szabonj@ibmpa.UUCP (Nick Szabo) (12/17/89)
In article <1989Dec12.174223.26995@axion.bt.co.uk> sjeyasin@dalriada.axion.bt.co.uk writes: >From article <3240@ibmpa.UUCP>, by szabonj@ibmpa.UUCP (Nick Szabo): >>The >> days of ten-billion dollar space projects are over. The most productive >> economy on our planet, Japan, engages in no such projects, and has no >> intention to start. >Bit of a sweeping statement isn`t it ? No, it is a probable projection, concatenated to a factual statement, concatenated to a probable projection. >After all Japan is contributing >one of the modules for Freedom. Yes, they will contribute c. $2.5 billion, while the U.S. contributes $30 billion, and the science results are shared equally. This despite the fact that Japan has a higher per capita income and many more engineers per capita than the U.S., and much more capital available for R&D than the U.S. Even at $2.5 billion, it is a marginal proposition for Japan, which should tell us something about how stupid it is for the U.S. to engage in. > Not to mention their HOPE orbiter project Which is much smaller than Shuttle, costs less than $10 billion, and will probably be cancelled anyway. >or their recent invitation to Western firms to join in their SST engine >project. They are also devloping their own cryogenic engine, H II. The SST project is for airliners, and the H II is for unmanned, commercial space activities. Both are properly scaled technologies that can provide saleable products and services. They could put Japan in the #1 position in aerospace, while the U.S. throws its money away on fantasies. The U.S. has a big lead, but then again we had a huge lead in autos in the 1960's, and threw it away in less than two decades. >[Are there any Japanese reading sci.space?] >Perhaps they are all too >busy actually making things happen rather than discuss it on the net! Could be! >I for one would like to know what makes them tick. Caveat: the following is way too simplistic and stereotypical; there are many exceptions. But it gives a good flavor, as the Japanese and American viewpoints are in some cases radically different. Freeman Dyson has a good essay on this in _Infinite In All Directions_, and, having studied Japanese culture myself, and talked to folks in the Japanese space program, I find myself agreeing with much of what he says there. The slogan of their space program echoes a popular slogan in their industries, "quick is beautiful". They won't even think about anything five years out, much less the decades out "long term planning" fantasies we see too often in sci.space and NASA, because there is nothing you can do about anything that far in the future. Many things will have changed by then; it is too unpredictable. So they try to avoid decade-long R&D cycles, preferring 1 or 2 years instead. Also they shy away from space voyages like Voyager that would take too long to pay off. Another current running through Japan is "small is beautiful". Honshu is a very crowded island, and you simply can't live on it and do all that manufacturing unless you are willing to be very, very efficient in how you use space and resources. And careful about what you do with your garbage. Honshu is probably the closest thing we have to a space colony on Earth. The fishing industry is very powerful in Japan (and for good reason; it is the only way Japan can produce protein. Would you be comfortable relying on a country that nuked your cities for your food supply? Not I). Space launch complexes take up large amounts of space, and it turns out the only good one in Japan sits right near large fishing grounds. Needless to say, the space launch facility is not the highest priority, and Japan will have to do what the French do, find some Third World equatorial country to launch from. The Japanese _love_ technology. They have many more robots than the U.S. (does somebody have the latest figures on this?) Vending machines are everywhere and serve everything (beer, sandwiches, shampoo, condoms, you name it). You don't see people running around screaming about how robots are taking peoples jobs, robots aren't as intelligent as people, ad nauseum. They realize machines can do some things and humans others, what machines can do and humans can do changes over time, and that who does what should be based on hard engineering and economics, not philosophy and fantasy. They are, and I stress this is positive and even something we might profit by emulating, _animistic_ about material things and especially technology. The weather speaks to them, it has a personality. The Shinto rituals involving new babies, akin to baptism in Christianity, have been used when setting up robots in their factories. There is no division between "natural" and "artificial"; Japanese gardens are both natural and quite man-made, and quite a bit more beautiful than much of the non-human landscape. For all that, the Japanese are very Westernized as well. Their children study more Greek, Roman, and European history, listen to more Western classical music, learn more mathematics and science, than children in the U.S. Bheetoven's 9th is a New Year's tradition. I'd love to hear comments from Japanese or long-time students of Japanese culture on these observations. *********** These opinions are not related to Big Blue's ************ -- --------------------------- Nick Szabo szabonj@ibmpa.tcspa.ibm.com uunet!ibmsupt!szabonj