Keep Those Obsolete Computers

Blogging is light because I’m building a computer out of spare parts for my niece, who’s starting USC in the fall. I had a motherboard that I thought was recent enough to not cause problems (a Diamond Multimedia Micronics C200, vintage 1998, an ATX form factor, with a 350 MHz AMD K6-2), but the BIOS couldn’t recognize hard drives larger than thirty-two gig.

(“Why would anyone ever need more than 640K of RAM?” –Bill Gates, c. 1981)

So I had to flash the BIOS with a more recent version. Problem is, in order to do that, the instructions are to boot with a DOS floppy. I’m no longer running any Windows versions older than W2K, and W2K will not create an old-style DOS bootable floppy–the old “/s” parameter is no longer recognized when floppies are formatted.

I looked around for some old DOS boot disks, but they seemed to be too old to read. So now I know that most of these floppies I’ve been hanging on to for years to preserve the data have really only been preserving dust.

What to do?

I dug out an old Toshiba laptop (state of the art and a couple thousand bucks new, about eight years ago). I can’t even put Linux on it–it’s got barely enough RAM (4 meg), but the hard drive is “only” 200 meg (which was a pretty decent sized drive in a laptop in the early nineties). But it does boot into DOS, and even Windows 3.1.

I plugged in the power supply (the battery had given up the ghost years ago), and fired it up. It booted, though it didn’t seem to recognize the trackball. I managed to navigate to a DOS window with the keyboard from Win 3.1. I formatted a system disk, and voila, took it over to the machine under construction and flashed the BIOS.

It now sees the forty-gig drive, and I’m in business. Now I’m just trying to decide whether to install Gatesware, or do a free RH 7.3 installation. I’m tempted to do the latter, to see how well it installs out of the box for a workstation, and how friendly it will be to a freshman college student.

So, off again…

You Can’t Fool All Of The People All Of The Time…

Here’s one European who sees through Yasir (that’s my exploding baby) Arafat:

My distinguished media colleagues in Europe just lap him up. Arafat, who attracts journalists like a lamp-post attracts dogs, gave the world the Pissoir Syndrome. When he appeared before a special session of the UN General Assembly in Geneva in 1988, I was not surprised that the delegates rose to applaud him. You expect that from diplomats. But that evening, arriving three hours late for a press conference in the UN building, I was shocked that all my colleagues gave him a whooping, standing ovation. Here, surely, was a boy band?s lead singer meeting the fans, rather than a terrorist leader about to renounce terrorism.

You Can’t Fool All Of The People All Of The Time…

Here’s one European who sees through Yasir (that’s my exploding baby) Arafat:

My distinguished media colleagues in Europe just lap him up. Arafat, who attracts journalists like a lamp-post attracts dogs, gave the world the Pissoir Syndrome. When he appeared before a special session of the UN General Assembly in Geneva in 1988, I was not surprised that the delegates rose to applaud him. You expect that from diplomats. But that evening, arriving three hours late for a press conference in the UN building, I was shocked that all my colleagues gave him a whooping, standing ovation. Here, surely, was a boy band?s lead singer meeting the fans, rather than a terrorist leader about to renounce terrorism.

You Can’t Fool All Of The People All Of The Time…

Here’s one European who sees through Yasir (that’s my exploding baby) Arafat:

My distinguished media colleagues in Europe just lap him up. Arafat, who attracts journalists like a lamp-post attracts dogs, gave the world the Pissoir Syndrome. When he appeared before a special session of the UN General Assembly in Geneva in 1988, I was not surprised that the delegates rose to applaud him. You expect that from diplomats. But that evening, arriving three hours late for a press conference in the UN building, I was shocked that all my colleagues gave him a whooping, standing ovation. Here, surely, was a boy band?s lead singer meeting the fans, rather than a terrorist leader about to renounce terrorism.

My Heros

There’s a little photoshop contest running at this site, playing games with that now-famous picture of Jesse Jackson and Yasir (that’s my exploding baby) Arafat.

Here’s my entry (actually, it’s Allouette’s from Free Republic), that I’ve combined with another recent favorite. (Hope it counts if I used the Gimp instead of Photoshop…).

Enjoy.

[Via Charles Johnson]

[No pixels were killed or injured in the production of this spoof photograph]

Space Technology And Business Misperceptions

Dave Perron has been engaged in an ongoing discussion with me (and others, but primarily me) in the comments section for this post, which has scrolled off the page, being now over a week old. But he raises some points that are worth discussing, because they contain a number of what I believe to be misperceptions about the space program, space technology, private enterprise, and XCOR in particular, and many people probably share them with Dave.

I appreciate his tenacity, because it actually helps hone arguments for more than one chapter of a book on which I’m laboring, in my copious free time.

He claims not to understand how there is any value of XCOR’s current plans to build a suborbital vehicle, in terms of building an orbital vehicle, particularly if there’s no actual hardware legacy from one to the other (if I’m misstating his view, I’m sure he’ll correct me in the comments).

Once the vehicle is done (provided it can reach 65 km, which I’m not at all convinced that it can given the design constraints)

I don’t understand why he believes that this is a technical challenge, in this day and age. Given smart designers, modern computer-aided design and manufacturing tools, and adequate funding, this is a relatively trivial accomplishment. That it hasn’t been done up to now is only because no one has bothered to fund it (for previous lack of interest in the goal).

then what you have is a carnival ride attempting to raise money to build pretty much the same thing NASA has been trying to build, only on lower cashflow.

The use of the term “carnival ride” is, to me, needlessly denigrating. But even if that’s a good analogy, a lot of people pay money to ride on carnival rides–it’s a thriving business, so I’m not sure what the point is here. If someone can build aerospace hardware, and learn how to routinely operate rocket-powered vehicles (something that NASA has never done, or even seriously attempted to do), and generate revenue from it, building a business to go on to the next step, I don’t understand what’s wrong with that as a market.

And as to the point about building “pretty much the same thing that NASA has been trying to build,” I don’t understand the reference. NASA has never attempted to build anything like this, precisely because it’s viewed by them (and people like them, such as Dave) as a “carnival ride,” having no value, and being beneath them.

Sure, the money is private sector. I want to make it clear that I couldn’t possibly contain any more approval for private-sector space exploration.

Here’s another example of a flawed paradigm. This has nothing to do with “exploration.” As long as we continue to think space=exploration, we’ll make little progress in actually developing it and putting it on a paying basis.

Let’s be clear. This is about space business, and space exploitation. That many think this a bad thing is one of the many flawed perceptions that remain long after the end of the Cold War. If we want to open up the frontier, we’re going to have to think of space as just a place to do business, and if one of those businesses is “carnival rides,” fine. At least we’re doing something, and developing useful technology, which NASA, sadly, is for the most part not.

But we’re talking gigantic sums of money here. Has XCOR shown that it can raise money in these quantities with a carnival ride? I’m curious how many $100k rides there are to sell.

Space Adventures seems to think that there are a lot. And the amount of money that XCOR is talking is a few million, at most. There are many people who have that kind of money, and in fact, some of them would be able to pay a million or three for their own rocketplane (these are the same people who buy their own Gulfstream IVs and Vs, which cost many tens of millions).

Normally when you see someone attempting to attract investors in the attempt to reach a goal, you at least see some level of initial design that’s on a path to meet that goal. I’ve seen nothing of the kind from XCOR, so I’m a little sceptical they have done much other than make and test some rocket engines and fly a rocket-powered subsonic aircraft around for a while.

The Xerus design is exactly that.

Not to denigrate those accomplishments, but they are a small fraction of what needst to be done. I have been unable to obtain so much as a back-of-the- envelope analysis that says “here’s our vehicle; it has X amount of maximum thrust and carries Y kilograms of fuel/oxidizer. Here’s our notional trajectory to 35 km.”

I’m sure they’ll be happy to show you if you’re a qualified, interested investor. They have no obligation to do so if you’re not, since they’re doing it with private funding–not taxpayers’. Knowing the individuals involved closely, there is no doubt in my mind that they have worked out those numbers to agonizing detail.

BTW I’m not affiliated with any part of Lockheed Martin that’s involved with space exploration or payload delivery. My current assignment is a targeting pod for the Air Force. But I have gained some passing familiarity with rocketry, orbital mechanics and aerodynamics, so whenever someone claims to be able to do for a buck and a quarter something that’s not been possible,

Why do you claim that it’s “not been possible”? Can you show me some kind of history of failed attempts to build suborbital passenger vehicles?

No.

The only failure has been in raising money for them.

and do it with rudimentary technology, I have to stop and examine it to see if there’s something squirrely being done.

What does “rudimentary technology” mean? They are using whatever technology level is required to get the job done. The fact that they have a small team says nothing about the level of technology that they’re using.

And why do you think that, in the year 2002, building such a vehicle is an intrinsically high-technology endeavor?

I can’t say that about XCOR because I have been unable to obtain sufficient detail about what’s being planned. But neither can I be satisfied that it’s all on the up- and-up.

“Squirrely.” “All on the up and up.” Just what are you accusing them of? And on what basis? That they don’t publicly disclose their privately-developed and proprietary detailed designs?

Do you believe that Burt (and Dick) Rutan are charlatans, too? They make similar claims.

Dave, space just isn’t as hard as you think it is. But a culture has developed in the aerospace industry over the past fifty years to make it seem hard, and even to believe themselves that it is (because it’s easier to convince others, and to sleep at night, if you believe the same things that you’re telling other people), because the environment has rewarded them for believing that.

After all, if something is hard, it makes it a lot easier to justify large budgets for it, and it provides an excuse if it doesn’t succeed. And because the incentives are in place to create jobs, rather than useful space hardware, it often doesn’t succeed. And then the failure is used as a proof–“See? We told you it was hard!” which becomes an excuse for even more funding in the future.

But this game doesn’t work with private money. Investors (as opposed to politicians who are rewarded by jobs in their districts) expect results.

XCOR has done something that many didn’t believe possible, at least not for the shoestring funding that they’ve received. They’ve developed a safe, reliable, reusable rocket engine, that can be integrated into an existing aircraft, flown repeatedly in a single day.

On the basis of that achievement, they’ve built credibility for the next thing–a suborbital airplane (with a different rocket engine in it). There will be little legacy, in terms of hardware, from EZ-Rocket, to Xerus. But their experience will translate to the new project. This will require a few million dollars.

If they succeed at that, (and succeeding includes not just building the vehicle, but repaying their investors), they’ll have even more credibility for their next goal, which will likely be a higher-performance suborbital vehicle, or an actual orbital vehicle. Will any of Xerus hardware find its way into that vehicle? Maybe, maybe not, but they’ll have the cash flow and track record they need to raise the money for it.

And they will have gotten into space the right way. Instead of making grandiose promises about high technology, and asking for billions of dollars up front, to be spread around to various congressional districts, they’ll have done it step by step, learning as they go, and providing confidence for the next.

The way we might have done it forty years ago if the X-15 program hadn’t been derailed by Apollo…

Blow Me To The Moon

Mark Steyn is a little rough on the paper formerly known as the paper of record, and on the press in general. But then, what else is new? And what the heck, it’s no more than they deserve.

…the New York Times has had a pretty risible war since October 30, when it loosed veteran correspondent R W Apple Jr to do a front-page “news analysis” with the hilarious opening: “Like an unwelcome specter from an unhappy past, the ominous word ‘quagmire’ has begun to haunt conversations among government officials and students of foreign policy, both here and abroad. Could Afghanistan become another Vietnam?” By “students of foreign policy”, I think he meant him, and “the ominous word ‘quagmire’ ” was haunting government officials only in the sense that some pill from the NYT kept bringing it up every press conference.

He does tip his hat to the blogosphere, though, and the man who coined the term:

…an estimated 10,000 Palestinians whooped it up in the streets of Gaza, celebrating their glorious victory on the battlefield of the university’s Frank Sinatra Centre. Those Palestinians hipsters won’t dance to Frank – no Songs For Swingin’ Lovers in Gaza – but give ’em some Songs for ‘Splodin’ Losers and you’ve got a capacity crowd ready to cheer all the old favourites: Come Die With Me, I’ve Got Jews Under My Skin, I’ve Got The World On A Fuse, all the hits. As the internet pundit William Quick put it, we haven’t seen Palestinians looking that happy since . . . oh, yeah, September 11, when they celebrated in Ramallah.

As usual, the whole thing is a joy and a hoot.

Amazing Photo

This is a shot of the Sukhoi 27 that crashed at the air show last weekend in the Ukraine. A few seconds after this picture was taken, almost everyone you see in it was severely injured…or dead. At least seventy people died in the worst air show accident in history.

The crew ejected and survived, but they may have trouble sleeping for the rest of their lives.

Simberg’s Law?

In what he calls a pre-mortem for the Department of Homeland Security, Arnold Kling has a follow up to my column (and post) on “emergent stupidity.”

He also names the law after me, though it’s hard to believe that I’m the first person to document this obvious phenemenon. Or that it’s well-enough refined to be useful in its present form. But I appreciate the thought, anyway.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!