10 ms·
It'll Never Work (1997)
- Buge 12y ago"It would appear that we have reached the limits of what it is possible to achieve with computer technology, although one should be careful with such statements, as they tend to sound pretty silly in 5 years." - John von Neumann in 1949
- Patient0 12y agoCan anyone explain the flaw in Bickerton's reasoning? It's not obvious to me where the mistake is: "For a projectile entirely to escape the gravitation of earth, it needs a velocity of 7 miles a second. The thermal energy of a gramme at this speed is 15,180 calories... The energy of our most violent explosive--nitroglycerine--is less than 1,500 calories per gramme. Consequently, even had the explosive nothing to carry, it has only one-tenth of the energy necessary to escape the earth... Hence the proposition appears to be basically impossible."
- ekanes 12y agoI believe the flaw was the assumption that the only way to get something into space was via detonating explosives.
- progrn 12y agoCorrect me if I am wrong, but we created more powerful fuel than he had when he made that statement.
- hudibras 12y agoJust guessing here, but he assumes that the thermal energy of that gramme traveling at 7 miles/second needs to be applied instantaneously or nearly-instantaneously, when it can instead be given to that gramme over the course of several minutes via, say, a Saturn V rocket system.
- sandworm 12y agoHe is correct. He is saying that a gram of fuel doesn't have enough energy to get itself into orbit. That is a true statement. But he ignores the fact that rockets spend many many grams of fuel to get a gram of non-fuel into orbit.
- HaloZero 12y agoI don't think that right. He's saying you can expend 10 grams of nitroglycerine, but the 10 grams isn't enough to get the 10 grams up into the orbit how can it possible carry more.
- simcop2387 12y agoBecause the 10 grams don't enter orbit. They're expended and stay on Earth. You'll still need more than the 10 grams because you will be lifting the some portion of the 10 grams up into the atmosphere because you can't use or get the energy in an instant. The explosion and propulsion happens over a period of time.
- skybrian 12y agoRockets have multiple stages. Most of the fuel doesn't have to be accelerated nearly that fast. (Also, I don't know how that compares to rocket fuel.)
- Geee 12y agoThat statement considers a projectile shot with a cannon. Gravimetric energy density of e.g. gasoline is much higher than nitroglycerine (6.4 MJ/kg vs. 46 MJ/kg).
- throwawaymsft 12y agoHe just described the energy requirements: each gram of payload needs 15k of energy put in to escape orbit. He didn't think of fuel which exists simply to move the rest of the fuel (the rocket equation). Imagine 50 sticks of dynamite separated by metal plates. The bottom stick explodes, lifting the pile a bit (energy split 50 ways). Then the bottommost explodes, lifting more (split 49 ways). This continues until the second stick propels the first into orbit. You can play with the numbers so explosion energy * (1/50 + 1/49 + ...) = escape energy You quickly realize it gets asymptotic, and extra fuel contributes relatively little to the payload.
- duozerk 12y agoI think he is imagining detonating all the explosives at once, like a gun, the bullet being the payload you want to put into orbit - like in the Jules Vernes books - instead of progressively consuming a fuel like kerosene (which itself has, from wikipedia, an energy density of about 10 kcal/g), leaving more and more mass behind as you ascend. The gun idea seems to be, instinctively, very inefficient because of the need to fight the air density in the lower atmosphere all in one shot. I may be wrong there - mostly imagining what may be wrong with the approach (beyond reducing a live payload to a pink mist) based on kerbal experience :-p
- XorNot 12y agoHe ignores staging and conservation of momentum. The explosives stay on Earth, and transfer their energy to a smaller mass which departs it. Since that smaller mass can in turn be explosives, you can repeat the process infinitely to achieve any desired net thrust-to-weight ratio for the final stage.
- xyzzyz 12y agoAlso, nitroglycerine is pretty terrible fuel. You can get 7 times more energy from burning a gram of ethanol than from exploding one gram of TNT.
- cpks 12y agoProjectile vs. rocket. The calculation is entirely correct -- we cannot shoot a projectile into space. There is no sensible way to get something to go fast enough to make it to space from Earth with no further propulsion. A better argument, actually, is about acceleration. In order to not be utterly crushed, a projectile would need a massive vertical track to be shot into space. Earth's escape velocity is around 10km/s. g=10m/s^2. If we assume maximum acceleration of 10g to not crush the pilot, to get out, we'd need to accelerate at 10g for 1,000 seconds. During that time, we'd travel a few thousand kilometers. Accelerating faster -- as with a nuclear explosion -- only exasperates the problem. We solved the problem by having propulsion the whole way up. We can fire a rocket into space, and it can take it's sweet time to get up there.
- gfodor 12y agoAlso fun to note this argument from first principals could be levied against the Earth if it were just a bit bigger: "If our planet was 50% larger in diameter, we would not be able to venture into space, at least using rockets for transport." http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/expedition30/tryanny.html http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/expedi... One wonders if it were the case, if humanity would come up with a solution by necessity or we'd still be grounded. My guess is we'd have nuclear powered rockets.
- pdpi 12y ago> The energy of our most violent explosive--nitroglycerine--is less than 1,500 calories per gramme. Well, part of it is that you don't really want "violent explosives", you want a controlled combustion. Once you take that limitation out of the way, turns out that explosives don't have very high energy densities, they are actually, for the most part, less energy-dense than food. Take a look at this table: http://physics.info/energy-chemical/ http://physics.info/energy-chemical/ (Funnily enough, was discussing this over lunch just now).
- mitchty 12y agoWhat about project orion? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_%28nuclear_propulsion%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_%28nuclear_propu... I think exploding nuclear bombs as a propellant qualifies as "violent explosives". Then again it was the 50's and those guys loved nuclear things.
- delinka 12y agoI've always thought about it as the difference between "throwing something out of Earth's gravity" (launching a projectile with initial force only) versus "climbing [a ladder?] out of Earth's gravity" (continually applying force just over gravity's influence.) I think Bickerton has confused the two concepts. Consider that gravity is the weakest of all forces. You overcome it every time you jump, run (with both feet off the ground) or climb a ladder. You don't overcome it for long enough to get into orbit, but you still overcome gravity. Birds and airplanes regularly overcome gravity.
- qiqing 12y agoReading this list just gives me a head-rush of joyous giddiness. Take that, craven old conservatives and naysayers! "Men might as well project a voyage to the Moon as attempt to employ steam navigation against the stormy North Atlantic Ocean." - Dr. Dionysus Lardner (1793-1859), Professor of Natural Philosophy and Astronomy at University College, London.
- mytochar 12y agoIt's nice to see that not all of the claims made that turned out to be false were in the negative. e.g: Automobiles will start to decline almost as soon as the last shot is fired in World War II. The name of Igor Sikorsky will be as well known as Henry Ford's, for his helicopter will all but replace the horseless carriage as the new means of popular transportation. Instead of a car in every garage, there will be a helicopter.... These 'copters' will be so safe and will cost so little to produce that small models will be made for teenage youngsters. These tiny 'copters, when school lets out, will fill the sky as the bicycles of our youth filled the prewar roads. - Harry Bruno, aviation publicist, 1943. Furthermore, I notice that's by an aviation publicist; and that just happens to lend to my other comment / question: How many of these people were paid to have the stance that they had?
- MichaelGG 12y agoIsn't the big miss there that they turned out not to be that cheap, nor that safe? Living in a city with bad traffic, I'd love to get a small copter.
- vladiliescu 12y agoBut if everybody else had a small copter too, wouldn't the air traffic be just as bad?
- kardos 12y agoNot really, because you have another dimension to expand into, so you can imagine adding as many levels as you need. Also you avoid all the obstacles that cars have to navigate at ground level (rivers, buildings, trees, etc). On the other hand, there's some work to be done to define good copter "rules of the road". A simple solution is to say you can only go north at lvl1, east at lvl2, south lvl3, west lvl4. That would pretty much eliminate lateral collisions, so then you've only got level changes and takeoffs/landings to solve and it's done. On the other other hand, there are bad drivers, there'll surely be bad pilots. Perhaps self-driving copters is the answer!
- jeffreyrogers 12y agoAnd here's one from Carl Sagan for a nice counterpoint: "The fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown."
- jokoon 12y agoI kinda disagree with that, as anyone trying to do something new is being laughed at, in general. I don't really care about the ideas, it's just frustrating to be laughed at every time to want to try something new. There's always something dismissive, some jealousy, some surprised inability to be humble while facing something strange or new.
- hvs 12y agoIt would probably be best to get over that frustration because it's human nature.
- simonh 12y agoTo be fair, Columbus did underestimate the size of the Earth by about a factor of 2, and that was over 1500 years after Eratosthenes had calculated it to a reasonable degree of accuracy. A lot of the geographers laughing at him did so for that reason, not because they thought the Earth was flat. To his dying day he thought he'd sailed half way round the world to the East Indies. That's why we call those islands the West Indies, and call native american's Indians to this day. If the Americas hadn't been there, the expedition would have all died when the supplies ran out. Columbus wasn't right, he was lucky.
- melling 12y agoLarry Page told his advisor that he thought it would take 2 weeks to index the Internet. His advisor knew it would take a lot longer but didn't say anything. What were the names of those geographers?
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- camperman 12y agoWhat's striking is how often expertise in one field is no guarantee of it in another.
- InclinedPlane 12y agoOr even in the same field really. Being an "expert" doesn't make you omnipotent. Millikan, Rutherford, and Einstein were experts in atomic and quantum physics, but it turns out they lacked the imagination to predict controlled nuclear fission. To be fair, it's a very non-intuitive process, but it just shows you how difficult predictions can be.
- andyidsinga 12y agosee also Clarke's Three Laws. BTW, some of these remind me of some of the critics of travel to Mars
- xerophyte12932 12y agoI find this one odd: >People give ear to an upstart astrologer who strove to show that the earth revolves, not the heavens or the firmament, the sun and the moon... Whoever wishes to appear clever must devise some new system, which of all systems is of course the very best. This fool wishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy; but the sacred scripture tells us [Joshua 10:13] that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, not the earth. - Martin Luther (1483-1546) [Criticizing Copernicus' heliocentric theory of planetary motion.] Because Copernicus wasn't the first astronomer to suggest this. In fact there's a very long line of Muslim astronomers that preceded Copernicus and noticed that the Greek model was wrong, based on a very simple observation: if the earth is stationary and every thing else revolves around it, the view of the heavens should be the same every night (which it isn't). In fact the Muslims actually proposed and experimentally tested several models before Copernicus.
- jacquesm 12y ago> every thing else revolves around it, the view of the heavens should be the same every night Well, unless of course the heavens revolve as well. Which is how it was usually pictured in those days, the distance of the stars was surprisingly much larger than even the wildest estimates.
- xerophyte12932 12y agoI obviously over simplified it. The original muslim astronomers not only tested the greek model but several others using observational data and mathematical models.
- signa11 12y agonot in the same vein as "it'll never work", but, arthur-eddington's heavy-handed approach to subramanyam-chandrashekar's theory on maximum mass of a stable white dwarf star (chandrashekhar's-limit), seems to have set back cosmology by at least couple of decades. what is kind of interesting, is that, lot's of luminaries f.e. bohr, fowler, pauli etc. agreed with his (chandra's) analysis, but owing to reputation of eddington, were unwilling to support him publicly. an excellent book by arthur-miller (empire-of-stars) is quite fascinating
- Cshelton 12y agoAnd just to think: what if the human race from the beginning of time, never lost any knowledge. No libraries were burnt, books and theories weren't banned, scientist kept their heads...on their bodies, info after a fallen empire was retained, the dark ages never happened, the pyramid mystery would never have been one, etc..., would we be several hundred years ahead of where we are now? Or is there some existential force that dictates the progression of innovation? Is it tied to the evolution of the human brains' capabilities?
- johnchristopher 12y agoYou don't need that `existential force` question to find hypothesis and answers to your first question. You are framing your question by opposing (`or`) that `existential force` to whatever your answer is to the first question.
- Cshelton 12y agoIt's really more rhetorical. Clearly I can't just oppose it because there is not a definitive answer. Just seeing what people think as far as the progression of mankind goes.
- gfodor 12y agoDavid Deustch in his book "The Beginning of Infinity" claims the 'existential force' is the emergence of a culture of criticism that recognizes the need for good explanations. The catch is these types of cultures have only sprung up occasionally in the history of humanity, with the vast time between made up of periods of stagnation.
- johnchristopher 12y ago> Animals, which move, have limbs and muscles. The earth does not have limbs and muscles; therefore it does not move. > - Scipio Chiaramonti [Professor of philosophy and mathematics at University of Pisa, arguing against the heliocentrc system, 1633] I can't help thinking that particular sentence context is more political than `scientific`.
- Symmetry 12y agoIt's also a classic example of an argument that proves too much. If the earth can't move because it lacks limbs then surely the sun isn't able to move either.
- delinka 12y agoAh, but do we know the sun isn't made of limbs and muscles? ;-)
- chetanahuja 12y agoBut we can trivially see a boulder rolling down a hill and know that limbs are not a pre-requisite for motion.
- johnchristopher 12y agoIt's more obvious than that. The argument is logically wrong.
- asadlionpk 12y agoA derived blog post by Sam Altman: http://blog.samaltman.com/technology-predictions http://blog.samaltman.com/technology-predictions
- chubot 12y agoInteresting that at least one prediction is too optimistic: Bitcoin is definitely going to be trading at $10,000 or more and in wide use by the end of 2014. - Many otherwise smart people, November of 2013 And I have to comment on: Superhuman machine intelligence is prima facie ridiculous. - Many otherwise smart people, 2015 It's not prima facie ridiculous, but the more common error is to take it for granted. I just don't like it when people start to make predictions about the future based on technology uploading brains to computer or simulating the universe (which was done in the book "Superintelligence" which I just read). It's far from obvious that those things are even possible.
- Simp 12y agoDon't go West young man. (Advice to Columbus.) I. A Voyage to Asia would require three years. II. The western Ocean is infinite and perhaps unnavigable. III. If he reached the Antipodes he could not get back. IV There are no Antipodes because the greater part of the globe is covered with water, and because St. Augustine said so. V. Of the five zones, only three are habitable. VI. So many centuries after the Creation, it is unlikely that anyone could find hitherto unknown lands of any value. - Report of the committee organized in 1486 by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain to study Columbus' plans to find a shorter route to India. Makes you wonder about widely derided projects such as Mars One.
- brazzy 12y agoNot really. Nobody is saying that the stated goals of Mars One are impossible to reach. People are saying that it's a scam without the means or even a viable plan to reach those goals.
- hga 12y agoSee the other comment by simonh in this discussion (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9261989 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9261989): Columbus had a multiplicity of detractors because his estimate of the circumference of the Earth was off by a factor of 2, and to his dying day insisted he'd found the East Indies, not the very fortuitous West "Indies". If the Americas weren't there, he'd be at best a footnote in history, a crazy explorer who'd perished with his crews.
- gonvaled 12y agoThis seems interesting: > The menace to our people of vehicles of this type hurtling through our streets and along our roads and poisoning the atmosphere would call for prompt legislative action ... Is this really so off-the-mark? Or have we just got used to vehicles being the kings of the streets, displacing pedestrians and filling our breathing air with pollutants?
- RyanMcGreal 12y agoEarly outrage over automobiles injuring and killing pedestrians at an alarming rate threatened to stall the growth in driving. In response, the auto industry undertook a major campaign to assert that cars should have the right-of-way and to denormalize people walking and cycling on the street, pushing them to the edges and criminalizing "jaywalking". Now, when a person driving a car kills a person walking, the default reaction is to blame the person walking for not being careful or attentive or visible enough. We have been conditioned point the finger at the pedestrian's earbuds rather than the obvious source of danger. Even when a driver is found guilty of careless driving, the maximum punishment - at least in most North American jurisdictions - is a $500 fine and maybe a few demerit points.
- sandworm 12y agoThat's a bit of an exaggeration. Pedestrians are not automatically to blame in every case. Today we have rules governing the movements of both pedestrians and cars. There is no default winner. Pedestrians win on crosswalks and such, but not in the middle of highways. And even there the car is no clear winner. For instance, if both driver and pedestrian have earbuds in, society today would say the driver is the more reckless. In fact most jurisdictions specifically forbid headphones on drivers. None that I know of forbid them of pedestrians. And 500$ is certainly not the maximum punishment. Vehicular homicide, negligence causing death, reckless endangerment, DUI ... even basic speeding tickets in many jurisdictions are far higher than 500$.
- gonvaled 12y agoWherever the blame may be, and whatever the punishments are, the fact is that the quote was more prescient than inaccurate: we should have legislated better in the early days of the automobile. Now it is too late (or will take too long for changes to take effect): the automobiles are ruling the roads, and specially the cities, from streets to parking lots. Urban planning is done (in most cases) with the goal of facilitating car circulation - pedestrians and bicycles are an afterthought, when at all.
- danieltillett 12y agoIs it too much to ask for references? I have had too many bad experiences over the years where person x was alleged to have said something when in fact never did.
- codeulike 12y agoAlso needs a page listing all the times that someone said that something wouldn't work, and they turned out to be correct.
- chetanahuja 12y agoYeah... confirmation bias written all over that premise.
- cpks 12y agoThe harder problem: How does one overcome such a mentality?
- gfodor 12y agoMy all time favorite from Paul Krugman: "The growth of the Internet will slow drastically, as the flaw in "Metcalfe's law"--which states that the number of potential connections in a network is proportional to the square of the number of participants--becomes apparent: most people have nothing to say to each other! By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet's impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine's."
- melling 12y agoHe says it really wasn't a prediction so he wasn't wrong: http://www.businessinsider.com/paul-krugman-responds-to-internet-quote-2013-12 http://www.businessinsider.com/paul-krugman-responds-to-inte... Sounds like that might be the wrong thing to say.
- wodenokoto 12y agoAs if the fax machine didn't have a huge impact.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- theklub 12y agoThere is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home. - Kenneth Olsen, president and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977. If he had just said "data" instead of computer.