posted by Angus Ontario:
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The computers you and I are typing on right now exist largely because of government sponsored research during WWII and the cold war.
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This is somewhat like the "who'll build the roads?" argument in favour of public funding. Considering the incredible usefulness of the computer, do you really think that it would not have been developed?
Bear in mind that most actual scientists (versus pseudo-scientists living on the government dole as a profession) are not particular enamored to the state either; relatively few went into a given branch of science "for the glory of Caesar."
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The technology that made the internet possible WAS largely developed using ARPA money here in Cambridge, MA and at Stanford University.
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No it wasn't. DARPA built the first functioning predecessor of the modern Internet based on technological designs and theories developed mostly at MIT by J.C.R. Licklider, and Leonard Kleinrock. Licklider was coincidentally the first head of DARPA's computer reasearch division, but his "Galactic Network" project was never seriously considered. Kleinrock later took the project to one of Licklider's successors, Lawrence Roberts, who took the project under DARPA's wing.
In 1969 the first multi-node network was created, not by DARPA, but by a team of researchers led by Kleinrock at UCLA. The network linked up computers at UCLA, Stanford University, UCSB and the University of Utah.
ARPANet did not roll out until 1972, and the only major improvements it ever had came from external researchers, just as its birth did. There is a big difference between funding a project and actually creating it -- ask any architect.
Just like virtually everything else for which DARPA gets credit, it did not develop anything -- only co-opted it.
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The technology we'll be using 5 years from now is being developed by R&D guys in industry and universities using (some) private money. But the technology we'll be using 15-20 years from now is being developed by guys utterly dependent on government funding agencies like DARPA.
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All that says to me is that the technology that you envision us using in 15-20 years is not all that important. Things for which there is a demand tend to get developed regardless of who does the developing.
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Would these technologies be developed without government involvement? Some would, but I doubt most would simply because the capital investment for any single firm (or even a consortium of large firms) is just too high, and the risk is high as well. If this investment in basic research is a shared cost though, suddenly many of these projects become feasible and there is a potentially large benefit for everybody.
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I've nothing against a "shared cost," and nothing really against non-profit research. What I am against, is research funded by theft and redistribution.
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I know I'm falling for a trap here but what company would possibly want to risk the money/liability of a trip to Mars? Where is the economic benefit for GE or Ford? In this case, where is the "first mover advantage"?
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Check out the above-linked site for Mars Direct, and if you are really interested get a copy of Zubrin's The Case for Mars. Zubrin's plan for getting to Mars was turned down by NASA in favour of the Battlestar Galactica approach when President GHW Bush first proposed putting a man on Mars. There are substantial economic incentives to get to Mars, and in fact colonisation of the Moon makes more sense when done from a Martian platform, because everything needed to manufacture spacecraft exists in raw form on Mars, and because it takes substantially less fuel to get from Mars to the Moon than it does to get from Earth to the Moon, because of gravitational considerations. So for non-manned, non-emergency space flight (which is virtually all space flight) Mars makes more sense as a first step, not a second one.
Mars is also a logical launch, furlough and processing point for eventual exploration and mining of the asteroid field. Given that the amount of mineral resources in the field dwarfs that found on Earth there's a pretty strong incentive to get cracking on Martian colonisation now (barring the advent of the fusion codicil, but should such a thing happen then all kinds of neat shit changes overnight.)
The plan that Zubrin and the top experts on Mars assembled used existing technology (including Delta IV rockets in use since the 1960's) and would have put a man on Mars approximately twelve years after implementation (in fact the first human mission to Mars would have landed right about now, had the timeline been followed.) Costs from the drawing board to the "flags and footprints" were to run between $ 25 and $ 30 billion. It even featured an incredibly simple means to produce rocket fuel by simple modification of the Martian atmosphere (a working machine which can accomplish this was built at NASA Hunstville, at the decidely non-NASA-like cost of $ 47,000.00)
NASA took one look at the plan and threw it out. What was presented to Congress was a plan drawn up almost entirely by non-scientists in NASA's employ. It called for a massive, thirty-year, $ 450 billion infrastructure project that would culminate in a huge launch platform from which ships could be assembled and launched, and contained little info or ideas about actually getting to Mars at some point. In other words, it was a NASA fundraiser's dream, not a scientist's.
Needless to say, Congress was not real wild about the idea of spending half a trillion dollars to build a spaceship-building platform that would not provide much in the way of eventual cost savings to space exploration and was really just a symbolic gesture to American space superiority. The plan was disapproved, and no other alternatives were sought.
THAT is what you get from NASA. You get the space shuttle program from NASA, which despite its scientific benefits is one of the worst-run, most over-priced ripoffs in the history of government pork projects. You get one big, impressive trip to the moon, and then when no one can think of a follow-up, you get a couple of more identical trips to the moon. You get an "interstellar craft" that will take over 25 million years to reach its first interstellar destination.
In other words, like all other government programs, you get shafted, and good ideas get shelved.
Phaedrus
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>
The computers you and I are typing on right now exist largely because of government sponsored research during WWII and the cold war.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
This is somewhat like the "who'll build the roads?" argument in favour of public funding. Considering the incredible usefulness of the computer, do you really think that it would not have been developed?
Bear in mind that most actual scientists (versus pseudo-scientists living on the government dole as a profession) are not particular enamored to the state either; relatively few went into a given branch of science "for the glory of Caesar."
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>
The technology that made the internet possible WAS largely developed using ARPA money here in Cambridge, MA and at Stanford University.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
No it wasn't. DARPA built the first functioning predecessor of the modern Internet based on technological designs and theories developed mostly at MIT by J.C.R. Licklider, and Leonard Kleinrock. Licklider was coincidentally the first head of DARPA's computer reasearch division, but his "Galactic Network" project was never seriously considered. Kleinrock later took the project to one of Licklider's successors, Lawrence Roberts, who took the project under DARPA's wing.
In 1969 the first multi-node network was created, not by DARPA, but by a team of researchers led by Kleinrock at UCLA. The network linked up computers at UCLA, Stanford University, UCSB and the University of Utah.
ARPANet did not roll out until 1972, and the only major improvements it ever had came from external researchers, just as its birth did. There is a big difference between funding a project and actually creating it -- ask any architect.
Just like virtually everything else for which DARPA gets credit, it did not develop anything -- only co-opted it.
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>
The technology we'll be using 5 years from now is being developed by R&D guys in industry and universities using (some) private money. But the technology we'll be using 15-20 years from now is being developed by guys utterly dependent on government funding agencies like DARPA.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
All that says to me is that the technology that you envision us using in 15-20 years is not all that important. Things for which there is a demand tend to get developed regardless of who does the developing.
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>
Would these technologies be developed without government involvement? Some would, but I doubt most would simply because the capital investment for any single firm (or even a consortium of large firms) is just too high, and the risk is high as well. If this investment in basic research is a shared cost though, suddenly many of these projects become feasible and there is a potentially large benefit for everybody.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
I've nothing against a "shared cost," and nothing really against non-profit research. What I am against, is research funded by theft and redistribution.
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>
I know I'm falling for a trap here but what company would possibly want to risk the money/liability of a trip to Mars? Where is the economic benefit for GE or Ford? In this case, where is the "first mover advantage"?
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Check out the above-linked site for Mars Direct, and if you are really interested get a copy of Zubrin's The Case for Mars. Zubrin's plan for getting to Mars was turned down by NASA in favour of the Battlestar Galactica approach when President GHW Bush first proposed putting a man on Mars. There are substantial economic incentives to get to Mars, and in fact colonisation of the Moon makes more sense when done from a Martian platform, because everything needed to manufacture spacecraft exists in raw form on Mars, and because it takes substantially less fuel to get from Mars to the Moon than it does to get from Earth to the Moon, because of gravitational considerations. So for non-manned, non-emergency space flight (which is virtually all space flight) Mars makes more sense as a first step, not a second one.
Mars is also a logical launch, furlough and processing point for eventual exploration and mining of the asteroid field. Given that the amount of mineral resources in the field dwarfs that found on Earth there's a pretty strong incentive to get cracking on Martian colonisation now (barring the advent of the fusion codicil, but should such a thing happen then all kinds of neat shit changes overnight.)
The plan that Zubrin and the top experts on Mars assembled used existing technology (including Delta IV rockets in use since the 1960's) and would have put a man on Mars approximately twelve years after implementation (in fact the first human mission to Mars would have landed right about now, had the timeline been followed.) Costs from the drawing board to the "flags and footprints" were to run between $ 25 and $ 30 billion. It even featured an incredibly simple means to produce rocket fuel by simple modification of the Martian atmosphere (a working machine which can accomplish this was built at NASA Hunstville, at the decidely non-NASA-like cost of $ 47,000.00)
NASA took one look at the plan and threw it out. What was presented to Congress was a plan drawn up almost entirely by non-scientists in NASA's employ. It called for a massive, thirty-year, $ 450 billion infrastructure project that would culminate in a huge launch platform from which ships could be assembled and launched, and contained little info or ideas about actually getting to Mars at some point. In other words, it was a NASA fundraiser's dream, not a scientist's.
Needless to say, Congress was not real wild about the idea of spending half a trillion dollars to build a spaceship-building platform that would not provide much in the way of eventual cost savings to space exploration and was really just a symbolic gesture to American space superiority. The plan was disapproved, and no other alternatives were sought.
THAT is what you get from NASA. You get the space shuttle program from NASA, which despite its scientific benefits is one of the worst-run, most over-priced ripoffs in the history of government pork projects. You get one big, impressive trip to the moon, and then when no one can think of a follow-up, you get a couple of more identical trips to the moon. You get an "interstellar craft" that will take over 25 million years to reach its first interstellar destination.
In other words, like all other government programs, you get shafted, and good ideas get shelved.
Phaedrus
