>The truth seems to be between these two arguments.
I think that's valid. Rockets were a technology who's time had come. I think the fact that delivering 1000 bombs could destroy a nation had something to do with how quickly they were developed at first, but in a world that had a jet starting to be tested by Germany in WWII, and the X-15, the technology was there for rockets, especially if they could be designed and built on a cost plus basis. But, they are based on fast, but not too fast, power output from available chemical energy. Everything indicates that building rockets up to the Saturn V was simply applying known physics and chemistry. But, I haven't heard of a propellant with, say, 10x the energy density of the propellants used in the '60s. I know I'm beating a dead horse, but since that time, we've been able to increase the density of semiconductor chips by more than a factor of a million in less than 40 years. In a real sense, the economy has been dependant on this, and knock offs of this during that time. That might seem strange, since Microsoft isn't in the top 10 companies and PC manufacturers come and go. But, a lot of it has to do with how the rest of us can do our jobs. Wall-Mart's big gamble in the late 80s and early 90s was to spend its money, not on stores, but on computer based inventory management. My buddies who created geosteering could not have done it if the cost of computing was as high as it was only 10 years earlier. 4-D seismic wouldn't have existed....and these are just a few things off the top of my head. The real driver for new technology is the physics/chemistry/biology which form the landscape that inventors explore. It's true that an ill prepared explorer will probably find nothing. But, I think rockets worked because the technology and science of the 30s and 40s were enough to form a basis. We haven't progressed much since the '60s because the basic question of propulsion doesn't have a clear way to increase bang for the buck. Without that, we have to work hard for modest improvements. Dan M. _______________________________________________ http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
