[extropy-chat] Re: Are dwarfs better for long duration spaceflight?

[David Lubkin]

Terry W. Colvin wrote:

>Besides, bigger means that you can work with a number of economies 
>of scale - such as mass production and system duplication to make 
>enough redundancy to cope with discrete failures.

Reminds me of a conversation I had a few years ago with a 
distinguished astronomer (and apparent idiot) who had worked on some 
of the robotic space missions.

I was talking about how useful it would be to, instead of having one 
or maybe two crafts that observe some solar system phenomena, set up 
an assembly line in near-Earth space. Build thousands of identical 
crafts. Perhaps finishing one a day, shoving it out into a new direction.

First, he dismissed the value of having data from different spots in 
the solar system. I think he's wrong, but at least the point seems debatable.

Then came his punchline, which demonstrated to me that Clarke's Laws 
are still in effect.

He proclaimed that spacecraft *must* be custom-built, and that it 
would *never* be possible to mass-produce them. And yes, friends, he 
really did mean *never*.


-- David Lubkin.