Oolite Bulletins

A good programme on BBC4 tonight, called "The Three Rocketeers", about the perhaps-soon-nearing-completion (and very long-running) project to design a single-stage air-breathing spaceplane, originally known as HOTOL but now called "Skylon". The programme is repeated on Saturday 15 September, after which it'll be available on iPlayer:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0 ... ocketeers/

There's a decent wikipedia page too:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skylon_(spacecraft)

The developer has estimated the development costs as being around $12 billion. Over 30 years. Maybe that's why, as I watched the programme, I kept thinking, "We just spent £12 billion (that's POUNDS, not dollars) on a glorified SPORTS DAY ...". Now, I find watching other people running, jumping and bouncing about as mildly diverting as the next guy - but is it wrong of me to think that maybe, if we'd just skipped the olympics, would anyone have really cared? Or noticed? We could just have said, "No, we just had the olympics, don't you remember? Beijing, fireworks, etc.?" I think most people would have fallen for it. Especially if we had a spaceplane to play with.

Anyway, the point is, maybe - just maybe - this thing is going to actually get built, and fly, sometime in the not-too-distant future. Even though some of the design was done on a ZX Spectrum. The stars: we're getting there, in spite of ourselves.

Pretty cool man. (I hear you about the Olympics - they should be every eight or ten years). I don't think NASA has done so much toward replacing the shuttle.... ....NASA....

Olympics every eight to ten years? Fine with me. But don't do the same to World Cup or Euro Cup. I suppose the cost for host countries doesn't compare to that of the Olympics.

CaptSolo wrote:

Olympics every eight to ten years? Fine with me. But don't do the same to World Cup or Euro Cup. I suppose the cost for host countries doesn't compare to that of the Olympics.

Sounds reasonable, as long as people don't get stupid afterwards trashing things . I think it was on "Smoking Gun's World's Dumbest" that a rowdy group of people of England started trashing their own neighborhood after a world cup and then tried to move the stupidity into a neighboring area - wound up getting their butts kicked (probably another reason why they landed themselves on a show about pea-brained folks ).

You bunch of philistines!!

The Olympics was fantastic. Real competition and sportsmanship from real athletes with a real skill rather than 22 overpaid, talentless yobs kicking a ball around.

It sickens me that the Olympic Stadium and all its memories is ultimately destined to become a football ground. What a waste.

Yeah, I hate football. Idiots pretending to be hurt by running into somebody and getting paid for it. I don't argue that there's some skill involved in kicking a ball accurately to someone 30 yards away, but watching the average game shows that it only happens once in, oh, ten or so passes. So is it skill or luck?

Compare the modern pentathlon. Ooh, Jess Ennis. A legend. She can run, ride a horse, shoot, fence and swim. THAT's talent. And she's a lot easier on the eye than the average footy player.

I even blame football for the economy. When football clubs can lay out millions of pounds for ONE MAN, there's something wrong. Football doesn't even have the boast of "inspiring the youth of today to become the stars of tomorrow" because most of the players that play in this country come from bloody overseas!! I won't even mention the waste of money in football compared to causes that need the funding more.

The £12bn outlay on the Olympics was WELL spent. Cycling, athletics, swimming - they've ALL gained public support and lottery funding due to the Olympics in both Beijing and London. Inspirational stuff all round. Yeah.

Selezen wrote:

The £12bn outlay on the Olympics was WELL spent. Cycling, athletics, swimming - they've ALL gained public support and lottery funding due to the Olympics in both Beijing and London. Inspirational stuff all round. Yeah.

Don't get me wrong - I'm as big a fan of PE and oddball minority sport as any normal human being. There are only a very few people in the whole world more interested in horse-waltzing than I am, for example. I just think that, maybe, given what $12 billion seems to have (almost) achieved with the Skylon project - or, alternatively, just the $2 billion it's cost to put a nuclear-powered, laser-armed robot on Mars - that perhaps £12 billion for a few weeks of jigging and physical jerks was just a smidgin high?

We've got huge sums of cash to pour over the physically elite: how about some for the mentally elite, now and again? Brains, not biceps. Anyway, the real news story is: spaceplane! Maybe. But still: spaceplane!

Re. baulking at the cost of the Olympics, and saying it should be every eight years, you are forgetting that its not the same country each time. Yes Britain just spent £12 billion on it, but that was a one off. We won't have the Olympics again in our lifetimes.

Hosting the Olympics was the best thing our country has done in many years.

Disembodied wrote:

There are only a very few people in the whole world more interested in horse-waltzing than I am

<sniggers>

Every time I hear of this project I am reminded of an earlier Skylon. This beautiful object was extremely popular but was sadly destroyed, some say for political reasons, which is truly tragic.
Let's hope the Skylon Spaceplane has a happier future.

JazHaz wrote:

Hosting the Olympics was the best thing our country has done in many years.

Tragically, this is all too true.

I mean, olympics, yay woo, and everything, but maybe the next time we give a project an unlimited budget, we can choose something with a bit more meat on it than a few weeks of exercise. Like, perhaps, forging new industries and laying the foundation for humanity's future amongst the stars? Just a thought.

No criticism of the athletes: let's face it, they run around all the time, and would have done so on camera for little more than some free muesli and a shot at a gold-plated medal. Most of the £12 billion went straight into the pockets of property developers and private contractors, and is now no doubt resting up in a selection of offshore tax havens. And a lot of multinational corporations enjoyed a global branding bonanza, so there's that, too.

But anyway: spaceplane! Yay woo!

I can be excited about both things. (Oh, and the earlier Skylon is a thing of beauty, too!)

And considering how much money went into bailouts for banks etc, there doesn't really seem to be a problem in raising 12 billions (in any currency) many times over…

Disembodied wrote:

We've got huge sums of cash to pour over the physically elite: how about some for the mentally elite, now and again? Brains, not biceps. Anyway, the real news story is: spaceplane! Maybe. But still: spaceplane!

Yes, well said. SPACEPLANE!

I read a book a couple of years back that I think was recommended by someone on this forum: Backroom Boys: The Secret Return of the British Boffin. In it there are short histories of Elite and the Blue Streak and Prospero projects: the last time that Britain "led" the space race. We are on the cusp of being there again, and really have been for some time, but it's always the government policies and funding problems that hold us back.

I think that the dream has been re-awakened. I can't put my finger on exactly what, but the Raspberry Pi is one example. Skylon needs to get some serious work and money behind it to make it a reality but it's a real hope for spaceplane technology.

The motto of the Olympics was "Inspire a generation". Who knows, maybe some of that sporting inspiration will rub off on others. I know that watching some of the paralympians proved to some people that it doesn't matter what obstacles you have in life you will always have something within you that could shine. It doesn't have to be sports. I felt inspired to chase by dreams and tilt at a few windmills as a result of the "feelgood" factor.

Football has NEVER managed that. I'm not even that big an athletics fan, to be honest.

On the plus side, combining the Olympic Spirit with spaceplanes could lead to zero-G cricket etc

Smivs wrote:

On the plus side, combining the Olympic Spirit with spaceplanes could lead to zero-G cricket etc

Just so long as we don't bring poetry* back into the Olympics.


* My gun running days of hauling Evil Poets to Teen are over. (For now)

I was very pleasantly surprised by the Olympics. Whereas I had expected the usual lack of good organisation and profligate money laundering with intolerable extra load on our already antiquated and overburdened infrastructure the actual event turned out to be a credit to our nation and I suppose a good portion of the funding must have actually reached the destination! I was impressed by the opening ceremony and thought that it was the best I've seen. A pleasant surprise indeed. Still, I wouldn't argue that the 12 billion (that's not actually the bottom line, government borrowing went off the scale and that isn't included in the 12bn spending estimate) would be better spent bringing a fusion power plant online or on resource harvesting from Luna or the asteroid belt - but, it does seem to have raised the U.K.'s profile away from the rock bottom at which level it had started digging. For me personally the long overdue local road improvements have reduced the amount of time and fuel I now expend in traffic jams.

I didn't really want to, partly because of what the answer might be, but I gotta ask, Disembodied!.. Is 'horse waltzing' the same as dressage?