themselves and/or to see NASA get more money to
fly those neat rockets, you don't have to be very disciplined in your
arguments.  You know your audience  will say "Yeah!" and then emotionally
parrot the various numbers you've pulled out of the air when anyone is
critical of such programs.   I don't have the luxury of such a credulous
crowd.  That is why I must respond to each of these 3 aspects of the
"economic multiplier"  argument separately.

INDUSTRIAL POLICY:

The response to the industrial policy argument requires the acceptance of a
few axioms.

1)  Bureaucracy is good at enforcing standardization by suppressing novelty
and innovation.

2)  Capitalism is based on the correct idea that people who earn  money are
the best people to make decisions about productive investment  of capital
by virtue of the obvious fact that they were productive  enough to earn it
in the first place.

3)  America's greatest strength resides in its pioneering spirit of
independent innovation and enterprise.

4)  That pioneering spirit is the same spirit that will be most critical
for opening the space frontier, just as it was for opening and settling the
New World.

Conclusion:  If you have capital which might be invested in space
technology, the the best way to waste it is to give it to people who
didn't earn it inside a centralized bureaucratic management organization
so they can be bosses over formerly independent innovators.  This is the
nightmare of "industrial policy" enjoying a recent resurgence of  political
support in the guise of "international technological competitiveness."

KEYNESIAN GROWTH (the origin of the "economic multiplier" idea):

One should certainly expect there to be innumerable economic benefits from
ANY expenditure of hundreds of billions of dollars.  If all  you did was
start a government program in which those dollars were scattered from the
bomb-bay of a B52 flying cross-country at high altitude, there would be
innumerable "spin-offs," jobs, etc. Gathering information on all the
various benefits to the economy would be almost as difficult as gathering
information on all the damage done to the economy by such a program.

In fact, in an economy like the 1930's, when capital centralized in
unhealthy ruts like debt instruments, as opposed to productive and  job-
creating risk investments, such a random dispersal of liquidity is exactly
what you want to do according to economist John Maynard Keynes.   There is
no problem with Keynesian economic theory and this kind of broad  liquidity
dispersal under these limited conditions.

However, there are two ways "the space program" and "military spending"
since WW II have failed the conditions of Keynesian theory required to
stimulate economic growth:

1) Capital centralization wasn't at unhealthy levels and in unhealthy
forms of debt during the first 2 decades of the space program.  It was only
as a result of Reaganomics that we have  recently revisited this
pathological capital structure in our country.   All that space program
spending didn't counter  the centralization of capital in debt-instruments
under Reaganomics.   It exacerbated it by issuing the most attractive debt-
instruments of  them all -- treasury paper -- and then distributing that
liquidity to  people who were relatively affluent.

2) When they are needed, Keynesian liquidity dispersal programs result in
economic growth from "trickle-up" or demand-side pump priming.  Greater
demand creates markets -- motivates investment of frozen capital -- starts
businesses -- creates jobs -- puts more wages in hands of consumers. You
don't start this off by having a highly selective system of employment, ala
space program and military contracting.  You are trying to get the economy
to create and distribute necessities instead Shuttles and Ferraris.   You
do it by taxing the capital sinks and sending that revenue to the
consumers -- the unemployed "Joe Six-Pack" preferrably while he is  back at
technical school learning jobs skills.  WPA was a lot closer to  creating
this kind of dispersal pattern, but its real benefit was that it issued its
own "scrip" which was merely another form of liquidity.

 The Keynesian "economic multiplier" is the amount of benefit you get from
dispersing a certain amount of liquidity in an economy with pathologically
centralized capital.  But when is capital accumulating in the hands of
productive people, you actually damage the economy by taxing it or even
borrowing it and giving it to people who didn't earn it.  That's what space
program spending did for our economy.

SPIN-OFFS:

If necessity is the mother of invention, then innovation is a "spin-off" of
efforts to serve real needs.  Needs such as food, water, housing,
education and energy are far more fundamental than flags and foot-prints.
Agreed, once invention raises per capita capabilities to a certain point,
the "need" for recreation or adventure will result in flags and foot-
prints. But that means flags and foot-prints are the "spin-offs" of
invention, not the other way around!

The best example of flags and foot-prints as "spin-off" of invention is
Charles Lindbergh's historic trans-atlantic flight.  The Kelly Act  of 1925
opened up the market for serving a real need,  air-mail, to the private
sector.  This resulted in rapid innovation in  aeronautics until Charles
Lindbergh simply took a plane that had been developed for air mail and flew
it across the Atlantic Ocean!  Here we had  privately financed technology
development driven by a real  need resulting in a low cost but high yield
adventure.  The first trans-atlantic spectacular was a very low cost "spin-
off" of innovation  driven by the need for air mail.  In many ways, it was
even more heroic than the Apollo program's triumph of socialism under Von
Braun.  It was definitely far less expensive!

In reality, the overall "economic multiplier" of the budget for  space
activities is a negative number.

For a look at exactly how large that negative number is, let us examine
what the world might have been like without this negative influence:

In the early 60's, before the Apollo program, NASA was barred  from
participating in comsat development and operations.  It was the only area
of space D&O from which NASA was barred.  3 decades later, it is the only
area in which the US leads the world in space commerce.  It is a part of
our everyday lives.  It followed the normal cost decay curves of any
reasonable industry.  The same thing happened when we came to our senses
about air transport in 1925 and passed the Kelly Act, resulting in the
airline industry.  There is every reason to  believe that we could have had
weather satellites with capabilities well  beyond our present capabilities,
earth observation sats from which Mission  to Planet Earth would have been
a trivial by-product and a launch  industry behaving more like the airline
industry, all with costs decaying exponentially rather than stagnating for
2 decades, if only  we had excluded NASA from ALL areas of D&O and focused
them on R only.   Research expenditures, by not competing with private
capital in D&O,  are complimentary rather than parasitic.

Indeed, there is a very good chance solar power satellites would have
become economical by now were it not for the Apollo program and its
aftermath.  Those "few" billions per year went a long way -- toward slowing
down the progress of innovation and enterprise in  commercial space D&O.
Without competition, NASA's few successes could  be portrayed as "glorious
breakthroughs" which were all the more  glorious because of their apparent
difficulty.  It's an old bureaucratic  game -- all too familiar to students
of history.

>From this we can see that the "economic multiplier" of NASA spending  has
become an exceedingly large negative number.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jim Bowery      619/295-3164               The Coalition for
PO Box 1981                                   Science and
La Jolla, CA 92038                             Commerce
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

Date: 5 Jun 91 03:01:41 GMT
From: news-server.csri.toronto.edu!torsqnt!lethe!telly!moore!eastern!egsgate![e-mail]  (oler, CARY OLER)
Subject: LOW LATITUDE AURORAL ACTIVITY WARNING



                /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

                    LOW LATITUDE AURORAL ACTIVITY WARNING

                            ISSUED: 04 JUNE, 1991
                             VALID: 04 - 05 JUNE

                /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\


ATTENTION:

     A minor to major geomagnetic storm is presently in progress.  Conditions
could become favorable for low-latitude auroral activity observations during
the local evening hours of 04 and 05 June.  Lunar phase will not be a source
of interference until the early morning hours.  Dark skies are expected until
the moon rises, and should provide optimum conditions for observing auroral
activity.

     Please note that as Region 6659 continues to produce very powerful major
flares, and as it continues to rotate into a more sensitive and influential
position, auroral and geomagnetic storming could become very high later this
week and into next week.  There is a distinct risk for low latitude auroral
activity becoming visible over the low latitude zones, as far south as
Florida and southern Texas sometime during the next 7 to 10 days.  For the
southern hemisphere observers, auroral activity could become very visible
throughout all of New Zealand and Australia.

     Daily solar terrestrial event updates will be presented effective
immediately.


**  End of Watch  **

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

Date: 4 Jun 91 19:51:52 GMT
From: cis.ohio-state.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!torsqnt!lethe!telly!moore!eastern!egsgate![e-mail]  (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Microgravity?


In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Herman
Rubin) writes:
>> A 710-meter shaft set deep into the Earth forms the centerpiece of a
>> new microgravity experimentation facility...
>
>I must be missing something.  How do we get microgravity at this depth?

Drop something down it.  You get microgravity down to about 709 meters... :-)
It's easier to drill shafts than build towers for long drops.
--
"We're thinking about upgrading from    | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto
Zoology
SunOS 4.1.1 to SunOS 3.5."              |  [e-mail]  utzoo!henry

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

Date: 4 Jun 91 23:41:46 GMT
From: cis.ohio-state.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!torsqnt!lethe!telly!moore!eastern!egsgate![e-mail]  (Herman Rubin)
Subject: Re: Microgravity?


In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Bob
Pendleton) writes:
> In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Herman
Rubin) writes:
> > In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Bev
Freed) writes:

              .....................

> > > A 710-meter shaft set deep into the Earth forms the centerpiece of a
> > > new microgravity experimentation facility which will open in July.
> > > The center is expected to make a significant contribution to
> > > biotechnology, metallurgy, ceramics, and other space related
> > > research.

              ..................

> > I must be missing something.  How do we get microgravity at this depth?
> > The formula I recall would have the gravitational force there
approximately
> > .9999 g.

> Not a problem. You put the experiment in a high density streamlined
> container and you DROP it 710 meters. During the fall you get
> microgravity. At the end you get macrogravity. :-)

N people also sent me this by email.  However, is this better than taking to
a substantial height (we do have ways to get drops of well over 7000 meters)
and it is not necessary to get quite as much macrogravity at the end?  Also,
one could even have good observing methods along the way instead of merely
removing the product from a canister.  How long a really low-gravity fall
would we get from the height at which the SR-71 could be flown?

--
Herman Rubin, Dept. of Statistics, Purdue Univ., West Lafayette IN47907-1399
Phone: [phone]
[e-mail] (Internet, bitnet)   {purdue,pur-ee}!l.cc!hrubin(UUCP)

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

Date: 4 Jun 91 23:39:47 GMT
From: cis.ohio-state.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!torsqnt!lethe!telly!moore!eastern!egsgate![e-mail]  ([e-mail] (Karen J. Weiland (NASA)))
Subject: Re: Microgravity?


In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Bob
Pendleton) writes...
>In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Herman
Rubin) writes:
>> In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Bev
Freed) writes:
>
>             .....................
>
>> > A 710-meter shaft set deep into the Earth forms the centerpiece of a
>> > new microgravity experimentation facility which will open in July.
>> > The center is expected to make a significant contribution to
>> > biotechnology, metallurgy, ceramics, and other space related
>> > research.
>
>             ..................
>
>> I must be missing something.  How do we get microgravity at this depth?
>> The formula I recall would have the gravitational force there
approximately
>> .9999 g.
>

    Here at the NASA Lewis Research Center, we have two
drop tower facilities that are used extensively for
microgravity research.  The 2.2 Sec Drop Tower is a 30
meter tower that extends down over a hillside.  To
reduce the effects of air drag, the experimental package
falls within a drag shield, which starts out about six
inches lower than the package.  The Zero Gravity Facility
is longer, being a shaft dug into the ground about 500 feet
long, and provides 5 seconds of microgravity.  The
facility is evacuated to a vacuum to reduce air drag.  The
deceleration experienced on the package in either facility
depends on the actual package construction, but is about
70 G's or more.  Test equipment such as light bulbs, movie
and video cameras, HeNe lasers, onboard computers, etc.
perform reliably drop after drop, with suitable care.

Karen J. Weiland
NASA Lewis Research Center

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

Date: 10 Jun 91 06:08:59 GMT
From: agate!lightning.Berkeley.EDU![e-mail]  (Frank Crary)
Subject: Re: orbiter production

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Allen W. Sherzer) writes:
>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Chris Jones) writes:
>>Also, I think you are allowing your preference for the
>>Titan to cause you to ignore the differences between the Titan II, with no
>>solid fuel strap-ons, and the Titans flying today.
>
>Not at all. Which of the differences do you consider relevant?
>
SOLID FUEL STRAP-ON [ROCKETS]
These are a big safty problem (as the space shuttle program found out.)
In any case, I do not follow the interest in Titan-launched manned capsules.
There are good engineering studies that demonstrate that a 4-man capsule
should mass only 7 tonnes. If you extrapolate this datum linearly (a bad
way to do things, but...) then a 20-tonne Titan-launched capsule would
carry 12 people. Do you really need this many? Wouldn't a smaller capsule
do better?

                         Frank Crary

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

End of SPACE Digest V13 #724
*******************