The Cold Equations
Brian Pickrell
[ The story so far: In the science fiction story _The Cold Equations,_ a
young female stowaway on a spaceship has to be tossed out the airlock
because there isn't enough fuel to land with the additional mass aboard.
The author's intended message was that the laws of nature are unforgiving.
Richard Harter blames the authorities instead, for failing to take
adequate precautions against stowaways. He also blames the author, Tom
Godwin, for a blame-the-victim mentality... ]
Bernard Peek (b...@intersec.demon.co.uk) wrote:
: In article <5dlg4h$o...@news-central.tiac.net>, Richard Harter
: <c...@tiac.net> writes
: >
: >>In fact your criticism of the original story is based on additional
: >>material that you fabricated.
: >
: >You make a point of a sort. I did not make it as clear as I might
: >have what they *did* not do, steps that are obvious. I quote:
: You made it clear that you felt that these were obvious, but failed to
: demonstrate that this follows from the text. The method by which the
: girl gains access to the ship isn't discussed in any detail, and
: therefore can't sensibly be subject to
: >
: >You would be wrong. The pilot does not make a routine
: >check for stowaways and feels no remorse for not
: >having done so. No effort is made to keep stowaways
: >out except for an uninformative sign. Nothing stops the
: >young woman from just wandering on board.
: >
: >If it makes you happy I will follow the author and call her a girl.
: >Now what was not done in the story?
: >
: >There is no lock on the door.
: >The girl is not informed of the policy.
: >The sign does not say anything about stowaways.
: >The pilot does not check his vehicle before taking off.
: I don't recall this being stated.
: >
: >These are routine, obvious precautions. The threat of a stowaway
: >is serious; so serious that the pilot is issued a blaster. Yet the
: >obvious precautions are not taken. All of this is quite clear in the
: >story.
: >
: >The author wished to set up a certain situation, one in which a
: >certain moral would hold. The simple fact is that he was sloppy about
: >doing so. I sympathize with him. Writing fiction is work; setting up
: >scenarios in which all the bases are covered takes quite a bit of
: >thought.
: And the effort involved couln't really be justified because it wouldn't
: have materially affected the story, except possibly to bury it in
: padding. The author's point was that the laws of gravity can't be
: repealed. It made the point succinctly and effectively, witness the
: story is still being discussed decades later.
I have to agree with Mr. Harter here. A writer should be able to set up a
scene adequately and concisely without leaving huge logical gaps. For
instance:
'Jeepers!' said the pilot, 'how did you get on board? Entry to this
area is carefully controlled, and there are warning signs telling you that
stowing away is very dangerous.'
'Oh, I slipped past the sensors,' replied the girl. 'And I never read
warning signs. But don't worry, I'm young and beautiful and my daddy's
rich, so the rules don't apply to me.'
Okay, it still needs a little more brushing up, but you get the idea.
: > Given the economics of writing short fiction (ASF paid three
: >cents a word at the time and they were the market leader) one, of
: >necessity, grinds the stuff out.
That's three cents more than I'm getting for writing this. Maybe I won't
bother brushing it up.
: >
: >Now it is quite clear what moral the author wished to draw, wished to
: >present to us. (Although the odds are that it was Campbell's idea and
: >Godwin wrote it on order.) But if we look at the situation actually
: >presented in the story it does not support the moral; that is the
: >first point of the essay.
: I understand that to be your premise. The story, as written, does
: support the moral (not really the right word in this context, morality
: was excluded from the central premise of the story). Your revised form
: may not, but it isn't the story that Godwin wrote.
: > The second point is that the situation
: >really supports a different and much uglier moral - that of
: >bureaucratic callousness and rationalization of that callousness. The
: >third point is that this fundamental defect escapes the editor (not
: >surprising) and the SF community.
: It's obviously possible to read this into the story, you've done it. I
: wouldn't have considered the issues you raise to have been important to
: the story, and now that you've pointed them out, I still don't. Over-
: reading can torture almost any story into supporting almost any theory
: about its contents. It's pointless because the criticism becomes a work
: of fiction in its own right, owing little to the original text.
: I'm sure that had Godwin thought that the points you raised were worth
: the effort he would have thrown in an extra paragraph to deal with them.
: Personally I think the effort would have been a wasted effort.
It tells a lot about the author (and his audience) to note which points he
thought were worth covering, and which he didn't. In this case, the
underlying assumption is that rockets are dangerous machinery, that
there's no margin for error, and that everyone ought to know that. Would
_The Cold Equations_ have the same effect if it was set in a rowboat?
The reason I crossposted this article is that the same premise is in
effect today. The Space Shuttle is still vulnerable to single-point
failures; if something goes wrong, everybody gets blown up. This is a
fundamental design defect, and space travel will never be practical until
the rocket designers abandon the _Cold Equations_ mentality and decide
that exposing passengers to this kind of danger is simply not acceptable.
: There's a more serious criticism of the work. The additional mass of the
: girl would have been detected almost instantly because of its effect on
: the course of the ship. The only way she could have avoided it would
: have been to discard her own mass in other objects. Had she done that it
: would have negated the entire central premise.
: >
: >It is the final point that is most damning of SF, in my opinion. The
: >story is a fine bit of melodrama and people respond to the melodrama
: >and the authors moralizaing without thinking about what actually went
: >on in the story. That is slop. Slop is the norm in SF.
: Hard SF of this vintage, particularly at short story length, was usually
: written around one central idea. The central idea in this case is that
: there are situations when the universe won't let you win.
: When I run management training courses I often set up at least one role-
: play scenario as a lose/lose situation. To avoid any accusations of
: unfairness I use situations that really happened. The Cold Equations was
: a scenario of that type. I realise it's unpleasant to realise that in
: some situations you can't win, but the universe is like that sometimes.
--
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Brian Pickrell
Bill MacArthur
I can't believe that this thread has returned! It seems to me that you
have stored this on disk, stewed over it and reposted.
pma...@eskimo.com (Brian Pickrell) wrote:
>[ The story so far: In the science fiction story _The Cold Equations,_ a
>young female stowaway on a spaceship has to be tossed out the airlock
>because there isn't enough fuel to land with the additional mass aboard.
>The author's intended message was that the laws of nature are unforgiving.
>Richard Harter blames the authorities instead, for failing to take
>adequate precautions against stowaways. He also blames the author, Tom
>Godwin, for a blame-the-victim mentality... ]
>
People are not victims when they suffer the consequences of dumb ass
mistakes.
>'Jeepers!' said the pilot, 'how did you get on board? Entry to this
>area is carefully controlled, and there are warning signs telling you that
>stowing away is very dangerous.'
>
>'Oh, I slipped past the sensors,' replied the girl. 'And I never read
>warning signs. But don't worry, I'm young and beautiful and my daddy's
>rich, so the rules don't apply to me.'
>
>Okay, it still needs a little more brushing up, but you get the idea.
>
I think if you criticize the story with quotation marks you should quote
it verbatim. The story made the point that she had been warned but she
just didn't believe it. I don't remember reading anything about sensors
in stories of that era. Naval analogies were far more prevalent.
BTW do rich brats not behave in the manner you described? Or poor brats
for that manner? How many young lives are snuffed out through
misadventure such as River Phoenix's a few years ago? How many die of
alcohol/drug related deaths, car accidents, AIDS and general
misadventure? Weren't they adequately warned?
>It tells a lot about the author (and his audience) to note which points he
>thought were worth covering, and which he didn't. In this case, the
>underlying assumption is that rockets are dangerous machinery, that
>there's no margin for error, and that everyone ought to know that. Would
>_The Cold Equations_ have the same effect if it was set in a rowboat?
>
You have missed the point completely. This is a cautionary tale. The
point is that the universe is uncaring. It does want to save us or kill
us, it just is and we have to live with it. As for your rowboat story,
read some sea stories. Start with _The Cruel Sea_.
>The reason I crossposted this article is that the same premise is in
>effect today. The Space Shuttle is still vulnerable to single-point
>failures; if something goes wrong, everybody gets blown up. This is a
>fundamental design defect, and space travel will never be practical until
>the rocket designers abandon the _Cold Equations_ mentality and decide
>that exposing passengers to this kind of danger is simply not acceptable.
>
I'm glad you weren't around when Columbus was ready to sail. The Nina,
Pinta and Santa Maria would still be in dry- dock.
Edward Wright
In article <JMC.97Fe...@Steam.stanford.edu>, j...@Steam.stanford.edu
says...
>Aircraft are subject to single-point failures. All it takes is one
>bomb. The design of the Shuttle involved as much redundancy as could
>be afforded. Space exploration to date has proved less dangerous than
>the arctic and high mountain exploration of the previous two
>centuries.
Several astronauts, including the former head of the NASA astronaut
office, John Young, have disputed this. NASA spent over $35 billion on the
Shuttle, yet the Shuttle didn't even have a drag chute for landing, until
after the Challenger accident. It's hard to argue, with a straight face,
that it was because NASA couldn't afford one.
>Some people are braver that Pickrell evidently thinks they ought to be.
Bravery has nothing to do with it. NASA granted itself more than 800
Criticality 1 (non-redundant) safety waivers on the Space Shuttle. No
safety waivers were allowed in the Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, or Skyalb
programs. That's not because the Mercury, Gemini, or Apollo astronauts
were less brave.
--
The opinions expressed in this message are my own personal views
and do not reflect the official views of Microsoft Corporation.
dkn...@efn.org
Bill MacArthur says that the girl in "The Cold Equations" "was warned"
but didn't pay any attention. All the story tells us about this is that
there was a sign over the door, "UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL KEEP OUT!"
Damon
Scott A. Munro
Someone within the last few years wrote a fictional "response" to
Godwin's story called "The Cold Solutions." The solution the pilot
came up with is to hack various body parts off herself and the
stowaway and eject them, thus allowing both to live.
-----
Scott A. Munro http://www.nextdim.com/users/smunro/
Read my horror story "Immortal"
<http://tale.com/munro/imm-free.htm>
on the web at Mind's Eye Fiction <http://tale.com/>
New York Theosophical Society
John McCarthy (j...@Steam.stanford.edu) wrote:
: error, and that everyone ought to know that. Would _The
: Cold Equations_ have the same effect if it was set in a
: rowboat?
: Similar stories have been set in rowboats. Usually, the actions that
: lead to the sacrifice of lives can be fuzzed up a little.
A doctor, a lawyer, and an accountant were in shark-infested
waters in a rowboat. There was a shore in sight, but the rowboat was
sinking; it could not make it to shore with all three people on board.
The lawyer, seeing this, said, "You row to shore; I'll jump into the
water", and proceeded to do so. The doctor and accountant rowed the boat
to shore, and, much to their amazement, saw the lawyer swim safely to
shore, flanked by sharks on either side.
"Why didn't the sharks eat you?" asked the doctor, in surprise.
"Professional courtesy", said the lawyer.
John McCarthy
In article <5dqt3c$t...@news.microsoft.com> edwr...@microsoft.com (Edward Wright) writes:
>
> In article <JMC.97Fe...@Steam.stanford.edu>, j...@Steam.stanford.edu
> says...
>
> >Aircraft are subject to single-point failures. All it takes is one
> >bomb. The design of the Shuttle involved as much redundancy as could
> >be afforded. Space exploration to date has proved less dangerous than
> >the arctic and high mountain exploration of the previous two
> >centuries.
>
> Several astronauts, including the former head of the NASA astronaut
> office, John Young, have disputed this. NASA spent over $35 billion on the
> Shuttle, yet the Shuttle didn't even have a drag chute for landing, until
> after the Challenger accident. It's hard to argue, with a straight face,
> that it was because NASA couldn't afford one.
>
> >Some people are braver that Pickrell evidently thinks they ought to be.
>
> Bravery has nothing to do with it. NASA granted itself more than 800
> Criticality 1 (non-redundant) safety waivers on the Space Shuttle. No
> safety waivers were allowed in the Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, or Skyalb
> programs. That's not because the Mercury, Gemini, or Apollo astronauts
> were less brave.
Do you seriously think NASA's safety waivers put astronauts in as much
danger as 17th thru early 20th century were? Scott and his entire
expedition to the South Pole perished - to take a 20th century
example.
Do you think John Young was claiming any such thing?
--
John McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305
http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
Cathy Mancus
In <JMC.97Fe...@Steam.stanford.edu>, j...@Steam.stanford.edu (John McCarthy) writes:
>Scott and his entire expedition to the South Pole perished - to take
>a 20th century example.
Only because he was grossly incompetent. We've already beaten
that subject to death.
--Cathy Mancus <man...@vnet.ibm.com>
FIDO
John McCarthy writes:
Scott and his entire expedition to the South Pole perished
- to take a 20th century example.
"Entire expedition"? Come now. Five who were the final assault
party. A monument to stupidity and hubris. Talk about safety
waivers ... Shackleton and Nansen wrote the ObBooks on polar
exploration.
FIDO
Zak Cramer
>John McCarthy (j...@Steam.stanford.edu) wrote:
>: error, and that everyone ought to know that. Would _The
>: Cold Equations_ have the same effect if it was set in a
>: rowboat?
Perhaps it would. But "The Cold Equations" is interesting not only in
the point it makes about physical law being what it is whether we like
it or not, but also in that this becomes more and more an issue for us
the farther removed we are from the safe confines of our homes .......
..... those ancient Phonecians or Greeks that set out into a dark and
unknown sea were brave men, and so also will be those who will set
forth leaving this safe blue sphere of our human origins and voyage
into the vast deep. - Zak
Allen Thomson
In article <JMC.97Fe...@Steam.stanford.edu> j...@cs.Stanford.EDU writes:
[snip]
>
>Do you seriously think NASA's safety waivers put astronauts in as much
>danger as 17th thru early 20th century were? Scott and his entire
>expedition to the South Pole perished - to take a 20th century
>example.
>
>Do you think John Young was claiming any such thing?
>--
>John McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305
>http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/
>He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Well, perhaps it would be useful to do, or at least think about,
arithmetic. If a person takes a trip on the Shuttle, that person
has about a 1% chance of dying during the trip. What was the chance
of dying during an expedition in the period you mention?
pat
In article <5dv4vo$l...@mufasa.harvard.edu>,
zcr...@warren.med.harvard.edu says...
Physical laws are what they are, but we still can alter the
scenario. Obviously the cold equations must have been written
before Apollo 13. The simple physical study of the Apollo 13
accident was of an unsurvivable event. The CM had insufficient
power to survive, and the LEM had insufficient resources for 3 men.
now godwin would have one of the three get thrown overboard.
Gene krantz decided otherwise.
any cargo ship without 100 Kg of disposable internal fittings,
is a joke. when a B-17 lost 2 engines, it was heading down.
the crew would dump everything to delay the inevitable long
enough to get over land.
Edward Wright
> > Bravery has nothing to do with it. NASA granted itself more than 800
> > Criticality 1 (non-redundant) safety waivers on the Space Shuttle. No
> > safety waivers were allowed in the Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, or Skyalb
> > programs. That's not because the Mercury, Gemini, or Apollo astronauts
> > were less brave.
>Do you seriously think NASA's safety waivers put astronauts in as much
>danger as 17th thru early 20th century were? Scott and his entire
>expedition to the South Pole perished - to take a 20th century
>example.
That is irrelevent. Polar explorers -- the good ones, anyway -- did as much
careful planning as possible before the set out. Failure to do that is not
bravery, it's stupidity. Safety standards for space vehicles should be based
on how safe we can make them, at reasonable expense, with current
technology, not on what was acceptable to 17th Century explorers.
Besides, Shuttle astronauts are not explorers. Their mission is to boldy go
where Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, and Skylab have gone before. They are not
Charles Lindbergh. More like the people who crossed the Atlantic 30 years
after Lindbergh. But no one who crossed the Atlantic in the 1950s faced a
1/100 chance of death.
Steve Dirickson
p...@clark.net (pat) wrote:
>any cargo ship without 100 Kg of disposable internal fittings,
>is a joke. when a B-17 lost 2 engines, it was heading down.
>the crew would dump everything to delay the inevitable long
>enough to get over land.
I don't intend to pick on this specific posting; this theme of "was it
*really really* necessary to space the stowaway?" has come up over and
over again in this thread (and the multitude that preceded it).
Aren't we kind of missing the point? This is a *story*, people! It is
not a drill scanario for space cadets, and it's not some type of
historical account being presented as a lesson--it's a tale, made up
by the author, and the events are simply not negotiable; this is the
way the author wrote it, and this is the way it is. If the story had
ended with
1) A brilliant solution that allowed both pilot and stowaway to
survive unscathed
2) The previously-mentioned "Cold Solutions" resolution of both
surviving, but less than intact
3) Both surviving, but at the cost of dumping the cargo
(critically-needed medical supplies as I recall, though it's been a
while)
4) Something else
then it wouldn't be the same story. It might be thoroughly enjoyable,
hailed as a masterpiece, or it might be a quickly-forgotten bit of
fluff, but it would not be *this* story, and this story is what the
author wrote.
Steve Dirickson WestWin Consulting
(360) 598-6111 sdir...@kpt.nuwc.navy.mil
Todd D. Ellner
In article <5e04fa$t...@news.microsoft.com>,
Edward Wright <edwr...@microsoft.com> wrote:
>In article <JMC.97Fe...@Steam.stanford.edu>, j...@Steam.stanford.edu
>says...
::danger as 17th thru early 20th century were? Scott and his entire
::expedition to the South Pole perished - to take a 20th century
::example.
>That is irrelevent. Polar explorers -- the good ones, anyway -- did as much
>careful planning as possible before the set out. Failure to do that is not
>bravery, it's stupidity.
It is a pity that Scott was one of the stupid ones. It is even more of
a shame that history lionized him while villifying the real heroes like
Amundsen and Shackleton(sp?).
Todd
--
Todd Ellner | The man who never alters his opinion is like the
tel...@cs.pdx.edu | stagnant water and breeds Reptiles of the mind.
(503)557-1572 | --William Blake "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell"
dkn...@efn.org
John McCarthy wrote:
> The premise of _The Cold Equations_ was that all possible weight had
> been removed in order that the ship had a chance of bring the needed
> vaccine. There were no phone books.
>
> I can understand that people don't want a story to be based on that
> premise. I feel similarly about Anna Karenina. Tolstoy should have
> written the story so that Anna got psychiatric help in time.
"The Cold Equations," as many people have pointed out, is a cheesy story
because the text does not support its premises. If you add up the mass
of various superfluous things mentioned in the course of the story, it's
easy to show that the girl need not have been jettisoned. I won't give
the whole list here, but start with the pilot's weapon, the rulebook,
and the closet (stowaways, concealment of, Mark VI). :)
Damon
John McCarthy
In article <5dvbkl$l...@clarknet.clark.net> p...@clark.net (pat) writes:
>
> In article <5dv4vo$l...@mufasa.harvard.edu>,
> zcr...@warren.med.harvard.edu says...
> >
> >
> >
> >>John McCarthy (j...@Steam.stanford.edu) wrote:
> >>: error, and that everyone ought to know that. Would _The
> >>: Cold Equations_ have the same effect if it was set in a
> >>: rowboat?
> >
> >Perhaps it would. But "The Cold Equations" is interesting not only in
> >the point it makes about physical law being what it is whether we like
> >
> >it or not, but also in that this becomes more and more an issue for us
> >the farther removed we are from the safe confines of our homes .......
> >..... those ancient Phonecians or Greeks that set out into a dark and
> >unknown sea were brave men, and so also will be those who will set
> >forth leaving this safe blue sphere of our human origins and voyage
> >into the vast deep. - Zak
> >
> >
> >
>
> Physical laws are what they are, but we still can alter the
> scenario. Obviously the cold equations must have been written
> before Apollo 13. The simple physical study of the Apollo 13
> accident was of an unsurvivable event. The CM had insufficient
> power to survive, and the LEM had insufficient resources for 3 men.
>
> now godwin would have one of the three get thrown overboard.
> Gene krantz decided otherwise.
>
> is a joke. when a B-17 lost 2 engines, it was heading down.
> the crew would dump everything to delay the inevitable long
> enough to get over land.
>
The premise of _The Cold Equations_ was that all possible weight had
been removed in order that the ship had a chance of bring the needed
vaccine. There were no phone books.
I can understand that people don't want a story to be based on that
premise. I feel similarly about Anna Karenina. Tolstoy should have
written the story so that Anna got psychiatric help in time.
Zak Cramer
Not always - or, at least, not yet.
The entry in The Encyclopedia of SF isn't full of details
(and I can't remember it very well) but I believe T. Godwin
died of some horrible disease ....
If we could ALWAYS alter the scenario, then no one on Earth would
be hungry, no one would die, and I wouldn't have to go to work every
day and waste my life on vacuous activities like reading usenet.
Still, though, I take your point - we should be optimists until we are
dead. It's not over till it's over.
- Zak
pat
> >
> > In article <5dv4vo$l...@mufasa.harvard.edu>,
> > zcr...@warren.med.harvard.edu says...
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >>John McCarthy (j...@Steam.stanford.edu) wrote:
> > >>: error, and that everyone ought to know that. Would _The
> > >>: Cold Equations_ have the same effect if it was set in a
> > >>: rowboat?
> > >
> > >Perhaps it would. But "The Cold Equations" is interesting not only
in
> > >the point it makes about physical law being what it is whether we
like
> > >
> > >it or not, but also in that this becomes more and more an issue for
us
> > >the farther removed we are from the safe confines of our homes
.......
> > >..... those ancient Phonecians or Greeks that set out into a dark
and
> > >unknown sea were brave men, and so also will be those who will set
> > >forth leaving this safe blue sphere of our human origins and voyage
> > >into the vast deep. - Zak
> > >
> > >
> > >
> >
> > before Apollo 13. The simple physical study of the Apollo 13
> > accident was of an unsurvivable event. The CM had insufficient
> > power to survive, and the LEM had insufficient resources for 3 men.
> >
> > now godwin would have one of the three get thrown overboard.
> > Gene krantz decided otherwise.
> >
> > any cargo ship without 100 Kg of disposable internal fittings,
> > is a joke. when a B-17 lost 2 engines, it was heading down.
> > the crew would dump everything to delay the inevitable long
> > enough to get over land.
> >
>
>The premise of _The Cold Equations_ was that all possible weight had
>been removed in order that the ship had a chance of bring the needed
>vaccine. There were no phone books.
>
>I can understand that people don't want a story to be based on that
>premise. I feel similarly about Anna Karenina. Tolstoy should have
>written the story so that Anna got psychiatric help in time.
>--
>John McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305
>http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/
>He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
>
All possible weight? Gee that must mean Landing loads onthe
vehicle are far greater then takeoff loads.
One takes a saw or a torch and starts cutting away now un-needed
structure. That blaster is of course a good starting point.
Now limited life support is a much stronger case. X O2 on board,
the vehicle leaks at a certain rate, one consumes at a certain
rate. Now one can modify this by reducing O2 pressure, sealing off
areas, etc....
The basic nihilism of many SF writers is troubling to me.
pat
pat
In article <5e1ob0$r...@mufasa.harvard.edu>,
zcr...@warren.med.harvard.edu says...
>
>p...@clark.net (pat) wrote:
>>Physical laws are what they are, but we still can alter the
>>scenario.
>
>
>The entry in The Encyclopedia of SF isn't full of details
>(and I can't remember it very well) but I believe T. Godwin
>died of some horrible disease ....
>
>If we could ALWAYS alter the scenario, then no one on Earth would
>be hungry, no one would die, and I wouldn't have to go to work every
>day and waste my life on vacuous activities like reading usenet.
>
>Still, though, I take your point - we should be optimists until we are
>
>dead. It's not over till it's over.
>
> - Zak
>
>
I would point out professional pilots never panic during an
in-flight emergency. the Cockpit Voice Recorder tapes 99%
of the time show them deliberately trying procedures and
analyzing the problem until about a second before impact.
They usually keep working the controls until final impact.
Quitting is for losers.
pat
Cathy Mancus
>j...@Steam.stanford.edu says...
>>The premise of _The Cold Equations_ was that all possible weight had
>>been removed in order that the ship had a chance of bring the needed
>>vaccine.
In <5e239l$7...@clarknet.clark.net>, p...@clark.net (pat) writes:
>All possible weight? Gee that must mean Landing loads onthe
>vehicle are far greater then takeoff loads.
The vehicle in the story was a small craft "launched" in zero-gee
from a mother ship. It never handled takeoff loads.
Of course, this begs the question of whether you really want
to be routinely flying vehicles with so little margins.....
--Cathy Mancus <man...@vnet.ibm.com>
gram
pat (p...@clark.net) wrote:
:
: any cargo ship without 100 Kg of disposable internal fittings,
: is a joke. when a B-17 lost 2 engines, it was heading down.
: the crew would dump everything to delay the inevitable long
: enough to get over land.
A B-17 that lost two engines was was _designed_ to have a lot of
capacity for material that could be jettisoned, and the means to
dump it quickly and easily. The B stands for Bomber.
Ward Griffiths
Gregg Germain
Cathy Mancus (JHOLL4@) wrote:
: In <5e239l$7...@clarknet.clark.net>, p...@clark.net (pat) writes:
: >All possible weight? Gee that must mean Landing loads onthe
: >vehicle are far greater then takeoff loads.
: The vehicle in the story was a small craft "launched" in zero-gee
: from a mother ship. It never handled takeoff loads.
Um all it means to be launched in Zero G is that the loading
on the articles inside it was 1 G less than if it were launched from
earth.
I don't know what acceleration the ship had to get away from the
mother ship but THOSE are launch loads and therefore the articles
inside did handle a "takeoff" load.
--- Gregg
Saville
gger...@cfa.harvard.edu #29 Genie
Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics #1762 CRIS
Phone: (617) 496-7713 "A Mig at your six is better than
no Mig at all."
Cathy Mancus
In <3304b...@cfanews.harvard.edu>, gr...@ncc1701a.harvard.edu (Gregg Germain) writes:
>Cathy Mancus (JHOLL4@) wrote:
>> The vehicle in the story was a small craft "launched" in zero-gee
>> from a mother ship. It never handled takeoff loads.
> Um all it means to be launched in Zero G is that the loading
>on the articles inside it was 1 G less than if it were launched from
>Earth.
> I don't know what acceleration the ship had to get away from the
>mother ship but THOSE are launch loads and therefore the articles
>inside did handle a "takeoff" load.
Sorry, that's oversimplified. There is a reason that launchers
don't accelerate at 1.5 g from Earth; you would waste too much fuel
while deep in the gravity well. It is much more efficient to
accelerate rapidly. The ship that pulled away from the mother
ship could have used very low gee thrust, although I don't remember
the actual amount from the story.
Also, a launch from Earth requires supports that can handle
the loaded weight, extra fuel to handle the aerodynamic drag, etc,
etc. Compare the LM with the Saturn V and you'll see what I mean.
--Cathy Mancus <man...@vnet.ibm.com>
John Schilling
p...@clark.net (pat) writes:
>Physical laws are what they are, but we still can alter the
>scenario. Obviously the cold equations must have been written
>before Apollo 13. The simple physical study of the Apollo 13
>accident was of an unsurvivable event. The CM had insufficient
>power to survive, and the LEM had insufficient resources for 3 men.
And a "simple physical study" shows this?
Bull.
The physics governing human oxygen consumption are far from simple,
and indeed are not particularly amenable to analytical solution.
The rocket equation predicts with as much precision as you care
to ask for, how much propellant will be reqiuired to complete a
particular trip. There is no such equation for oxygen consumption;
certainly nothing along the order of "X men in Y hours consume Z
kilograms of oxygen".
There are statistical approximations. "X men in Y hours will with
99.99% confidence consume between Z1 and Z2 kilograms of oxygen".
And these approximations, applied to the circumstances of the Apollo
13 spacecraft and crew, resulted in a simple, physical *uncertainty*
regarding the survivability of the event. There were insufficient
resources to *guarantee* the survival of three men, but there is
a very large grey area between guaranteed survival and guaranteed
death by asphyxiation.
Apollo 13 was very much like the classic "lifeboat" story, and thus
a nearly absolute opposite of the scenario in _The Cold Equations_.
The former are characterized by a fundamental *un*certainty regarding
the outcome of various strategies, the latter by an absolute certainty.
Which is why Godwin chose propellant, rather than oxygen, as the
limiting factor.
>any cargo ship without 100 Kg of disposable internal fittings,
>is a joke.
Fine. List for me the 100kg of disposable internal fittings in
a Cessna Skywagon modified for range and cargo. The kind of
"cargo ship" which, in the real world, might be used for, say,
carrying medical supplies to a remote outpost. Your local
general-aviation airport can probably set you up with an owner's
manual that itemizes the weight of every component, so it shouldn't
be too difficult a task.
And yes, there is at least one place in such an aircraft where a
stowaway could hide, even through a standard preflight inspection.
--
*John Schilling * "You can have Peace, *
*Member:AIAA,NRA,ACLU,SAS,LP * or you can have Freedom. *
*University of Southern California * Don't ever count on having both *
*Aerospace Engineering Department * at the same time." *
*schi...@spock.usc.edu * - Robert A. Heinlein *
*(213)-740-5311 or 747-2527 * Finger for PGP public key *
David M. Palmer
p...@clark.net (pat) writes:
[trimming, and thereby losing all but the top level attribution]
>> > >the point it makes about physical law being what it is whether we like
>> > Physical laws are what they are, but we still can alter the
>> > any cargo ship without 100 Kg of disposable internal fittings,
>>
>>The premise of _The Cold Equations_ was that all possible weight had
>>been removed in order that the ship had a chance of bring the needed
>All possible weight? Gee that must mean Landing loads onthe
>vehicle are far greater then takeoff loads.
Yes they were. The ship in question was a small ship launched
from a larger ship. It couldn't lift off from a planet under
its own power, so there's no reason to make it strong enough to.
>The basic nihilism of many SF writers is troubling to me.
Actually, the story was written in response to the prevailing Sci-Fi
style of the time, where against impossible odds, the hero pulls
out a miraculous save, sometimes using super-science*. The whole
point of the story is that, _sometimes_, you can't. One unhappy
ending out of thousands of stories should be troubling only because
of its rarity.
*After the villian had encased the three orphans and me in solid rock,
eight miles below the surface, with only three minutes worth of air,
things looked pretty grim. But I noticed that the cavity we were in
intersected a vein of spuzzumite which, as you know, breaks down in the
presence of electricity. I grabbed a comb and ran it through the
tousled mops of the three youngsters, and soon had enough static charge
to clear the way to safety.
--
David M. Palmer
dmpa...@clark.net
http://www.clark.net/pub/dmpalmer/
Robert Sneddon (SEE .SIG TO REPLY)
In article <5e0c93$a...@sirius.cs.pdx.edu>
tel...@cs.pdx.edu "Todd D. Ellner" writes:
>
> It is a pity that Scott was one of the stupid ones. It is even more of
> a shame that history lionized him while villifying the real heroes like
> Amundsen and Shackleton(sp?).
>
And the unsung heroes, like Dr. Ray, from the Orkneys, who mapped and
surveyed massive tracts of Canada over a ten year period for the Hudson
Bay Company, and only lost one man, an Esquimaux who drowned. He
wasn't a self-publicist, or articulate, or titled, just a working stiff.
His big mistake that cost him dear was to bring back evidence of the fate
of an "expedition" lead by a titled idiot who died to the last man -
telling of "civilised" people and the cannibalism that was their last
desperate act before their extinction. He was vilified as a credulous
fool, who would take the word of a native, a savage, about their hero's
fate (the "savage" had traded valuable meat for useless (but identifiable)
trinkets to the lost expedition, and tried to give them directions,
which they ignored).
Going into the Unknown can kill you. Space travel is no different
from Polar or naval travel used to be, before powerful steel-hulled
ships, helicopters, satellite navigation systems etc were introduced.
It is dangerous, and AFAIK still totally a volunteer occupation.
The risks are minimised, and they can be reduced further as
knowledge is gained, but as this happens, the Unknown is rolled back.
This always seems to expose more Unknown...
--
*** SPAM BLOCKED ADDRESS *** To reply, remove the string "_nospam_" from
the address above. If you don't, mail will bounce and I'll never see it.
This is done to prevent spammers from junk-emailing me.
Robert (nojay) Sneddon
pat
In article <5e31ir$9...@spock.usc.edu>, schi...@spock.usc.edu says...
>>before Apollo 13. The simple physical study of the Apollo 13
>>accident was of an unsurvivable event. The CM had insufficient
>>power to survive, and the LEM had insufficient resources for 3 men.
>
>
>And a "simple physical study" shows this?
sure. The LEM was designed to support 2 men for 48 hours,
not 3 men for 96. Power, water, Co2 absorption were all
insufficient.
If you went by the book, ensign savik.
>
>Bull.
>
>The physics governing human oxygen consumption are far from simple,
>and indeed are not particularly amenable to analytical solution.
>The rocket equation predicts with as much precision as you care
>to ask for, how much propellant will be reqiuired to complete a
>particular trip. There is no such equation for oxygen consumption;
>certainly nothing along the order of "X men in Y hours consume Z
>kilograms of oxygen".
>
>There are statistical approximations. "X men in Y hours will with
>99.99% confidence consume between Z1 and Z2 kilograms of oxygen".
>
>And these approximations, applied to the circumstances of the Apollo
>13 spacecraft and crew, resulted in a simple, physical *uncertainty*
>regarding the survivability of the event. There were insufficient
>resources to *guarantee* the survival of three men, but there is
>a very large grey area between guaranteed survival and guaranteed
>death by asphyxiation.
>
>
>Apollo 13 was very much like the classic "lifeboat" story, and thus
>a nearly absolute opposite of the scenario in _The Cold Equations_.
>The former are characterized by a fundamental *un*certainty regarding
>the outcome of various strategies, the latter by an absolute certainty.
>
>Which is why Godwin chose propellant, rather than oxygen, as the
>limiting factor.
and even propellant while governed by the rocket equation assumes a
certain fixed mass.
>
>
>>any cargo ship without 100 Kg of disposable internal fittings,
>>is a joke.
>
>
>Fine. List for me the 100kg of disposable internal fittings in
>a Cessna Skywagon modified for range and cargo. The kind of
>"cargo ship" which, in the real world, might be used for, say,
>carrying medical supplies to a remote outpost. Your local
>general-aviation airport can probably set you up with an owner's
>manual that itemizes the weight of every component, so it shouldn't
>be too difficult a task.
>
>And yes, there is at least one place in such an aircraft where a
>stowaway could hide, even through a standard preflight inspection.
Ah, he get's chicken, Internal fittings. Real men will not be limited
to this.
Start with.
1) Seats.
2) Co-pilot controls (Pedals, rudders, yoke, linkages.)
3) Radio Nav stack and com radio stack.
4) all manuals, logbooks, food,water.
5) Fire extinguisher
6) O2 bottles.
7) engine instrumentation.
8) flight instruments except ASI,ALtimeter, climb rate gauge,compass.
9) carpeting
10) garments.
-------
now if you are a real macho stud, and not some whining, crying,
quitter, you get out on the wing and take off the
flaps, drives and linkages. Speed brakes if they are existent.
if that's not enough drop the wheels and landing gear struts.
That is assuming you are macho enough.
the goal is to get the cargo there, the aircraft is disposable.
a belly landing maybe ugly, but it is an acceptable option,
If you are up to the challenge.
------------------
Of course it's far easier to sit there reading magazines and whining
about how hard life is in a university then actually doing the hard
things.
pat
pat
In article <5e3cct$l...@clark.net>, dmpa...@clark.net says...
>
>p...@clark.net (pat) writes:
>[trimming, and thereby losing all but the top level attribution]
>>> > >the point it makes about physical law being what it is whether we
like
>>> > >it or not...
>>> > any cargo ship without 100 Kg of disposable internal fittings,
>>>
>>>The premise of _The Cold Equations_ was that all possible weight had
>>>been removed in order that the ship had a chance of bring the needed
>>>vaccine. There were no phone books.
>
>>All possible weight? Gee that must mean Landing loads onthe
>>vehicle are far greater then takeoff loads.
>
>Yes they were. The ship in question was a small ship launched
>from a larger ship. It couldn't lift off from a planet under
>its own power, so there's no reason to make it strong enough to.
>
Typical Narrow-minded, failure seeking Aero-space engineer.
Okay, so this is a shuttle, What does it do once it makes
planetary landfall, turn into a gazebo?
when it gasses up, loads cargo and leaves the planet, it faces
a much larger takeoff load.
And in this case, the vehicle is landing, so it's burning fuel
and losing weight and stress during the landing.
I know most aero folks sort of prefer failure, but this is
ridiculous.
>>The basic nihilism of many SF writers is troubling to me.
>
>Actually, the story was written in response to the prevailing Sci-Fi
>style of the time, where against impossible odds, the hero pulls
>out a miraculous save, sometimes using super-science*. The whole
>point of the story is that, _sometimes_, you can't. One unhappy
>ending out of thousands of stories should be troubling only because
>of its rarity.
>
Most of human endeavour is survival against the odds.
>*After the villian had encased the three orphans and me in solid rock,
>eight miles below the surface, with only three minutes worth of air,
>things looked pretty grim. But I noticed that the cavity we were in
>intersected a vein of spuzzumite which, as you know, breaks down in the
>presence of electricity. I grabbed a comb and ran it through the
>tousled mops of the three youngsters, and soon had enough static charge
>to clear the way to safety.
Hey if you like kids reading, fine. I'll stick to the more serious
stuff.
David Anderman
In article someone says...
>>>The basic nihilism of many SF writers is troubling to me.
What is more troubling to me is that we are a lot more interested in SF and
what to call Star Trek fans than getting out into the Real World to open the
space frontier.
How about a discussion on:
What are the real policy issues that confront space entrepreneurs today;
and
what can *we* do to resolve those issues?
Otherwise, we'll not only still be discussing SF and Star Trek on this board
in 30 years, but we'll be arguing about whose fault it was that the space
frontier was never opened.
DAvid Anderman
Jim Kingdon
> What are the real policy issues that confront space entrepreneurs today;
Well, depends on the entrepreneurs, but I'd probably say that the
biggest issues confronting entrepreneurs are not government policy at
all, but just the usual difficulties in starting a business. As
nearly as I can tell, LunaCorp and Casey Aerospace are going to
succeed or fail based on whether they can get their act together, not
based on anything external to those companies themselves.
> Otherwise, we'll not only still be discussing SF and Star Trek on this board
> in 30 years, but we'll be arguing about whose fault it was that the space
> frontier was never opened.
Oh we do that already :-).
-Mammel,L.H.
>Physical laws are what they are, but we still can alter the
>scenario. Obviously the cold equations must have been written
>before Apollo 13. The simple physical study of the Apollo 13
>accident was of an unsurvivable event. The CM had insufficient
>power to survive, and the LEM had insufficient resources for 3 men.
I actually remember this issue coming up during the coverage
of the events. All the news people were in a tizzy over the
amount of oxygen. A news conference was held and the spokesman
started intoning their plans etc., when the press erupted
from the floor, "WHAT ABOUT OXYGEN? DO THEY HAVE ENOUGH
OXYGEN?" Yes, they did. "HOW COULD THEY?" The amount in
the lunar module included allowance for two purges of the
cabin during their lunar excursions. "OHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
Also, FYI, sometime before Apollo 11, LEM was dropped in favor
of LM ( Lunar Excursion Module -> Lunar Module ) but
it continued to be referred to orally as the "Lem", and
LEM survives by virtue of its lexicographical utility in
crossword puzzles.
Lew Mammel, Jr.
Bill MacArthur
>>Fine. List for me the 100kg of disposable internal fittings in
>>a Cessna Skywagon modified for range and cargo. The kind of
>>"cargo ship" which, in the real world, might be used for, say,
>>carrying medical supplies to a remote outpost. Your local
>>general-aviation airport can probably set you up with an owner's
>>manual that itemizes the weight of every component, so it shouldn't
>>be too difficult a task.
>>
>>And yes, there is at least one place in such an aircraft where a
>>stowaway could hide, even through a standard preflight inspection.
>
>Ah, he get's chicken, Internal fittings. Real men will not be limited
>to this.
>
>Start with.
>
>1) Seats.
>2) Co-pilot controls (Pedals, rudders, yoke, linkages.)
>3) Radio Nav stack and com radio stack.
>4) all manuals, logbooks, food,water.
>5) Fire extinguisher
>6) O2 bottles.
>7) engine instrumentation.
>8) flight instruments except ASI,ALtimeter, climb rate gauge,compass.
>9) carpeting
>10) garments.
>
I presume that you are talking about a Cessna 180 and not the finely CE
ship. You have built some assumptions in here:
1) You have the tools to remove the seats.
2) You have the tools to remove the co-pilot controls and not mess
anything up.
4) Manuals etc. would weigh but a few pounds unless you have some long
term provisions.
5) Fire extinguisher- OK.
6) O2- OK.
7) Tools to remove engine instrumentation.
8) " " " flight ".
9) " " " carpeting.
10) OK but the big question is Who flies the airplane while you tear it
apart?
If you had the tools to rip out all this stuff, you would probably save
more weight throwing the tools overboard.
le...@netcom.com
In article <5e3duh$l...@clarknet.clark.net>,
p...@clark.net (pat) wrote:
>
> In article <5e31ir$9...@spock.usc.edu>, schi...@spock.usc.edu says...
> >
> >
> >
> >>Physical laws are what they are, but we still can alter the
> >>scenario. Obviously the cold equations must have been written
> >>before Apollo 13. The simple physical study of the Apollo 13
> >>accident was of an unsurvivable event. The CM had insufficient
> >>power to survive, and the LEM had insufficient resources for 3 men.
> >
> >
Not quite sure what you mean by this. The idea behind the rocket
equation is that fuel is burned, the total mass of the vehicle goes down,
that changes the amount of fuel you need to burn, etc. Mass of
propellant is not a constant.
The other thing is, it can be exactly calculated. There aren't any of
the uncertainties associated with something like oxygen consumption.
Thus, the characters in TCE know just how far they can run with the
girl's added mass on board.
>
> >
> >
> >>any cargo ship without 100 Kg of disposable internal fittings,
> >>is a joke.
> >
> >
If these fittings are disposable, then why are they even there in the
first place? Especially when extra mass means burning more fuel, which
means burning more money. Anyway 1) how do you tear them out and 2) if
they're not truly superfluous, (for instance, something like backups),
are you sure you want to fly without them?
> >Fine. List for me the 100kg of disposable internal fittings in
> >a Cessna Skywagon modified for range and cargo. The kind of
> >"cargo ship" which, in the real world, might be used for, say,
> >carrying medical supplies to a remote outpost. Your local
> >general-aviation airport can probably set you up with an owner's
> >manual that itemizes the weight of every component, so it shouldn't
> >be too difficult a task.
> >
> >And yes, there is at least one place in such an aircraft where a
> >stowaway could hide, even through a standard preflight inspection.
>
> Ah, he get's chicken, Internal fittings. Real men will not be limited
> to this.
>
> Start with.
>
> 1) Seats.
> 2) Co-pilot controls (Pedals, rudders, yoke, linkages.)
> 3) Radio Nav stack and com radio stack.
> 4) all manuals, logbooks, food,water.
> 5) Fire extinguisher
> 6) O2 bottles.
> 7) engine instrumentation.
> 8) flight instruments except ASI,ALtimeter, climb rate gauge,compass.
> 9) carpeting
> 10) garments.
>
> -------
Again, how do you tear all this stuff out? Also remember that you're
running against a time limit.
>
> now if you are a real macho stud, and not some whining, crying,
> quitter, you get out on the wing and take off the
> flaps, drives and linkages. Speed brakes if they are existent.
> if that's not enough drop the wheels and landing gear struts.
>
> That is assuming you are macho enough.
>
> the goal is to get the cargo there, the aircraft is disposable.
> a belly landing maybe ugly, but it is an acceptable option,
>
> If you are up to the challenge.
>
And belly landings are a good way to die.
Why even bother tearing all of this stuff out? Why not just stuff that
girl out the airlock? Isn't it a little foolish to risk the lives of the
pilot and all those miners by gutting his ship just to save the life of
one human being?
Anyway, what's macho go to do with it? Machismo or whatever is a poor
substitute for courage; for instance, if the girl had said, "Well, you
could gut this ship, trashing backup instrumentation and cutting away
pieces of the hull, drastically reducing the chances of either of us
making it and in the process dooming those poor miners, or I can walk out
that airlock. I think I'll walk out that airlock."
Now that's a lot more admirable than machismo.
> ------------------
>
> Of course it's far easier to sit there reading magazines and whining
> about how hard life is in a university then actually doing the hard
> things.
>
> pat
-------------------==== Posted via Deja News ====-----------------------
http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Post to Usenet
pat
In article <E5o61...@news.uwindsor.ca>, bil...@uwindsor.ca says...
>
>p...@clark.net (pat) wrote:
>>In article <5e31ir$9...@spock.usc.edu>, schi...@spock.usc.edu says...
>
>>>a Cessna Skywagon modified for range and cargo. The kind of
>>>"cargo ship" which, in the real world, might be used for, say,
>>>carrying medical supplies to a remote outpost. Your local
>>>general-aviation airport can probably set you up with an owner's
>>>manual that itemizes the weight of every component, so it shouldn't
>>>be too difficult a task.
>>>
>>>And yes, there is at least one place in such an aircraft where a
>>>stowaway could hide, even through a standard preflight inspection.
>>
>>Ah, he get's chicken, Internal fittings. Real men will not be
limited
>>to this.
>>
>>Start with.
>>
>>1) Seats.
>>2) Co-pilot controls (Pedals, rudders, yoke, linkages.)
>>3) Radio Nav stack and com radio stack.
>>4) all manuals, logbooks, food,water.
>>5) Fire extinguisher
>>6) O2 bottles.
>>7) engine instrumentation.
>>8) flight instruments except ASI,ALtimeter, climb rate gauge,compass.
>>9) carpeting
>>10) garments.
>>
>ship. You have built some assumptions in here:
>
>1) You have the tools to remove the seats.
>2) You have the tools to remove the co-pilot controls and not mess
>anything up.
>4) Manuals etc. would weigh but a few pounds unless you have some long
>term provisions.
>5) Fire extinguisher- OK.
>6) O2- OK.
>7) Tools to remove engine instrumentation.
>8) " " " flight ".
>9) " " " carpeting.
>10) OK but the big question is Who flies the airplane while you tear it
>apart?
>
>If you had the tools to rip out all this stuff, you would probably save
>more weight throwing the tools overboard.
>
A swiss army knife, a Leatherman and some desperation???
Sounds like all the tools I need. Now for somethign big like a
landing gear strut that may require something larger, or some
more creative approaches, but internal light fittings???
I think it's reasonable.
pat
-Mammel,L.H.
In article <8561229...@dejanews.com>, <le...@netcom.com> wrote:
>
>Not quite sure what you mean by this. The idea behind the rocket
>equation is that fuel is burned, the total mass of the vehicle goes down,
>that changes the amount of fuel you need to burn, etc. Mass of
>propellant is not a constant.
>
>The other thing is, it can be exactly calculated. There aren't any of
>the uncertainties associated with something like oxygen consumption.
>Thus, the characters in TCE know just how far they can run with the
>girl's added mass on board.
The idea that the fuel requirement is constant and independent
of the chosen trajectory is a dynamical absurdity. In the story
the pilot deviates considerably from the planned course
"to prolong that ultimate end". If the course had been planned
for minimal fuel usage, this sentimental act would be fatal -
much more surely than a minor weight deviation. And Wait! He
stops DECELERATING and it will take LONGER to get there?
The operative rules here are literary, fantastical, not
physical. The "ultimate end" of the story determines all
the rationalizations, not the other way around.
Lew Mammel, Jr.
Michael P. Walsh
David Anderman wrote:
>
>
>
> How about a discussion on:
>
>
>
> what can *we* do to resolve those issues?
---
---
I think that the main policy issue that needs to be explored is what
regulation problems will be faced by space entrepreneurs who are
trying to accomplish commercial activities in space.
The fact has to be faced that while the government may not be able
to produce low cost access to space, it certainly has the power
to prevent anyone else from doing it.
Mike Walsh
paschal
On Sun, 16 Feb 1997 le...@netcom.com wrote:
> Anyway, what's macho go to do with it? Machismo or whatever is a poor
> substitute for courage; for instance, if the girl had said, "Well, you
> could gut this ship, trashing backup instrumentation and cutting away
> pieces of the hull, drastically reducing the chances of either of us
> making it and in the process dooming those poor miners, or I can walk out
> that airlock. I think I'll walk out that airlock."
>
> Now that's a lot more admirable than machismo.
Given this improbable ship to start with, the above is one alternative
scenario that I would accept. At least it suggests the triumph of the
human spirit over selfishness, fear, etc.
But: machismo is still an extremely valuable quality in men, and in the
world. It, along with other qualities, has often aided men in
accomplishing the "impossible."
-Paschal
Doug Hendrix
dav...@cwo.com (David Anderman) wrote:
>How about a discussion on:
>What are the real policy issues that confront space entrepreneurs today;
>and
>what can *we* do to resolve those issues?
That's a good idea and may I suggest that we look forward rather than
back.
I think one big issue that confronts space entrepreneurs today is the
identification of a product that can be produced in space, in the near
term, that has sufficient commercial value to attract investors.
Maybe mining asteroids and the like are realistic commercial ventures
but payback prospects are too long to attract serious investors. What
is needed is a product that has great commercial appeal and can be
produced in Space in the 5 years. Five years and the prospect of
50-100% ROI and as an investor and I'm interested. Ten years requires
a MUCH greater ROI potential. Greater than 10 years....No one will be
interested. Find the product that fits the above description and a
toehold will be possible for space entrepreneurs.
yon lew
l...@ihgp167e.ih.lucent.com (-Mammel,L.H.) writes:
>In article <8561229...@dejanews.com>, <le...@netcom.com> wrote:
>>
>>Not quite sure what you mean by this. The idea behind the rocket
>>equation is that fuel is burned, the total mass of the vehicle goes down,
>>that changes the amount of fuel you need to burn, etc. Mass of
>>propellant is not a constant.
>>
>>The other thing is, it can be exactly calculated. There aren't any of
>>the uncertainties associated with something like oxygen consumption.
>>Thus, the characters in TCE know just how far they can run with the
>>girl's added mass on board.
>The idea that the fuel requirement is constant and independent
>of the chosen trajectory is a dynamical absurdity. In the story
>the pilot deviates considerably from the planned course
>"to prolong that ultimate end". If the course had been planned
>for minimal fuel usage, this sentimental act would be fatal -
>much more surely than a minor weight deviation. And Wait! He
>stops DECELERATING and it will take LONGER to get there?
It's been a while since I've read the story, but as I recall the shuttle
DID have a slight amount of surplus fuel for use in emergencies. When
the pilot lets the girl stay on board for a while before tossing her out,
it's this fuel which is being consumed.
Secondly, even if the pilot doesn't point the nose of his ship in a
different direction, just accelerating or decelerating will change his
orbit. I don't remember if he was travelling between stars or planets or
what, but you can easily set up a scenario where the above would be
true, especially if the guy has to deal with more than one big gravity
well in his path.
>The operative rules here are literary, fantastical, not
>physical. The "ultimate end" of the story determines all
>the rationalizations, not the other way around.
>Lew Mammel, Jr.
I would have to disagree here. While this story continues to excite
controversy, it almost always centers around the "Couldn't he have tossed
some stuff out?" question. I don't know that anyone's successfully
undermined the basis for the story on the grounds of it being simply
physically impossible.
-Mammel,L.H.
In article <lewyE5q...@netcom.com>, yon lew <le...@netcom.com> wrote:
>l...@ihgp167e.ih.lucent.com (-Mammel,L.H.) writes:
>
>>The idea that the fuel requirement is constant and independent
>>of the chosen trajectory is a dynamical absurdity. In the story
>>the pilot deviates considerably from the planned course
>>"to prolong that ultimate end". If the course had been planned
>>for minimal fuel usage, this sentimental act would be fatal -
>>much more surely than a minor weight deviation. And Wait! He
>>stops DECELERATING and it will take LONGER to get there?
>
>
>It's been a while since I've read the story, but as I recall the shuttle
>DID have a slight amount of surplus fuel for use in emergencies. When
>the pilot lets the girl stay on board for a while before tossing her out,
>it's this fuel which is being consumed.
OK, belay my "And wait! ..." remark.
It does mention a "meager surplus of fuel to compensate for
unfavorable conditions within the atmosphere." He reduces
deceleration to save fuel, right - so this defers the fatal
moment, although it would presumably shorten the trip. On the
other hand he's already been decelerating at a presumably moderate
rate for an hour without unduly wasting fuel, so we're getting
kind of a confused picture here.
Anyway, how could this delay of an hour fail to completely wreck
the carefully planned trajectory and drastically affect
the fuel requirements? A severe technical flaw. It would have
made more sense if the EDS ( Emergency Dispatch Ship ) was
still coasting before a planned burn.
>Secondly, even if the pilot doesn't point the nose of his ship in a
>different direction, just accelerating or decelerating will change his
>orbit. I don't remember if he was travelling between stars or planets or
>what, but you can easily set up a scenario where the above would be
>true, especially if the guy has to deal with more than one big gravity
>well in his path.
It's a straight "drop" onto the planet. Come on! you want to
talk rocket science and you don't know if it's "stars or
planets or what" ? Thanks for making my point about rules
fantastical!
I reiterate, the setting of the story is the fifties SF
mythos, not reality. BTW, I think that's why the ship isn't
coasting - a residual Aristotelianism whereby motion entails
some sort of propulsion, whether decelerative or otherwise.
Lew Mammel, Jr.
Steve Patterson
In article <5e4kcc$d...@clarknet.clark.net>, p...@clark.net (pat) says:
>
>In article <5e3cct$l...@clark.net>, dmpa...@clark.net says...
>>
>>p...@clark.net (pat) writes:
>>
>>>All possible weight? Gee that must mean Landing loads onthe
>>>vehicle are far greater then takeoff loads.
>>
>>Yes they were. The ship in question was a small ship launched
>>from a larger ship. It couldn't lift off from a planet under
>>its own power, so there's no reason to make it strong enough to.
>
>Typical Narrow-minded, failure seeking Aero-space engineer.
>Okay, so this is a shuttle, What does it do once it makes
>planetary landfall, turn into a gazebo?
Typical short-sighted, fault-seeking critic. :) It isn't a shuttle.
It's an Emergency Dispatch Ship, designed to be as light as possible.
It probably operates on the Dorito(tm) principle; launch all you want,
we'll just make more. (There are *enormous* weight-savings when you
make something disposable.)
>when it gasses up, loads cargo and leaves the planet, it faces
>a much larger takeoff load.
No, it doesn't, because it never takes off again. The pilot would
probably be retrieved by a reusable shuttle launched by a later-arriving
FTL transport, either a scheduled supply run or a more-fully equipped
relief ship depending upon the nature of the emergency.
[example of super-science tale deleted.]
>
>Hey if you like kids reading, fine. I'll stick to the more serious
>stuff.
You might want to re-read that post more carefully, and check whether it
was *endorsing* or *denigrating* super-science tales.
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
Note: My "from:" address has been altered to foil mailbots.
Please use the corrected address appearing below.
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
Steven J. Patterson spatt...@wwdc.com
W.O.R.L.D.'S....S..L..O..W..E..S..T....W...R...I...T...E...R
"Men may move mountains, but ideas move men."
-- M.N. Vorkosigan, per L.M. Bujold
Jim Kingdon
> I think that the main policy issue that needs to be explored is what
> regulation problems will be faced by space entrepreneurs who are
> trying to accomplish commercial activities in space.
It depends on the activity. For comsats and most other payloads which
can launch on existing launchers (or new launchers which can cope with
the existing regulatory framework), the regulatory environment is well
known. For many kinds of deals with the Russians (e.g. Pepsi Mir ad),
the US government is not an issue.
I'll agree that the regulatory environment is an issue. But I think
it is not as large an issue as many people assume.
Jim Kingdon
> I think one big issue that confronts space entrepreneurs today is the
> identification of a product that can be produced in space, in the near
> term, that has sufficient commercial value to attract investors.
Absolutely right. But requiring the product to be produced in
space is thinking too narrowly. For example:
LunaCorp--today they try to put together Desert Trek, Robots in
Cyberspace or other projects involving terrestrial rovers; if that
works out then they can build on that to do the same thing with rovers
to the moon.
Casey Aerospace--today they put together a plan for microgravity
aircraft tourism; if that works out then they can move on to
suborbital or orbital tourism.
KSC Visitor center--in 1996 they spent a bunch of private money to
upgrade their facility to attract more tourists; if that works out
then they can move on to deals with LunaCorp, video from Mir, or other
ways in which a theme park might fund spaceflight.
I have lots more ideas on matters such as these; see
http://www.cyclic.com/~kingdon/space/markets.html
yon lew
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,rec.arts.sf.misc,rec.arts.sf.written,sci.space.policy
Subject: Re: The Cold Equations
References: <5dgi63$n...@news-central.tiac.net> <8561229...@dejanews.com> <5e871d$e...@ssbunews.ih.lucent.com> <lewyE5q...@netcom.com> <5e8k9r$f...@ssbunews.ih.lucent.com>
l...@ihgp167e.ih.lucent.com (-Mammel,L.H.) writes:
Hmm, I guess I should have been more specific here. First off, just let
me say that it's been a long time since I've read this story. From what
I recall, it wasn't too specific on a lot of the technical details,
leaving you free to assume stuff. I assumed that the guy knew what he
was doing and that the extra amount of fuel he has was sizable. After
all, if he only had a tiny amount of extra fuel he wouldn't have had time
to talk to the girl; he would have had to shoot her immediately and throw
her body out the hatch. I also assumed that they plotted a new orbit
because as I pointed out before it's impossible for him to maintain the
same orbit once he stops decelerating. Given that, it's entirely
conceivable that in his new orbit it'll take him longer to get where he's
going.
So, hell, if we're going to go out on a limb let's just go all the way
out and hypothesize as to what the characters in Tom Godwin's story were
_really_ thinking. Our pilot has to navigate through several big gravity
wells, (if he's making just a planet drop, then the planet's got a couple
of big-sized moons that are messing with his orbit). Time is of the
essence, (I don't remember, but weren't these miners sick with some
disease or some such?), so the navigators use their computers to plot a
course that takes a minimal amount of time, but it requires constant
deceleration and constant fuel burning to do it. Alas, our pilot finds
this girl on board, so he kills the engines to give them some extra
time. Unfortunately, this kicks them into another orbit. The fuel he
would have burned to constantly decelerate his ship and keep him on a
minimal-time flight path will now be used to guide him along another,
slower approach.
>>Secondly, even if the pilot doesn't point the nose of his ship in a
>>different direction, just accelerating or decelerating will change his
>>orbit. I don't remember if he was travelling between stars or planets or
>>what, but you can easily set up a scenario where the above would be
>>true, especially if the guy has to deal with more than one big gravity
>>well in his path.
>It's a straight "drop" onto the planet. Come on! you want to
>talk rocket science and you don't know if it's "stars or
>planets or what" ? Thanks for making my point about rules
>fantastical!
Obviously, I was just joking about that interstellar travel part. Those
miners' grandkids' grandkids would have perished long before the shuttle
landed.
Also, I don't remember if it was a drop onto a planet, or from how far
out. If it's from way out, you can imagine the effect any nearby planets
would have on this guy's course. If it's from relatively close, you
could have the same effect from a couple of big moons.
Or hell, maybe instead of fuel he's going to slingshot off the sun or a
moon or something to guide himself in.
>I reiterate, the setting of the story is the fifties SF
>mythos, not reality. BTW, I think that's why the ship isn't
>coasting - a residual Aristotelianism whereby motion entails
>some sort of propulsion, whether decelerative or otherwise.
>Lew Mammel, Jr.
See above for some groundless but basically sound speculation as to why
he wasn't coasting.
David Thomas Richard Given
In article <JMC.97Fe...@Steam.stanford.edu>,
John McCarthy <j...@cs.Stanford.EDU> wrote:
[...]
>Do you seriously think NASA's safety waivers put astronauts in as much
>danger as 17th thru early 20th century were? Scott and his entire
>expedition to the South Pole perished - to take a 20th century
>example.
[...]
So did the crew of _Challenger_.
I think it's a valid comparison. It's a dangerous, highly experimental
business. If something goes wrong, they're on their own. AFAIK, there is
*no* way in which a shuttle, stranded in orbit, can be rescued before
they run out of life support, unless a shuttle happens to be on the pad
for some other reason.
--
------------------- http://www-hons-cs.cs.st-and.ac.uk/~dg --------------------
If you're up against someone more intelligent than you are, do something
totally insane and let him think himself to death. --- Pyanfar Chanur
---------------- Sun-Earther David Daton Given of Lochcarron ------------------
Brenda Kalt
In article <lewyE5q...@netcom.com>, le...@netcom.com (yon lew) writes:
|> >the pilot deviates considerably from the planned course
|> >"to prolong that ultimate end". If the course had been planned
|> >for minimal fuel usage, this sentimental act would be fatal -
|> >much more surely than a minor weight deviation.
|>
|> >The operative rules here are literary, fantastical, not
|> >physical. The "ultimate end" of the story determines all
|> >the rationalizations, not the other way around.
|>
|> >Lew Mammel, Jr.
|>
|>
|> I would have to disagree here. While this story continues to excite
|> controversy, it almost always centers around the "Couldn't he have tossed
|> some stuff out?" question. I don't know that anyone's successfully
|> undermined the basis for the story on the grounds of it being simply
|> physically impossible.
|>
Within the last year I read a story (whose title escapes me, unfortunately--
"The Warm Equations,"?) that solved the paradox. The pilot used a laser
to cut off the child's legs, her own legs, and one of her arms. (In this
rubber science, the child was young enough to regenerate the limbs, but the
pilot isn't.) Jettisoning this mass did the trick.
--
Brenda Kalt Pardon him, Theodotus: he is a barbarian, and
sas...@unx.sas.com thinks that the customs of his tribe and island
are laws of nature. G.B.S. > R.A.H.
John Schilling
p...@clark.net (pat) writes:
>In article <5e3cct$l...@clark.net>, dmpa...@clark.net says...
>>
>>p...@clark.net (pat) writes:
>>>All possible weight? Gee that must mean Landing loads onthe
>>>vehicle are far greater then takeoff loads.
>>
>>Yes they were. The ship in question was a small ship launched
>>from a larger ship. It couldn't lift off from a planet under
>>its own power, so there's no reason to make it strong enough to.
>>
>Typical Narrow-minded, failure seeking Aero-space engineer.
Actually, most of us seek success, not failure. As 99.999+% of
the aircraft which take off on a given day do in fact land
safely at the end of their journey, I think we do a pretty
good job.
>Okay, so this is a shuttle, What does it do once it makes
>planetary landfall, turn into a gazebo?
>when it gasses up, loads cargo and leaves the planet, it faces
>a much larger takeoff load.
This confirms what I have suspected from the start.
YOU HAVEN'T READ THE STORY YOU ARE DENOUNCING.
Sorry for shouting, but the intellectual dishonesty underlying this
fact is staggering. To assert that you are qualified to denounce a
story as implauisble, and by implication its author as incompetent,
when you haven't *read* the story, is absurd.
In the story, it is quite explicity stated early on, that not only
is the spacecraft in question "launched" in space rather than from
a planetary surface, but that it is strictly a one-use, expendable
craft for emergency operations.
When it lands, it *does* turn into a gazeebo. Or, more appropriately,
an emergency shelter. It *never* "gasses up, loads cargo, and leaves
the planet". As such, the greatest loads it will ever face occur
during landing.
John Schilling
p...@clark.net (pat) writes:
>In article <5e31ir$9...@spock.usc.edu>, schi...@spock.usc.edu says...
>>
>>p...@clark.net (pat) writes:
>>
>>
>>>Physical laws are what they are, but we still can alter the
>>>scenario. Obviously the cold equations must have been written
>>>before Apollo 13. The simple physical study of the Apollo 13
>>>accident was of an unsurvivable event. The CM had insufficient
>>>power to survive, and the LEM had insufficient resources for 3 men.
>>
>>
>>And a "simple physical study" shows this?
>sure. The LEM was designed to support 2 men for 48 hours,
>not 3 men for 96. Power, water, Co2 absorption were all
>insufficient.
The LEM was designed to support two men in the top 5% of the
population in both body mass and metabolic rate, for 48 hours
of moderate to heavy physcial activity, with absolutely no
adverse health effects of any kind.
How long will such a life-support system suffice for three
random men deliberately seeking to minimize oxygen consumption,
and willing to suffer any effects of anoxia or acute carbpon
dioxide poisoning short of actual death?
Hint #1: The answer is *not* (2*48)/3 = 32 hours
Hint #2: The answer cannot be given with accuracy better than +/-50%
>>>any cargo ship without 100 Kg of disposable internal fittings,
>>>is a joke.
>>
>>
>>Fine. List for me the 100kg of disposable internal fittings in
>>a Cessna Skywagon modified for range and cargo. The kind of
>>"cargo ship" which, in the real world, might be used for, say,
>>carrying medical supplies to a remote outpost. Your local
>>general-aviation airport can probably set you up with an owner's
>>manual that itemizes the weight of every component, so it shouldn't
>>be too difficult a task.
>>
>>And yes, there is at least one place in such an aircraft where a
>>stowaway could hide, even through a standard preflight inspection.
>Ah, he get's chicken, Internal fittings. Real men will not be limited
>to this.
>Start with.
[wish list of items, many of which are not even present in the A/C
in question]
>now if you are a real macho stud, and not some whining, crying,
>quitter, you get out on the wing and take off the flaps, drives
>and linkages. Speed brakes if they are existent. if that's not
>enough drop the wheels and landing gear struts.
>That is assuming you are macho enough.
This reminds me why the term "macho" is now generally considered to
be an insult, indicating a combination of extreme stupidity and even
more extreme overconfidence.
Were it not for the fact that Cessna 180 aircraft are, unlike yourself,
a valuable and now irreplaceable commodity, I would dearly love to see
you try to remove the wing flaps while in flight. It's a spectacular
way to commit suicide, to be sure.
Hint #3. The attachment fittings for the wing flaps on Cessna's light
singles are not accessable unless the flaps are extended. The flap
extension mechanism does not incorporate any provision for extending
only one flap at a time. Consider the aerodynamics of the aircraft
midway through your proposed stunt, with one flap extended and the
other removed.
At least, that's the way things work in the reality I inhabit. You
apparenly reside in an imaginary realm where a sufficiently "macho"
individual can accomplish absolutely anything they set their mind to.
I am insufficiently familiar with the physical laws (if any) in your
realm to continue this debate on those terms,
pat
In article <5ea0og$t...@van1s03.cyberion.com>,
no_spam_s...@wwdc.com says...
>>>
>>>p...@clark.net (pat) writes:
>>>
>>>>All possible weight? Gee that must mean Landing loads onthe
>>>>vehicle are far greater then takeoff loads.
>>>
>>>Yes they were. The ship in question was a small ship launched
>>>from a larger ship. It couldn't lift off from a planet under
>>>its own power, so there's no reason to make it strong enough to.
>>
>>Typical Narrow-minded, failure seeking Aero-space engineer.
>>planetary landfall, turn into a gazebo?
>
>It's an Emergency Dispatch Ship, designed to be as light as possible.
>It probably operates on the Dorito(tm) principle; launch all you want,
>we'll just make more. (There are *enormous* weight-savings when you
>make something disposable.)
>
ah, so the story creates the perfect scenario. a ship deep in space,
without enough mass for a high Delta -V shuttle, carries the
penalty mass for an emergency dispatch ship, meant to travel
long range, one way, planetary landing missions, with the
optimal cargo space for a lightweight medical cargo of say
20 Kg, and said deep space ship is at the maximum range of
the dispatch ship, stripped to bare bones????
ANy thing else we can add to the scenario? How about an
exploding Cryo Oxygen tank????
>>when it gasses up, loads cargo and leaves the planet, it faces
>>a much larger takeoff load.
>
>No, it doesn't, because it never takes off again. The pilot would
>probably be retrieved by a reusable shuttle launched by a
later-arriving
>FTL transport, either a scheduled supply run or a more-fully equipped
>relief ship depending upon the nature of the emergency.
Note the Probably.
So you don't actually know?
Thank you.
yon lew
p...@clark.net (pat) writes:
It was an emergency. If we're going to speculate about the background of
the story, why not speculate that the ship was being pushed to it's outer
limits to reach a planet at a range outside of what it was designed for?
>>>when it gasses up, loads cargo and leaves the planet, it faces
>>>a much larger takeoff load.
>>
>>No, it doesn't, because it never takes off again. The pilot would
>>probably be retrieved by a reusable shuttle launched by a
>later-arriving
>>FTL transport, either a scheduled supply run or a more-fully equipped
>>relief ship depending upon the nature of the emergency.
>Note the Probably.
>So you don't actually know?
>Thank you.
It's a story, it doesn't say, there's this thing called willing
suspension of disbelief, read what James Gunn had to say about critics of
TCE.
Edward A Gedeon
In article <5e5eul$a...@ssbunews.ih.lucent.com>, l...@ihgp167e.ih.lucent.com (-Mammel,L.H.) writes:
>
> Also, FYI, sometime before Apollo 11, LEM was dropped in favor
> of LM ( Lunar Excursion Module -> Lunar Module ) but
> it continued to be referred to orally as the "Lem", and
> LEM survives by virtue of its lexicographical utility in
> crossword puzzles. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
There should be a term for this type of word. How about,
"Crucinym (n): a word which is not in common usage, but appears
frequently in crossword puzzles."
To get back on topic, I read "The Cold Equations" years ago, and my
first reaction was that you wouldn't get *me* to pilot a ship with
that little margin. What if the pilot has to land in a heavy
crosswind? I know, the point of the story is that any new frontier is
not a safe fuzzy warm cuddly place; it's damn dangerous. But still,
the author could have made his point a little more effectively.
--
Ed Gedeon, Delco Electronics | "'Twas honest old Noah first planted the Vine,
Above opinions are mine alone | And bettered his Morals by drinking its Wine;
DNRC O- _____________________| He justly the drinking of Water decried;
_________| For he knew that all Mankind, by drinking it, died." --B. Franklin
Steve Patterson
In article <5eah47$2...@clarknet.clark.net>, p...@clark.net (pat) says:
>
>In article <5ea0og$t...@van1s03.cyberion.com>,
>no_spam_s...@wwdc.com says...
>>
>>It isn't a shuttle.
>>It's an Emergency Dispatch Ship, designed to be as light as possible.
>>It probably operates on the Dorito(tm) principle; launch all you want,
>>we'll just make more. (There are *enormous* weight-savings when you
>>make something disposable.)
>
>ah, so the story creates the perfect scenario. a ship deep in space,
>without enough mass for a high Delta -V shuttle, carries the
>penalty mass for an emergency dispatch ship, meant to travel
>long range, one way, planetary landing missions, with the
>optimal cargo space for a lightweight medical cargo of say
>20 Kg, and said deep space ship is at the maximum range of
>the dispatch ship, stripped to bare bones????
a) As I noted in my post, a ship designed for one use would be much lighter
than an equivalent one designed for reuse; you don't have to worry nearly
as much about material fatigue.
b) I quote from the story:
"Some method of delivering supplies or assistance when an emergency occurred
on a world not shceduled for a visit had been needed and the Emergency
Dispatch Ships had been the answer. Small and collapsible, they occupied
little room in the hold of the cruiser; made of light metal and plastics,
they were driven by a small rocket drive that consumed relatively little
fuel. Each cruiser carried four EDS's and when a call for aid was received
the nearest cruiser would drop into normal space long enough to launch an
EDS with the needed supplies or personnel, then vanish again as it
continued on its course."
[...]
"The cruisers were forced by necessity to carry a limited amount of the
bulky rocket fuel and the fuel was rationed with care; the cruiser's
computers determining the exact amount of fuel each EDS would require for
its mission."
I hope this answers your questions regarding what an EDS is, and why there
were such critical limitations upon fuel consumption.
c) Every now and then an intrusive entity known variously as "Society" or
"the Government" forces people to think about assisting others in a crisis,
sometimes to the (minor) detriment to those who would prefer to let the
damned fools rot. I mean, having to hire a *third* wireless operator to
have a 24-hour radio watch? Outrageous! Just because those bloody White
Star blighters had a run-in with an iceberg...
>ANy thing else we can add to the scenario? How about an
>exploding Cryo Oxygen tank????
Well, whatever floats your boat. I'd personally prefer having space sirens
serinade the pilot, forcing him to tie himself into his chair and block
his ears with earphones playing Metallica's "Enter Sandman"...
>>>when it gasses up, loads cargo and leaves the planet, it faces
>>>a much larger takeoff load.
>>
>>No, it doesn't, because it never takes off again. The pilot would
>>probably be retrieved by a reusable shuttle launched by a
>later-arriving
>>FTL transport, either a scheduled supply run or a more-fully equipped
>>relief ship depending upon the nature of the emergency.
>
>Note the Probably.
>
>So you don't actually know?
Well, it's kinda hard for me to ask Godwin himself. However, the assumption fits
with the details of the story and with what little I know about engineering,
economics, and physics.
>Thank you.
*Glad* to be of service.
Olaf Weber
John Schilling writes:
> In the story, it is quite explicity stated early on, that not only
> is the spacecraft in question "launched" in space rather than from
> a planetary surface, but that it is strictly a one-use, expendable
> craft for emergency operations.
> When it lands, it *does* turn into a gazeebo. Or, more appropriately,
> an emergency shelter. It *never* "gasses up, loads cargo, and leaves
> the planet". As such, the greatest loads it will ever face occur
> during landing.
But this raises that other point: presumably the "secondary function"
as an emergency shelter would be a design consideration. But if the
fixtures cannot be removed from the craft, won't that impair its
usability as an emergency shelter?
But that isn't my main gripe with the story. As I recall, we are told
that these craft are used fairly regularly, and the fuel margins are
routinely this small. This is already odd by itself: a vital mission
where no backup is possible is warrants increased margins compared to
a routine flight.
But we are also told that it is not uncommon to find stowaways -- in
fact, there are even regulations that spell out that they are to be
shot and jettisoned, and a gun is part of the standard pilot's
equipment (partly) for this reason. The implication is that finding
stowaways is practically a routine occurence.
But if you combine these two, it suggests that the missions of these
craft fail with some regularity due to the presence of stowaways,
either because they're found too late, or because they managed to
shoot first. But perhaps that is cheaper than keeping a decent watch
over the craft while it is being prepared for launch, or doing a
thorough pre-launch check.
--
Olaf Weber
Cathy Mancus
In <5eac8l$k...@spock.usc.edu>, schi...@spock.usc.edu (John Schilling) writes:
>The LEM was designed to support two men in the top 5% of the
>How long will such a life-support system suffice for three
>random men deliberately seeking to minimize oxygen consumption...
I'm confused as to how the *same* two men who are "in the top
5% of the population in body mass and metabolic rate" suddenly
become two of the "three random men...." in the second paragraph.
The crew doesn't suddenly change in the middle of the mission!
Also, there is no reason to suppose that moonwalkers are in the
top 5% of the population in body mass. I doubt that Pete Conrad
was, for example.
--Cathy Mancus <man...@vnet.ibm.com>
Karen M Cramer
ark.net> <5eac8l$k...@spock.usc.edu> <5ecbrd$m...@rtpnews.raleigh.ibm.com>
Distribution:
Cathy Mancus (JHOLL4@) wrote:
: In <5eac8l$k...@spock.usc.edu>, schi...@spock.usc.edu (John Schilling) writes:
: >The LEM was designed to support two men in the top 5% of the
: >population in both body mass and metabolic rate...
: >How long will such a life-support system suffice for three
: >random men deliberately seeking to minimize oxygen consumption...
: I'm confused as to how the *same* two men who are "in the top
: 5% of the population in body mass and metabolic rate" suddenly
: become two of the "three random men...." in the second paragraph.
: The crew doesn't suddenly change in the middle of the mission!
The system was designed for the top 5%, in order to make sure which
ever 2 guys ended up on the moon would have adquate life support.
: Also, there is no reason to suppose that moonwalkers are in the
: top 5% of the population in body mass. I doubt that Pete Conrad
: was, for example.
I also doubt many of the other austronauts were either. They tend to
be short and normal weight.
: --Cathy Mancus <man...@vnet.ibm.com>
Karen
--
We choose to go to the Moon... not because they are easy but because they
are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of
our energies and skills, because that challenge is one we are willing to
accept, one we are unwilling to postpone and one we intend to win. -J.F.K.
le...@netcom.com
In article <E5rEp...@unx.sas.com>,
I think that was Larry Niven. And I think that someone else in this ng
pointed out that Niven had to "cheat" by making the child much younger
than the girl was in TCE. Otherwise, even the mass of all those
discarded limbs still wouldn't be enough for the shuttle to land safely.
John McCarthy
What did James Gunn have to say about critics of TCE? Were the
squabbles in SFdom the same as ours?
--
John McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305
http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
John Schilling
Olaf Weber <Olaf....@cwi.nl> writes:
>John Schilling writes:
>> In the story, it is quite explicity stated early on, that not only
>> is the spacecraft in question "launched" in space rather than from
>> a planetary surface, but that it is strictly a one-use, expendable
>> craft for emergency operations.
>> When it lands, it *does* turn into a gazeebo. Or, more appropriately,
>> an emergency shelter. It *never* "gasses up, loads cargo, and leaves
>> the planet". As such, the greatest loads it will ever face occur
>> during landing.
>But that isn't my main gripe with the story. As I recall, we are told
>that these craft are used fairly regularly, and the fuel margins are
>routinely this small. This is already odd by itself: a vital mission
>where no backup is possible is warrants increased margins compared to
>a routine flight.
Margins are required only to the extent that there is uncertainty
regarding actual requirements. In the case of rocketry, for any
given mission the uncertainty regarding propellant consumption
can be reduced almost arbitrarily, and in fact real space launch
missions (including manned ones) typically have propellant margins
of one or two percent, tops.
In the case of EDS ships, the real margin is in the mission-planning
stage. When the time comes to launch one of the four EDS shuttles a
cruiser normally carries, the mission for *that* shuttle is already
known, and the required propellant can be computed to within a percent
or so. But there's no way to know what, if any, missions the other
three EDS shuttles will be called upon to perform, and as there is
not enough propellant to top off the tanks on all four, it is clearly
preferable to save as much propellant for the three shuttles whose
missions are not known, than to waste extra on the one shuttle they
know fairly certainly will *not* need it to complete the mission.
>But we are also told that it is not uncommon to find stowaways -- in
>fact, there are even regulations that spell out that they are to be
>shot and jettisoned, and a gun is part of the standard pilot's
>equipment (partly) for this reason. The implication is that finding
>stowaways is practically a routine occurence.
I'll quibble with "not uncommon". Lots of regulations exist for
dealing with quite uncommon situations. Discussion in the story
confirms some prior experience with, but does not indicate the
frequency of, stowaways.
Explicitly disreputable stowaways, mostly criminals trying to run from
the law. Not, in the opionion of the EDS service's leaders, worth
risking the lives of innocents to save. If the first three EDS shuttles
depart with a stowaway's worth of propellant margin, there might not
be enough for the fourth shuttle to complete its mission at all.
A defensible attitude for a frontier society, if not necessarily
appropriate for late-20th-century America.
>But if you combine these two, it suggests that the missions of these
>craft fail with some regularity due to the presence of stowaways,
>either because they're found too late, or because they managed to
>shoot first. But perhaps that is cheaper than keeping a decent watch
>over the craft while it is being prepared for launch, or doing a
>thorough pre-launch check.
Probably true, in fact. Given the demands placed on they few hyperspace
cruisers in Godwin's universe, it isn't likely that they carry any great
surplus of crew. So the mechanics are probably overworked, and there are
no full-time security guards. Even the EDS pilot himself likely had a
day job, so to speak. Not much chance of implementing an ironclad defense
against stowaways in such an environment.
Richard Harter
schi...@spock.usc.edu (John Schilling) wrote:
>Olaf Weber <Olaf....@cwi.nl> writes:
>>But that isn't my main gripe with the story. As I recall, we are told
>>that these craft are used fairly regularly, and the fuel margins are
>>routinely this small. This is already odd by itself: a vital mission
>>where no backup is possible is warrants increased margins compared to
>>a routine flight.
>Margins are required only to the extent that there is uncertainty
>regarding actual requirements. In the case of rocketry, for any
>given mission the uncertainty regarding propellant consumption
>can be reduced almost arbitrarily, and in fact real space launch
>missions (including manned ones) typically have propellant margins
>of one or two percent, tops.
>In the case of EDS ships, the real margin is in the mission-planning
>stage. When the time comes to launch one of the four EDS shuttles a
>cruiser normally carries, the mission for *that* shuttle is already
>known, and the required propellant can be computed to within a percent
>or so. But there's no way to know what, if any, missions the other
>three EDS shuttles will be called upon to perform, and as there is
>not enough propellant to top off the tanks on all four, it is clearly
>preferable to save as much propellant for the three shuttles whose
>missions are not known, than to waste extra on the one shuttle they
>know fairly certainly will *not* need it to complete the mission.
All of this is somewhat tangential to the thrust (you should excuse
the expression) of the story which means to establish a certain
situation. There are technical errors in setting up the situation,
some known or knowable in 1954 when the story was written, others
obvious after the fact.
An obvious problem with the technology is that the EDS is a re-entry
vehicle which, barring star-trek technology, would have had to meet
the stresses of atmospheric braking including ablative shielding. It
would have had to have been heavier and more complex than the flimsy
light-weight ship portrayed in the story.
A less obvious problem is that there are margins that must have been
there. To work this out one has to go to the "real" cold equations,
the physics of rocket equations and atmospheric braking. The physics
of a controlled burn in space are pretty simple. Managing re-entry is
not so simple and one can trade off fuel consumption for time and
safety.
One might argue that technical errors are nit-picking; grant the
author his thesis and assume that the nits can be taken care of with
some modification. On the other hand one can argue that the nits
point to a fundamental problem with setting up the situation. In
general the boundaries between safety, life-or-death, and certain
death in situations are not sharp; there is always an element of
chance.
Be that as it may, the author's thesis depends on the observation that
a small action can tip the scales from normal operation to certain
failure and this is common enough.
Richard Harter, c...@tiac.net, The Concord Research Institute
URL = http://www.tiac.net/users/cri, phone = 1-508-369-3911
I'm a primatologist specializing in homo sapiens.
Their lack of true intelligence simplifies my studies.
Dana Crom
In article <5ecbrd$m...@rtpnews.raleigh.ibm.com>,
Cathy Mancus <man...@vnet.ibm.com> wrote:
>In <5eac8l$k...@spock.usc.edu>, schi...@spock.usc.edu (John Schilling) writes:
>>The LEM was designed to support two men in the top 5% of the
>>population in both body mass and metabolic rate...
> I'm confused as to how the *same* two men who are "in the top
>5% of the population in body mass and metabolic rate" suddenly
>become two of the "three random men...." in the second paragraph.
>The crew doesn't suddenly change in the middle of the mission!
>
>top 5% of the population in body mass. I doubt that Pete Conrad
>was, for example.
Design goal vs actual.
The "two in the top 5%" was a design goal - "the module must be capable of
supporting any likely two man crew, even if they are both in the top 5% of
the population in body mass and metabolic rate." They certainly don't do
basic design around the specific astronauts involved.
"Three random men" are the folks actually chosen for the mission, long after
the LM was designed. And if I recall correctly, one of the criteria for
selection as an astronaut used to be (is it still?) size - astronauts tended
to be medium sized or less. Makes sense when when you are trying to stuff
crew and supplies into cramped quarters with limited payload.
--
--------------------------+------------------------------------------------
Dana Crom (415) 933-1449 / "If you have a cat you're sharing your life with
da...@morc.mfg.sgi.com / a furry little sociopath" - Rick Cook
Silicon Graphics, Inc. / Sociopaths of the world, unite!
Avram Grumer
In article <5e871d$e...@ssbunews.ih.lucent.com>, l...@ihgp167e.ih.lucent.com
(-Mammel,L.H.) wrote:
>In the story the pilot deviates considerably from the planned course
>"to prolong that ultimate end". If the course had been planned
>for minimal fuel usage, this sentimental act would be fatal -
>much more surely than a minor weight deviation.
The story mentions that he has a small safety margin. He has the big
ship's computer calculate how long he can put off decelerating and still
land.
>And Wait! He stops DECELERATING and it will
>take LONGER to get there?
No, he puts off decelerating so that he doesn't have to waste fuel
decelerating her mass.
--
Avram Grumer Home: av...@interport.net
http://www.crossover.com/agrumer Work: agr...@crossover.com
"Do you hear Lincoln turning over in his grave?
That's the Republican Revolution." -- The Foremen, "Hidden Agenda"
John Schilling
JHOLL4@ (Cathy Mancus) writes:
>In <5eac8l$k...@spock.usc.edu>, schi...@spock.usc.edu (John Schilling) writes:
>>The LEM was designed to support two men in the top 5% of the
>>population in both body mass and metabolic rate...
>>How long will such a life-support system suffice for three
>>random men deliberately seeking to minimize oxygen consumption...
> I'm confused as to how the *same* two men who are "in the top
>5% of the population in body mass and metabolic rate" suddenly
>become two of the "three random men...." in the second paragraph.
>The crew doesn't suddenly change in the middle of the mission!
They don't. They change in the middle of mission *planning*. The
Grumman engineers who designed the LEM, did not know who was going
to be on board - hardware design preceeded crew selection by a large
margin. So they had to design a system which would be adequate for
any two people NASA might happen to chose, with nothing more than
the basic NASA physical requirements to work with. IIRC, those
used the 95th percentile as the cutoff in most areas.
pat
In article <5ebh4g$5...@van1s03.cyberion.com>,
no_spam_s...@wwdc.com says...
however, this still misses issues on mass budget to an EDS.
Even if we assume it's a trans-former like toy, capable of
fairly large volume changes, it still has to be designed with
a certain structural design limit for the worst possible design
case and a safety factor.
That safety factor can be stripped out, and the mission
re-programmed against that.
Use less power on auxiliary systems,,,,
I'm sorry, If Godwin ever met Gene kranz in a bar, Kranz would
slap godwin silly.
"Losing people on your watch is not good piloting regardless of
circumstances"
>c) Every now and then an intrusive entity known variously as "Society"
or
>"the Government" forces people to think about assisting others in a
crisis,
>sometimes to the (minor) detriment to those who would prefer to let the
>damned fools rot. I mean, having to hire a *third* wireless operator
to
>have a 24-hour radio watch? Outrageous! Just because those bloody
White
>Star blighters had a run-in with an iceberg...
Actually, those guys forgot to set their magnetic detectors on
which would alert the wireless operator of signals traffic on
channel.
Sorry, I think people always have free-will.
pat
pat
>
>On Sun, 16 Feb 1997 le...@netcom.com wrote:
>
>> Anyway, what's macho go to do with it? Machismo or whatever is
a poor
>> substitute for courage; for instance, if the girl had said, "Well,
you
>> could gut this ship, trashing backup instrumentation and cutting away
>> pieces of the hull, drastically reducing the chances of either of us
>> making it and in the process dooming those poor miners, or I can walk
out
>> that airlock. I think I'll walk out that airlock."
>>
>> Now that's a lot more admirable than machismo.
So, gene kranz and Robert Heinlein (If he were still alive)
would take turns slapping you silly.
pat
pat
In article <5ea110$1i6$1...@kocrsv08.delcoelect.com>,
c2x...@eng.delcoelect.com says...
>
>
>In article <5e5eul$a...@ssbunews.ih.lucent.com>,
l...@ihgp167e.ih.lucent.com (-Mammel,L.H.) writes:
>>
>> Also, FYI, sometime before Apollo 11, LEM was dropped in favor
>> of LM ( Lunar Excursion Module -> Lunar Module ) but
>> it continued to be referred to orally as the "Lem", and
>> LEM survives by virtue of its lexicographical utility in
>> crossword puzzles. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
> There should be a term for this type of word. How about,
>"Crucinym (n): a word which is not in common usage, but appears
>frequently in crossword puzzles."
I'd propose crucable as in cross useful.
pat
Who hung around the latin lab just a touch too much ;-)
pat
In article <5ed1k2$r...@spock.usc.edu>, schi...@spock.usc.edu says...
>
>Olaf Weber <Olaf....@cwi.nl> writes:
>
>>John Schilling writes:
>
>>> In the story, it is quite explicity stated early on, that not only
>>> is the spacecraft in question "launched" in space rather than from
>>> a planetary surface, but that it is strictly a one-use, expendable
>>> craft for emergency operations.
>
>>> When it lands, it *does* turn into a gazeebo. Or, more
appropriately,
>>> an emergency shelter. It *never* "gasses up, loads cargo, and
leaves
>>> the planet". As such, the greatest loads it will ever face occur
>>> during landing.
>
>
>>that these craft are used fairly regularly, and the fuel margins are
>>routinely this small. This is already odd by itself: a vital mission
>>where no backup is possible is warrants increased margins compared to
>>a routine flight.
>
>
>Margins are required only to the extent that there is uncertainty
>regarding actual requirements. In the case of rocketry, for any
>given mission the uncertainty regarding propellant consumption
>can be reduced almost arbitrarily, and in fact real space launch
>missions (including manned ones) typically have propellant margins
>of one or two percent, tops.
>
>In the case of EDS ships, the real margin is in the mission-planning
>stage. When the time comes to launch one of the four EDS shuttles a
>cruiser normally carries, the mission for *that* shuttle is already
>known, and the required propellant can be computed to within a percent
>or so. But there's no way to know what, if any, missions the other
>three EDS shuttles will be called upon to perform, and as there is
>not enough propellant to top off the tanks on all four, it is clearly
>preferable to save as much propellant for the three shuttles whose
>missions are not known, than to waste extra on the one shuttle they
>know fairly certainly will *not* need it to complete the mission.
>
>
A good analogy for this story is a ship with 4 emergency radios,
because you never know when or how long you'll need them,
but charged batteries for only three. You see, you never need
to carry more batteries then neccessary and can half charge
a dead pair because most emergencies are really short.
sorry, if you are going to go through the burden of carrying
4 dispatch ships, you will also carry enough fuel to top off
all four of them.
If the use of EDS ships is rare, then you'll send them out with
lot's of margin, for just in case.
after all the others aren't going to likely need that fuel.
if use is common, then you'll carry enough fuel for
4 full tanks, because you expect the odds to be high of
having long range rescue missions.
sorry, I just don't buy into this failure seeking mind-set.
pat
Edward Wright
In article <5e8707$t...@news.ro.com>, nhen...@ro.com says...
>What is needed is a product that has great commercial appeal and can be
>produced in Space in the 5 years. Five years and the prospect of
>50-100% ROI and as an investor and I'm interested.
Fine. Go out and read G. Harry Stine's "Halfway to Anywhere." Pay special
attention to the chapter on financial returns, based on models contructed
by Stine and his partner, investment banker Paul Hans. Then stop throwing
brickbats at anyone trying to make it happen.
Assuming, of course, you really meant what you said.
--
The opinions expressed in this message are my own personal views
and do not reflect the official views of Microsoft Corporation.
paschal
On 18 Feb 1997, pat wrote:
>
> however, this still misses issues on mass budget to an EDS.
>
> Even if we assume it's a trans-former like toy, capable of
> fairly large volume changes, it still has to be designed with
> a certain structural design limit for the worst possible design
> case and a safety factor.
>
> That safety factor can be stripped out, and the mission
> re-programmed against that.
>
> Use less power on auxiliary systems,,,,
>
> I'm sorry, If Godwin ever met Gene kranz in a bar, Kranz would
> slap godwin silly.
>
> "Losing people on your watch is not good piloting regardless of
> circumstances"
Pat, I think I *love* you!
-Paschal
le...@netcom.com
In article <Pine.SOL.3.95.970218...@rac5.wam.umd.edu>,
paschal <pas...@wam.umd.edu> wrote:
<snip>
>
> On Tue, 18 Feb 1997 le...@netcom.com wrote:
>
>
> > Secondly, the story is playing with the literary conventions of the time.
> > Setting up a situation like this, then having the hero pull something out
> > of his hat at the last minute was a standard, formula sf story of the
> > time. When TCE was published, it caused a firestorm of controversy
> > because of its ending.
>
> Me being a Child of the 'fifties, Let's hear it for the 'Fifties'! and
> for what *most* fifties' stories had to say, about man's ability to
> conquer Fate...
>
The most notable books I can think of that came out of the '50's would be
_Catch-22_ (1955?) and maybe _The Naked and the Dead_ (1948?).
> > Thirdly, the point of the story is that human beings can't do anything.
> > They run smack dab up against the cold equations, a cold and uncaring
> > universe that couldn't care less about human conceits of omnipotence. To
> > prove my point, try jumping off the top of the Empire State Building and
> > flying by flapping your arms. As you fall to your death, I'll shout down
> > the relevant physics equations that explain why what you're trying to do
> > is impossible. If the pilot had somehow been able to save the girl in
> > TCE, that would have been just as ludicrous and ending as if the story
> > had been resolved by someone flying about the cabin by flapping their
> > arms.
>
> If I could fly, it would not be by "flapping my arms." It would be by
> recognizing that gravity is just a thing that we've all agreed on,
> tentatively, (in a Cosmic sense) and on a deep level. Someone will
> probably soon show, that gravity is basically just another illusion. It
> will probably not be me; but I'm sure there is *someone* alive on the
> Earth, who can prove you wrong. Finding him is *your* problem. Mine is
> only Faith that he Exists. I'm happy enough walking around on the ground,
> in the meantime; the earth is Quite Nice Enough as it is.....
>
I heard that the Buddha could levitate, throwing off light and water.
Somehow though, I think he would have been out of place in TCE.
> > > Let's hear it for John Wayne, the 7th Cavalry, and macho dudes like Pat,
> > > who are still willing to get out on the wing to save a silly girl's
> > > life; and who still get a thrill out of attempting the impossible - even
> > > if only for the hell of it. (I've never flown in an airplane but if it
> > > ever becomes necessary, I want Pat to be the pilot.)
> > >
> > > The only things that determine what human beings are able to overcome or
> > > achieve are faith, imagination, and the refusal to give in to fear and
> > > negativity, or to quit.
> > >
> >
> > That's nice, but not everyone thinks that way. And more relevantly,
some
> > of the most beautiful books ever written have had conclusions that were
> > not, how shall I put it, life affirming.
>
> Let's write New Books!
>
Sure, but I hope that they all don't have happy endings. Human beings
don't always out to happy endings, and out of respect for the human
condition art should reflect that.
> >
> > > -Paschal
> > > Wishful Thinker and Anti-Nihilist extraordinaire.
> > > (It works for me.)
> >
> > I find that I'm happier by causing other people misery. :) Did it work
> > with this post?
>
> No, Love; It Didn't.
> Try Harder.
I'm actually glad to hear that.
>
> -Paschal ;-)
yon lew
j...@Steam.stanford.edu (John McCarthy) writes:
Some guy named Lorenzo Love posted the quote a couple of days ago here.
Hopefully it's still around.
-Mammel,L.H.
In article <avram-ya02338000...@news.crossover.com>,
Avram Grumer <av...@interport.net> wrote:
>In article <5e871d$e...@ssbunews.ih.lucent.com>, l...@ihgp167e.ih.lucent.com
>(-Mammel,L.H.) wrote:
>
>>In the story the pilot deviates considerably from the planned course
>>"to prolong that ultimate end". If the course had been planned
>>for minimal fuel usage, this sentimental act would be fatal -
>>much more surely than a minor weight deviation.
>
>The story mentions that he has a small safety margin. He has the big
>ship's computer calculate how long he can put off decelerating and still
>land.
What I'm claiming is that it's absurd to believe that the
fuel requirements of the new trajectory would be exactly
the same as the old one. This constant fuel requirement
holds in the mythos of the story, not reality.
>>And Wait! He stops DECELERATING and it will
>>take LONGER to get there?
>
>No, he puts off decelerating so that he doesn't have to waste fuel
>decelerating her mass.
Right, that's the rationale. But you are inaccurate to state
the he "puts off" decelerating, since in the story he definitely
cuts the engines to a minimum, implying that he had already
been running them at a moderate level for about an hour.
Why was the fuel wastage incurred in the first hour negligible?
This is not explained. Also, ( in defense of my remark ) it
has to be true that the ship would arrive at any given
critical point sooner than it would have if he had continued
his planned burn. This is not indicated in the story.
I'm claiming that the events as depicted in the story are
not reconcilable with any realistic scenario of a powered
descent to a planetary surface. In particular, you would
use the minimum fuel by deferring your retrofire until
as late as possible. Early burns are a waste. On this
consideration, one would expect the new trajectory to use
significantly less fuel the the old one.
Lew Mammel, Jr.
yon lew
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,rec.arts.sf.misc,rec.arts.sf.written,sci.space.policy
Subject: Re: The Cold Equations
References: <5dgi63$n...@news-central.tiac.net> <E5BHH...@eskimo.com> <JMC.97Fe...@Steam.stanford.edu> <5e239l$7...@clarknet.clark.net> <5e3cct$l2i@ <5eah47$2...@clarknet.clark.net> <5ebh4g$5...@van1s03.cyberion.com> <5ed8l0$p...@clarknet.clark.net>
p...@clark.net (pat) writes:
<snip>
>however, this still misses issues on mass budget to an EDS.
>Even if we assume it's a trans-former like toy, capable of
>fairly large volume changes, it still has to be designed with
>a certain structural design limit for the worst possible design
>case and a safety factor.
That's assuming the designers did their jobs right, something that
doesn't always happen today, or that they feel your considerations are
important enough to take into account. Not sure what you mean by "the
worst possible design case".
>That safety factor can be stripped out, and the
mission >re-programmed against that.
How do you strip it out? You've got two people, you're racing against
time, this "safety factor" may be built into the ship's hull, taking it
out might compromise structural integrity on a craft that's still got to
make re-entry...
In other words, why bother? Obviously pulling all this stuff out is
going to endanger the craft and it's mission. Is it fair to do that and
risk the lives of all those miners just to try and save the life of one girl?
>Use less power on auxiliary systems,,,,
What this has to do with rocket fuel is beyond me. I would think that
electrical power on this little ship came from batteries of some sort.
And if you want to tear out the batteries, see above.
>I'm sorry, If Godwin ever met Gene kranz in a bar, Kranz would
>slap godwin silly.
Somehow, I doubt that. Especially considering that the two scenarios in
question are not even remotely similar.
>"Losing people on your watch is not good piloting regardless of
>circumstances"
I think the pilot would disagree with you. Part of his duties include
tossing stowaways out the hatch. In other words, he's losing people on
purpose.
>>c) Every now and then an intrusive entity known variously as "Society"
>or
>>"the Government" forces people to think about assisting others in a
>crisis,
>>sometimes to the (minor) detriment to those who would prefer to let the
>>damned fools rot. I mean, having to hire a *third* wireless operator
>to
>>have a 24-hour radio watch? Outrageous! Just because those bloody
>White
>>Star blighters had a run-in with an iceberg...
>Actually, those guys forgot to set their magnetic detectors on
>which would alert the wireless operator of signals traffic on
>channel.
>Sorry, I think people always have free-will.
Yeah, but the point of the story is that we are constrained in our
actions by an indifferent universe.
>pat
Filip De Vos
Richard Harter (c...@tiac.net) wrote:
: An obvious problem with the technology is that the EDS is a re-entry
: vehicle which, barring star-trek technology, would have had to meet
Nobody seems to have pointed out yet the real flaw: if margins are so
thight, why is the extra mass on board not detected before launch? And if
nothing else, the extra mass would have shown up by a performance
shortfall at or after launch. If launch was by electromagnetic
accelerator (and I gather that it was not) then the launch sequence could
have been aborted then.
Filip (who has not read the story, and cannot post to rec.*)
--
Filip De Vos Pierce Brosnan is OK as Bond nr.006
FilipP...@rug.ac.be
yon lew
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,rec.arts.sf.misc,rec.arts.sf.written,sci.space.policy
Subject: Re: The Cold Equations
l...@ihgp3.ih.lucent.com (-Mammel,L.H.) writes:
>In article <avram-ya02338000...@news.crossover.com>,
>Avram Grumer <av...@interport.net> wrote:
>>In article <5e871d$e...@ssbunews.ih.lucent.com>, l...@ihgp167e.ih.lucent.com
>>(-Mammel,L.H.) wrote:
>>
>>>In the story the pilot deviates considerably from the planned course
>>>"to prolong that ultimate end". If the course had been planned
>>>for minimal fuel usage, this sentimental act would be fatal -
>>>much more surely than a minor weight deviation.
>>
>>The story mentions that he has a small safety margin. He has the big
>>ship's computer calculate how long he can put off decelerating and still
>>land.
>What I'm claiming is that it's absurd to believe that the
>fuel requirements of the new trajectory would be exactly
>the same as the old one. This constant fuel requirement
>holds in the mythos of the story, not reality.
In fact the fuel requirements aren't the same for both orbits. The
second orbit requires more fuel and consumes the reserves the ship had.
(I am fairly sure about this one. I seem to remember the pilot telling
the girl that he's going to burn his emergency reserve to give her more
time).
>>>And Wait! He stops DECELERATING and it will
>>>take LONGER to get there?
>>
>>No, he puts off decelerating so that he doesn't have to waste fuel
>>decelerating her mass.
>Right, that's the rationale. But you are inaccurate to state
>the he "puts off" decelerating, since in the story he definitely
>cuts the engines to a minimum, implying that he had already
>been running them at a moderate level for about an hour.
>Why was the fuel wastage incurred in the first hour negligible?
>This is not explained. Also, ( in defense of my remark ) it
>has to be true that the ship would arrive at any given
>critical point sooner than it would have if he had continued
>his planned burn. This is not indicated in the story.
It can be assumed that the fuel wasted in the first hour before he
realized the girl was on board came out of his reserves. See below for a
response to your second point.
>I'm claiming that the events as depicted in the story are
>not reconcilable with any realistic scenario of a powered
>descent to a planetary surface. In particular, you would
>use the minimum fuel by deferring your retrofire until
>as late as possible. Early burns are a waste. On this
>consideration, one would expect the new trajectory to use
>significantly less fuel the the old one.
The problem is that the situation can be arbitrarily complicated with the
addition of more planets, moons or other gravity wells that would have an
effect on the shuttle. I don't remember exactly, (it's been a long time
since I've read the story), but the impression I have is that the pilot
is coming in from a long way out. If he has to deal with the gravity
effects of nearby planets, moons, etc. then it's very easy to come up
with a hypothetical situation that satisfies the premise of the story.
As I suggested in an earlier post, the pilot was responding to a medical
emergency. Maybe the computer came up with an orbit that took a minimum
amount of time but required constant thrust to counter-balance the effect
of these planets, moons, whatever. When he finds the girl, they
recalculate an orbit that uses all of his fuel and takes a lot more time.
>Lew Mammel, Jr.
Lorenzo L. Love
>>fact, there are even regulations that spell out that they are to be
>>shot and jettisoned, and a gun is part of the standard pilot's
>>equipment (partly) for this reason. The implication is that finding
>>stowaways is practically a routine occurence.
>
>
>I'll quibble with "not uncommon". Lots of regulations exist for
>dealing with quite uncommon situations. Discussion in the story
>confirms some prior experience with, but does not indicate the
>frequency of, stowaways.
>
>
>Explicitly disreputable stowaways, mostly criminals trying to run from
>the law. Not, in the opionion of the EDS service's leaders, worth
>risking the lives of innocents to save. If the first three EDS shuttles
>depart with a stowaway's worth of propellant margin, there might not
>be enough for the fourth shuttle to complete its mission at all.
>
>A defensible attitude for a frontier society, if not necessarily
>appropriate for late-20th-century America.
>
>
of frequency: "Perhaps once in his lifetime an EDS pilot would find such
a stowaway on his ship; warped men, mean and selfish men, brutal and
dangerous men..." Hardly an routine occurence but a good reason to carry
a side arm.
Lorenzo L. Love
lll...@snowcrest.net
Michael P. Walsh
Edward Wright wrote:
>
> In article <5e8707$t...@news.ro.com>, nhen...@ro.com says...
>
> >What is needed is a product that has great commercial appeal and can be
> >produced in Space in the 5 years. Five years and the prospect of
> >50-100% ROI and as an investor and I'm interested.
>
> Fine. Go out and read G. Harry Stine's "Halfway to Anywhere." Pay special
> attention to the chapter on financial returns, based on models contructed
> by Stine and his partner, investment banker Paul Hans. Then stop throwing
> brickbats at anyone trying to make it happen.
>
> Assuming, of course, you really meant what you said.
---
---
Good advice, I always recommend Stine's book. However, I did not see
predictions of 50-100% in five years. Stine's book gives figures of
%16-20 which doesn't meet Hendrix's criteria.
The model does use a time span for the system of 5 years and assumes
no residual value which is quite conservative. This is for a return
to the vehicle financers. Since the book is basically a SSTO history
and argument for proceeding to an operational system it doesn't
address the "product produced in space" in 5 years criteria.
Hendrix concern is a quite serious one as currently there is no known
product which meets this criteria.
Moving away from Hendrix's concerns and to my views, this is one of the
reasons I strongly support continuation of the space station-Shuttle
programs as currently financed by the government. I believe the
station is needed as an experimental platform for both gaining
space operational experience and providing the opportunity to do
micro-gravity product research.
Mike Walsh
pat
In article <330C6F...@pacbell.net>, mp_w...@pacbell.net says...
>
>Edward Wright wrote:
>>
>> In article <5e8707$t...@news.ro.com>, nhen...@ro.com says...
>>
>> >What is needed is a product that has great commercial appeal and can
be
>> >produced in Space in the 5 years. Five years and the prospect of
>> >50-100% ROI and as an investor and I'm interested.
you want 100% ROI, sell crack...
>The model does use a time span for the system of 5 years and assumes
>no residual value which is quite conservative. This is for a return
>to the vehicle financers. Since the book is basically a SSTO history
>and argument for proceeding to an operational system it doesn't
>address the "product produced in space" in 5 years criteria.
>
>Hendrix concern is a quite serious one as currently there is no known
>product which meets this criteria.
>
and not much on earth that does either.
>Moving away from Hendrix's concerns and to my views, this is one of the
>reasons I strongly support continuation of the space station-Shuttle
>programs as currently financed by the government. I believe the
>station is needed as an experimental platform for both gaining
>space operational experience and providing the opportunity to do
>micro-gravity product research.
you want LEO operational experience, start speaking russian.
as for micro-G, it's a dead end. Allen bromley called it that
years ago.
pat
pat
In article <5eacpp$k...@spock.usc.edu>, schi...@spock.usc.edu says...
>
>p...@clark.net (pat) writes:
>
>>In article <5e3cct$l...@clark.net>, dmpa...@clark.net says...
>>>
>>>p...@clark.net (pat) writes:
>
>
>>>>All possible weight? Gee that must mean Landing loads onthe
>>>>vehicle are far greater then takeoff loads.
>>>
>>>Yes they were. The ship in question was a small ship launched
>>>from a larger ship. It couldn't lift off from a planet under
>>>its own power, so there's no reason to make it strong enough to.
>>>
>
>>Typical Narrow-minded, failure seeking Aero-space engineer.
>
>
>Actually, most of us seek success, not failure. As 99.999+% of
>the aircraft which take off on a given day do in fact land
>safely at the end of their journey, I think we do a pretty
>good job.
>
too bad, the instant we stick a rocket on the vehicle,
you guys switch to "It's gonna fail", 'oooh, it's so dangerous'
and 'this is real dangerous' as a mindset.
everytime a CATS advocate says, rocketships should be built like
and operated like air-craft we get the failure seeking, danger
avoiding, hide under the stairs crowd out shrieking about the
dangers.
I bet if the story involved an air-plane, we wouldn't have seen
this end result.
>
>>Okay, so this is a shuttle, What does it do once it makes
>>planetary landfall, turn into a gazebo?
>
>>when it gasses up, loads cargo and leaves the planet, it faces
>>a much larger takeoff load.
>
>
>This confirms what I have suspected from the start.
>
>
>YOU HAVEN'T READ THE STORY YOU ARE DENOUNCING.
I never said i did. I said the descriptionof the scenario was
incredible.
>
>
>Sorry for shouting, but the intellectual dishonesty underlying this
^^^^^^^^^^
speak only for yourself, monkey-boy.
>fact is staggering. To assert that you are qualified to denounce a
>story as implauisble, and by implication its author as incompetent,
>when you haven't *read* the story, is absurd.
and when the details were explained, i pointed out the authors
mind-set was of failure seeking, loser-dom....
sorry, if that strikes close to home.
>
>
>In the story, it is quite explicity stated early on, that not only
>is the spacecraft in question "launched" in space rather than from
>a planetary surface, but that it is strictly a one-use, expendable
>craft for emergency operations.
>
>When it lands, it *does* turn into a gazeebo. Or, more appropriately,
>an emergency shelter. It *never* "gasses up, loads cargo, and leaves
>the planet". As such, the greatest loads it will ever face occur
>during landing.
and the story also points out that they carry 4 of these vheicles,
but only fuel enough for 2. If that isn't loser-ville thinking,
i don't know what is.
How many ships carry life-boats, but only put in enough supplies
for half the boats, after all, food is expensive, and we never
expect for all the boats to need food, just some of them, and we
can share the food around, when we need it.
-Mammel,L.H.
In article <lewyE5v...@netcom.com>, yon lew <le...@netcom.com> wrote:
>
>The problem is that the situation can be arbitrarily complicated with the
>addition of more planets, moons or other gravity wells that would have an
>effect on the shuttle. I don't remember exactly, (it's been a long time
>since I've read the story), but the impression I have is that the pilot
>is coming in from a long way out. If he has to deal with the gravity
>effects of nearby planets, moons, etc. then it's very easy to come up
>with a hypothetical situation that satisfies the premise of the story.
>As I suggested in an earlier post, the pilot was responding to a medical
>emergency. Maybe the computer came up with an orbit that took a minimum
>amount of time but required constant thrust to counter-balance the effect
>of these planets, moons, whatever. When he finds the girl, they
>recalculate an orbit that uses all of his fuel and takes a lot more time.
>
This sounds more like a Felix the Cat cartoon than a
"hard SF" story. Anyway, you've trapped yourself. How is it
that the law of constant fuel requirement applies in this
arbitrarily complex scenario? If, on the other hand, the
original course was planned to use minimum fuel, then the
large deviation implied by the drastic course change would
use more fuel, and be fatal. If it were not a minimum fuel
course, then the course could be altered to use less fuel
and save the girl.
Lew Mammel, Jr.
pat
In article <5eac8l$k...@spock.usc.edu>, schi...@spock.usc.edu says...
>
>p...@clark.net (pat) writes:
>
>>Ah, he get's chicken, Internal fittings. Real men will not be
limited
>>to this.
>
>>Start with.
>
>
>[wish list of items, many of which are not even present in the A/C
>in question]
>
>
try listing them, rather then whining.
>>now if you are a real macho stud, and not some whining, crying,
>>quitter, you get out on the wing and take off the flaps, drives
>>and linkages. Speed brakes if they are existent. if that's not
>>enough drop the wheels and landing gear struts.
>
>>That is assuming you are macho enough.
>
>
>This reminds me why the term "macho" is now generally considered to
>be an insult, indicating a combination of extreme stupidity and even
>more extreme overconfidence.
and also the ability when faced with an extreme situation to
deal with it.
>
>Were it not for the fact that Cessna 180 aircraft are, unlike yourself,
>a valuable and now irreplaceable commodity, I would dearly love to see
>you try to remove the wing flaps while in flight. It's a spectacular
>way to commit suicide, to be sure.
I'm not saying it's easy or fun, but it isn't necessarly impossible.
>
>
>Hint #3. The attachment fittings for the wing flaps on Cessna's light
>singles are not accessable unless the flaps are extended. The flap
>extension mechanism does not incorporate any provision for extending
>only one flap at a time. Consider the aerodynamics of the aircraft
>midway through your proposed stunt, with one flap extended and the
>other removed.
consider the aero-dynamics of a 5 degree flap extension, or the
effects of cutting holes in the flap body to reduce it's effective
area, before the removal process...
>
>
>At least, that's the way things work in the reality I inhabit. You
>apparenly reside in an imaginary realm where a sufficiently "macho"
>individual can accomplish absolutely anything they set their mind to.
I notice, you ran away entirely from the other proposed weight
reduction schemes.
Consider this.
Do you think it is possible for a fighter aircraft to shoot down
several enemy aircraft despite the handicap of having several
large bullet holes in the fuel tank bottoms causing a
high rate of fuel loss while in flight?
pat
yon lew
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,rec.arts.sf.misc,rec.arts.sf.written,sci.space.policy
Subject: Re: The Cold Equations
l...@ihgp167e.ih.lucent.com (-Mammel,L.H.) writes:
>Lew Mammel, Jr.
Like I said in the first part of the post:
1) The two fuel requirements for the two courses are not the same. In
the story the pilot explicitly states that he's gong to burn his reserve
to give the girl time to write a few letters.
2) What if it's not a minimal fuel course? Well, you can certainly
change course to one that uses a minimum amount of fuel BUT it may still
be that even this new course doesn't conserve enough fuel to carry that
extra fifty kilograms. In other words, the new course may save fuel but
still not enough fuel.
For instance, maybe the new course will use a slingshot off of a moon or
planet to put the shuttle on course.
yon lew
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,rec.arts.sf.misc,rec.arts.sf.written,sci.space.policy
Subject: Re: The Cold Equations
p...@clark.net (pat) writes:
>In article <5eacpp$k...@spock.usc.edu>, schi...@spock.usc.edu says...
>>
>>p...@clark.net (pat) writes:
>>
>>>In article <5e3cct$l...@clark.net>, dmpa...@clark.net says...
>>>>
>>>>p...@clark.net (pat) writes:
>>
>>
>>>>>All possible weight? Gee that must mean Landing loads onthe
>>>>>vehicle are far greater then takeoff loads.
>>>>
>>>>Yes they were. The ship in question was a small ship launched
>>>>from a larger ship. It couldn't lift off from a planet under
>>>>its own power, so there's no reason to make it strong enough to.
>>>>
>>
>>>Typical Narrow-minded, failure seeking Aero-space engineer.
>>
>>
>>Actually, most of us seek success, not failure. As 99.999+% of
>>the aircraft which take off on a given day do in fact land
>>safely at the end of their journey, I think we do a pretty
>>good job.
>>
>too bad, the instant we stick a rocket on the vehicle,
>you guys switch to "It's gonna fail", 'oooh, it's so dangerous'
>and 'this is real dangerous' as a mindset.
>everytime a CATS advocate says, rocketships should be built like
>and operated like air-craft we get the failure seeking, danger
>avoiding, hide under the stairs crowd out shrieking about the
>dangers.
>I bet if the story involved an air-plane, we wouldn't have seen
>this end result.
Yeah, because planes can glide.
>>
>>>Okay, so this is a shuttle, What does it do once it makes
>>>planetary landfall, turn into a gazebo?
>>
>>>when it gasses up, loads cargo and leaves the planet, it faces
>>>a much larger takeoff load.
>>
>>
>>This confirms what I have suspected from the start.
>>
>>
>>YOU HAVEN'T READ THE STORY YOU ARE DENOUNCING.
>I never said i did. I said the descriptionof the scenario was
>incredible.
Maybe if you haven't studied high school physics.
>>
>>
>>Sorry for shouting, but the intellectual dishonesty underlying this
> ^^^^^^^^^^
>speak only for yourself, monkey-boy.
>>fact is staggering. To assert that you are qualified to denounce a
>>story as implauisble, and by implication its author as incompetent,
>>when you haven't *read* the story, is absurd.
>and when the details were explained, i pointed out the authors
>mind-set was of failure seeking, loser-dom....
>sorry, if that strikes close to home.
Someone who moves from criticizing the argument to attacking the
individual proposing probably doesn't have any valid criticism of the
arguement.
Anyway, seeing as you're going to argue about this story in a public
forum, the least you could do is find it someplace and read it. It's one
of the classics of sf, and so it's not hard to find.
>>
>>
>>In the story, it is quite explicity stated early on, that not only
>>is the spacecraft in question "launched" in space rather than from
>>a planetary surface, but that it is strictly a one-use, expendable
>>craft for emergency operations.
>>
>>When it lands, it *does* turn into a gazeebo. Or, more appropriately,
>>an emergency shelter. It *never* "gasses up, loads cargo, and leaves
>>the planet". As such, the greatest loads it will ever face occur
>>during landing.
>and the story also points out that they carry 4 of these vheicles,
>but only fuel enough for 2. If that isn't loser-ville thinking,
>i don't know what is.
Not if weight is at a premium. This way, you're guaranteed that fifty
percent of your shuttles can malfunction and you'll still have two ready
to go. Fuel doesn't really "malfunction"...
>How many ships carry life-boats, but only put in enough supplies
>for half the boats, after all, food is expensive, and we never
>expect for all the boats to need food, just some of them, and we
>can share the food around, when we need it.
Gosh, off the top of my head I can think of. . .the Titanic? Sad thing
is, this type of thing isn't uncommon today. Stupidity and incompetance
are everywhere today, and they kill people. Why should the engineers in
TCE necessarily be any brighter than the ones we have today?
John Schilling
c...@tiac.net (Richard Harter) writes:
>All of this is somewhat tangential to the thrust (you should excuse
>the expression) of the story which means to establish a certain
>situation. There are technical errors in setting up the situation,
>some known or knowable in 1954 when the story was written, others
>obvious after the fact.
>An obvious problem with the technology is that the EDS is a re-entry
>vehicle which, barring star-trek technology, would have had to meet
>the stresses of atmospheric braking including ablative shielding. It
>would have had to have been heavier and more complex than the flimsy
>light-weight ship portrayed in the story.
Actually, the "star-trek technology" in question is nothing more than
chemical rocketry. It is clear from the description in the story that
EDS shuttles decelerate and land under rocket power, not through
aerodynamic drag. No heat-shielding, no "re-entry" in the common,
hypersonic sense. Just deceleration under rocket thrust, with the
last, slowest portion of the trajectory happening to occur within
whatever atmosphere (if any) the destination planet posesses.
This is certainly possible; if you can build a flimsy tank of propellant
with rockets on the bottom and cabin on top that can climb out of a
gravity well under rocket power (i.e. any current launch vehicle), you
can just as well build one to make the reverse trip in the same fashion.
It's a remarkably *silly* thing to do if you are planning to land on
Earth, but it might make sense if you have to consider a variety of
destinations. And the answer in any event would not have been obvious
to very many people in 1954.
>A less obvious problem is that there are margins that must have been
>there. To work this out one has to go to the "real" cold equations,
>the physics of rocket equations and atmospheric braking. The physics
>of a controlled burn in space are pretty simple. Managing re-entry is
>not so simple and one can trade off fuel consumption for time and
>safety.
Not if the "re-entry" is as described above, with the vehicle slowing
to a very small fraction of orbital or escape velocity before even
entering the atmosphere, and counting on rocket thrust for virtually
all braking. Such a situation wouldn't give you much margin to
trade fuel consumption vs. entry velocity without tearing the ship
apart on entry.
>One might argue that technical errors are nit-picking; grant the
>author his thesis and assume that the nits can be taken care of with
>some modification.
An appropriate modification, were the story to be rewritten today,
would be a transpiration-cooled heat shield. Coolant expenditure
for transpiration cooling is about as deterministic as propellant
expenditure for rocket propulsion; in this case the "cold" equations
become: A kilograms of spaceship entering atmosphere at velocity B,
must dissipate C joules of heat. X kilograms of coolant can
absorb Y joules of heat in boiling off. If C>Y, something more
than coolant is going to boil away.
John Schilling
p...@clark.net (pat) writes:
>In article <5ed1k2$r...@spock.usc.edu>, schi...@spock.usc.edu says...
>>
>>In the case of EDS ships, the real margin is in the mission-planning
>>stage. When the time comes to launch one of the four EDS shuttles a
>>cruiser normally carries, the mission for *that* shuttle is already
>>known, and the required propellant can be computed to within a percent
>>or so. But there's no way to know what, if any, missions the other
>>three EDS shuttles will be called upon to perform, and as there is
>>not enough propellant to top off the tanks on all four, it is clearly
>>preferable to save as much propellant for the three shuttles whose
>>missions are not known, than to waste extra on the one shuttle they
>>know fairly certainly will *not* need it to complete the mission.
>A good analogy for this story is a ship with 4 emergency radios,
>because you never know when or how long you'll need them,
>but charged batteries for only three. You see, you never need
>to carry more batteries then neccessary and can half charge
>a dead pair because most emergencies are really short.
Actually, that's a wholly inappropriate analogy. Batteries are
small compared to spaceships, or even radios. So carring extra
batteries imposes a trivial weight penalty, and increases the
potential utility of a much heavier piece of hardware.
Rocket propellant, OTOH, is *not* small compared to a rocket.
It's the other way around. The propellant for a chemical
rocket is an order of magnitude heavier than the rocket itself.
To a first approximation, once you've budgeted the fuel, you
can carry as many rocket *ships* as you want at no extra
cost - they weigh *nothing* compared to the fuel.
>sorry, if you are going to go through the burden of carrying
>4 dispatch ships, you will also carry enough fuel to top off
>all four of them.
>If the use of EDS ships is rare, then you'll send them out with
>lot's of margin, for just in case.
>after all the others aren't going to likely need that fuel.
>if use is common, then you'll carry enough fuel for
>4 full tanks, because you expect the odds to be high of
>having long range rescue missions.
Wrong, wrong, and wrong. You're deciding on the number of ships
first, and then throwing in fuel as an afterthought.
Since the fuel is the heavy part, you have to look at it the other
way around.
Assume you have 25 tons to spare for carrying EDS shuttle fuel.
EDS Shuttles themselves are essentially weightless by comparison,
their fuel tanks can hold 25 tons, and EDS shuttle missions can
consume anywhere from 5-20 tons on a typical mission.
How many shuttles do you carry? Keep in mind that you can only
top off the tanks of one.
Or, taking your original example, if you *can* carry four shuttles
*and* four shuttles' worth of fuel, why wouldn't you carry *eight*
shuttles instead? Doesn't cost you anything more, and gives you
more operational flexibility if the first four shuttles need less
than a full tank of gas when you use them.
John Schilling
fid...@eduserv1.rug.ac.be (Filip De Vos) writes:
>Richard Harter (c...@tiac.net) wrote:
>: An obvious problem with the technology is that the EDS is a re-entry
>: vehicle which, barring star-trek technology, would have had to meet
>Nobody seems to have pointed out yet the real flaw: if margins are so
>thight, why is the extra mass on board not detected before launch? And if
>nothing else, the extra mass would have shown up by a performance
>shortfall at or after launch. If launch was by electromagnetic
>accelerator (and I gather that it was not) then the launch sequence could
>have been aborted then.
>Filip (who has not read the story, and cannot post to rec.*)
If by "launch", you refer to a maneuver or operation imparting some
initial velocity on the EDS shuttle, then the shuttle was not "launched"
at all.
It was simply dropped. Cruiser emerges from hyperspace on, presumably,
a close hyperbolic flyby trajectory, opens docking bay doors, releases
shuttle, jumps back into hyperspace. Quibbles about the exact method
of release aside, there's nothing in the "launch" procedure to indicate
weight or mass.
The shuttle then coasts for a while, and the stowaway is detected at
about the time the first course-correction or braking (story is unclear)
burn is initiated.
John McCarthy
In 1954 the term "atmospheric braking" was used for the kind of
re-entry that was pioneered by the missiles. It was conjectured that
it would probably work but was not considered certain. Schemes where
the space craft entered the atmosphere, did some braking and then
skipped out again to cool off before entering again were considered
but proved unnecessary.
I don't recall whether the destination planet in TCE was supposed to
have an atmosphere or what its gravitational field might have been.
John McCarthy
Batteries have a non-trivial mass in case of cars and are almost
insuperably heavy for airplanes. This remark is tangential to
Schillings main points with which I agree.
John McCarthy
In considering hyperspace, science becomes irrelevant. In particular,
the SF writer can assume what he likes about what velocity the EDS
will have relative to the planet. Once he got the EDS out of
hyperspace and out of the ship, the author assumed the known science
of celestial mechanics. - A reasonable literary decision.
pat
In article <5eju7d$o...@spock.usc.edu>, schi...@spock.usc.edu says...
>
>c...@tiac.net (Richard Harter) writes:
>
>
>>All of this is somewhat tangential to the thrust (you should excuse
>>the expression) of the story which means to establish a certain
>>situation. There are technical errors in setting up the situation,
>>some known or knowable in 1954 when the story was written, others
>>obvious after the fact.
>
>>vehicle which, barring star-trek technology, would have had to meet
>*John Schilling * "You can have Peace,
*
>*Member:AIAA,NRA,ACLU,SAS,LP * or you can have Freedom.
*
>*University of Southern California * Don't ever count on having both
*
>*Aerospace Engineering Department * at the same time."
*
>*schi...@spock.usc.edu * - Robert A. Heinlein
*
>*(213)-740-5311 or 747-2527 * Finger for PGP public key
*
unless of course you alter the re-entry profile to reduce
heat load. that's a problem when your capsule only has a limited
life support, but life support is a small requirement compared
to braking fuel.
pat
In article <5ejusc$p...@spock.usc.edu>, schi...@spock.usc.edu says...
but once you launch the EDS, you might as well send it out with
full tanks.
the EDS ship is light and expendable, the mission is critical,
now if the cruiser returns home with 25 tons of EDS fuel well
that isn't real economical either.
So why not send it out with nearly full tanks?
>>sorry, if you are going to go through the burden of carrying
>>4 dispatch ships, you will also carry enough fuel to top off
>>all four of them.
>
>>If the use of EDS ships is rare, then you'll send them out with
>>lot's of margin, for just in case.
>>after all the others aren't going to likely need that fuel.
>
>>if use is common, then you'll carry enough fuel for
>>4 full tanks, because you expect the odds to be high of
>>having long range rescue missions.
>
>
>Wrong, wrong, and wrong. You're deciding on the number of ships
>first, and then throwing in fuel as an afterthought.
>
>Since the fuel is the heavy part, you have to look at it the other
>way around.
>
Okay mr expert.
IS the use of EDS ships Common or Rare?
Is the Typical mission range long or short?
>
>Assume you have 25 tons to spare for carrying EDS shuttle fuel.
>EDS Shuttles themselves are essentially weightless by comparison,
>their fuel tanks can hold 25 tons, and EDS shuttle missions can
>consume anywhere from 5-20 tons on a typical mission.
>
>How many shuttles do you carry? Keep in mind that you can only
>top off the tanks of one.
I don't know, how much do EDS shuttles cost and how much does
fuel cost? WHo pays for the rescue mission.
these are engineering questions.
>
>
>Or, taking your original example, if you *can* carry four shuttles
>*and* four shuttles' worth of fuel, why wouldn't you carry *eight*
>shuttles instead? Doesn't cost you anything more, and gives you
>more operational flexibility if the first four shuttles need less
>than a full tank of gas when you use them.
>
so why not carry 55 shuttles, that will give lot's of flexibility.
pat
-Mammel,L.H.
In article <JMC.97Fe...@steam.stanford.edu>,
John McCarthy <j...@cs.Stanford.EDU> wrote:
>
>I don't recall whether the destination planet in TCE was supposed to
>have an atmosphere or what its gravitational field might have been.
The story includes a rather extensive description of "Woden":
evidently a very earthlike planet, but of course more "wild"
as befits its frontier status.
Lew Mammel, Jr.
-Mammel,L.H.
In article <5ejv8p$p...@spock.usc.edu>,
John Schilling <schi...@spock.usc.edu> wrote:
>
>The shuttle then coasts for a while, and the stowaway is detected at
>about the time the first course-correction or braking (story is unclear)
>burn is initiated.
Not so!
"... [he] turned to the control board and cut the deceleration to
a fraction of a gravity;"
He does this in response to his newly discovered situation,
drastically altering his planned course, and making nonsense
of the fiat constant fuel requirement that is the technical
centerpiece of the story.
Lew Mammel, Jr.
-Mammel,L.H.
In article <5ekrt8$e...@news.snowcrest.net>,
Lorenzo L. Love <lll...@snowcrest.net> wrote:
>>
> Will somebody just read the damn story? No mention was made of other
>moons or planets. No mention was made of delaying the arrival at the
>planet. The pilot cut deceleration to .10 g (from we can assume 1 g) for
>a period of 80 minutes in order to save fuel decelerating the additional
>weight of 110 lbs. In order to compensate for this he had to later
>increase his deceleration to 5 g.
So he can cut deceleration without affecting the arrival
time, and this is OK by you? ( I read the story, BTW )
Note that with the rotating planet ( yes stated in the story )
altering the flight time makes landing in the right location
rather problematical - and certainly makes nonsense out of
the constant fuel "law".
> "She had violated a man-made law that said KEEP OUT but the penalty
>was not of men's making or desire and it was a penalty men could not
>revoke. A physical law had decreed: _h amount of fuel will power an EDS
>with a mass of m safely to its destination;_ and a second physical law
>had decreed: _h amount of fuel will not power an EDS with a mass of m
>plus x safely to its destination.-_
> EDS's obeyed only physical laws and no amount of human sympathy for
>her could alter the second law."
>
> No amount of what-if, should-of, could-of changes the story. No amount
>of arguing physics changes the story. Can you say 'fiction'? The physical
>laws in Godwin's story don't need to be any more real then his hyperspace
>cruisers are. Godwin was not writing a science textbook. He was writing a
>damn good science-FICTION story. "The Cold Equations" is internaly
>consistent. That's all we ask of any SF story as far as reality goes.
I say no, it is not internally consistent. When the crux of the
story hinges on immutable physical law, I think we have the
right to ask just what laws are operating. You write
"science-FICTION", with CAPS on FICTION - well why not
"SCIENCE-fiction" - is it science fiction or just a fairy tale ?
"The other kids were cheering,
but I wasn't cheering because
HE DIDN'T GET OUT OF THE COCK-A-DOODY CAR !!!!"
Lew Mammel, Jr.
David M. Palmer
l...@ihgp167e.ih.lucent.com (-Mammel,L.H.) writes:
>In article <5ekrt8$e...@news.snowcrest.net>,
>Lorenzo L. Love <lll...@snowcrest.net> wrote:
>>>
>> Will somebody just read the damn story? No mention was made of other
>>moons or planets. No mention was made of delaying the arrival at the
>>planet. The pilot cut deceleration to .10 g (from we can assume 1 g) for
>>a period of 80 minutes in order to save fuel decelerating the additional
>>weight of 110 lbs. In order to compensate for this he had to later
>>increase his deceleration to 5 g.
>So he can cut deceleration without affecting the arrival
>time, and this is OK by you? ( I read the story, BTW )
>Note that with the rotating planet ( yes stated in the story )
>altering the flight time makes landing in the right location
>rather problematical - and certainly makes nonsense out of
>the constant fuel "law".
Decelerating at 0.1 g for 80 minutes gives a delta-v of 4800 m/s. For
an Earth-like planet, the surface is moving at ~400 m/s. Worst-case,
coming straight in with the target crossing the center of the disk, you
need to compensate with about 800 m/s transverse velocity relative to
the original trajectory if you spread it throughout the time period.
You can get that from your 0.1 g burn by tilting your thrust by ~10
degrees, giving you ~0.098 g deceleration along your previous
trajectory, and ~0.017 g transverse. You can optimize further by
adjusting the thrust direction as a function of time.
Cutting deceleration does affect the arrival time. He gets there
earlier than he would if he had used a straight 1 g burn until he got near
the planet. It also affects the angle of final approach and other
things that Godwin didn't bother to mention because they are totally
inconsequential to the story. The ship also saves some fuel by not
pulling heavy gees until he gets deeper into the planet's gravity
well. Enough fuel to give the girl a chance to call her brother.
It's simple and predictable. It's only rocket science. You can
calculate these things. And if you don't get the answer you want
THE UNIVERSE DOESN'T GIVE A SHIT.
That's what the story is about.
That's what some people refuse to accept.
--
David M. Palmer
dmpa...@clark.net
http://www.clark.net/pub/dmpalmer/
Lorenzo L. Love
le...@netcom.com (yon lew) wrote:
>Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,rec.arts.sf.misc,rec.arts.sf.written,sci.space.policy
>Subject: Re: The Cold Equations
com> <lewyE5v...@netcom.com> <5ej11f$2...@ssbunews.ih.lucent.com>
moons or planets. No mention was made of delaying the arrival at the
planet. The pilot cut deceleration to .10 g (from we can assume 1 g) for
a period of 80 minutes in order to save fuel decelerating the additional
weight of 110 lbs. In order to compensate for this he had to later
increase his deceleration to 5 g.
"She had violated a man-made law that said KEEP OUT but the penalty
was not of men's making or desire and it was a penalty men could not
revoke. A physical law had decreed: _h amount of fuel will power an EDS
with a mass of m safely to its destination;_ and a second physical law
had decreed: _h amount of fuel will not power an EDS with a mass of m
plus x safely to its destination.-_
EDS's obeyed only physical laws and no amount of human sympathy for
her could alter the second law."
No amount of what-if, should-of, could-of changes the story. No amount
of arguing physics changes the story. Can you say 'fiction'? The physical
laws in Godwin's story don't need to be any more real then his hyperspace
cruisers are. Godwin was not writing a science textbook. He was writing a
damn good science-FICTION story. "The Cold Equations" is internaly
consistent. That's all we ask of any SF story as far as reality goes.
Lorenzo L. Love
lll...@snowcrest.net
Filip De Vos
John Schilling (schi...@spock.usc.edu) wrote:
To: schi...@spock.usc.edu (John Schilling)
Subject: Re: The Cold Equations
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,rec.arts.sf.misc,rec.arts.sf.written,sci.space.policy
In article <5ejv8p$p...@spock.usc.edu> you wrote:
: fid...@eduserv1.rug.ac.be (Filip De Vos) writes:
: If by "launch", you refer to a maneuver or operation imparting some
: initial velocity on the EDS shuttle, then the shuttle was not "launched"
: at all.
: It was simply dropped. Cruiser emerges from hyperspace on, presumably,
: a close hyperbolic flyby trajectory, opens docking bay doors, releases
: shuttle, jumps back into hyperspace. Quibbles about the exact method
: of release aside, there's nothing in the "launch" procedure to indicate
: weight or mass.
I see. There seems to be a discrepancy about making the fuel budget so
tight, while it is dropped from a 'cruiser emerging from hyperspace',
on a trajectory which the cruiser presumably can choose with some margin.
But my point about accurately measuring the mass of the shuttle still
stands: if the fuel budget of the shuttle is so thight, then checking
it's weight right up to the moment of launch seems absolutely neccesary,
especially as it is so trivial: just shake the shuttle a bit in all
kinds of directions, and measure the force imparted and the
accelerations. A species that cracks the hyperspace barrier can't measure
mass in freefall? Yeah right.
Another method of detecting the stowaway is by the life-support
installation: a (metabolic) source of CO2, H2O etc must be detected.
From what I gather about the story (as I said, I have not read it) the
author wanted to go against the convention in SF stories, and set up
the situation accordingly.
I must disagree with the point somebody else made on the thread: the
story seems _not internally consistent, though this may not have been
evident at the time it was written.
Filip (who has not read the story, and cannot post to rec.*)
--
-Mammel,L.H.
In article <5elses$o...@clark.net>, David M. Palmer <dmpa...@clark.net> wrote:
>
>It's simple and predictable. It's only rocket science. You can
>calculate these things. And if you don't get the answer you want
>THE UNIVERSE DOESN'T GIVE A SHIT.
OK, do it. Let's see if you get the answer YOU want.
I doesn't seem to me that Godwin understood orbital dynamics at
anywhere near the level you're implying. I think he was making a
qualitative extrapolation of the Physics I "rocket equation". His
bio says he worked as a hardrock miner and as a cowpuncher, then
spent his married years writing, surveying, and building
concentrators for extracting gold.
If you know more about him than this, I stand ready to be
corrected.
Lew Mammel, Jr.
-Mammel,L.H.
>earlier than he would if he had used a straight 1 g burn until he got near
This is putting it mildly. They would be 100,000 km closer and
going 42 km/sec faster than they would have been if they had
been decelerating at 1g instead of .1g for 80 minutes. This is
after a presumed 60 minute 1g burn, which means they must have
started AT LEAST 350,000 km away and been hurtling towards
Woden at 100 km/sec. Just think of the rocket and fuel requirements
for these burns!
The numbers are ludicrous. The story is a purely impressionistic
word painting, not a technically viable scenario.
Lew Mammel, Jr.
Kristopher
OK.... Enough is enough. Everyone is fighting over the nitpicky things
about how the ship could've done this or that, or how Godwin's phsyics are
just wrong. I say, WHO CARES? The story is written, the results are in
and thats that.
By focusing on these nitpick things we lose sight of the point of the
story. The point -- Nature makes no deliniations between gender or race
-- why should we?
kristopher
PS: I apologize if I've inadvertantly stepped on anyone's foot. I just
think we are getting away from the point.
"Due to budget cuts, the light at the end of the tunnel will be turned off
until further notice." -The Management
--
"Due to budget cuts, the light at the end of the tunnel will be turned off
until further notice." -The Management