Return-path: X-Andrew-Authenticated-as: 7997;andrew.cmu.edu;Ted Anderson Received: from hogtown.andrew.cmu.edu via trymail for +dist+/afs/andrew.cmu.edu/usr11/tm2b/space/space.dl@andrew.cmu.edu (->+dist+/afs/andrew.cmu.edu/usr11/tm2b/space/space.dl) (->ota+space.digests) ID ; Thu, 27 Jun 91 03:45:36 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: Precedence: junk Reply-To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU From: space-request+@Andrew.CMU.EDU To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU Date: Thu, 27 Jun 91 03:45:30 -0400 (EDT) Subject: SPACE Digest V13 #724 SPACE Digest Volume 13 : Issue 724 Today's Topics: Negative Economic Multipliers LOW LATITUDE AURORAL ACTIVITY WARNING Re: Microgravity? Re: Microgravity? Re: Microgravity? Re: orbiter production Administrivia: Submissions to the SPACE Digest/sci.space should be mailed to space+@andrew.cmu.edu. Other mail, esp. [un]subscription requests, should be sent to space-request+@andrew.cmu.edu, or, if urgent, to tm2b+@andrew.cmu.edu ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 10 Jun 91 15:30:17 PDT From: jim@pnet01.cts.com (Jim Bowery) To: crash!space+@andrew.cmu.edu Subject: Negative Economic Multipliers A basic problem with space activists, as well as many other segments of society these days, is the lack of recognition that you can do damage to people and industries by giving them money. For example some people are convinced that they should support the space station program because the money would have gone to social programs instead of other space activities. Aside from this being false, it presumes that all dollars spent on space are beneficial to our long-term goals in space. I don't know how to deal with this problem exactly, but I think it is a cognitive fallacy that underlies welfare state philosophies in general, so the conservative think-tanks should have an idea of how to deal with it (if they are doing their jobs). Since our friends at RAND Corp., Aerospace Corp. etc. tend to come up with studies that continually tout the "economic multiplier" effect of spending on space, it is interesting there are no countervailing voices that study the negative impact of spending on space even though it's obvious to anyone who tries to invest in space that the majority of the government's space budget is currently having a negative impact on the competitiveness of the space industry. The "economic multiplier" issue has been confused by our friendly "economists" from places like RAND Corp., to the point that it includes industrial policy, Keynesian economic growth and the supposed "spin-offs" from crash programs. When you're paid to write for a credulous crowd that wants government money for themselves and/or to see NASA get more money to fly those neat rockets, you don't have to be very disciplined in your arguments. You know your audience will say "Yeah!" and then emotionally parrot the various numbers you've pulled out of the air when anyone is critical of such programs. I don't have the luxury of such a credulous crowd. That is why I must respond to each of these 3 aspects of the "economic multiplier" argument separately. INDUSTRIAL POLICY: The response to the industrial policy argument requires the acceptance of a few axioms. 1) Bureaucracy is good at enforcing standardization by suppressing novelty and innovation. 2) Capitalism is based on the correct idea that people who earn money are the best people to make decisions about productive investment of capital by virtue of the obvious fact that they were productive enough to earn it in the first place. 3) America's greatest strength resides in its pioneering spirit of independent innovation and enterprise. 4) That pioneering spirit is the same spirit that will be most critical for opening the space frontier, just as it was for opening and settling the New World. Conclusion: If you have capital which might be invested in space technology, the the best way to waste it is to give it to people who didn't earn it inside a centralized bureaucratic management organization so they can be bosses over formerly independent innovators. This is the nightmare of "industrial policy" enjoying a recent resurgence of political support in the guise of "international technological competitiveness." KEYNESIAN GROWTH (the origin of the "economic multiplier" idea): One should certainly expect there to be innumerable economic benefits from ANY expenditure of hundreds of billions of dollars. If all you did was start a government program in which those dollars were scattered from the bomb-bay of a B52 flying cross-country at high altitude, there would be innumerable "spin-offs," jobs, etc. Gathering information on all the various benefits to the economy would be almost as difficult as gathering information on all the damage done to the economy by such a program. In fact, in an economy like the 1930's, when capital centralized in unhealthy ruts like debt instruments, as opposed to productive and job- creating risk investments, such a random dispersal of liquidity is exactly what you want to do according to economist John Maynard Keynes. There is no problem with Keynesian economic theory and this kind of broad liquidity dispersal under these limited conditions. However, there are two ways "the space program" and "military spending" since WW II have failed the conditions of Keynesian theory required to stimulate economic growth: 1) Capital centralization wasn't at unhealthy levels and in unhealthy forms of debt during the first 2 decades of the space program. It was only as a result of Reaganomics that we have recently revisited this pathological capital structure in our country. All that space program spending didn't counter the centralization of capital in debt-instruments under Reaganomics. It exacerbated it by issuing the most attractive debt- instruments of them all -- treasury paper -- and then distributing that liquidity to people who were relatively affluent. 2) When they are needed, Keynesian liquidity dispersal programs result in economic growth from "trickle-up" or demand-side pump priming. Greater demand creates markets -- motivates investment of frozen capital -- starts businesses -- creates jobs -- puts more wages in hands of consumers. You don't start this off by having a highly selective system of employment, ala space program and military contracting. You are trying to get the economy to create and distribute necessities instead Shuttles and Ferraris. You do it by taxing the capital sinks and sending that revenue to the consumers -- the unemployed "Joe Six-Pack" preferrably while he is back at technical school learning jobs skills. WPA was a lot closer to creating this kind of dispersal pattern, but its real benefit was that it issued its own "scrip" which was merely another form of liquidity. The Keynesian "economic multiplier" is the amount of benefit you get from dispersing a certain amount of liquidity in an economy with pathologically centralized capital. But when is capital accumulating in the hands of productive people, you actually damage the economy by taxing it or even borrowing it and giving it to people who didn't earn it. That's what space program spending did for our economy. SPIN-OFFS: If necessity is the mother of invention, then innovation is a "spin-off" of efforts to serve real needs. Needs such as food, water, housing, education and energy are far more fundamental than flags and foot-prints. Agreed, once invention raises per capita capabilities to a certain point, the "need" for recreation or adventure will result in flags and foot- prints. But that means flags and foot-prints are the "spin-offs" of invention, not the other way around! The best example of flags and foot-prints as "spin-off" of invention is Charles Lindbergh's historic trans-atlantic flight. The Kelly Act of 1925 opened up the market for serving a real need, air-mail, to the private sector. This resulted in rapid innovation in aeronautics until Charles Lindbergh simply took a plane that had been developed for air mail and flew it across the Atlantic Ocean! Here we had privately financed technology development driven by a real need resulting in a low cost but high yield adventure. The first trans-atlantic spectacular was a very low cost "spin- off" of innovation driven by the need for air mail. In many ways, it was even more heroic than the Apollo program's triumph of socialism under Von Braun. It was definitely far less expensive! In reality, the overall "economic multiplier" of the budget for space activities is a negative number. For a look at exactly how large that negative number is, let us examine what the world might have been like without this negative influence: In the early 60's, before the Apollo program, NASA was barred from participating in comsat development and operations. It was the only area of space D&O from which NASA was barred. 3 decades later, it is the only area in which the US leads the world in space commerce. It is a part of our everyday lives. It followed the normal cost decay curves of any reasonable industry. The same thing happened when we came to our senses about air transport in 1925 and passed the Kelly Act, resulting in the airline industry. There is every reason to believe that we could have had weather satellites with capabilities well beyond our present capabilities, earth observation sats from which Mission to Planet Earth would have been a trivial by-product and a launch industry behaving more like the airline industry, all with costs decaying exponentially rather than stagnating for 2 decades, if only we had excluded NASA from ALL areas of D&O and focused them on R only. Research expenditures, by not competing with private capital in D&O, are complimentary rather than parasitic. Indeed, there is a very good chance solar power satellites would have become economical by now were it not for the Apollo program and its aftermath. Those "few" billions per year went a long way -- toward slowing down the progress of innovation and enterprise in commercial space D&O. Without competition, NASA's few successes could be portrayed as "glorious breakthroughs" which were all the more glorious because of their apparent difficulty. It's an old bureaucratic game -- all too familiar to students of history. >From this we can see that the "economic multiplier" of NASA spending has become an exceedingly large negative number. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jim Bowery 619/295-3164 The Coalition for PO Box 1981 Science and La Jolla, CA 92038 Commerce ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------ Date: 5 Jun 91 03:01:41 GMT From: news-server.csri.toronto.edu!torsqnt!lethe!telly!moore!eastern!egsgate!Uucp@uunet.uu.net (oler, CARY OLER) Subject: LOW LATITUDE AURORAL ACTIVITY WARNING /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\ LOW LATITUDE AURORAL ACTIVITY WARNING ISSUED: 04 JUNE, 1991 VALID: 04 - 05 JUNE /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\ ATTENTION: A minor to major geomagnetic storm is presently in progress. Conditions could become favorable for low-latitude auroral activity observations during the local evening hours of 04 and 05 June. Lunar phase will not be a source of interference until the early morning hours. Dark skies are expected until the moon rises, and should provide optimum conditions for observing auroral activity. Please note that as Region 6659 continues to produce very powerful major flares, and as it continues to rotate into a more sensitive and influential position, auroral and geomagnetic storming could become very high later this week and into next week. There is a distinct risk for low latitude auroral activity becoming visible over the low latitude zones, as far south as Florida and southern Texas sometime during the next 7 to 10 days. For the southern hemisphere observers, auroral activity could become very visible throughout all of New Zealand and Australia. Daily solar terrestrial event updates will be presented effective immediately. ** End of Watch ** ------------------------------ Date: 4 Jun 91 19:51:52 GMT From: cis.ohio-state.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!torsqnt!lethe!telly!moore!eastern!egsgate!Uucp@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Henry Spencer) Subject: Re: Microgravity? In article <13150@mentor.cc.purdue.edu> hrubin@pop.stat.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin) writes: >> A 710-meter shaft set deep into the Earth forms the centerpiece of a >> new microgravity experimentation facility... > >I must be missing something. How do we get microgravity at this depth? Drop something down it. You get microgravity down to about 709 meters... :-) It's easier to drill shafts than build towers for long drops. -- "We're thinking about upgrading from | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology SunOS 4.1.1 to SunOS 3.5." | henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry ------------------------------ Date: 4 Jun 91 23:41:46 GMT From: cis.ohio-state.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!torsqnt!lethe!telly!moore!eastern!egsgate!Uucp@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Herman Rubin) Subject: Re: Microgravity? In article <1991Jun4.164829.10226@dsd.es.com>, bpendlet@bambam.dsd.es.com (Bob Pendleton) writes: > In article <13150@mentor.cc.purdue.edu>, hrubin@pop.stat.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin) writes: > > In article <406.284B619D@nss.FIDONET.ORG>, freed@nss.FIDONET.ORG (Bev Freed) writes: ..................... > > > A 710-meter shaft set deep into the Earth forms the centerpiece of a > > > new microgravity experimentation facility which will open in July. > > > The center is expected to make a significant contribution to > > > biotechnology, metallurgy, ceramics, and other space related > > > research. .................. > > I must be missing something. How do we get microgravity at this depth? > > The formula I recall would have the gravitational force there approximately > > .9999 g. > Not a problem. You put the experiment in a high density streamlined > container and you DROP it 710 meters. During the fall you get > microgravity. At the end you get macrogravity. :-) N people also sent me this by email. However, is this better than taking to a substantial height (we do have ways to get drops of well over 7000 meters) and it is not necessary to get quite as much macrogravity at the end? Also, one could even have good observing methods along the way instead of merely removing the product from a canister. How long a really low-gravity fall would we get from the height at which the SR-71 could be flown? -- Herman Rubin, Dept. of Statistics, Purdue Univ., West Lafayette IN47907-1399 Phone: (317)494-6054 hrubin@l.cc.purdue.edu (Internet, bitnet) {purdue,pur-ee}!l.cc!hrubin(UUCP) ------------------------------ Date: 4 Jun 91 23:39:47 GMT From: cis.ohio-state.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!torsqnt!lethe!telly!moore!eastern!egsgate!Uucp@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (NASA@f98.n250.z1.FidoNet.Org (Karen J. Weiland (NASA))) Subject: Re: Microgravity? In article <1991Jun4.164829.10226@dsd.es.com>, bpendlet@bambam.dsd.es.com (Bob Pendleton) writes... >In article <13150@mentor.cc.purdue.edu>, hrubin@pop.stat.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin) writes: >> In article <406.284B619D@nss.FIDONET.ORG>, freed@nss.FIDONET.ORG (Bev Freed) writes: > > ..................... > >> > A 710-meter shaft set deep into the Earth forms the centerpiece of a >> > new microgravity experimentation facility which will open in July. >> > The center is expected to make a significant contribution to >> > biotechnology, metallurgy, ceramics, and other space related >> > research. > > .................. > >> I must be missing something. How do we get microgravity at this depth? >> The formula I recall would have the gravitational force there approximately >> .9999 g. > Here at the NASA Lewis Research Center, we have two drop tower facilities that are used extensively for microgravity research. The 2.2 Sec Drop Tower is a 30 meter tower that extends down over a hillside. To reduce the effects of air drag, the experimental package falls within a drag shield, which starts out about six inches lower than the package. The Zero Gravity Facility is longer, being a shaft dug into the ground about 500 feet long, and provides 5 seconds of microgravity. The facility is evacuated to a vacuum to reduce air drag. The deceleration experienced on the package in either facility depends on the actual package construction, but is about 70 G's or more. Test equipment such as light bulbs, movie and video cameras, HeNe lasers, onboard computers, etc. perform reliably drop after drop, with suitable care. Karen J. Weiland NASA Lewis Research Center ------------------------------ Date: 10 Jun 91 06:08:59 GMT From: agate!lightning.Berkeley.EDU!fcrary@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Frank Crary) Subject: Re: orbiter production In article <1991Jun9.204826.2811@iti.org> aws@iti.org (Allen W. Sherzer) writes: >In article <3943@ksr.com> clj@ksr.com (Chris Jones) writes: >>Also, I think you are allowing your preference for the >>Titan to cause you to ignore the differences between the Titan II, with no >>solid fuel strap-ons, and the Titans flying today. > >Not at all. Which of the differences do you consider relevant? > SOLID FUEL STRAP-ON [ROCKETS] These are a big safty problem (as the space shuttle program found out.) In any case, I do not follow the interest in Titan-launched manned capsules. There are good engineering studies that demonstrate that a 4-man capsule should mass only 7 tonnes. If you extrapolate this datum linearly (a bad way to do things, but...) then a 20-tonne Titan-launched capsule would carry 12 people. Do you really need this many? Wouldn't a smaller capsule do better? Frank Crary ------------------------------ End of SPACE Digest V13 #724 *******************