Ernie : Thanks for the thoughtful reply. That clarifies some things that were vexing me. But we do disagree about the practicality of manned Space flight. Thanks to NASA TV one matter has become completely clear. Just about every shuttle flight, plus a number of the Soyuz flights, and also X number of flights of the Japanese and Europeans, brings to the ISS some new scientific experiments to carry out. None of these experiments are trivial, all have at a minimum some "real world" value, or as the case may be, "real Space" value. The Japanese and the Europeans send automated / remote controlled vehicles to the station, but the stuff that is transferred is meant for human operation. Not that the media covers such flights, with very rare exceptions they ignore them all. But this has been happening year after year and, IMHO. is a helluva lot more meaningful than 90 % of the stuff reported on the networks. Obviously a lot of the experiments in question are not related to Silicon Valley, at least not directly, but there are other forms of high tech, such as chemicals, medicines, biotech, materials science, and you name it. Then, as highlighted, R2 seems to be set to blaze a path to the future and one would think that 95 % of everything about this robot would be understood as directly relevant to Apple or MS or Intel and the rest of the industry. Again, I have some doubts. There just may be some glitch and maybe it will take time before it lives up to the hype, but here potentially is a really functional humanoid robot If NASA learns what R2 was designed to teach, there could be 1000 apps, for both Earth and orbit and beyond. I don't see why this wouldn't have tech people with robotics interest anything but jumping up and down in excitement. Then there is the station, like the USS Enterprise aircraft carrier, always updated with the latest technology. Sure, the original technology was 1980s, but what is up there now is almost all state-of-the-art. The astronauts and cosmonauts on board the station are always retrofitting, installing new computer stuff, and otherwise are as busy as hell almost 24 / 7. All of which was expedited greatly by the shuttle because of its load capacity. The Soyuz and the rockets of the Europeans and Japanese simply can't lift as much. I mean, this pains me considerably given the station as it has become, not quite a hotel in Space. Or, more aptly, Bell Labs in Space. Then there is the discovery of water on both the Moon and Mars. Exploiting these discoveries is now out of the question for decades because the manned US program is being retired. At least unless the 2011 Congress gives it a new lease on life. " But NASA manned flight has absolutely nothing to do with the technology world." Huh ? I did send a somewhat lengthy list of tech innovations that are spin offs from manned flight, no idea why these innovations didn't impress you. Maybe you didn't want to be impressed. "Right or wrong, we in the Valley don't trust the government to create technology for us. We create it ourselves. " Another "huh" ? Why is this either / or ? Both can be done simultaneously. And it isn't just the US gvt, it is also the Japanese and Russians and Europeans who can each add to the store of useful knowledge / innovations. My best guess, one example that just may be close, what about miniature TVs and high performance video developed originally for Space ? Maybe not manned flight to begin with, but doubtless in terms of equipment used by astronauts in their missions. If this is true, then products ( some of them ) sold by Apple are direct descendants of innovations from orbit.
"I do think it is a tragedy that Obama killed manned space flight without actively promoting a better alternative, and in retrospect i was wrong to defend him. He really seems to be acting out of either vengeance or (more likely) the modern liberal's distaste for non-reditsributive spending ." Yeah, maybe there was an element of political payback, but I'm as skeptical about that as you are. Because to hurt Texas he also hurt Florida, and that is one of the battleground states the Dems cannot afford to lose. I think your point about modern Lefties seeing value only ( or primarily ) in spending on social programs is the real culprit and it is so ingrained that no-one among this political class even sees the issue / problem for what it is. Manned flight in Space a "dead end" ? No idea at all why you said this despite your "explanation," since the explanation was about as thin as anything gets and wasn't --to me-- at all convincing. I remember the comments made about Spirit and Opportunity a few weeks after they landed on Mars. Everyone was going crazy about how great the rovers were doing. Then came a NASA geologist who pointed out the obvious. What a rover takes a week to do a human geologist could do in a couple of hours. And the human could do so much more, in the bargain. Billy ====================================================== message dated 11/1/2010 11:48:02 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time, [email protected] writes: Hi Billy, On Nov 1, 2010, at 5:07 PM, [email protected]_ (mailto:[email protected]) wrote: I get the clear impression that ( 1 ) you never watch NASA television and ( 2 ) pretty much could care less what happens with the Space program. Correct me if I am wrong, but this is what comes across. Yes. Neither does anyone I know, at least on a professional level. Personally, yes, I have friends who are excited about watching Space Shuttle launches and dream of flying to the moon or mars. But NASA manned flight has absolutely nothing to do with the technology world. The Space Shuttle is 1980's technology. There is a lot of interest in the X-Prize, but hardly anybody in Silicon Valley bids on the kinds of government contracts funded by NASA. Do I know about "Space opinion" in Silicon country ? Hardly Nor am I at all sure how to even find out what it is. But thinking about not only Apple but Google and HP and the folks at Stanford and the whole schmeer, my best guess is that a clear ( or even large ) majority is aghast at the gutting of NASA. Maybe, but it certainly doesn't make the headlines in the local papers. What makes the headlines are private initiatives: _http://www.googlelunarxprize.org/_ (http://www.googlelunarxprize.org/) Right or wrong, we in the Valley don't trust the government to create technology for us. We create it ourselves. FAR from my views being ca 1970s in character, seems to me they are very much 2010. See below. No idea how to characterize your outlook but I wouldn't classify it in terms of some past era of Space history. I can guess, but that is all, maybe a reflection of concerns with here-and-now marketing priorities which have little to do at all with Space, possibly you have some sort of emotional sense that Space focus would compete with your Earth-o-centric career path and represent unwelcome competition for common resources, or maybe the source is theological in some sense, or a function of a bad run-in, in the past, with a Space freak who soured you on the idea of Space, or God knows what. These may all be wrong guesses, but I would be utterly incredulous if your outlook was shared in Silicon Valley by more than a minority As often happens, you are conflating my response to two different issues. 1. There may be valid emotional and psychological reasons for governments to go into space and mars, and many people in Silicon Valley would support that vision. 2. But from a pure technology development point-of-view, NASA manned space flight isn't interesting to us, and no major corporation I know cares at all about the impact on their R&D from NASA's woes. I was disagreeing with your assertions about the latter, not the former. I do think it is a tragedy that Obama killed manned space flight without actively promoting a better alternative, and in retrospect i was wrong to defend him. He really seems to be acting out of either vengeance or (more likely) the modern liberal's distaste for non-reditsributive spending. But professionally speaking, NASA's maned programs are an evolutionary dead end in terms of technology, and they desperately need a fresh start. The shame isn't that he killed the space shuttle. The shame is that he didn't invest real R&D into something that _would_ advance the state of the art. -- Ernie P. -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: _http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism_ (http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism) Radical Centrism website and blog: _http://RadicalCentrism.org_ (http://radicalcentrism.org/) -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org
