On Tue, 5 Feb 2008 04:53:28 -0800 (PST), Brian Davis <brdavis@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
wrote:
>On Feb 5, 4:18 am, Erik Max Francis <m...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>> John Schilling wrote:
>>
>>> A bunch of people who are now dead, or close enough as makes no
>>> difference, did it before. They can't do it again. That a bunch
>>> of completely different people are now doing business under the
>>> same name, doesn't mean they can do what the dead guys once did.
>
>Hmm. So stuff like Apollo only happened in about ten years, because of
>a specific group of, what, several 10's of thousands of people, who
>were unique in ways that we can't duplicate today?
No, because of a specific *organization* that we can't duplicate today.
A group of ten thousand individual people, no matter how individually
talented, who are rounded up in a stadium where some guy with a megaphone
shouts at them to Complete Incredibly Difficult Project X, will not be
accomplishing much of anything in a hurry. Nor will having the blimp
overhead shower gigabucks on the crowd, help.
Organization, *matters*. And if you get the organization wrong, you
fail no matter how many brilliant and talented people you have and
how much resources you have. See, e.g., the economy of the former
Soviet Union. Now see NASA. But I repeat myself...
Getting the organization *right*, is as difficult and time-consuming
as getting the design of the spaceship right. And you really can't
start on the latter, until you're done with the former.
>And as I recall, Apollo wasn't even motivated by anything financial -
>it was essentially a political goal that was completed in a short
>period of time because (at least in part) it harnessed the economic
>machine of the time (there was a lot of money to be made by getting
>the contract, if you could do it *fast*).
The "economic machine of the time" included a couple dozen aerospace
primes capable of building serious spaceships and organized for the
goal of building spaceships faster, better, and cheaper than the other
guy on account of the contracts would go to one of the other guys if
they didn't.
The economic machine of today, consists of *two* aerospace primes
capable of building serious spaceships, organized for the goal of
wasting as much money as possible in the process on account of the
profit awarded is proportional to the money spent and they are each
guaranteed half the contracts no matter what.
That's the wrong organization. No matter how talented the people,
and how much money is offered, that organization will fail at this
task. And building a new or greatly improved organization, will take
too long.
>>> You might as well ask Xerox to develop the information
>>> technologies that will dominate the coming decades... [etc.]
>Or, you might as well use that money to create an economic leverage -
>the X prize being a very poor, underfunded example compared to Apollo,
>for instance.
I've explained why prizes are not a plausible model for this scenario.
>As far as the "launch window" constraint goes, well, again, putting
>together a fortuitous arrangement of planets isn't a big hurdle,
>especially as a Voyager-like launch window to Saturn opens about once
>every decade, not once a century.
I never mentioned a launch window constraint, because it isn't terribly
relevant. But, insofar as the *total* time limit is one decade, saying
that there's a launch window about once a decade, isn't helping your
case.
>And Voyager was done using a Titan IIIE Centaur combination - was does
>a Titan heavy w/ Centaur get you now?
A trip to the museum to look at pictures of that big rocket they don't
make any more, on account of the organization which built it was wasting
too much time and money even by the standards of modern DoD contracting?
>Clearly a probe to Jupiter in a decade or two is possible, and I'd guess
>to Jupiter in under a decade. Tight, but not as far out as you would seem
>to put it.
I agree. A probe to Jupiter in a decade or two is possible, if tight on
the short end.
But we were talking about a probe to *Saturn*, in a decade or *less*.
--
*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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