[ExI] simulation as an improvement over reality

spike spike66 at att.net
Tue Dec 28 20:45:00 UTC 2010


...
>> Semi-soft landing of >100 kg parcels on Luna affordably is the most
expensive and critical aspect of the venture. Scaling down robotics and
moving towards self-replication closure is a much easier problem in
comparison... Eugen

>I disagree that robotics is much easier. ...However, I do agree that
getting stuff to Luna is more expensive.
The majority of that, in turn, is simply the cost of launching stuff off of
Earth.  Intense R&D is being done today - again, see SpaceX.  This is
"easier" in that one simply needs to throw enough money at the people
already working on this... Adrian

Launching stuff from the Earth's surface has proven to be a far more
persistent bottleneck than anyone from the 1960s thought it would be.  I
don't see that we have made any real progress in that area since then.  Even
taking into account SpaceX and other commercial efforts in heavy lift to
orbit, a good argument could be made that we have regressed.

I am tempted to agree with Eugen: the way through that tenacious bottleneck
is in downscaling scaling mechanisms, an area which has been wildly
successful since the 60s.  We focus our efforts on getting that mass way
down, then we transport software instead of building more and bigger
rockets.

spike












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