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From: j...@pnet01.cts.com (Jim Bowery)
Subject: Who I am and why I support Big Science
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Date: Tue, 29 Jun 1993 07:16:54 GMT
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There have been some questions about who I am and what my positions
are. Here are the relevant details for sci.space readers:
As chairman of the Coalition for Science and Commerce, I have, over the
last 5 or so years, been the principle activist promoting the Launch
Services Purchase Act of 1990 and the launch voucher provision of the
1992 NASA authorization.
To preempt some noise:
Allen Sherzer has yet to apologize to me for his repeated slanders
in this forum 2 years ago, declaring that my contributions to the
passage of the LSPA were insignificant compared to those of Glenn
Reynolds, then chairman of the legislative committee of the National
Space Society. However, during congressional hearings on space
commercialization, the LSPA's sponsor, Congressman Packard, gave me
a personal introduction (the only panelist out of over 10 to receive
such an introduction) and my organization credit for passage of the LSPA.
Congressman Packard did so with Glenn Reynolds sitting next to me on
the same panel -- and he did not mention Glenn Reynolds or the NSS.
This is in the Congressional Record and on video tape. Allen Sherzer's
words are in the sci.space archives of late spring to early summer
1991. I encourage those with access to the sci.space archives to
retrieve them and see exactly what Allen Sherzer said and the manner
in which he said it.
I've been involved in several other, as yet unsuccessful, legislative
efforts to reform NASA, DoE (primarily fusion), NSF and DARPA. In so
doing I've come across gross inefficiencies in technology development --
inefficiencies that some small high technology startups were ready to
fill with technical advances of great economic and social import.
The government agencies I just mentioned see these high technology
startups, not as vital partners, but as deadly political threats to the
credibility of those, within the agencies, that picked incorrect
technical directions. These government-funded individuals drive
funding away from those who would bring us critically needed technical
advances -- rather than working with and help them.
The dollars we spend on NASA, DoE, DARPA and NSF to promote technology
are actually used to suppress this country's technology in a frighteningly
effective manner. But when one looks at the political incentives of these
institutions, one wonders how anyone could believe it to be otherwise.
My first and most tragic experience in this area was George Koopman's
statement to me, made in person just before his untimely death, that
NASA had been relentlessly driving his suppliers and investors away
from doing business with his company, AMROC. NASA appeared to reverse
its behavior in a tokenistic manner just prior to Koopman's death. The
first test of an AMROC booster, shortly thereafter, failed and AMROC was
forced into capitulation with established aerospace firms. This pattern
of hostile behavior from NASA, combined with the means, motive and
opportunity, leave room for reasonable suspicions of murder against
individuals within or funded by NASA.
This is only one story and I wasn't even involved in trying to garner
support for AMROC at that time. Other high technology companies I have
had the privilege of working with have experienced similar hostilities
from NASA, DoE, DARPA and NSF, and they experience these hostilities in
proportion to the significance (political visibility) and viability of
the technology they are pursuing.
Congressional oversight committees which are supposed to put a stop to
this sort of activity have no incentive to do so and efforts to get
them to investigate are futile. Their only real incentive is to increase
the bugets of those who they oversee and require political payback via
hegemoney.
This is why technology development programs become the worst possible
way to invest the taxpayer's money -- worse even than monstrously expensive
and unproductive production systems like space shuttles and space stations.
In general, technology is not an objective product. I does not usually
succeed or fail with respect to a well defined objective. Even if a
test device explodes, it can be portrayed as an expected outcome of a
test. A technology development program can always be declared a
success -- and its obvious shortcomings attributed to "limited funding".
The more important a potential technology, the more money can be thrown
at a program proclaiming itself to be delivering that potential, without
any political repercussions for lack of success. This would seem to
present an irresistible opportunity for exploitation and fraud --
but it is worse than that.
When enough time has elapsed, the individuals who exploit these
situations find themselves confronted by "inventors in garages"
(sometimes literally) who, working quietly, on the basis of
real innovation and serendipity from other fields not suppressed
during that period, are in a position to actually achieve the
stated goals of the technology program on a budget and timescale
that is frequently orders of magnitude lower than that anticipated
by the managers of the government program. This is a prospect
so terrifying to those working on the government-funded programs
that a cohesive quasi-religious cult of denial develops around the
mainline program as the inventors are, inevitably, treated as
charlatans or even satan-spawn.
Since these technologies are justifying large government programs,
it is a safe bet that there are big economic paybacks foreseen from
their successful development and application -- a fact that is not
lost on the inventors. Inventors typically have to invest their
lives on a long-shot, and are acutely aware of the role that profit
plays in free enterprise, as the reward for risk-taking. Justifiably,
they want to see some highly deserved rewards for their labors.
They seek out private investors, who are generally leery of high-risk
projects -- regardless of how great the profits might be. There
are very few technically competent wealthy, due to profoundly
destructive biases in our tax and legal systems and it takes
hard-nosed technical competence and accurate imagination to discriminate
between a pipe-dream and the next technology revolution.
Thus it is relatively easy for the government-funded "technologist"
to scare the technically illiterate investors away from the
"crackpot" inventor. Since the government's money is under
their control anyway, it is trivially easy to prevent taxpayer's
money from filling the investment gap they, themselves, helped create.
The space station, the space shuttle, the super conducting supercollider
and other exceedingly large and centralized programs within the
government take money away from government-funded technologists who
are then forced to look for other sources of support. They then
become much less likely to slander external inventors who may
become their future employers, and may even become supportive of
these inventors, both within and outside of government.
Further, the very large and centralized programs are much more
likely to fail and do so in such a way that the taxpayer can recognize
as a betrayal of his trust. They are programs through which fraud
is more easily exposed than vague "technology development" programs.
This means the agencies responsible for technology suppression
can be held to account for their fraud in these types of programs.
Therefore, I have come to the conclusion that political support of
government big science is highly valuable because it helps bring down
the entire system that suppresses development of critical technologies.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Choose truth or peace, here and now.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
On Mon, Jul 29, 2013 at 12:04 PM, Giovanni Santostasi <gsantost...@gmail.com
> wrote:
> Why the space shuttle was technosocialist?
> Confused.
> Giovanni
>
>
> On Mon, Jul 29, 2013 at 11:05 AM, James Bowery <jabow...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hey! That technosocialist POS that set back progress in space by 3
>> decades was good for something after all!
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Jul 29, 2013 at 8:43 AM, David Roberson <dlrober...@aol.com>wrote:
>>
>>> I agree! What a great ride.
>>>
>>> Dave
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: OrionWorks - Steven Vincent Johnson <orionwo...@charter.net>
>>> To: vortex-l <vortex-l@eskimo.com>
>>> Sent: Mon, Jul 29, 2013 8:18 am
>>> Subject: RE: [Vo]:Ride a Shuttle Booster Rocket
>>>
>>> Wow!
>>>
>>> Thanks Vorl!
>>>
>>> I'll pass this on!
>>>
>>> Regards,
>>> Steven Vincent
>>> Johnsonsvjart.OrionWorks.comwww.zazzle.com/orionworkstech.groups.yahoo.com/group/newvortex/
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: Vorl Bek [mailto:vorl....@antichef.com <vorl....@antichef.com?>]
>>> Sent: Monday, July 29, 2013 5:41 AM
>>> To: vortex-l@eskimo.com
>>> Subject: [Vo]:Ride a Shuttle Booster Rocket
>>>
>>> People on this list should enjoy this 400-second video
>>> http://tinyurl.com/m7b6wvr
>>>
>>>
>>
>
