On Mon, 4 Feb 2008 04:34:30 -0800 (PST), raphfrk <raphfrk@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
wrote:
>On Feb 3, 6:22 pm, John Schilling <schil...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>> NASA couldn't do it, not even with unlimited funding and the
>> certain knowledge that every NASA employee would be tortured to death
>> if they failed.
>I doubt the torture would matter. With unlimited funding anything is
>possible.
Hardly. For starters, with unlimited funding, speed is *not* possible.
You might want to check out the movie, "Brewster's Millions". While
exaggerating the point for comic effect, the basic premise was right
on: it takes *time* to spend money, especially if you're trying to
spend it in a non-wasteful manner, especially if you don't already
have a staff of people trained and organized to spend money at the
desired rate.
More importantly, with unlimited funding, corruption is inevitable.
Fraud, waste, and abuse will follow the money wherever it goes, and
consume most of it.
Will, in the case of money that's suddenly being spent at a vastly
accelerated rate by people not experienced in such, consume *all*
of it and then some.
For any project, there is a point beyond which adding money will
*reduce* the probability of success, and delay any success which
does occur.
>NASA currently represents <1% of the budget of the US government and
>that covers various other projects.
>If they were allocated 5% of the total budget and told to concentrate
>on this one mission, that would represent almost $300 billion a year.
Of which almost $300 billion a year would be utterly wasted.
Really, what do you imagine NASA would be able to *spend* all that
money on? Hiring a couple million currently-unemployed rocket
scientists? Buying warehouses full of rocket parts that have
been left unsold for lack of NASA funding in the past? Sorry,
but those things *don't exist*. They cannot be bought at any
price.
Nor can they be created in anything less than a decade, no matter
how much money is spent on the project.
And if they did, they still couldn't put a spacecraft in orbit
around Saturn in a decade, because the process simply takes too
long. There are too many steps that can't be started until the
step before is finished, and even if each step is done as fast
as possible by as many people will fit around the workbench, it
won't get done in time.
"Give NASA $300 billion a year; that will get the job done", is
akin to demanding that a new baby be made from scratch in a month,
on account of you're offering up enough cash to hire nine surrogate
mothers. On an island that has only two women of childbearing age.
>In fact, a $60 billion prize for the first 5 companies to make it to
>the test point, as long as they reach the point by 2018, would
>probably do it and if they let the fund build up over a few years,
>they could have prizes in the $300 billion range per winner.
And if we offer a $60 billion prize for the first five atheletes
to run a two-minute mile, would you expect success in that area as
well?
There are probably no companies capable of putting a spacecraft in
orbit about Saturn in under ten years. Offering people arbitrary
sums of money to do a thing, does not magically imbue them with the
ability to do that thing. If they can't do it, they can't do it.
And if they can do it, it's going to be expensive. Problem with
prizes is, they don't pay off until *after* you succeed, whereas
the people selling the stuff you need to pull it off, want to get
paid in advance.
And no, bankers will not advance a $60 billion loan on the basis of
a business plan that starts with, "When I win the prize ten years
from now..."
For prizes to work, they have to be for results that can reasonably
be achieved by wealthy visionaries or venture capitalists using their
own, expendable, money. And there's basically nobody on Earth rich
enough for this one.
--
*John Schilling * "Anything worth doing, *
*Member:AIAA,NRA,ACLU,SAS,LP * is worth doing for money" *
*Chief Scientist & General Partner * -13th Rule of Acquisition *
*White Elephant Research, LLC * "There is no substitute *
*John.Schilling@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
* for success" *
*661-951-9107 or 661-275-6795 * -58th Rule of Acquisition *
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