Path: utzoo!attcan!telly!lethe!yunexus!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!zephyr.ens.tek.com!tektronix!sequent!crg5!szabo From: szabo@crg5.UUCP (Nick Szabo) Newsgroups: sci.space Subject: Re: Japan's Space Industry Keywords: Japan, Nippon Message-ID: <21092@crg5.UUCP> Date: 6 Feb 91 06:33:28 GMT References: <197.27AE8D32@nss.FIDONET.ORG> Reply-To: szabo@crg5.UUCP (Nick Szabo) Organization: Sequent Computer Systems, Inc Lines: 68 In article yamauchi@cs.rochester.edu (Brian Yamauchi) writes: >In article <197.27AE8D32@nss.FIDONET.ORG> Paul.Blase@nss.FIDONET.ORG (Paul Blase) writes: > > NS> The only thing the Japanese really have over us is efficiency -- > > The key is that Japanese Industry is taking the initiative and not merely > relying upon government funding. Maybe we're more innovative, but they > are DOING it. > >Japanese companies also seem to have more of a long-term vision with >regard to space development. I've heard that Shimizu has plans for an >orbital space station (for tourism), a lunar base, and a Mars base, >and that Ohbayashi has plans for a lunar mining complex. The U.S. also has "plans" for this space mythology, for what it is worth. No profitable corporation in either country is spending serious money for any of this. BTW the slogan of NASDA -- "quick is beautiful" -- is the opposite of the U.S. space program's fetish with "long term planning", a euphimism for putting off until tomorrow what should be done today. >Whether these plans will be translated into reality is another issue, >but, still, I wonder whether one could suggest similar ideas to an >American Fortune 500 company without being laughed out of the >boardroom... (or whether one would get to the boardroom in the first >place). You would get laughed out of any boardroom of any organization that had even the slightest interest in and knowledge of economic payback. There has yet to be created a business plan for space stations and space bases that is anything close to reasonable in terms of cash flow. The costs are two or more orders of magnitude away from economic payback. I challenge anybody on the net to present a business plan -- the market plan, R&D plan, projected financing and cash flows will suffice -- for any one of the following: * space station * lunar base * Martian base using current launch costs, historical R&D costs for manned space capsules, space-qualified machinery, etc. Fact is, nobody on this net or anywhere else on this planet can present a sound business plan that is within even two orders of magnitude in cost to being profitable. The space station/lunar base/Mars spiel is simply a tradition of space lore mimicked from the previous generation, with no grounding in the technological, economic or scientific reality of the past half-century or next century. Communications satellites and space exploration probes have already turned the previous generation's space plan on its head, and modern automation technology puts it away for good. For the pioneers of today, the plans of the past consist of exactly zero in creativity and imagination, and a big empty set in vision. Not to mention huge losses on the balance sheet of any organization that cares to try them. -- Nick Szabo szabo@sequent.com Embrace Change... Keep the Values... Hold Dear the Laughter...