All posts by Rand Simberg

General Science

A Fowl Fate

I couldn’t quite figure out how to categorize this one. There are stories of children being raised by wolves, but here’s the first case, at least of which I’m aware, of a man being raised by chickens.

It will be certain to be the butt of jokes, but of course it’s a tragic situation. I really mean it–once you get past the absurdity of it, it really was catastrophic for the poor guy.

But it could have been worse–he was fortunate that it happened after he had at least developed the ability to speak. Children raised without human contact from birth never develop the ability to do so–there’s a certain critical point in development and the wiring of the brain during which speech is acquired, and if you miss it, you’ve apparently missed it forever. The story claims that he is learning (or relearning) how to speak, and presumably to eat with utensils instead of pecking.

Of course, as the old joke in the Woody Allen movie (Annie Hall?) went, they may not want to go too far in rehabilitating him. They won’t get any more eggs. Besides, he may have a thrilling career ahead of him as a sports team mascot.

Space

A Moore’s Law For Spaceflight?

Michael Turner has a piece in today’s The Space Review arguing that Moore’s Law won’t apply to space development. His argument fails, at least to me, because it rests on a false premise (and a common myth)–that the reason access to space is expensive is because we don’t have the “right” technology.

While I don’t literally believe in a Moore’s Law for space (in the sense that we can see seemingly never-ending halving of costs on some constant time period), I do expect to see dramatic reductions in cost in the next couple decades, but not because there are vast ranges for improvement in the technologies, but because there are is vast potential for improvement in the real problem–the heretofore lack of market.

Costs will come down dramatically when we start flying a lot more. It’s that simple. Once we reach a plateau, in which the costs of propellant start to become significant in the overall costs of flight, then we should look to some new technological breakthroughs, but we’re sufficiently far from that that some form of Moore’s Law, at least in the short term, is actually quite likely to hold.

Space

A Moore’s Law For Spaceflight?

Michael Turner has a piece in today’s The Space Review arguing that Moore’s Law won’t apply to space development. His argument fails, at least to me, because it rests on a false premise (and a common myth)–that the reason access to space is expensive is because we don’t have the “right” technology.

While I don’t literally believe in a Moore’s Law for space (in the sense that we can see seemingly never-ending halving of costs on some constant time period), I do expect to see dramatic reductions in cost in the next couple decades, but not because there are vast ranges for improvement in the technologies, but because there are is vast potential for improvement in the real problem–the heretofore lack of market.

Costs will come down dramatically when we start flying a lot more. It’s that simple. Once we reach a plateau, in which the costs of propellant start to become significant in the overall costs of flight, then we should look to some new technological breakthroughs, but we’re sufficiently far from that that some form of Moore’s Law, at least in the short term, is actually quite likely to hold.

Space

A Moore’s Law For Spaceflight?

Michael Turner has a piece in today’s The Space Review arguing that Moore’s Law won’t apply to space development. His argument fails, at least to me, because it rests on a false premise (and a common myth)–that the reason access to space is expensive is because we don’t have the “right” technology.

While I don’t literally believe in a Moore’s Law for space (in the sense that we can see seemingly never-ending halving of costs on some constant time period), I do expect to see dramatic reductions in cost in the next couple decades, but not because there are vast ranges for improvement in the technologies, but because there are is vast potential for improvement in the real problem–the heretofore lack of market.

Costs will come down dramatically when we start flying a lot more. It’s that simple. Once we reach a plateau, in which the costs of propellant start to become significant in the overall costs of flight, then we should look to some new technological breakthroughs, but we’re sufficiently far from that that some form of Moore’s Law, at least in the short term, is actually quite likely to hold.