szabo@crg5.UUCP (Nick Szabo) (12/08/90)
In article <1990Dec6.174515.2343@zoo.toronto.edu> henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes: >In article <20634@crg5.UUCP> szabo@crg5.UUCP (Nick Szabo) writes: >>>some of the attendees commented that the deck was stacked: the choice >>>of participants seemed to be deliberately aimed at such a conclusion.) >> >>Isn't "invitation only" also true of NASA committees, the Space Council, >>NSS committees, etc.? Your biases are showing, Henry. :-) > >"I don't make the news, I just report it." The comment was in the original. > >Committee-stacking is a venerable tradition in the government, but the >Planetary Society only undermines its position as a source of honest >advice by such tactics. The comment may be in the original, but it does look like you agree with it. :-) I still don't see how the choosing mechanism was different from NASA, NSS, Space Council, and other non-elected committees. I don't see any reason to comment on it and I don't see how a normal committee selection process undermines that committee's position as a source of honest advice. Since the committee includes space scientists that have explored most of the solar system, and other "customers" of Fred, their opinions bear great weight. > >>Nobody wants "Fred" anymore.... >>We are coming to the realization that the "space station" concept is an >>obsolete 19th-century idea... > >Nonsense. We are coming to the conclusion that trying to build a space >station that is all things to all people -- most notably, a reliable >source of income for the NASA centers and their contractors -- is a lousy >way to explore space. Only organizations in it for reliable source of tax income (eg NASA and Glavkosmos) would seriously consider launching a space station. Even Glavkosmos does it only because they lack automation technology. Fred isn't all things to all people, it is nothing to nobody. Before the Fred announcement, no customers came out and expressed a desire to use (and even remotely pay for) a space station. The "requirements" were gimicked after the announcement to make it look like a space station would be useful. It turns out that a space station is useless. "We live and we learn, or we don't live long" (Robert A. Heinlein). >That in no way indicates any fundamental failing >in the concept of a space station as a useful resource. Even -- dare I >say it -- the Planetary Society has proposed a suitably designed space >station as an important part of their headlong-race-to-Mars project. I don't know what the Planetary Society has proposed in this regard, but I have never heard any experienced deep space mission planner propose significant use of a space station. (I have heard a lot of people who have never planned a successful deep space venture propose all sorts of weird things with a space station). Astronauts point out that we didn't need a space station to do Apollo -- in fact a space station was explicitly proposed and rejected, for the good reason of being a costly side diversion. As for microgravity furnaces, I have read the Soviet microgravity papers which clearly show that cosmonaut vibrations are (by several orders of magnitude) the worst destroyers of microgravity material structure. Nearly all microgravity scientists want a free-flyer. What is left? What vapor customers can be conjured up now? The long search for the mythological Space Station Application is over. Fred is dead. Let the Space Age begin. -- Nick Szabo szabo@sequent.com "We live and we learn, or we don't live long" -- Robert A. Heinlein The above opinions are my own and not related to those of any organization I may be affiliated with.