Re: Taylor Dinerman nails it

henry@xxxxxxxxxxxxx (Henry Spencer) wrote:

>In article <43946d16.5830710@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
>Derek Lyons <fairwater@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>His only point seems to be the same as the same mistaken viewpoint so
>>often espoused here: 'we could build crude prototypes in a few years
>>forty years ago - so modern operational craft that are vastly more
>>capable and complex with much longer lifespans shouldn't take much
>>more than a week or two'.
>
>Another nasty sound bite from Derek, oversimplified to the point of
>outright error yet again.

Sadly, my precis is a fair summation of the article *as written*. The
material Tom and yourself have provided is written much clearer, much
more directly, and much more on point.

>The article makes considerable sense. His main point is the same one a
>lot of increasingly-exasperated people in Congress and elsewhere have
>been making lately: programs aimed at building operational spacecraft,
>especially ones with hard deadlines because their predecessors have
>limited remaining life, should be built with (at most) minor stretching of
>existing technology, rather than aiming for radical improvements. There
>is quite enough potential difficulty and delay in putting together a
>reliable, long-lived operational bird *without* also stuffing it with
>bleeding-edge technology.

It's a very good point - but it's one that's tossed off in much less
clear terms at the end of the article.

I learned to put the important stuff at the *start* of the article,
and to follow it with the supporting and amplifying information when I
took a journalism class back in ninth grade. )I also learned about
such things as thesis statements - which appear nowhere in the
article.)

For example, he cites TIROS - a very simple bird that they hoped
worked, as an example. This is faulty apples and oranges logic as it
compares an experimental craft with an operational craft. (You are
correct in pointing out that it *should* be an experimental craft -
but it's not. Dinerman never clearly does.) From TIROS he leaps to
the new system - without ever discussing whether the intermediate
systems also had teething problems.

Hence my summation.


D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL
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