Gyroscopic Investing

MediumTex wrote: It's remarkable how our two main approaches to getting that high are to burn a TON of rocket fuel or just let a helium balloon carry you up there.  It seems to me that a really elegant spacecraft would be taken to suborbital heights under a helium balloon and then fire the rockets from there.

Lone Wolf wrote: Compared to that, I love the elegance of your balloon idea.  After all, our hero Felix got 24 miles up with nothing but a balloon!

Balloons can raise the initial altitude of rockets.

However, balloons have relatively low payload (although see the Sky Cat project for an example of a heavy-lift balloon intended for use in the lower atmosphere), and this decreases even more with increasing altitude.

The lifting gas is usually helium, which is expensive in large quantities. This makes balloons an expensive launch assist technique. Hydrogen could be used as it has the advantage of being cheaper and lighter than helium, but the disadvantage of also being highly flammable.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-rocket_spacelaunch

A serious disadvantage is that balloons cannot be steered and consequently neither the direction the launched rocket moves in nor the region where it will fall is easily adjustable. Therefore, a large area for the fall of the rocket is required for safety reasons.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockoon

Gumby wrote: But, here's a link of other cool non-rocket spacelaunch ideas...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-rocket_spacelaunch

moda0306 wrote: Jeezus MG... Death Grip monopoly?  Does it piss you off that bad that it was government that figured out how to put a man on the moon?  Has the private sector been so oppressed against getting to space?

moda0306 wrote: Jeezus MG... Death Grip monopoly?  Does it piss you off that bad that it was government that figured out how to put a man on the moon?  Has the private sector been so oppressed against getting to space?

MachineGhost wrote:I am also sympathetic to the argument that corporations -- even private -- are the breeding grounds of socialism.  They are certainly not free market hierarchericies internally, but utilize the same top down, command and conquer perversion that government festers upon general society.

moda0306 wrote: Large corporations, as MG says, have a very Socialistic, if not Communistic internal operating structure.

Though I never was close to any managers, it was obvious that most of them suffered the same intimidation and hassles that I faced as their peon. But if bosses were as oppressed as I was, I reasoned, why were they so willing, even eager, to carry out the ridiculous dictates of the company? How had they turned into complacent embodiments of corporate policies? Why were they so ready to enforce completely arbitrary policies which oppressed them as much as me? It couldn't just be the money, or could it?

Scenes From Corporate Life, a detailed exploration of the corporate manager's life, is an attempt to answer these questions. The book, which originally had the same title as this review, depicts the duplicity, shallowness, manipulations, and general stupidity that prevail among managers. The portrait will be familiar to anyone who has labored in the office world. Earl Shorris (who was a long-time middle manager himself) argues convincingly that common business practices produce corporations which are essentially totalitarian institutions.

For Shorris, totalitarianism is the process of destroying autonomy. Corporate totalitarianism idolizes efficiency in its bureaucracies and takes its ideology from industrial psychology, management textbooks and classes. The result is a microworld where the autonomy of human beings is systematically thwarted.

Among his vignettes he describes techniques effective in intimidating and controlling both managers and knowledge workers. For example, the annual bonus system is used almost as a piece-rate kind of motivation for the middle-level employees. And yet, because of the company's need to keep people off guard and unsure of themselves the awarding of bonuses is often arbitrary and out of line with actual events.

***

But "men do not merely acquiesce, they choose to live under totalitarian conditions. . . out of fear, mistaking its effect upon them because they do not think of the meaning of their actions.'' Managers have accepted an externally- imposed definition of happiness (i.e. material wealth, career advancement) provided by The Organization and its leaders. In so doing they have ceded their autonomy as free human beings to an abstract end and reduced themselves to mere means. In sacrifices "for the company'' Shorris identifies the essential ingredient of a totalitarian society: human beings actively, even willingly, participating in self-delusion and renunciation of their own freedom, in exchange for a false sense of security.

"In the modern world a delusion about work and happiness enables people not only to endure oppression but to seek it and to believe that they are happier because of the very work that oppresses them.''

TennPaGa wrote:

MediumTex wrote:

moda0306 wrote: Large corporations, as MG says, have a very Socialistic, if not Communistic internal operating structure.

The definitive work on this topic is Earl Shorris's Scenes From Corporate Life.

It's out of print now, but well worth tracking down a copy.

Here is one review:

Where did you find this review?