This Bus Goes Nowhere (A Rational Look at the Shuttle)

The feared and hated lewrockwell.com ^ | 2/5/03 | Vin Suprynowicz

[ez]

A bunch of orgs are competing for the "X-Prize" here. . The winner gets 10 million dollars...that means they have to ferry passengers to space for less than that, or act philanthropically.

[B-Chan]

The alternative

[HamiltonJay]

The device you use to post your attacks is the direct result of governement research spending!

The Internet you use to transport those thoughts to this website is a direct result of government research spending!

For the record, I don't now, nor have I ever worked for a government agency or military agency. I have been with many private enterprises, mostly start ups, even ridden a few through to becoming publicly traded companies! Just because I understand the utility of research spending doesn't mean I must be some government hack.

Fact is typical people don't have a clue to just what extent their lives have been affected by government and research spending... because there is no way they could make the completely idiotic statements they do.

You are welcome to go live in the 3rd world, without antibiotics, IC's, reliable water purification and delivery... etc etc... If you think research spending is such a bad thing, please go live in a place that doesn't enjoy the benefits of it.

[RightWhale]

To place, repair, and retrieve orbital satellites

Yes, but. We don't need the Space Shuttle specifically. We could have a much cheaper and more robust system.

[from occupied ga]

... If you think research spending is such a bad thing, please go live in a place that doesn't enjoy the benefits of it.

Are you really this naive as to be oblivious to the fact that you're offering a false dichotomy? The choices aren't government research or no research. Research is not done solely with plundered dollars. In fact the most effective research is done under private auspices using those resources after the government finishes its looting. Antibiotics - to use your example are NOT funded by the government. IN fact the government acts as a giant barrier to antibiotic research via its timing on the patent laws.

DO you really think that there would be no internet without the government's plunder, squander to buy votes, and then whine for more cycle.

You and the other big government cheer leaders don't realize that there is nothing magic about the government spending money. Those same dollars would have been spent far more effectively by the creators of the wealth rather than the looters.

[HamiltonJay]

I have never said the Shuttle is the best thing since sliced bread... I believe the orbiter program is overly costly.... and the decisions made in the 70s, 80s and 90s by congress and even Nixon and even Reagan himself have left a long term legacy of problems with this program.

Congressional defunding of their replacements certainly hasn't helped matters either. But it is a far cry from criticising the shuttle program, and making the idiotic claim that private industry can and will do it better... it won't. Where we are today is at the end result of over 50 year of work, work that WOULD NOT HAVE HAPPENED without government backing!

And as to space being an expesive irrelevancy... I'll call the space program an irrelevancy, when IC chips are replaced by a truly 100% privately funded equivalent... When private industry truly 100% privately funds equivalents for insulation and heat disapation and obsorption etc etc... I don't see russia selling their flights at a cost that prevents it from being expensive... ANd forgive me if I believe it is far better than I see USA on the side of our rockets, instead of "PEPSI BLUE".

I am so sick of inanity of some of the people on here, who simply rant idiological tyrades over any sort of factual stand. Not a damned one of these whiners doesn't take their mortgage interest deduction at tax time, and most likely have FHA back mortgages that let them get their loans in the first place! As long as the public dole is helping their sorry asses out, no problem, don't mention it... but if something goes somewhere they think they know better then its a government conspiracy and theft.

I do agree, shuttle program is overly expensive, reality is, though regardless of how we got here, this is where we are. Most of that lies directly at the decisions of Congress back in the 70s. We can't change that, the only options are continue to work with what we have, or work to replace it... period. Can't turn back a clock and change a dicision made in the NIXON administration.

Launching things into space and having them either return to earth savely, or arrive on other planets safely is not a trivial task... we've seen the results of smaller, faster, cheaper... 2 lost missions to mars, possibly a direct link to the loss of Columbia... this IS ROCKET SCIENCE PEOPLE! To try to equate the space program with your garbage collection (hey why not let private industry handle it)... is idiotic. The idea that private enterprise of its own accord would have taken us to space, and be where we are today is comical... the costs are too high, and the direct financial payback is too tough to measure beforehand.

[GSWarrior]

There's got to be a better way to spend our money on the space program.

An orbiting International Space Station is being built that would be susceptible to breakdowns or terrorism. What about that satellite that has been there for eons? How much more expensive would it be to put a colony on the moon?

[HamiltonJay]

Antibiotics were indeed, originally developed for the military, get your facts straight.

I know for a fact there would BE NO INTERNET TODAY if it werent for government spending... Arpanet became the internet.... and guess what, when it finally was made open to the public by a bill signed by Bush Senior, not a single commercial equivalent existed! Some private point to point, and modem BBSand FIDONET.... Private industry was nowhere near its own Internet as it existed in the early 90s, and the private networks that did exist, were built completely upon the concepts and research that built the government programs.


No one is doubting that money kept by persons would be spent, certainly it would... money is a vehicle flowing is what it does. My argument is not that the money would not be spent, our disagreement is how it would have been spent. Your supposition is basically the following "Public works are always bad, and the same or better result will come without them" that's really the argument you are making, and its completely false.

I suggest you go look up what exactly a SOCIETY is... there are certain things societies do collectively for the betterment of all.. its not big government, or socialist, its reality! If there were no tangible benefit to such things, societies would never form.

Its a good thing tax money has built an infrastructure such that nearly every person in this nation can get safe clean drinking water in their homes, and that sewage systems remove the waste from nearly all of them... Its a good thing that the government helps private people buy their own homes and have private property through the FHA and Mortgage deductions, we are a better off as a society because of it.... Its a good thing government funded INTEL, etc etc etc... Your failure to recognize there are things that can only be accomplished by society as a whole shows that you are making purely ideological arguments, not ones based in fact or reason.

As for being big government, I voted for Alan Keyes for crying out loud... I am so sick of the foolishness, that if you can see what a society is, you must be a liberal big government lover.

[mikegi]

Why have a reusable vehicle at all? Why not use simple capsules? I believe it was "physicist" who brought this up on a thread awhile ago. Makes sense to me. Reusable vehicles require stronger construction to survive multiple missions, etc. Plus, adding in the ability to fly adds more complexity (wings, control surfaces, flight control systems, etc.). All this adds weight, too, which limits payloads.

It would interesting to read an unbiased technical comparison of expendable vs. reusable space vehicles now that we have had plenty of experience with both. Reusability has turned out to be more expensive than originally thought.

[bvw]

The device you use to post your attacks is the direct result of governement research spending

Parts are government, parts are volunteer (most of the standards), parts are commercial. It's a mix. Bisync, SDLC, HDLC ... the fore-runners of the low level net protocols were largely wrought by IBM, Honeywell, Burroughs -- for commercial use.

But take your assertion at face for the purpose of discussion -- that the government brought the internet into being. Okay. Then those particular government wise guys and contractors (DARPA, et al) backed off and let everyone else take over. They didn't turn the internet into a Federal Pensionaires Dukedom.

[Wolfie]

I can see this is already degenerating into the "nee-ner, nee-ner, NEE-ner" debate I though it would while reading it, but I just wanted to let you know that I thoroughly enjoyed that article.

[gregwest]

I never got the point. During my youth in the Apollo years, it was commonly believed that long-duration space missions would use rotational designs to use centrifugal motion that would create "artificial gravity." Why are we spending billions to study biological impacts of weightlessness when we can eliminate it by using other designs?

The other thing is our persistent use of chemical rockets. We study long-term weightlessness so we can take two years to fly to Mars and back, when we could be using already existing technology (nuclear) to fly there and back in matter of weeks, not months.

NASA's budget, in all likelihood, is being diverted to military space projects. A documentary I watched last year on Discovery Wings channel talked about our very first sucessful satellite launch actually had a second military satellite housed in a shroud beneath the publicly known mission satellite. From the outset, NASA is a military operation, not a civilian one.

I suspect the latest shuttle mission was probably a military mission by virtue of the crew composition and the fact that many critics said they were doing "junk science" on the published list of experiements. It was a tragic accident and the astronauts died doing their duty, so they deserve our highest honors. But I think it's criminal to use the space agency in such a covert way.

GW

[HamiltonJay]

ACtually I was speaking of the CPU running your box, take a look at Intel's past. And if you use an AMD or knock off, even reverse engineering still owes its creation to the research who created the original concepts... and they were indeed funded by good old Uncle Sam.

As to the commercialization of the Internet, I am not sure where you are trying to go with that one. Fact is, all of the activity we engage in on a daily basis in our lives, that is built on top of that technology would not exist without the underlying technology. You can't escape it, government spending created the foundations of much of the technology we use daily today... that's reality.

[hopespringseternal]

Can't turn back a clock and change a dicision made in the NIXON administration.

Nor is it necessary to carry every bad decision forward indefinitely. The point of looking back is to learn so that we can learn from our mistakes going forward. And we constantly have to objectively judge where we are.

NASA did its part by consistently undermining private efforts as a result of bureaucratic self-absorption.

I am not a purist on this, I do believe the government has a role to play, as it always has in any very large project. But I also believe that the government program should not try to freeze out private enterprise, and that the government programs will be more limited and more expensive without private enterprise.

[from occupied ga]

Antibiotics were indeed, originally developed for the military, get your facts straight.

Alexander Flemming discovered penicillin - discovered it in 1929 working at St Mary's Hospital London. You get YOUR facts straight.

I know for a fact there would BE NO INTERNET TODAY if it weren't for government spending

You know no such thing. You infer it from the fact that it was an outgrowth of arpanet; however, who knows what could have been done with all of the wasted wealth that government has plundered and squandered over the years.

"Public works are always bad, and the same or better result will come without them"

Pretty close. I would say that public works are always inefficient, frequently unnecessary and unwanted and cost far more than the same result produced by private means.

do collectively for the betterment of all.. its not big government, or socialist, its reality!

Other than wage war which admittedly government do well, I can't think of anything that the government does that couldn't be done by private means or that shouldn't be done at all.

If there were no tangible benefit to such things, societies would never form.

Oh I agree that there is plenty of tangible benefit. However, the tangible beneft accrues to the government itself or its favored cronies (aerospace companies in the case of NASA) and not to "society as a whole" I am always suspicious of the phrase "society as a whole" because there isn't any such thing. In fact the concept itself is ludicrous. It implies that the same things benefit everyone. It doesn't benefit me to take my money and give it as food stamps to some illegal Somali immigrant, but I've heard many times that programs like food stams "benefit society as a whole" It doesn't benefit me in the least to give John Glenn a $400,000,000 ride as a reward for blocking a bill in committee, yet there are those who insist the space program "benefit society as a whole" It doesn't benefit me to pass gun control legislation, yet the a$$hole who push it always use the same tired cry - it benefits "society as a whole" Hogwash.

[from occupied ga]

Irreconcilable differences :-)

[hopespringseternal]

It would interesting to read an unbiased technical comparison of expendable vs. reusable space vehicles now that we have had plenty of experience with both. Reusability has turned out to be more expensive than originally thought.

The space shuttle was originally supposed to be reusable. Calling what we have reusable is an abuse of the word.

A big problem is that we approached reusability with the same sort of engineering used on expendibles: Bleeding edge performance and "five nines" reliability for one flight. That isn't reusability. Have you ever wondered why it takes more than ten thousand people several months to turn a shuttle around?

The whole point of reusability is not throwing away expensive hardware, but the point becomes moot if it takes as much or more effort to reuse as it does to build another one. Plenty of competent "rocket scientist" engineers have said we can do much, much better.

[winodog]

This is one reason I spend more time at FR then I should. Not only did you answer the question but you explained a few things to me in layman's terms. I learned something
Thank you

On a side note I have a chance to meet Vin Suprynowicz.
Any freepers have any good questions to ask?

[bvw]

I remember seeing the little inch or two inch article in perhaps Information Weeek when the Intel 4004 came out. I was running factory payrolls and inventory on a NCR Century at the time. Second/Third shift, going to school days. I had a whole bunch of jobs, plus school in those years of the early-seventies. Did some microwave mixer/amp stuff for a Navy contractor, ran a production and Q/A line at a digital watch factory, drove a truck, rebuilt trucks, all sorts of stuff. Libertarians would be proud.

But what I remember about Intel's microprocessor was that they had made it "spec" for a Japanese calculator company, to power a calculator. Where's the US Government in that?

I was working at Princeton when the earliest proto-net went in, connecting the national labs. I played chess on a TTY over it against the MIT computer's chess program.

A few years later -- early eighties, I got to meet and work with some of the guys who worked designing on the ARPAnet and the ethernet wire protocols. As I said, it was a mix of interests -- government, volunteer, commercial. No doubt the government helped foster the initiation of some of the technology, but commercially it would have come about anyway. As I recollect and ponder the whole thing, I'm thinking the greatest benefit of government involvement was that the government was that through the "academic" govrnment grant-receivers many sharp volunteers and hobbyists were able to enter into the design and development.

That is, I think, all things considered, that volunteers and hobbyists had the greatest effect in producing open architectures and standards that allowed for magnitides faster improvements, than just about any human endeavor in history.

[HamiltonJay]

Look, no one is arguing that Private Enterprise could likely do many things the government does more effectively, the point you are missing is that you assume because they could do them more efficiently, they would do them! That is where the idiotic idealogical viewpoint always falls apart. You automtically assume that private industry WOULD do the things governments do... and reality is, they won't.


Governments duties include things that no private company will touch... for a multitude of reasons... Government can't just say, sorry PASS... there are fundamental things and obligations it must fulfill... unlike private industry it can't just pick and choose. I don't see private industry chomping at the bit to find a cure for Ebola, or even investigating it seriously... yet when an outbreak happens, who has to go clean it up? Sure isn't Phiser or Bayer, I can tell you that. Was the irradication of smallpox the action of a private company? No, was the Salk Vaccine? No.. Were private companies rushing to clean up the environmental damages decades of polluting had caused? No... they weren't...

There's and outbreak of TB in NYC, government can't just say, nope sorry, no profit there, we're gonna sit right here.

Most people don't have the foggiest idea of the role government plays in their lives... sure they don't want it intruding, I sure don't, but they don't understand and respect exactly how much government work goes on to allow them that reasonably comfortable life they have. You own a home, likelihood is very good, governments subsidizing you.... You on a municipal line for water or power? Likelihood very good government money helped build those faclities. You work in construction? THere is hardly any construction that goes on in this nation, commercial or otherwise that doesn't have some sort of government funding involved. You drive on interstates, have your refuse removed and taken to public landfills... enjoy pleantiful foods all of which at some level directly are the result of government actions and programs... Just because you don't know about them, doesn't mean you don't benefit from them.

The fact you can buy private property and be reasonably sure that it won't be taken away by some schyster with a fake deed is because of government. The fact there is a hospital within an hours drive of well over 90% of all americans is a direct result of government programs and spending. The fact your traffic signals work, emergency services exist are all government programs.

The fact that most rivers have been tamed, and floods are now a rarity, not a regularity, government program (private idustry sure wasn't going to tame the rivers.) The power grid that cris crosses this nation, governement funded... Hoover Damn, that allowed the growth of the southwest, and provided power to most of it as well, government program... etc etc etc...

It is absolutely foolish to make the incredibly naive leap of logic that private industry would do the things government does... they wouldn't, and won't. Your supposition that they would ignores history... if governments were only needed for fighting wars, there would be few governments ever.... your believe that is all they are good at or neccessary for, shows such ignorance, that either you have never thought about it, or you just refuse to see. Please go to a country without a real government... go to Somalia, or the ilk... see what it is like someplace where government truly does NOTHING but further its own power if it can... then maybe you can see exactly how much good government does do.