Products > Dodgy Technology
Spinlaunch... Can it succeed?
Rick Law:
--- Quote from: dunkemhigh on December 31, 2021, 07:37:11 pm ---
--- Quote ---world be a better place if we were living off off the land as the Native Americans, Africans and Aboriginal people have
--- End quote ---
They only managed because there were relatively few of them. There is no way the current world population could exist living off the land in the same way.
--- End quote ---
In agreement to dunkemhigh's reply above, I would add: these days we have more who use single variable thinking instead of thinking dynamically with multiple variables.
A simple illustration of single variable thinking: Just prior to 2000, there was an increase in tax large luxury yachts. Politicians were thinking, well, we are collecting 2% tax and we are getting X, if we increase it to 6%, we have 3X the income... They never consider the fact that at 6%, far fewer people would buy luxury yachts. The luxury yacht business was dead in a year. Took years for that business to recover. Single variable thinking at work.
The whole thing about living off the land is another such single variable thinking. A recent example being former Zimbabwe, in around 1990's, the commercial farms were destroyed, broken up and turned into family farms eating what you grow. The productivity just isn't the same[1]. Before that, they were a food exporter to other nations, after the land redistribution, they became a net food importer with food shortages. To their credit, they saw the light - in 2006, they started inviting the commercial farmers back with free 99 years land leases to rebuilt a commercial farming industry. But of course with the infrastructure already destroyed, it will take them a while to debug the process and make it work. Just back in March 2021, banks refused to accept leases as collateral, arguing that land still belongs to the State[2]. Businesses can't work well when bank wont make loan. So, the process debugging continues.
Reference:
[1] CNN: How Robert Mugabe killed one of Africa's richest economies
https://money.cnn.com/2017/11/15/news/economy/zimbabwe-economy-robert-mugabe-history/index.html
[2] Commercial Farmers’ Union of Zimbabwe: Zimbabwe banks declare 99-year leases worthless
http://www.cfuzim.com/2021/03/19/zimbabwe-banks-declare-99-year-leases-worthless/
Spinlauch is exactly the same "single variable thinking" is at work. This faulty thinking was pointed out by CatalinaWOW in this earlier reply:
--- Quote from: CatalinaWOW on November 28, 2021, 03:48:07 am ---There are tons of second order problems to solve also. You can get a glimpse with a much simpler concept. Large rockets burn huge amounts of fuel in the first few meters of flight. The Saturn V burned roughly 35,000 kg of fuel in the first 10 meters of motion and is still only going roughly 20 meters/second at that time. If you just mounted the whole rocket on a hydraulic piston and shoved it the first ten meters you would save all that mass with corresponding improvements in downstream performance.
BUT, to save that fuel you have to light the fires after the piston initiates it's motion. And in the case of a misfire you have a giant rocket heading into the air and at least partially on fire with an impact zone a few meters from the launch platform. Space flight is exciting enough without problems like that.
Spin launches are an approach to taking the weight of initial velocity production out of the rocket, but this one seems most efficient at rearranging the location of cash.
--- End quote ---
As long as we do not think about the other variables, a lot of things seem to make sense, but once we put those other variables in play, the whole thing collapsed. I am afraid Spinlaunch, and many other fads of day such as "we can all bike to work to save the environment", are merely a black hole for money and productivity leaving us worst off, and disfunctional.
DougSpindler:
I am still waiting for one of the bike to work enthusiasts who are willing to have their mother of grandmother do it. Especially if they live in one of the northern states in the winter or southwest states in the summer.
Nusa:
--- Quote from: DougSpindler on December 31, 2021, 11:56:51 pm ---I am still waiting for one of the bike to work enthusiasts who are willing to have their mother of grandmother do it. Especially if they live in one of the northern states in the winter or southwest states in the summer.
--- End quote ---
I'm sure there are thousands of examples that meet that criteria; you just aren't looking for them so you can claim they don't exist.
My father was an avid cyclist for the last 35 years of his life. His health slowed him down at age 87, but until then a 10+ mile bike ride was something he did all the time. Plenty of hills, too.
fourfathom:
--- Quote from: DougSpindler on December 31, 2021, 11:56:51 pm ---I am still waiting for one of the bike to work enthusiasts who are willing to have their mother of grandmother do it. Especially if they live in one of the northern states in the winter or southwest states in the summer.
--- End quote ---
Nobody is demanding that *everybody* ride bikes to work. Why do we try to apply binary "all or none" thinking to these problems? Improvements are usually made at the margins, and the best ones slowly work their way to towards the center.
And I drive an internal combustion car.
DougSpindler:
--- Quote from: fourfathom on January 01, 2022, 01:11:29 am ---
--- Quote from: DougSpindler on December 31, 2021, 11:56:51 pm ---I am still waiting for one of the bike to work enthusiasts who are willing to have their mother of grandmother do it. Especially if they live in one of the northern states in the winter or southwest states in the summer.
--- End quote ---
Nobody is demanding that *everybody* ride bikes to work. Why do we try to apply binary "all or none" thinking to these problems? Improvements are usually made at the margins, and the best ones slowly work their way to towards the center.
And I drive an internal combustion car.
--- End quote ---
Something is telling me you are are a 20-35 year old. These snowflakes can only think in binary…. We need to go what’s good for the planet. As in everyone should be driving EVs. Everyone should be riding bikes. Everyone should be eating vegan. We need to rid the world of plastics.
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