
How to succeed or fail on a frontier - nkurz
http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2006/10/how-to-succeed-or-fail-on-frontier.html?repost
======
biohacker42
Good summary of Portuguese vs Chinese sea exploration.

Bad extrapolation into modern space exploration. Also, there's an artificial
distinction between publicly funded space tech. and publicly funded military
space tech.

Military spec tech. is funded from our taxes just like the shuttle is. And
while it _may_ serve as a deterrent, there also may be much cheaper ways to
get the same peaceful results. Like for example changing foreign policy to be
less interventionist.

I think it's important to remember that Columbus was funded by the Queen of
Spain, so it wasn't all private efforts.

It's also important to remember the modern day trade restrictions on space
tech and flight restrictions imposed due to _military needs_.

And that's what's common between us and ancient China, it's not the public
funding, it's the public restrictions.

~~~
bokonist
_I think it's important to remember that Columbus was funded by the Queen of
Spain, so it wasn't all private efforts._

The kingdoms and the city states of 15th century Europe were like competing
family owned businesses (large property owning and managing businesses). The
two keys for building a scalable success are competition and the profit
motive. By definition, profitable means you get out more resources than you
get in. Thus anything that is scalable must be profitable. The Chinese ran the
missions for reasons of glory, so they did not concentrate on profit. As a
result, the missions did not scale and were cut back when new rulers came to
power. The same goes for NASA. But the monarchs of Europe were trying to make
a profit so their exploration strategy was far different and far more cost
effective.

------
smhinsey
This is remarkably interesting. I wish it'd been better titled so that I
didn't keep skipping it.

~~~
nkurz
Interesting. It was originally submitted by 'bokonist' accurately titled as
"How tiny Portugual beat the Chinese Empire in the race to control the seas",
but this got very few votes: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=482484>

I resubmitted it with this title, which is the original title of the article,
hoping that it would be called to the attention of a few more readers.
Empirically, this title seems to have worked better.

What title would you suggest?

~~~
smhinsey
I'm not sure that I have any better suggestions, although the title of that
original post was definitely clearer. It's too bad I didn't see that one.

------
msie
_We proved that our socialists, if funded by taxing capitalists, could beat
their socialists funded by socialists._

What a ridiculous statement!

~~~
randallsquared
If by "ridiculous" you mean "insightful". :) Seriously, the race to the moon
was useless for accomplishing any of the things that we space nuts (though I
wasn't born yet; no one has been to the moon in my lifetime) dreamed. It was a
huge diversion from actual economic growth into pyramid building.

If done for a profit, going to the moon would _be_ economic growth, but as it
was, it was essentially a program to build a legacy for Kennedy and Johnson,
at which it was immensely successful! After all, people associate those two
with the space program more than with the Vietnam War, now, as far as I can
tell.

------
davidw
An interesting side effect of all this Portuguese expansion was the
accompanying decline of the Republic of Venice, which was the former big power
in terms of trade.

The town where my wife is from south of Padova is actually fairly new in
Italian terms (16/17th century). Why? Because it was originally mosquito-
infested swamp land. It got cleared out when the Venetians turned 'inwards' to
try and make better use of the land they had when their trade fortunes started
to decline. Or so goes the story, at least...

~~~
defen
I thought the Most Serene Republic declined because they got squeezed between
the Ottoman Empire and Habsburg Dominions, both of whom were able to mobilize
significantly larger armies and navies. The Habsburgs could do so because of
New World silver, and the Ottomans could because they had the world's best
bureaucracy, and trade with the East.

------
tomsaffell
If you enjoy this article, then I highly recommend Nathaniel's Nutmeg:

[http://www.amazon.com/Nathaniels-Nutmeg-Incredible-
Adventure...](http://www.amazon.com/Nathaniels-Nutmeg-Incredible-Adventures-
Changed/dp/0140292608/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1244233412&sr=1-1)

------
stcredzero
Summary: Want to succeed on a frontier? Do it frugally, so it pays for itself!
Best way to do it frugally? -- involve the free market as much as you can!

------
boryas
Also, there's no one to trade with or conquer on mars

~~~
ieatpaste
Well, Mars exploration can be a potential commercial enterprise in real
estate, travel, and natural resources (unsure on this one). Regardless, I
think the point of the article was to point out there needs to be 1) focus on
a tangible benefit/gain, and 2) be able to scale from small to big, similar to
most startups.

~~~
randallsquared
There is unlikely to be anything worth bringing back from Mars, physically. I
think Mars' biggest export to Earth, if it ever has any, will be entertainment
or other information.

But I think humans-off-Earth will never be a large percentage of all people,
even after/if people-off-Earth are an overwhelming majority. Meat isn't suited
for space.

~~~
stcredzero
There's plenty which will be worth lifting off the surface of Mars, but not to
head back to Earth. Mars gravity is only 38% of Earth's -- low enough that we
can build a space elevator there with materials we have had for years. Even
without that, it's still much, much cheaper to get to the asteroids and the
rest of the Solar System from there.

Mars has a nearly 24 hour day/night cycle and solar flux suitable for growing
plants. Mars has also had the same sorts of geologic processes that created
many of the mineral deposits on Earth. Basically, Mars is a treasure trove of
resources to enable the cost-effective human settlement of the rest of the
Solar System.

And the rest of the solar system _will_ get settled. There is simply too much
military advantage to be gained from being up there as opposed to down here.
Ultimately, the amount of resources and energy that a solar system-wide space-
faring civilization will be able to control will be a couple of orders of
magnitude larger than what we can easily acquire on Earth. Therefore, some
Earthside societies will try to settle Mars and exploit the resources up
there, and it's only a matter of time until at least one succeeds.

However, these attempts of Earth societies to colonize space will ultimately
fail to create good copies of their parent societies and will instead give
rise to an entirely new society, which will generate many new innovations much
as the American colonies failed to remain under Britain and eventually gave
rise to much of the innovation of the Industrial Revolution.

Whether or not we're mostly made of meat by that time -- I'm not sure how
relevant that is, really.

<http://baetzler.de/humor/meat_beings.html>

