Halfway down the Danube

Huh. Is the Jose Garcia mentioned there the same one I knew from roleplaying?

The problem with manned space flight is that there's noplace worth going.

Well, for a brief visit, maybe. But considering travel times, that's the Moon and the Moon, at least for the next century or so.

I've had this discussion with fa ... space flight buffs a number of times. If you could walk around on Mars in a heavy parka and facemask, then I'd be all 1950s gung-ho spend-to-the-limit and everything too.

But you can't. These guys just keep failing to update their priors based on new information. I understand the disappointment at just how bloody boring the solar system turned out to be --- yes, James, even Titan --- but the denial of that reality gets weird after four decades.

Send robots there until 21-something, and go yourself to someplace much more salubrious, like Panama or the Philippines? Speaking of which, Carlos ...

The problem isn't that the solar system is boring. One problem is that the sort of riches it offers at this point in time are abstract and most people don't really care about pure knowledge (That's just an observation, not a criticism of what people choose to be interested in). The other is that at the moment space travel and habitation is extemely expensive and there's very little incentive to bring the costs down.

Actually, given the price elasticity, there may be negative incentive, since the net result of reducing costs might just be to reduce total profits.

Given the existance of guys who think walking into active volcanoes is fun and interesting, I can easily imagine someone who thinks trying to ride the plumes on Enceladus is a giggle.

Seriously, though, wouldn't "trying to ride the plumes on Enceladus" qualify as something that's good "for a brief visit, maybe"?

Sure, Mars is interesting, in an intellectual sense. And yes, it'd be a hoot to go there and stomp around for a while. But if the place had blue skies and flowers --- even flowers that caused severe allergic reactions in unexposed humans --- we'd already be there, cost be damned.

And that wouldn't be for economic reasons; it's because it would be cool to go settle another planet ... if you could, like, not have to fundamentally rewire the human brain to make living there pleasant.

C'mon, James, you've just implied that you're indifferent between a solar system with our Mars and one with Robert Heinlein's. I don't think it's true that you'd prefer our dustball to someplace with oceans and Old Ones, even if the Old Ones were just very odd-looking trees.

If you didn't believe this, you wouldn't spend so much time wondering about habitable worlds in other solar systems on your blog.

In other words, I'll rephrase and re-emphasize. I believe that you, James Nicoll, believes that solar system did in fact turn out to be /relatively/ boring, and that the fact that the place is such a drag is why we've got to wait for the cost (and speed!) of space travel to drop down to the point where Joe X-sports can do adventure tourism in the dim light of the Saturn system. E.g., 2100, maybe ... if then.

(shakes fist at sky)

But why rage at the sky, Noel, when you can rage against strep throat? Damn you animalcules! DAMN YOU!

(Still futzing with the 1946 to 1965 years. "Footnote: Ferdinand Marcos converted Luis Taruc to Catholicism WITH HIS BARE HANDS! Karnow, p. xxx")

Technical point: you mean that the demand for space travel is inelastic, right? That is, a reduction in costs won't lead to an increase in demand. Well, that shouldn't affect incentives. If the launch market is monopolistic, then there are big incentives to cut costs but keep prices high; the more inelastic the demand, the better. In a competitive market, it should be easy for a new entrant to grab away the market by offering a cheaper vehicle.

The problem, I think, is that it's very expensive to reduce launch costs, but you can't effectively amortize those costs in a small market. This is the sort of thing that government money is supposed to solve, which makes me think that the engineering problems are much tougher than the buffs believe, given just how much cash has been tossed in that direction.

n other words, I'll rephrase and re-emphasize. I believe that you, James Nicoll, believes that solar system did in fact turn out to be /relatively/ boring, and that the fact that the place is such a drag is why we've got to wait for the cost (and speed!) of space travel to drop down to the point where Joe X-sports can do adventure tourism in the dim light of the Saturn system. E.g., 2100, maybe ... if then.

Say, do I get to make pronouncements on what you are really thinking, too?

Compared to the solar system we used to have, circa I Discover Clarke, we've lost a dying/dead Mars and a Venus unsuited for white men [1] in exchange for a far more interesting and active solar system. It also turns out to be a lot harder than we hoped to actually live in space but that's actually not surprising in situations like this. You could build a road with the bodies of the dead Europeans in Canada who discovered optimism is not replacement for wilderness survival skills.

1: Except oddly, except for space-doctors in EFR, the Chinese guy in BETWEEN PLANETS and the expendible Tibetans in RED PLANET, I don't recall non-whites really being allowed off-planet in the older SF.

"Compared to the solar system we used to have, circa I Discover Clarke, we've lost a dying/dead Mars and a Venus unsuited for white men [1] in exchange for a far more interesting and active solar system."

So - you find, say, the lunar surface more interesting than the Amazon jungle?

Personally, I've always found biology more interesting than geology, but that's just my prejudice...

"So - you find, say, the lunar surface more interesting than the Amazon jungle?"

I have an irration dislike for tropics, which can be traced back to having there.

No, I think the Moon is a bit dull. It's also fairly close in broad details to the Classic SF Moon, so I am not losing anything there.

Active worlds, particularly ones that are active and not Earthlike, are what turns my crank. This forces me to look to the outer system for interesting planets.

And as far as biology goes, who knows? We're only just beginning to look.

I basically have to agree with Noel's conclusion.

Did the Solar System end up being any more boring than (at least the more serious) SF types thought it would be? Early Heinlein had some extreme-but-livable terrain within the orbit of Pluto. Most of the rest have relied on the kludge of FTL to get around its already long apparent boring-ness. I think you two have different definitions of "interesting", though. James is right, it is still full of "pure knowledge"-type stuff. But there are limits to what anybody's willing to pay for that, which is why the SF author always comes up with some fake incredibly-useful-but-rare resource like Niven's magnetic monopoles to justify a story-worthy level of development.

"The problem, I think, is that it's very expensive to reduce launch costs, but you can't effectively amortize those costs in a small market. This is the sort of thing that government money is supposed to solve"

It isn't exactly what governments have been shooting for, either. Because of the specific uses to which they put space and the high prestige costs associated with a loss (particularly during the CW), they've been more interested in reliable launch platforms to Earth-orbit rather than cheap ones. (Not that that has worked out all that well, either.) That probably ties into large fixed costs issue, too. You might get around the issue without huge up-front government expenditure by structuring the finance correctly, though, assuming you could project something worth going up for with your new, lower launch costs in the first place. Maybe convertible extra-long duration bonds, with a government guarantee of some minimum yield. People have been known to take punts on worse risks, the majority of the railroad companies being only one example. You could even justify buying them as a duration-matching exercise for pension funds and insurance companies looking at really long-term liabilities.

I am fond of the bridge-to-Ketchikan analogy for a space elevator. The economics of launch systems don't look good to me where they don't look incomprehensible (I suspect vast hidden costs and subsidies), but I understand how to pay for a bridge, even one that takes decades to build and doesn't serve much purpose for the next twenty years of operation.

You know what I'm thinking of, Noel.

Carlos: I do? Why yes, I do! First fire baptism in April, my friend. But we've been here before.

James: sure! You might be wrong, but I'd be amazed if sometimes you didn't think I wasn't saying what I meant, or didn't realize that something I said wasn't consistent with other things that I said.

Bernard: hot damn, we still agree on some things! While I don't know if a different financing scheme would produce "better" (i.e., cheaper) results, we certainly have several models to choose from. See note from Carlos, above.

I am here because I have two Lindbergh references in this reading, one to his actual charisma and then one to his missing child, and I have to replace one (of course) so I thought you would have some nugget for me, as you did earlier, which is to say that you at least got me thinking of the rubric of widows and head wounds, but the thing is, you see

breathe.

that I went to the newswriter link, hoping that it would be interesting and just have one ickle spark and nothing. also, that man was boring. he had a v boring life.

o, missing lindbergh child! how I do not even know your christian name! eff you!

but with what to replace his snapshot? o, poetry. arglusksk!!!!!! I have something to tell you and expect me to rush *right* *at* *you* and wind my arms around you and tell you in your ear! right in front of my husband, even!!! it's gossipful and delicious!!

baisers.

One of my recently graduated students looks almost exactly like Ms. Lakdawalla. Actually the more I look at her picture the more eerie is the similarity.

The obvious answer is that they are both Cylons.

Stumbled onto this thread a few days late. Sadly, I think Ms. Lakdawalla is quite married.

>Doug suspects I have a crush on its proprietor, >Emily Lakdawalla.

(Just back from LPSC) So this was that cute redhead. She actually looks even better than
on the pictures.

Andreas

Andreas, Colin: I am so not surprised.

James,

Yup I am that Jose. I'm now living in Brighton in the UK. You still in Waterloo?