2009-07-19
post/144653965
The Technium: Was Moore’s Law Inevitable?
Of course, it kind of weakens his argument, but I still find it odd that Kevin Kelly doesn’t admit anywhere in this post that the speed curve for rockets he posted turned out to be wrong.
OK, fine, it predicted the first satellite launches and Apollo, but then it broken down catastrophically. The fastest a human has ever travelled was in 1970.
Kelly does address the reason later on:
In this microcosmic realm energy is not very important. We don’t see exponential improvement in efforts to scale up, to keep getting bigger, skyscrapers and space stations.
Multi-stage chemical rockets are the only way we have to hoist payload. Unless and until we shift to nuclear rockets or tease out of particle physics some magic method of propulsion, they’re the only way we have to get to the Moon, and Saturn V and Energia are as big as we’ve made. As Charlie Stross says:
Stick a LEM on the moon and bring the contents back? Easy. Increase the mass that the LEM brings back? Very expensive — the price goes up as the sixth power of the weight you’re returning from the lunar surface (because you have to loft the heavier LEM into Earth orbit to begin with).
This doesn’t really invalidate Kelly’s argument. I just found it a bit of an odd omission.
