16 November 2001

The Internet Under Siege Must read seminal article from the man, Lawrence Lessig, on the Internet counter revolution which will strangle its development at birth. This is right on the nail: "The Internet revolution has ended just as surprisingly as it began. None expected the explosion of creativity that the network produced; few expected that explosion to collapse as quickly and profoundly as it has. The phenomenon has the feel of a shooting star, flaring unannounced across the night sky, then disappearing just as unexpectedly. Under the guise of protecting private property, a series of new laws and regulations are dismantling the very architecture that made the Internet a framework for global innovation." A Travesty of Justice The New York Times is deeply opposed, and rightly so, to the use of secret military tribunals to try Bin Laden and anyone else at Bush's whim "More than half a century ago the United States and its allies brought some of history's most monstrous criminals to justice in Nuremberg, Germany. In his opening statement at the trial of Nazi leaders, Robert Jackson, the chief American prosecutor, warned of the danger of tainted justice. "To pass those defendants a poisoned chalice is to put it to our lips as well," he said. President Bush would be wise to heed those words." (via Scriting.com) Rocket Men NASA ain't the trailblazers they started out as. In order to get us out into space, in the broadest colonisation sense, their primary objective ought to be to develop a cheap reusable vehicle for escaping earth's gravity and getting out into low orbit. Straightforward enough, you would have thought, but not a project suited to the bloated bureaucracy NASA has become. It swallows up and kills this kind of idea, preferring the cost and complexity of the Space Shuttle, which doesn't threaten the status quo. Which makes it all the more tantalising to read about this low budget private effort, born out of the failed Rotary Rocket. "For the four founders who've spent two years turning a kit-built Long EZ hobby plane (you can buy one for about $30,000) into a rocket-powered mission statement, this hot-cold dichotomy is a more serious problem than the buggy VCR. Rockets, space travel and aerospace in general have always been big-budget, government-style endeavors, and no privately funded civilians have ever sent somebody into space and brought them back. If XCOR is to survive, however, if founders DeLong and Loretta "Aleta" Jackson, Doug Jones and Jeff Greason are to do this, they have to make rocket science safe and predictable. In other words, mainstream and boring. An everyday thing." The old curmudgeon Jerry Pournelle has been involved in the space industry going way back. Here's a paper of his with some interesting ruminations on how to get the logs unjammed and costs for space access down. "Airline operations cost a small multiple (typically 3 to 5) of fuel costs. It costs about the same in fuel costs to fly a pound to Sydney, Australia from the United States as it does to put that pound in orbit. It shouldn’t cost more in dollars, either. Of course the airline doesn’t roll the airplane into the sea after it gets to Sydney. Although fuel cost drives airline operations costs, there’s another driver for space ops. A typical airline will have about 110 employees per airplane, but half of those sell tickets. Sixty in operations and maintenance is more likely. Now divide the number of NASA civil servants and contractor employees working on Shuttle by the number of Shuttles, and you will get some idea of why Shuttle flights are about a billion dollars a flight instead of the hundred million or so an airliner would charge. [7] Understand I am not accusing NASA of featherbedding Shuttle: all those people are needed, but that’s just the problem. Shuttle was in some respects designed to need them. When your goal is to employ a standing army, you will reach that goal one way or another. Shuttle is rebuildable, not reusable, and that’s not what we need. A properly designed space ship will seek to minimize operations costs, not maximize performance. We have yet to build rockets whose design was driven by operations, and it’s time to do it. Operations driven designs are the key to our future in space." 8:06:42 AM