🚀 go-pugleaf

Donald Phillipson (ad201@FreeNet.Carleton.CA) wrote:

: Kirby Urner (pdx4d@teleport.com posted July 25:

: 1.  Urner implies greater faith than most posters feel in the new hardware
: and "decision technology" associated with the space programme.  Actual
: critical events (Apollo 13, Challenger disaster, recent accidents aboard
: Mir etc.) suggest real space systems have never yet been so automated as

I think Kirby was talking about the flight-control center and other 
decision-support technologies, not actual hardware in orbit. Since the 
cost of putting people up there was so high (unfortunately it still is), 
methods had to be found for humans to make decisions here on the ground, 
which requires that information about the spacecraft had to be brought 
down to them, and somehow presented in a meaningful way to them. These 
technologies are applicable to more pedestrian uses and certainly look 
valuable to me. 

: to be automatically failure proof and to require no original human
                      ^^^^^^^^^^^^^                ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
One was not neccesary, the other was not the intention. 

: intervention -- which weakens their strength as new models of anything. 

Why?


--
Filip De Vos                  The idea that space travel is inherently      
                              enormously expensive is fraudulent. 
FilipPC.DeVos@rug.ac.be                    John S. Lewis

ad201@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Donald Phillipson) wrote:

>1.  Urner implies greater faith than most posters feel in the new hardware
>and "decision technology" associated with the space programme.  Actual
>critical events (Apollo 13, Challenger disaster, recent accidents aboard
>Mir etc.) suggest real space systems have never yet been so automated as
>to be automatically failure proof and to require no original human
>intervention -- which weakens their strength as new models of anything. 
>

I'm not talking about eliminating human intelligence from the 
executive decision-making role -- I'm not a big fan of the old
AI paradigm (thinking we could somehow encode the 'rules' and
shuff off responsibility for thinking onto HAL-type systems).

I'm talking about setting goals, milestones, and storyboarding
the several parallel tracks (convergent/divergent) required to
achieve them.  As a kid, I was impressed by Apollo for its 
scripted positions (mission control:"Lights?" astronaut: "Check")
which links to 'program' (in the sense of theater) and to a
'main sequence or count down' (T-minus to lift off, then T-plus)
-- all these tasks were synchronized relative to some 'main
clock'.

When you look at Spaceship Earth as 'already launched' but 
still in need of on board systems upgrading (in many cases
to compensate for rampant downgrading executed by humans 
with only a dim sense of acting within a space program),
then it becomes logical to think of one's life as a thread
in a multi-threaded, highly intertwisting (convergent/divergent)
critical path scenario, with a 'main clock' marking time as
we move towards milestones.

>2.  The ideal process of debate focuses less on the substance
>disagreements than on the reasons each side offers why its data or
>interpretations ought to convince the other:  but you cannot have these
>rival reasons without the disagreements first (which is the way scientific
>research makes much of its progress.) Arguing about smallish details is a
>distinct Kuhnian class of activity, between his extremes of "normal
>science," i.e. filling the blanks, and revolutionizing paradigms, which
>may be as bulky as "normal science."
>

Sometimes the gulf between paradigms is such that "reaching agreement"
is not a likelihood from the get go.  Kuhn talks about this in his
book:  science, like other enterprises, depends on attrition to 
supply the necessary turnover, while on the front end of the pipeline,
the focus is on recruitment of talented and skilled newcomers to the
various competing disciplines.  Like, welcome to the machine (Pink Floyd).

Kirby

----------------------------------------------------
Kirby Urner  "ALL realities are 'virtual'" -- KU
Email: pdx4d@teleport.com
Web:   http://www.teleport.com/~pdx4d/