Continuing engineering failure analysis of social systems re technology

(Continued from http://kestsgeojedc.blogspot.com/2011/10/failure-analysis-of-lack-of-acceptance.html )

So far, the failure analysis of the social systems needed to establish early space colonization for humanity, have brought up factors of lack of congressional funding; judging the originator's credentials instead of judging the concepts themselves; lack of peer-membership with the potential evaluators; interference with existing business investments and career planning; unfamiliar technology to the evaluators; and the business choices of going for easy profit instead of the vision of early space colonization.

The 1972 Lunar space elevator concept, called the Mooncable, brought up those factors, as mentioned in the referenced post which is part of this overall message.

The next concept utilized for this failure analysis of needed social systems, relates to the the "KESTS to GEO" concept. So the last part of the preceding post is repeated here, as it is part of the description of what was tried and how failure was the result.

The second example for this kind of overall system failure analysis, is my effort to gain interest in my concept for rapid expansion into high Earth orbit, initially with the purpose of building abundant Solar Power Satellites to provide plentiful clean energy to nations around the world. This concept would bypass the Space Elevator's severe limitations, yet be able to do the same efficient access to high earth orbit, probably even more capably too. It would use the outward force of internal centrifugal force to balance the weight of the structure in the planetary gravitational field, instead of utilizing strength of materials to do the job.

I created this "KESTS to GEO" concept - acronym for "Kinetic Energy Supported Transportation Structure to Geostationary Earth Orbit" - to bypass the problem with the Earth Space Elevator concept, that of the lack of a material strong enough for its mass to support its own weight between GEO and the ground. I was keenly aware of this problem, having thought of the earth space elevator idea in 1969 - not the first person to do so, it turned out - then realized that the tensile strength to density ratio problem that really made a problem for the concept. (However, that effort later enabled my 1971-1972 creation of the Mooncable concept.) So I constantly sought other ways to have large scale access of earth orbital space.

The early 1980's concepts of Keith Lofstrom's Launch Loop rocket lift to the fringes of the atmosphere by a trapezoid shaped tethered out-flung loop of continuous material, and Rod Hyde's "StarBridge" vertical tower to the fringes of the atmosphere, supported by electrodynamic drag of high velocity paramagnetic beryllium disks flung upward inside the structure, excited my hopes for early large scale space colonization in my time; even Earl Smiths' "Texas and Universe Railroad" concept of an out-flung expandable iron belt from the earth surface to GEO, although had some major flaws in it including that it would not go to GEO if anchored in the high latitude of Texas, got me to do my first speech supporting those concepts, as well as my Mooncable space elevator concept, to the National Commission on Space in 1985. But to no avail, the Commission's report did not mention any of these things.

I mulled over the why-nots for a few years, discovering the major faults within each of those systems, and finally figured out how to combine all those concepts and add some new components, to make what appeared a workable large scale ground-to-GEO access space transportation structure of high efficiency, supported by the outward force of high velocity armatures circulating throughout the quasi-elliptical hoop around the Earth, connecting the equatorial surface to GEO. The materials and technology were well within the contemporary capability.

But the problem remained, of how I, as still an unknown in the field, could get this concept into the awareness of those who could take it to the next steps. About that time, I had gotten connected to the GEnie Spaceport Library, via my 300 baud modem connected to my long-obsolete Adam Coleco computer; as always, I lived on the edge of poverty, earning a living as an engineering technician in electronics; I worked for a small car alarm manufacturer at the time. Finally I could get the attention to my Mooncable concept and my new KESTS to GEO concept, I thought, through the GEnie network, connecting with other space enthusiasts involved with technology.

Even the GEnie Network was sponsored by General Electric, a large company who could possibly be able to build much of the KESTS to GEO system, I thought. I posted the initial insights there in 1988, and had largely fleshed it out in 1989, posting many files in the GEnie Spaceport Library.

But the reaction I got as a result was lots of angry replies, not involving technology, but bringing up other issues that readers would have to wade through before getting to the technical parts of the chat strings back then.

It took me a long time to realize that the KESTS to GEO concept would obsolete the ground rocket launch vehicle industry, on which these folks based their futures. No wonder the anger.

But clearly they were only interested in their personal fortunes, not the vision of large scale economical access and utilization of high earth orbit, and the large scale access of the Lunar environment and Mars' moons and asteroids, all now potentially in the near future, instead of something that would only have to withstand the test of real physical construction and usage generations later, as were the other forms of space colonization views as based on rocket systems alone.

A general pattern seems to be forming as I write here: the wideness of the vision of the evaluator, controls the trend of the resulting decision. If the evaluator was not fitting the concept into the wide vision of extending humanity into space colonies, then the criteria would be based on such things as the concept's potential effects on the evaluator's career, the corporate business potentials, the disruption to existing personal investments such as into petrochemical energy sources so as to gain personal wealth that way, effect on esteem from non-peer level concept offerings, and potential effects on international interactions. Thus what seems to be a failure of social systems, is simply reduced to success at supporting continuance of other considerations. Not looking to early space colonization, why disrupt existing plans for enabling that to happen.

In the KESTS to GEO enabled SPS case, done by the pointing out of the essential nature of large scale worldwide energy sources that are not primarily based on burning of petrochemicals in the air, simply stimulated efforts to create "green" energy sources and transportation systems, from existing technologies of wind, photovoltaics, wave energy, nuclear, and geothermal energy sources; maintaining the hydroelectric dams, and electric cars.

Such a diversity of energy sources is important for a resilient energy supply. Yet since these "green" energy sources are not producing more than a small fraction of the nation's energy needs; we have to burn coal aplenty to provide the vast majority of our daily energy usage.

The concept of building Solar Power Satellites in GEO, adequate to supply the vast majority of civilization's energy needs on into the future, enabled by building the KESTS to GEO transportation structure from ground up to GEO, is still being intensely avoided even now in 2011, some 22 years since the concept was fairly fleshed out in 1989, and long enough to have developed working structures built between equatorial ground and GEO by now, and a few prototype Solar Power Satellites of operational capacity already built and being used to supply all the energy the transportation structure system needs itself, as well as supplying gigawatts of energy to the power grid.

While the failure to implement this is a failure to be able to provide plentiful non-petrochemical energy for civilization along with large scale space colonization in GEO and on the Moon, it is not a social failure in the sense that it enable continuance of business-as-usual, in the comfort zone of those who make things happen. And, there are fewer big goofs made, when people stick to the familiar; never-mind the lack of preparation for the needs of the future of civilization. There is also the social quirk that people generate far more emotional energy when things fail as they do when things work fine; witness the major agony over the crash of the Challenger, yet no comparable rejoicing across the nation in the many successful flights that the Challenger Space Shuttle made before that. Goofs cost the doer far more than successes are rewarding to the doer, in other words. Risk not taken, means not risking condemnation due to failure.

But, this is analogous to when a man fails to approach a woman in hopes of courting her, for fear of rejection by her. No loving has a chance of happening. In this case, we not only have no chance of life preservation diversification via space colonies, but also we are stuck with our planetary oxygen being converted into unbreathable carbon dioxide, in order to have electrical energy lightening our homes, and our massive cars get pushed around in the commute each day.

So let's look in more detail as to how the KESTS to GEO concept was shot down, and why. Each factor can be a factor in extrapolating what will happen in subsequent efforts to revive the concept, as well as in new forms of space access and utilization concepts.

The initial efforts to gain awareness and interest in the KESTS to GEO concept are described above, utilizing the GEnie Information Network.

Other avenues were also explored, however. A visionary article on the concept was published in a non-technical magazine called "Meditation Magazine" in 1990. A talk was given to the Los Angeles Chapter of the International Society of System Scientists, on the subject of KESTS to GEO in 1994. A description was given as part of a RAND study seeking new space systems concepts. The early vision of KESTS to GEO envisioned its high energy efficiency, high capacity continuous operation between ground and GEO, to enable a couple of prototype space colonies in GEO, modeled after the Stanford Torus 10,000 person space settlement design of 1975, originally intended for construction in the distant future at L-5 built out of Lunar materials; but KESTS to GEO would enable them built in GEO without first creating a huge Lunar infrastructure. So it was also proposed to build a classical wheel-type space station in LEO, totally built teleoperated until assembled in LEO, before the first manned presence would be needed there; this concept was called "Centristation"and would be a 100-200-person R&D habitat to work out many of the interactions of a near-self-sustaining 1-g environment in actual space conditions. The wheel structure would first be built on the ground and debugged there as much as possible; each of the component modules would be designed and built for use as their own fuel tank during launch. Thus it was titled "Wet launch of Prefab habitat Modules" when I presented a peer-reviewed technical paper on the Centristation concept to the Space Studies Institute at Princeton, NJ, in 1995.

May I mention the factors that this was my first attendance to such a space conference and knew little about doing such a thing; I was still very nervous about public speaking, having only done the one testimony to the NCS in 1985 as mentioned before; and that in my impoverished state - employed as an electronics technician at a car alarm manufacturing company at the time - all I had was a 386SX computer running DOS at home so I had to format the document to SSI specs, using poster freeware to make the camera-ready copy of the paper. This paper got published by SSI/AIAA in 1995.

Such a wheel- space station in LEO was in line with Gerard O'Neil's wonderful vision for space colonization that was the lifeblood of the Space Studies Institute.

But the KESTS to GEO concept was not in line with that SSI vision; it would bypass the need for an initial Lunar infrastructure and colonies built at L-5 which would build the Solar Power Satellites; KESTS to GEO would build the SPS out of earth materials, economically brought up for construction in GEO by the electrically powered and supported transportation structure. In other words, I did not realize I was trying to propose something that would wipe out their grand vision's purpose for happening.

Thus it is no wonder I was ridiculed and booed out after I gave my technical paper to SSI on KESTS to GEO in 1997, naively thinking them to be focused on getting SPS built in GEO and space colonization to happen much quicker than their existing vision would. I thought they would welcome my vision with open arms; but in reality I was seen as a disruptor, and invader, something to be stamped out of existence.

It was easily seen that if enough orbiting satellites and space junk were put into the space between ground and GEO, that continuous structures like Space Elevators and KESTS to GEO Space Escalators increasingly become at risk for collision and thus destruction. Stall these transportation structures long enough, and they would not get built because of this, thus assuring that rocketry business would continue on abundantly, instead of becoming obsolete. And so they did that. And that is the situation now. We are stuck with rockets, the incredibly inefficient rocket launch vehicle access to earth orbit and elsewhere.

Nonetheless, there is still potential for building KESTS to GEO, if mankind chose to do so.

Anyway, after getting the boot from Princeton, I nursed my wounds but saw no flaw in my technical concept itself; so I submitted a technical paper to the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) space conference in 1998. It got rejected. I rewrote it and it finally got accepted for presentation and publication in 2000, and thus became the first peer-reviewed formal technical paper hardcopy published on the KESTS to GEO concept. Two years later, I wrote a more complete paper on the subject and presented it to the ASCE 2002 space conference. But clearly there was some interference going on; NASA had sponsored someone to make a spectacular proposal saying that the Earth Space Elevator was ready to build, if money were available to do so. And thus no one was interested my concept when something else could be built right away, that would do a similar job. Of course, we now know that it was not ready to build at all; but the timing was just right to shoot down the budding KESTS to GEO concept. In 2004 a third technical paper on KESTS to GEO was presented my me, and the paper published, but clearly it was being ditched by the rocket launch business interests who freshly had been given contracts for the manned Mars project by NASA.

I began to realize that NASA itself was actively against KESTS to GEO. Impossible as that seemed to me to be; was not NASA devoted to advancing space utilization including space colonization?

But, rocketry systems were what NASA folks were experts in. Not some weird electric motor completely encircling the Earth; their academic and corporate expertise would largely be obsolete and they would have to go back to college, maybe to fail this time. Nope; keep business as usual.

And after all, NASA has the mandate to enable America to stay ahead of the Space Race, to protect America from possible lunar bases built on the Moon aimed at us, like Cuba back in the 1960's that was what NASA was created to do, and now it has the task of maintaining that technical expertise of manpower and manufacturing. The scientific folks can do relatively safer robotic missions to Mars and the other bodies hurtling around in our solar system, keeping their technical expertise up through that kind of exercise, and also happening to see what the potentials are out there. But space colonization is not in NASA's mandate. Solar Power Satellites are not in NASA's mandate. Congress sets NASA's purpose. NASA is just doing its job. And, the prospect of them having to build a KESTS to GEO most likely is scary to them; too different and too many goofs inevitable, like in early rocket development.

The KESTS to GEO concept would provide a means for electrically lifting goods and personnel from ground up into GEO and back, potentially very energy efficiently. The amount of energy added to each pound of mass lifted from the equator up into GEO is only 7,300 KWh, or 73 cents per pound, if at a energy cost of 10 cents per KWh. Lifting an average person up into GEO would therefore add the amount of energy to his mass, about the same as the cost of a trip from coast to coast by airplane. Building things in GEO could become very low cost and rapid instead of the incredible cost and effort of rocket launch to there, as is required now.

KESTS to GEO can take many forms. For example, KESTS could also be built for ground to LEO access, or even be used in circular form, linking pressure-supported towers located around the planet along the equator, for highly efficient intercontinental travel. But the most useful form would be from equatorial ground up into GEO, where something will stay put, with no intermediate use of a rocket propelled vehicle or other free-flying vehicle. Walk onto KEST on the ground, walk off into GEO.

The KESTS to GEO structure would not have its weight supported by the counterbalance of a weight swung around by the Earth's rotation, as would be done in the case of the anchored tether Space Elevator concept.

Instead, it would provide its own internal centrifugal force in the direction opposing Earth's gravitational field everywhere, but constrained high velocity armature segments endlessly circulating within the hollow hoop structure at velocities several times that of the orbital velocity along that path.

Thus the surplus outward centrifugal force supports the static weight of the earth-stationary part of the structure.

The whole transportation structure is essentially a synchronous electric motor. In its primary form, all the energy is input to it at the ground terminal, by electromagnetic accelerators synchronously re-accelerating each armature segment as it passes through the accelerator; the armature segment then coasts all around the planet within the hollow hoop, back again the the earth terminal accelerator where its energy losses along the way are replenished over and over again. Millions of such armature segments comprise the high velocity mass that provides the outward push against the hoop structure, supporting its weight and the weight of its live loads.

The armature segments' upward-bound mass stream are also configured, at least in part, for being electrodynamically braked against by coupling to captive spacecraft, thus lifting the spacecraft up between ground and GEO; thus the vehicles carry no energy source nor need any beamed to them by lasers.

The captive spacecraft carrying construction materials and personnel up from ground to GEO, would move continuously up one side and down the other side gently back to Earth. Counter-rotating mass streams within the hoop are needed for this, note, laterally coupled by the constraints on their inductive extreme high velocity maglev tracks. The continuous lift of materials up to GEO make rapid construction of large scale Solar Power Satellites possible.

It also make s possible the construction of spaceports in GEO, where rocket components would be electrically lifted efficiently up to GEO, where the reaction-engined spacecraft would head off to space, already 91% up out of the Earth's gravitational energy well. Returning to Earth is just as efficient, no re-entry energy to be dealt with.

This would enable a whole new paradigm about civilization's relationship with space at the vast resources there of room to grow, material to be found, energy from the sun 24/7, and opportunity to establish space colonies abundantly in high earth orbit as well as on the Moon, Phobos, Mars and asteroids, for starters.

But we chose not to do this. Business as usual is lots easier. We have kids to put through college, etc.

In 2005 I naively also tried presenting papers to Space Elevator conferences. It was as popular as a Ford salesman babbling away at a General Motors new car showroom. They published three of my KESTS to GEO related technical papers, but they somehow ungrouped the graphics so they are meaningless, useless for communicating the concepts.

I finally got the message. Corporate aerospace does not like KESTS to GEO.

A friend who understands the world more than I do, urged me to write science fiction about my concepts, instead of technical papers. I at first resented that, fearing people already call my concepts science fiction, not having been built yet. But, eventually I discovered that writing high tech science fiction about my concepts was cathartic, finally living out the building and usage of such transportation systems involving Centristation, the Space Elevator, KESTS to GEO and Circular KESTS. It got to be fun and interesting to do so, and was lots easier than traveling to space conferences and coping with public speaking tying to convince hostile people of the worth of my concepts. I had to learn how to format the sci fi novels so they could be printed as paperbacks, and made available for sale at Amazon, but nobody buys them, nobody knows they are there, and Amazon does not bring them up in title searches. I have also made most of the novels into eBook format too, via Smashwords.

What more can I do to help space colonization happen?

In evaluating this kind of effort for what caused the failure to get these concepts to be made physical, so that the larger goal of establishing living systems off-planet can be achieed, some factors need to be considered. There is a characteristic integration among the pieces of the concepts, different from team designs or design by committee; for example, although the Centristation in LEO project would be built using over 200 launches of a three-part reuseable teleoperated launch and docking system, using conventional chemical rockets, and its purpose is to get advance R&D done for the construction of 10,000-person Stanford-Torus type space colonies in GEO, that it still needs the KESTS to GEO already built to at least a small lifting capacity girth, or at least built to access LEO from the ground. This is because of the need to staff it with some 200 people, perhaps as many as a thousand people. It would take the transportation capacity of a KESTS to put that many people into orbit in a short time, and to get them back again in a hurry if need be. The orbit of the Centristation would be chosen to not intersect with the KESTS to GEO. The characteristic integration of such large scale projects is the result of both a predisposition by the individual, plus the very long term obsessive pursuit of a subject for achievement that is characteristic of someone with Asperger's Syndrome. In this case, consider that large scale earth to space transportation structures were sought and found as early as 1969; and some some 42 years of mulling over the basic transportation problem having been done even since then. It is the result of much of a lifetime obsession with the subject. Both conscious and subconscious mind ever at least partially looking for hints of pieces to the solution of the puzzle the Asperger person seeks to build.

Yet the naive Asperger person believes that humanity will accept him/her finally, when a successful concept design is produced. Like the fable of the rejected "different" Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer at Christmas time, the goal is to come through to save the day. Such fantasies are rarely realized in the real world, however; the real world just usually dismisses the Asperger's great creation as somehow unworthy; or if not, the Asperger must have stolen it from someone of high academic or corporate stature. This is because of the non-Asperger's nature of ever striving to prove he/she is better than... somebody. The Asperger with the concept is considered a show-off, trying to be better-than you; therefore, must be put down, in order to restore everybody's status. Such petty processes are busy influencing what happens to the concept; and will normally result in either someone else stepping forward and declaring it is their idea, or someone else's idea, thus the concept originator is righteously put in his/her place; and the concept is now loose and available for all the regular folks to use without involving the originator anymore. (Unfortunately they usually do a poor job of utilizing it, settling for merely one implementation of it that makes them money.)

For some reason, the group psychology needed for some corporation to form a team to develop such a concept to bring it into reality, needs to thusly pry rights to the concept from the one who has spent much of a lifetime creating it, by trickery like that; it shows that they are smarter after all. The concept is thought to be completely the property of those who are in the team and the team's financiers; and indeed patents are not awarded to the originator of the concept that describes how to build something, it is awarded to whoever follows the instructions and thus puts it into practice before others do.

Yet the spread of new concepts need to be done. Like the story of Archimedes, having long struggled with the very complex problem of how to calculate the exact volume of a complex metal object volume so as to be able to correctly measure its density and therefore determine the type of metal of which it is made, having noticed in a bathtub how the water rises in exact displacement of his complex body's shape, he made the connection that the same thing could be applied to the complex shape of, say, a gold jewelry item; simply measure the height of the liquid it displaces, inside a constant cross sectional area container. The integrated volume is found as easy as that. And so this technique was eventually communicated widely, so that all people might utilize it. The concept becomes part of civilization's tools.

So, to seek engineering failure analysis of social systems, and find ways to resolve the problems, it is suggested that people seek more understanding, and make it available to others, I suppose, like in this writing.

Jim Cline 20111028 Ephrata, WA, USA

Writing sci fi is definitely cathartic

It is novel writing month again, participating in the nanowrimo.org's annual event, along with 176,000 other writers this year. The decision as to what to write on, this time, has to be made as of when starting to write on Nov 1; there is no time to waste as it is hard to catch up if one does not get the 1,700 words done even one day. So I am now finding myself writing a sequel to the novel about a Lava World topic that I first wrote about last year.

I notice that my novel writing is still science fiction, but continues to get less sciencey and more fictioney as time goes on. But it is still fun to do. My page is http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/user/57903 I still don't have a title for it yet, however.

Interestingly, yesterday I cranked out several chapters in advance, first time I have done that. Was it all the public focus on the voting going on, the election results about to happen and then were happening? How could that affect my writing of a science fiction novel? Have written none on the novel today, so far, and it is noon.

This is the seventh year that I have participated in the http://www.nanowrimo.org writing activity, and I have made five of the resulting novels into books, all both as paperbacks and as ebooks. Mostly, I just give them away; but a handful of people have bought a copy, and far more would need to do that to cover the cost of the ISBNs, for one thing. But it is just a hobby for me, and one expects to spend one's own money on a hobby.

For me, writing sci fi is definitely cathartic.

Space Day 2010

July 20 is Space Day each year. A nice event, where folks can be entertained by space activities past, present and future. Often in coordination with open houses and space activist booths. Folks, like me, who believe that space resources can be used for the expansion and benefit of civilization, and action can be done now.

But we humanity are a complex bunch, in types of people and in multiplicity of motives. The original July 20 lunar landing was thrilling to a nation as a major accomplishment of technology and teamwork. To some others it was a solid step toward space colonization and resource use, long dreamed about in science fiction writings and movies. To some others, the lunar landing was a milestone in the "space race" to show the Soviets that we too can reach the Moon and attack nuclear rocket sites they might put there aimed at the US as they did in Cuba - but we had a placard on that lander that said "we came in peace for all mankind" which set the tone for the event. And in fact, those latter folks were the ones who made it all happen, put forth the money and effort to get it done; if it had not been for fear of the Soviets reaching the Moon first and aiming unassailable rockets at us from there, they would never have enabled us to reach the Moon that day.

Even looking back further, when the Nazis created the V2 rocket, its designers dreamed of peaceful space travel by rockets someday, but the ones that actually made it happen, again were the military minded types, that bent the rocket technology to the task of attacking the quarry, such as London. It was the ones who focus on assault that were the ones that actually made rocketry happen.

Although the "space race" was won with the Apollo lunar landings, and that program was cut short thereafter, there were the ones who saw space as opportunity for adventure and profit, enabling things to happen that could not be done otherwise such as the telecommunications satellites in GEO and GPS in low orbits, that were able to continue on with some impetus after Apollo. The Space Shuttle and ISS projects were then started, something to keep our technology level up - in case someone else with urges of conquering thinks of putting missiles on the Moon or other distant parts, we will be able to be in the game - and the ISS enabled those of formerly opposing sides to cooperate in a high profile interesting project, proving we can achieve together without conflict. Many nations have chimed in with their own launches of satellites to do various things, communications, earth monitoring, sometimes a status-proving human launch and recovery. Scientific probes of the other planets have found out many interesting things and provides amazing photographs of those far away places; and identified potential material resource identification for the future; these tend to not be of militaristic motivation except possibly some support simply as intelligence gathering of everything known.

But a check today of the front page online of the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, even the SeattlePi website, none of them mentioned anything whatsoever about space activities or plans. Even the BBC site only had one article about space activities, and that was to announce that Russia was going to build a new spaceport on its eastern edge, primarily for civilian launches; it also pointed out that when the Space Shuttle is retired, the only way to provide human travel to and from the ISS will be by the Russian vehicles.

Even the space projects I have designed and proposed over the decades, have been so thoroughly ignored - in some cases apparently outright suppressed by rival interests - that the only outlet I have remaining is to fall back on that old standby, science fiction. And in fact it has been satisfying to my introverted self, to experience the creation of my space projects in such fantasy. I also have come to realize that much of science fiction is not to work toward actual space travel, but instead sci fi enables creation of worlds where human activities can play out without offending the powers-that-be. These writers and readers seem to be quite horrified at my writings that suggest we could actually today be preparing for enormous travel to Earth orbit etc; to bring the aloof fantasy worlds of sci fi down into the arena of actual physical doings, also brings it at risk of being taken over by the authoritarians that rule the rest of our lives and are controlled by power crazies and business profit greed, no interest in humanity or civilization except as predators, rule by the most powerful, that kind of stuff. So my writings are apparently seen as an invasion of the potential real, into their free-living fantasylands, a risk of their losing their precious place of escape from their bosses, even if only in imagination. And with such fantasies of sci fi adventures being read, when things get too rough up there, like using Star Trek's "Transporter," the reader can instantly be back down here in safe same-old physical reality, no longer chased by space aliens or whatever.

So, that is what Space Day 2010 looks like from here now.

Rewarding comment from former post triggers memories

On rare occasions something results from one's efforts on the net that provides a very nice feeling to oneself. One of those times was when doing a routine examination of comments that have accumulated, and this morning it resulted in finding a nice comment for
http://kestsgeojedc.blogspot.com/2010/03/writing-sci-fi-re-management.html bringing connection to a long past part of my life, a bit of a high point in it. (Even in the comment's news was a sad note too; the cherished supervisor, Alastair Heaslett, had long since tragically passed away from cancer.) At that gracious comment's encouragement, another related high point's memories flowed in like a wave upon the beach, bringing stuff with it.

Back in the same employment era at Shugart Corp. in Sunnyvale, CA, where I worked in floppy disk development work, one day I was asked to see if I could help out at another division, the hard disk drive division. Arriving there for the first time, I found a few people whom I had worked with in earlier years in technology development. It was explained to me that they had a problem with their new Hard Drive product, and the production line was shut down and costing $20,000 a day because of that. They showed me an environmental test chamber (much as I mentioned in the above-mentioned post) which is a large box about 5 feet on a side, with a door in front and various controls on it and openings in sides for connecting to what was within. An instrument to be tested would be put inside, and the controls set to change the internal environment to some temperature and humidity level.

Inside this one was a hard disk drive, much advanced over the hard disk drives I had worked on in development half a dozen years before at a different company, Pertec Computer Corp. in Chatsworth CA. This hard disk drive had a transparent plastic covered chamber for the disks and heads, where the actuator could be watched moving the heads across the disks. They explained that it all worked fine, except in some installations, after running awhile there would be some hard errors appearing, an unacceptable thing. It only occurred when installed in a large electronic rack and after operating a few hours, usually when unattended overnight somewhere. They suspected that it was because in that sealed bubble environment where the disks and heads were, that when it got hot, the relative humidity went down, and that the plastic insulation of the wires to the heads might then generate enough static electricity - by occasionally rubbing on the plastic of the plastic enclosure - to generate a tiny spark; but they had not been able to prove that. They had a fine digital scope - something new in those days and this one cost $70,000 I recalled as I had recommended buying it years before and they did but gave it to somebody else to use - and it was hooked up to show the signals where the scope probes were hooked to the instrument, and caught the events triggered by an error detection. But nothing correlated preceding the error signal. The events only happened a couple of times a test run and usually during the night while it was all running unattended. It would be very expensive to have a metal casting made to replace the plastic bubble cover, taking a long time to make, and it might then turn out to not fix the problem. Could I help solve the problem, they asked.

Well, if there were indeed a small spark between the read-write head wires on the actuator, as they swept past the plastic enclosure during some kinds of track span jump vibrations of the wires, perhaps the spark could be detected by a piece of metal placed on the outer surface of the plastic bubble right across from the read-write head wires. (I had started out as a physics major in college, and only got into electronics as a career when I eventually dropped out of college - but that is another story dwelled on elsewhere: Tinnitus, wheat gluten, impoverished, lost girlfriend, Asperger's without a support system, etc.) I asked one of the assemblers in the room, whom I had worked with before, if she had some aluminum foil and she said no. Asking a few other people got the same answer. I did not have any either in my own work area, so I determined the next day to bring some from home. I showed up the next day with some aluminum foil in my pocket, and taped it on the plastic bubble at the site where the read-write head wires came closest, and attached a 10 MegOhm scope probe onto the foil. Closed up the environmental chamber and coordinating to have the same test run again overnight sealed and heating.

The next morning I came over there and asked what the result was; they said that indeed, every time there had been an error signal, it had been preceded by a blip from the probe I had connected to the aluminum foil, as recorded by the pre-triggered digital scope. The problem was solved; it was thus proven that it was caused by static electricity discharge under the extreme condition of low hot humidity and particular motions of the read-write head actuator wire motion during a few of the random test jumps between tracks, due to proximity to the plastic of the transparent housing. The need for me was over so I turned and left, returning to my normal job in the floppy disk development area.

Although nobody ever thanked me or commented on it, I think that maybe that event contributed to my being put into a design-development engineer's position.

I had forgotten about all that long ago. But now with memories coming back as stimulated by that woman's nice comment on my blog post, daughter of the cherished manager back then, I now realize that those times had some pleasant memories too.

And moreso, back to that previous post I made re management, I recall that most of my immediate supervisors over my career were competent and considerate managers. Even the rare upper management that I had any connection with over my lifetime, seemed like very fine people.

As for those who were inspiration for my science fiction's Ownma Corp and TANFL Corp inimically powerful management, most likely it was my frustration with upper management at my last two electronics jobs, people that I rarely if ever met but whom seemed quite hostile towards my efforts to get exceptions from their employment agreements regarding my prior personal creation of my space transportation concepts, particularly my KESTS to GEO concept and my Centristation concept. They refused to respond to my emails, and the HR lady when I hired in who said that of course the record would be made modifying the Employment Agreement, would not respond either and then soon was replaced. I began to suspect there was something afoot attempting to rob me of my authorship of those concepts, but was stonewalled whenever attempting to contact HR and upper management either directly or up through my immediate supervisor.

There was a bit of indirect help, however, in working then for a company named "Orbital Sciences Sensor Systems Division," in that in my efforts to get a technical paper accepted for formal presentation and publication finally got an acceptance for the ASCE space conference to be held in 2000, shortly after I started working for Orbital Sciences in Pomona. (Having an employer named Orbital Sciences - nevermind in what capacity - apparently somehow got me into a peer-classification with those space industry folks; in contrast to my being employed by a small car alarm manufacturing company when I first came up with the integrated KESTS to GEO concept and the Centristation concept.) That broke the ice and eventually I also was invited to present technical papers on my KESTS to GEO concept in 2002, 2004 and 2005, getting published each time in the conference proceedings. Although it was too late to cheer my mother, who had financed my first formal presentation of the KESTS to GEO concept at the 1997 space conference at Princeton at the Space Studies Institute, where I was laughed away after I gave my extremely stressful presentation in the huge auditorium, and they refused to publish my paper, without giving any reasonable reason. Looking back I realize it was a huge academic ego thing, most likely; how dare I, an academic nobody, come up with a concept that they themselves had not thought of to enable large scale space activity in the near future; but that did not help cheer my mother's faith in me, and she soon passed away after my 1997 space paper's failure to be published, no doubt frustrated at my performance, which now is known as Asperger's, or "high functioning autism;" but at the time was not recognized as other than being sometimes a bit odd as well as gifted.

Ah, the memories. I guess that is mostly all an old man has anymore. And also the opportunity to write high-tech science fiction novels, where I get to finally live out the adventures of creating systems using my space transportation and utilization concepts - if only in the virtual world of sci fi writing. Sometimes, like this morning reading the comment to my post last March, brings a nice comfy feeling of being appreciated.

Masters of the Trading Game

"Masters of the Trading Game" a Science Fiction short story by Jim Cline

The engine of the little aircraft he had rented had suddenly quit, and soon stalled, now heading rapidly toward the rough terrain below. He had a toolkit which quickly showed him that the engine had quit because its flight controller had been sent a signal by an airport ground control that the plane had landed and was to shut the engine down and let the passenger out. Unable to change the instruction to the autopilot, he activated his suit's buoyancy control, needed to live on this heavy gravity planet, set to a negative average weight, opened the door and jumped out. The plane sped downward past him; moments later it hit the ground, splattering pieces all over the mountainside. Reaching the ground, he adjusted his average weight for some traction, and bounded lightly across the terrain. Reaching the wreckage, he retrieved his luggage and lightly bounded away to a place that provided concealment yet he was able to view the wreckage. Soon a helicopter arrived out of nowhere in this desolate place, and it squirted a stream of liquid fuel all over the wreckage, ignited it; hovered awhile to watch the inferno, then flew off.

So far, his day was not going well. Up until today, things had seemed to be quite reasonable. He had arrived as an ambassador to this planet, with a specialty in sociology, to determine how the beings here needed to be treated for a harmonious trade relationship with the Federation of Planets. It was not a judgmental activity; merely standard research to determine the data needed to establish the optimum trade relationship parameters.

They had no intention to interfere with any planet's doings; all they wanted was the working trade relationship so as to acquire needed goods in exchange for goods of which they had too much. The people here generally understood that. And yet, one of the natives had only yesterday acted odd and quietly told him to mind his own business or he would be in trouble, then the native faded away into the crowd.

Feeling a bit hungry, he carefully selected leaves from the thorny tree which hid him, taking select leaves from the outside where it would let more sunshine in for inner leaves to relish and grow faster. Putting the leaves into his pocket snack converter, soon it produced a refreshing sip of nutritious liquid and some tasty munchies for him. Now what? He had noticed the same corporation markings on the helicopter as had been on the rented aircraft, apparently associated with this particular territory he had just begun to gather data within. It appeared clear that some quite competent group had worked to destroy him, and probably of the control of this territory. To go into a nearby town would likely invite another destructive effort, maybe one he would not be able to avoid. His sociological research report would have to incorporate the social phenomenon which had produced his current predicament, so making it look like he was missing while he was continuing his data gathering project seemed most likely to determine pertinent data. An observer always had to be careful to not significantly alter the workings of the social system that was being documented, and it appeared that the social forces here had considered his presence much disruptive. Opening his suitcase, accessing the data store, found a map with his location on it, and located the nearest large town. There were none nearby, however, so he chose to head back to the place from which he had rented the aircraft, and where his other belongings were presumably still located. But he would remain on the outskirts in hiding; see what he could discover from there as to what was going on now.

He traveled in the twilight hours, when the desert mountains were most active with animal life, hiding out both in daylight and the deep of the night, motion too risky. He was in no hurry; data was data whenever he obtained it. Arriving on the outskirts of the city, he squirreled a secure hiding spot where he could see the area where his motel room was located, and his rented ground vehicle. It was still in the parking lot; he saw no one entering his motel room. The security cameras were not aimed at him nor his vehicle nor his room, just at their usual views of access passageways. He needed to report in, so as dusk fell he set his suit to high buoyancy and lightly bounced across the intervening space, coming in at an angle not observed by the cameras; touching the motel roof, he flipped over the eaves to be in front of his motel room door, and was soon inside. Odd, the couple of electric sparks he felt doing tiny stings on his skin. This door opening would be signaled to the office, surely; so he quickly gathered supplies and his communicator, leaving everything else as it was he left the room, bounced to the roof and off across several roofs to gain a probably unobserved return to his hideaway. His suit was the equivalent to a portable airship inflated by hydrogen; it had already been determined that this civilization had abandoned rigid airship transportation due to a spectacular accident long ago, and had used powered airfoils for airlift since then.

Back in his hideaway, he quickly set up the sub-space communicator and filed his report update. Then he switched the communicator to "observe local news" mode, suppressing its normal "interactive news" mode which would have given his continued existence away, making his job more difficult than it already had become. The folks receiving his report on his home planet would merely file it away; they had seen about anything possible, among the many planets which had been brought into the Federation; they had, however, cautioned him to be more careful about triggering activities by his presence that would further disrupt data acquisition and maybe even terminate him. Replacing him and his equipment would be costly and delay the acceptance of this planet into the Federation, so be more careful; end of message.

So he resigned himself to a long stay in this rather uncomfortable quarters, furtively watching. It was going to be a longer time until he would be back in the comfortable embrace of his wife; instead, he was here in this hole made among sharp rocks and thorny leaf-bushes. His buoyancy suit was made of sturdy cloth and when partially inflated, it provided a barrier between his body and the uncomfortable rocks surrounding him, so he at least could be somewhat comfortable when sleeping.

Opening his briefcase, he activated half of its fleet of micro-vehicles, programmed to scamper around the nearby city until hearing audio or observing activity, then transmit what ever they observed back to the suitcase along subspace channels; periodically the raw data was sent in a packet through subspace to the home planet data center mindless recorders, just in case. A few of the micro-vehicles were hovering around his hideaway and if something suddenly obliterated him there, they would have described the incoming missile and so the home planet would have that data at least. Few ambassadors had ever been lost, and it was considered incompetence that led to their demise; and data as to causes was merely added to the vast database. He was on his own; no rescue would be sent. If he really messed up, he would merely be replaced, quickly forgotten. The Prime Directive was to not disrupt trade activities among planets.

So. What had he done to offend these people so much? This was the fourth territory which he had explored on this planet; this one seemed much the same as the other three, bland and understandable. That is, up until his aircraft crashed several days ago. Must be something different happening here. What was it? He examined the statistics. People were busy making things, buying and selling, growing food, marrying having offspring and getting divorced, same old stuff. The next level deeper among the data showed something a bit odd, there were far more females here than males, as compared to ratios in the prior three territories. That was something for the micro-vehicles to ferret out a bit deeper. He compared the current findings to the planetary library history set. There were as many females as males born, on the average, everywhere. It was the same on the birth record in this town too, just as many males as females born each year. There were a large number of divorced females with children, single moms were quite well supported by the system. Soon another irregularity was found, that even among the relatively few males here, many of them were living together in group living situations, some with a female among them, others not. eventually he discovered that there were only a few males who were active in procreation; they were marrying a female, procreating, divorcing them, supporting them while going on to another single woman; he periodically visited all his former wives, who did not seem to have any other relationship but with him. Odd, how did that happen? The community was thriving; monogamy was part of the law here as elsewhere, but divorced moms were of course allowed to have relationships. So it was not obviously polygamy, but effectively so, staying within the law.

Where had the extra females come from? Records seemed oddly scant, as if they suddenly appeared. There were several groups living in the city besides the one that had the group of men who had many former wives who all formed a mutual support group.

He focused upon a young couple who had moved into town, he having been lured here by a high paying nice job. The micro-vehicles clustered around the area, where their new home had been, he on his job, and their shopping. Things had looked fine looked fine. Then they registered to receive an offspring permit; immediately there were odd changes. The micro-vehicles discovered that the woman had been surrounded during shopping by the most handsome men among the sales staff, smiling and being helpful. Meanwhile, her husband was being assaulted by nearly invisible electric sparks shot by devices carried by the leaders of the area, and also were mounted in vehicles and at doorways, all quite hidden. The man, increasingly unfocused, gave up trying to figure out what had pricked him out of nowhere over and over again, and his body chemistry became altered, befuddling his thinking increasingly. When he came home, his wife wondered why he was being so dopey and no longer coping with life; he began to tell her that his boss on the job was not giving him a good job review. She liked the town there, the handsome salesmen and the smiling and very helpful women ever busy around when something was needed, who seemed ever ready to give her whatever she needed even before she needed it.

Finally her husband came home one day and said he had lost his job; he could not figure out what was going on, felt sleepy much of the time. There was a divorce clinic in town so she went there, found it was a quick and easy process, and soon she was a free woman, the law forcing her former husband to support her. Meanwhile, her former husband could find little work, and that was of low skill, and he was ever sleepy and now was being assaulted by pre-sonics which were used in stores to direct staff, but now directed mysteriously to the now loner male. Eventually he could not endure it all, wifeless and alone, friendless, and he left town. Thus, another female added to the territory's population, not balanced by a male's equal presence. Eventually the woman got involved in the town's group meetings and support systems, leading to occasional contact with the males who were former husbands of lots of the women; soon she was to be added to the list of re-married, reproduced, divorced again, and living just fine with children, occasional visits by former reproducing mate. So that was the phenomenon.

Comparing with the other three territories he had observed, he found that they too had the same subgroup among them, quietly gathering other females from among the other groups nearby. Yet they had not yet taken over the other three territories yet.

The library yielded lots of this kind of activity in history; it was a pattern where a small group of males somehow figured out how to deprive lots of other males of women, and thus had large groups of females by which to reproduce, and all their sons were now bonded by genetics, a genetic mark that caused them to unite against the world cleverly. Unmated, the genetics of the other males faded out of existence. The more subtle levels of living system, sometimes called spiritual equivalents, were involved, the groups which were growing under the united membership requiring only male dependancy of their unique male ancestry, a subtle psychic bonding and monitoring system that mystified non-members and eventually caused their downfall, freeing their women to be acquired by the in-group. Such systems had happened several times around the world and throughout history, but eventually all the other groups had become amalgamated to a large extent into the larger society of which they were part. But the current group in this territory was of a fairly new such group; wars were not being fought to dispose of neighbor males and free their women to be taken; but rather this time it was an insidious war against the individual males of the larger group, all done mysteriously to the non-in-group males. With the available females being taken in by the very supportive expanding group fathered by the founding fathers of the group, the other males of the original 50-50 gender ratio at birth, deprived of mating and progeny, faded away early in life. Laws enforcing monogamy were being skirted thereby; and anyway the law enforcers were among the reproductively privileged males, and no way were they going to disrupt a good thing for themselves.

So the micro-vehicles had found the raw data and his suitcase data processor and communicator had sifted out the patterns. Yet it did not seem to be cause of the attack on himself; was it that they were afraid he would observe the phenomenon and spread the word? Not likely; they knew his mission was to enhance trade between planets and did not care who it was with whom they traded. More data was needed.

He expanded his library searches and searches of archives of the larger territory, even of the world, randomizing the searches so as to not leave too obvious a pattern for any who might wonder at the curiosity. Billions of news articles and writings of all kinds in the public system were evaluated, and a shadow process began to be sifted out, something that had been going on a long time, and rapidly getting more powerful, yet still not noticed by those squarely in the obvious path of ruin for the chosen target ones. It was one of the groups of the same leadership which had taken over this town, one woman at a time, by disposing of one man at a time via social crushing, mysterious estrangements. The shadow pattern took on probabilities way above random, that showed that the national and international spread of this group had expanded enormously under the cover of being just another group. They were very supportive of each other, whereas much of the rest of the world was intensely rivalrous to each other, each man an island, slowly drowning as the social water rose around him, ever shrinking his territory to nothing. The percent of women they would have had as mates, were easily lured into the spreading group, much as within this city he was observing. Yet it was a big nation, and a bigger world. In the past, this group had become too noticed by the men who had been deprived of mates, and in one case were declared unwanted and so they had moved elsewhere; yet their great mutual support system among the females had supplied abundance and good living, unhindered by taboos against the psychic side of spirituality common elsewhere; no part of life was taboo and therefore all were resources, thus maximum success was theirs. The only losers were all men who were not genetically related to the founding fathers of the seminal group a hundred years before. Yet now their wealth and quiet power had gotten an incompetent greedy government into power, which had led the country into financial ruin by expending resources fighting shadows in far lands and causing havoc there, generating growing world hostility.

Meanwhile, the spread word was that the whole world was overpopulated, so everybody stop having many children, and this was being followed willingly or unwillingly by increasing numbers of people, many threatened by new diseases and strange toxins and disruptive pseudo-hormones. All except a couple groups, that is, and the group who were acquiring women by the truckload like in this town, were reproducing as fast as possible. It was clear by drawing the projection curves, this group would soon have overrun the whole country; and they were making efforts for formal leadership of the country, even though they had long had virtual control of the country through their vast network of normally peaceable mind-their-own-business people who only rarely responded to requirements to do an occasional dirty-work of the eldership, to trigger some event in unobvious fashion.

Ok, he now had the larger shadow social pattern, which clearly would coalesce most anywhere he tested; it was a deliberately guided subtle takeover of the nation. It would be they with whom the Federation would trade, so what? The Federation does not care whom they traded with. So why had there been an attempt to terminate his research as ambassador here? It had been clearly an unemotional assault, they just pulled the plug on him, then went to make sure nothing remained to show it.

So he provided his data set of the social evaluation via subspace communication to the home planet, then recommended that a perfunctory search be made for his crashed aircraft and his remains, making an official end to the investigation of his mysterious disappearance ... and by the way, happening to make a pit-stop here at his hideaway hole in the twilight so he could jump in and head back with them to home, along with his equipment; these people were too quietly ruthless to be trusted with knowledge of such advanced technology as he had here. His job was done here; soon he would be in the comforting embrace of his wife. Criteria for the trade negotiations were about to change on this planet, but now they knew what the new social system would be, and they would be ready to make profitable trade with it. No problem.

He was getting oddly sleepy now, and as he dozed off he vaguely remembered the man who had come to do an ordinary job in this town, but it had cost him his wife; he had lost all to the hidden alpha-male masters of the business game. He was getting ... so ... oddly ... sleepy ....

Copyright © 2007 James E. D. Cline