Re: Barack Obama Pits Space Explorers Against School Children

On 5 Dec, 12:37, Quadibloc <jsav...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Dec 5, 4:51 am, Ian Parker <ianpark...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On 4 Dec, 21:11, simberg.interglo...@xxxxxxxxx (Rand Simberg) wrote:
On Tue, 4 Dec 2007 12:17:46 -0800 (PST), in a place far, far away, Ian
Parker <ianpark...@xxxxxxxxx> made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
such a way as to indicate that:
The first of these is that there is no
magic formula to lower costs. If there were someone would now be
building a cheap LEO reusable vehicle.

Yes, of course. In fact we would have had it three thousand years
ago.
Now this really is idiotic. To claim that we could have had a
technology years back in the past with no antecedents. It is on a par
with some feminist "science that insist that Newtons work was a rape
manual.

I think what he meant was that if there was a "magic formula" to
voyage to the Moon without problems, then, since three thousand years
ago, people were already chanting magical incantations, it could has
easily have been available then.

That is, he was taking the phrase "magic formula" in its literal sense
with the intent of uttering a witticism.

No the implication to me seemed clear. A full industrial civilization
could have been buily 3000 years ago. Looking at history we can see
that the future is accelerating. Therin lies the challenge.


- Ian Parker
.

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